Month: April 2013

One notable little nugget from Mark Mazzetti’s latest piece in The New York Times is the following, which gives added weight to warnings of blowback resulting from the Obama administration’s drone war:

…the map of Islamic militancy inside Pakistan had been redrawn in recent years, and factions that once had little contact with one another had cemented new alliances in response to the C.I.A.’s drone campaign in the western mountains. Groups that had focused most of their energies dreaming up bloody attacks against India were now aligning themselves closer to Al Qaeda and other organizations with a thirst for global jihad.

Not only is the cruel nature of the drone war, with its massive civilian casualties, a motivation for unaffiliated locals to join the ranks of al-Qaeda, but other regional terror groups from the other side of Pakistan “cemented new alliances” with those in the Northwest Frontier Province as a result of the decade long bombing campaign.

See here for an extended interview with Mazzetti from Danger Room’s Spencer Ackerman.

Glenn Greenwald has posted a good interview he conducted with Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, authors of the recent book Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Scott Horton also interviewed the two on their book back in February. Listen to it here.

There have been several reviews of the book published here at Antiwar.com, including ones by Gareth Porter, Nima Shirazi, and Philip Reboli. I talked about the book in a recent post on the US-led negotiations with Iran.

Jay-Z and Beyoncé are with the terrorists.

Actually they’re with Barack Obama, which allows them the privilege of going on vacation in “enemy country” – something ordinary Americans are forbidden to do by Uncle Sam.

Ed Krayewski:

Jay-Z and Beyoncé visited Cuba for their fifth wedding anniversary last week, reportedly on a license from the Treasury Department. It shouldn’t be surprising that the politically-connected entertainment business couple was able to secure a way to visit the communist country, which is subject to a decades-long trade and travel embargo by the United States.

As Krayewski details, Republicans are playing politics with the the hip-hop couple’s trip to Cuba. You see, it’s a great opportunity to associate President Obama with Castro-loving commie celebrities and to frame his selective endorsement of the trip as elitist. The latter part is accurate.

“Senator Marco Rubio wants the Obama administration to explain why Jay-Z and Beyoncé were allowed to visit Cuba,” Krayewski writes. “The more important question is why aren’t we?”

Indeed. Cuba has elicited particular ire from Washington ever since the Eisenhower administration, a byproduct of Cold War justifications for US grand strategy, which seeks to maintain hegemony and crush economic, geo-political, or ideological defiance.

Cold War rhetoric is stale, though, so Washington has resorted to declaring Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, a blanket accusation Washington applies to any government it doesn’t like. Contrary to more public statements, a State Department report last year found that Cuba’s ties to so-called terrorist groups are tenuous at best.

Cuba has repeatedly reached out to Washington, as President Raul Castro did last summer, insisting that Cuba “is willing to mend fences with bitter Cold War foe the United States and sit down to discuss anything, as long as it is a conversation between equals,” The Associated Press reported.

“Any day they want, the table is set. This has already been said through diplomatic channels,” Castro said. “If they want to talk, we will talk.”

But the Obama administration has refused, intent on continuing to isolate Cuba and maintain the brutal embargo and travel ban.

…Unless you are close personal friends of King Barack.

In an Op-Ed at The Boston Globe, Thanassis Cambanis argues one reason the Obama administration hasn’t directly intervened militarily in Syria is because the long, drawn out conflict hurts America’s geo-political competitors.

The war is also becoming a sinkhole for America’s enemies. Iran and Hezbollah, the region’s most persistent irritants to the United States and Israel, have tied up considerable resources and manpower propping up Assad’s regime and establishing new militias. Russia remains a key guarantor of the government, costing Russia support throughout the rest of the Arab world. Gulf monarchies, which tend to be troublesome American allies, have invested small fortunes on the rebel side, sending weapons and establishing exile political organizations. The more the Syrian war sucks up the attention and resources of its entire neighborhood, the greater America’s relative influence in the Middle East.

Last month I wrote a controversial post about Obama’s apparent “pro-Assad policy.” I say it was controversial because people worried about yet another US war in the Middle East have been arguing since the start of the Syrian conflict that it provides the US with an opportunity to topple the Assad regime, eliminate Iran’s major ally, and set up a new client state that would conform to US demands.

But as I wrote, that’s not what we’ve seen. It’s true that Obama has sent non-lethal and (indirectly) lethal aid to the rebels, despite the fact that the great bulk of the fighters who actually matter are jihadists. But the truth is, Obama has ruled out sending decisive aid, lethal or non-lethal, to Syria’s rebels. He reportedly overruled the suggestions of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey – all of whom advocated arming the rebels. Instead, Obama made policy moves like designating the al-Qaeda in Iraq offshoot in Syria a terrorist organization and pressuring Saudi Arabia not to send heavier arms like anti-aircraft weapons.

In the last few weeks, it has been revealed that the CIA is boosting support to Iraqi militias (Baghdad is an ally of Assad) with the aim of clamping down on al-Qaeda affiliates there pouring into Syria to join the rebellion. The Obama administration even considered a request from the Iraqi government to use drones to bomb Islamist rebel forces along the Iraq-Syria border.

When I posed this “pro-Assad” hypothesis to former CIA intelligence officer and Antiwar.com columnist Phil Giraldi, he concurred.

“I think you are right that Obama has come around to the view that regime change is more fraught with dangers than letting Assad remain,” Giraldi said.

The ongoing conflict in Syria isn’t perceived in Washington as harming US interests, but – according to Cambanis – it is seen as draining the resources and influence of Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. This is valuable to US strategists at a time when the relative balance of US power is seen as waning.

So despite the fears of non-interventionists, it doesn’t look like the Obama administration is prepared to impose regime change in Syria through military action, thereby draining more US resources, increasing anti-American sentiment, creating a power vacuum where jihadists are likely to seize power, and obligating America to another decade of wasteful counter-insurgency and  nation-building in the Middle East. Not when an ongoing stalemate does more for US interests.

In an article at Der Speigel entitled “Leaving Corruptistan,” Susanne Koelbl reflects on what we’re left with after eleven years of war in Afghanistan:

• A state with a security apparatus that might be strong enough to at best hold the Taliban halfway in check.
• A country whose order will be guaranteed by brutal warlords.
• And a president who will play the kingmaker and wait until the last moment to reveal the person he will back as his successor and who will look like a puppet of Karzai’s interests when the latter steps down next year.

As the article details, the name of the game right now in Afghanistan is for the US to reduce its troop presence significantly by 2014 and declare victory, facts notwithstanding.

As for the 5,000-10,000 troops to remain beyond 2014, Washington and Kabul are haggling over the details. “Afghanistan’s parliament wants to be able to prosecute American soldiers in Afghan courts,” Koelbl reports. “But, says one US diplomat, ‘That will never happen.'”

US soldiers must be permitted to act outside the law indefinitely. How else are we to get away with systematic abuse of Afghans?

Incidentally, that very dispute is what bungled the Obama administration’s effort to establish an enduring troop presence in Iraq beyond 2011. But the Afghan state is much weaker than the one in Baghdad, and it’s unlikely Washington will allow such defiance to spoil plans to continue the occupation and nation-building project in Afghanistan.

Most importantly, US presence in Afghanistan provides Washington with a way to justify the drone war in neighboring Pakistan. That’s an important asset to the war-makers.

It must be hard for even the most brainwashed jingoes to look at Afghanistan and honestly say the fight has been worth it. But with 2013 almost half over, Americans should expect a wave of propaganda about Uncle Sam’s glorious achievements there – both to vindicate the past decade of wasted blood and treasure, and to justify our nefarious occupation into the future.