Month: October 2013

Leaving aside how egregiously extra-legal, unrestrained, and unchecked the NSA’s domestic surveillance is, today’s news from Glenn Greenwald in the French paper Le Monde is a window into what NSA spying looks like with zero constraints.

According to the article, the NSA recorded 70.3 million French phone calls between Dec. 10, 2012, and Jan. 8, 2013. We’re not talking meta-data here. These were recorded and collected, and the NSA targeted not only terror suspects but also French politicians, private businesses, and – unquestionably – ordinary French citizens.

According to the BBC, France is outraged. The “foreign ministry has summoned the U.S. ambassador” over the news and “Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he was “deeply shocked” by the claims made in the Le Monde newspaper.”

The Obama administration responded to the news by saying essentially, “so what?”

“As a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.

This isn’t the first NSA revelation reported by Greenwald for foreign audiences. It was also reported in Brazilian outlets that the NSA spied on a Brazilian oil company, which drew into question NSA claims that it does not engage in spying for economic purposes. The Brazilian government was quite vexed.

And the NSA also hacked the email of Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón, among other expansive spying practices in that country, according to Der Spiegel.

Some commentators on the NSA revelations from Edward Snowden like to claim the NSA has free rein to spy on the world, even if there ought to be minor legal constraints on domestic surveillance. This twisted logic implicitly maintains that only Americans have rights.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is really upset that the U.S. and Iran seem to be getting closer to rapprochement. But would Israel go ahead and bomb Iran, as it has long threatened, without a green light from the U.S.?

Iran is in the process of offering significant concessions on its nuclear program and asking in return for the U.S. to recognize its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes and to lift economic sanctions. A simple deal, it appears. But, asks Uri Sadot of the Council on Foreign Relations, “With the renewed negotiations in place, will Israel dare strike a Middle Eastern nation in defiance of its closest allies?”

“It seems unlikely,” Sadot answers, “but 32 years ago, the answer was yes.”

On June 7, 1981, Israel launched Operation Opera. A squadron of fighter planes flew almost 1,000 miles over Saudi and Iraqi territory to bomb a French-built plutonium reactor on the outskirts of Baghdad, which Israeli leaders feared would be used by Saddam Hussein to build atomic bombs.

The operation was successful, but the international reaction was severe. On the morning following the attack, the United States condemned Israel, suggesting it had violated U.S. law by using American-made military equipment in its assault. State Department spokesman Dean Fischerreiterated the American position that the reactor did not pose a potential security threat, and White House press secretary Larry Speakesadded that President Ronald Reagan had personally approved the condemnation.

Israel didn’t hesitate back then to bomb what it viewed as a threatening nuclear program, even at the risk of provoking a conflict with the United States — and it will likely not hesitate today.

First, the notion that “the operation was successful” is dubious.

“To begin with, Hussein was not on the brink of a bomb in 1981,” writes Colin Kahl, for Obama administration deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. Saddam “Hussein had not decided to launch a full-fledged weapons program prior to the Israeli strike.”

“By demonstrating Iraq’s vulnerability,” Kahl explains, “the attack on Osirak actually increased Hussein’s determination to develop a nuclear deterrent,” and Iraq followed up by kicking out UN inspectors and reconstituting a nuclear weapons program in earnest (only to have it virtually destroyed in a 1991 war with the US).

But the point remains, Israel will embrace it’s rogue status if it wants to. This was demonstrated again in 2007, when Israel bombed a nuclear reactor in Syria despite opposition to the strike from President George W. Bush.

Hopefully, U.S.-Iranian rapprochement won’t be the driving force behind an Israeli decision to preventively bomb Iran. The consequences of such a strike would be disastrous. To start with, it would be a grave war crime. It would also ensure the Iranian hardliners who oppose détente win over the moderates like Rouhani, thus immediately rendering the historic U.S.-Iran negotiations kaput.

Ever since the onset of the Arab Spring, it has become increasingly difficult for the U.S. to maintain its decades-long policy of support for dictatorial Middle Eastern regimes that obediently conform to U.S. interests, as I wrote more than two years ago. While U.S. support for these regimes hasn’t shifted, cracks have begun to form, as was seen with the Obama administration’s decision this month to withhold some military aid to Egypt.

But as long-standing U.S. towards brutal Middle Eastern regimes begins to adjust due largely to increased awareness, America’s penchant for supporting dictatorship is shifting to Africa. Newly strengthened U.S. allies are sharply intensified domestic repression.

Ever since the country’s disputed elections in 2005, Ethiopia has been a strong U.S. ally, even invading Somalia with Washington’s support in 2006. These years have correlated with harsh crackdowns.

“Ethiopian authorities have subjected political detainees to torture and other ill-treatment at the main detention center in Addis Ababa,” reports Human Rights Watch this month. “Those detained in Maekelawi include scores of opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies.”

And remember Obama’s unilateral decision back in 2011 to send U.S. troops to Uganda to support the government’s fight against domestic militants? Well, a matter of months into that increased support role, Amnesty International warned that “the Ugandan government and public officials are increasingly placing illegitimate restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly to silence critical voices.”

Amnesty reported that public protests had been banned and several political activists had been charged with treason, a capital offense.

Increased U.S. military and financial support for the Kenyan government is also correlated with increases in human rights abuses. According to Jonathan Horowitz at Foreign Policy, the U.S. “may rightly be criticized for aiding and abetting human rights violations,” like “detainee abuse, denial of fair trial guarantees, extrajudicial killings, or unlawful extraditions.”

And then, at the end of September, the Obama administration issued blanket waivers exempting three countries from a federal law banning U.S. military aid to countries that use child soldiers. Two of these exempted countries were in the heart of Africa: Chad and South Sudan.

This is all being done under the umbrella of anti-terrorism, but that is an inflated threat and probably not the prime mover of the Pentagon’s shift toward Africa, as I wrote last week.

In an interview early this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said illegal Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory are a “bogus issue” that “don’t stand in the way” of a peaceful solution to the conflict.

That was exactly wrong, especially considering that direct negotiations had been stalled for years because the Palestinian side had freezing settlement construction as a precondition to talks. But it’s interesting to see what Israel has been up to in the meantime:

AFP:

New settlement construction starts rose by 70 percent in the first half of 2013 compared with a year earlier, an Israeli NGO said Thursday, describing the increase as “drastic”.

According to figures released by the anti-settler group Peace Now, the construction of 1,708 new homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem began between January and June 2013, compared with 995 in the same period last year.

Billing the figures as a “drastic rise,” Peace Now said 44 percent of the new construction had taken place east of Israel’s vast separation barrier which cuts through the West Bank, and 32 percent fell to the west of it.

The number of Jewish settlers that the Israeli government has incentivized to live on Palestinian land has tripled since 1993 to more than 342,000 at the end of 2011, the Associated Press reported last year. That number does not include some 200,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed from the Palestinians in 1967. Updated settler population estimates for 2013 aren’t available, to my knowledge.

To reiterate, all of this settlement building is illegal under international law, which prohibits the forced transfer of civilian populations and forbids military occupiers from transferring any of its population to settle into the occupied area. Yet the demolitions of Palestinian homes and the erection of new Jewish settlements continues.

One might think settlement activity would abate now that Secretary of State John Kerry has apparently got each side back to the negotiating table. But settlement building is a political tactic in addition to a long-term effort to annex the West Bank.

As Yousef Munayyer wrote recently in The New Yorker, ”Everything about the Israeli state’s actual behavior suggests it has no intention of ever leaving the West Bank.” Lara Friedman and Daniel Seidemann, writing in Foreign Policy, call it the “everybody knows fallacy,” namely that Israel’s gradual and continuous expansion onto Palestinian land is premised “on the grounds that ‘everybody knows’ these areas will always be part of Israel.”

If anyone thinks this is lost on the Palestinians, think again.

“We believe that Israel is deliberately sending a message to the US, to the rest of the world that regardless of any attempt at launching negotiations, ‘we are going to press ahead with stealing more land, building more settlements and destroying the two-state-solution,’” PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi told the BBC.

And that’s how this ‘peace process’ is going. The Israeli leadership doesn’t want peace, they want land that doesn’t belong to them. And thanks to support from Washington, they just might get it.

The U.S. has deployed “200 Marines to a naval base in Sicily for possible operations in Libya,” according to UPI, the latest in the establishment of “a network of bases in Italy as launch pads for military interventions in Africa and the Mideast.”

The UPI report adds: “U.S. operations in Africa are growing as the Islamist threat expands.” Not quite. U.S. operations are indeed growing in Africa, but it isn’t being driven by an “Islamist threat” to America.

This has been a long time coming. The Obama administration has been slowly – and very quietly – getting America militarily involved throughout Africa. While extreme poverty and governance problems still plague Africa, many countries have been improving infrastructure and developing their economies like never before. And this has grabbed the attention of more advanced economies, especially given several areas of untapped oil and gas.

“China-Africa trade grew 1000% from $10 billion in 2000 to $107 billion in 2008,” according to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s recent book Strategic Vision. Uncle Sam would be damned if he let that competition slide without a response. Since 2007, when AFRICOM was established, the U.S. has been trying to up its game, except that usually means militarily. Washington has been increasing its support for African regimes, many with records of human rights violations, and boosting efforts to train African militaries to keep them dependent on the Pentagon. The U.S. is training and equipping militaries in countries including Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia – not to mention operations in Libya, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti, et al. – all in the name of preventing “terrorists from establishing sanctuaries.”

But America is getting itself tangled in its own web of expansion and blowback, using every bad consequence of previous interventions to justify new ones.

The U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 gave rise to the militant group al-Shabab, a group that is now formally allied with al-Qaeda and ironically justifying further interventions. Beyond that, Al-Qaeda’s presence in Africa was generated in large part by the U.S.-NATO war in Libya two years ago. Jihadist fighters from abroad joined the rebel militias in Libya early on and then exploited the power vacuum left when the U.S. helped them overthrow the Gadhafi regime. As the Washington Post reported, “the overthrow of dictator Moammar Gaddafi in Libya triggered a migration of African mercenaries and their weapons back to countries where al-Qaeda elements are based.” Ansar al-Sharia now has a presence in Libya and Islamic extremists are present in Mali, which was destabilized thanks to the chaos in Libya.

Even still, the notion that these groups have the ability or the intention to attack the U.S., or present any significant threat to speak of, is hard to believe. Al-Shabab militants “do not pose a threat to the U.S. homeland or to U.S. interests in East Africa,” according to Bronwyn Bruton, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

“[T]he actual risk of a terrorist attack by Al Shabab on a soft target in the U.S. remains very low, and should not be a cause for alarm,” adds Ken Menkhaus, a professor of political science. Nevertheless, the U.S. continues to send JSOC teams into Somalia, hover drones above militant territory, and fund unscrupulous proxies on the ground.

In Nigeria, the radical group Boko Haram has not had its sights on the U.S., but that is likely to change in due time thanks to increased U.S. support for the Nigerian military and other U.S. meddling. Boko Haram “remains largely focused on a Nigerian domestic agenda,” according to EJ Hogendoorn, Africa deputy program director at International Crisis Group.

Unfortunately, that’s not enough for Washington. In the words of Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA), “While I recognize there is little evidence at this moment to suggest Boko Haram is planning attacks against the [U.S.] homeland, lack of evidence does not mean it cannot happen.”

What a great strategy! Assume everything poses a threat and intervene everywhere!

The issue of Islamic militancy in Africa is, at its core, an inflated threat that is providing the U.S. justification to invade and dominate Africa like it has the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, and East Asia. The real worry is how it is being done: in near total secrecy. Americans aren’t voting for increased U.S. militarism in Africa. They, and probably their representatives, are mostly unaware. But the Obama administration’s penchant for secrecy and covert war is making it all happen without any debate.

Down the line, we will be talking about how these early Obama-era interventions planted the seeds of our future threats, instability, and quagmires in Africa.

Part of American Exceptionalism is never having to admit when your government kills hundreds of thousands of people.

A new study says the U.S. invasion and subsequent war in Iraq killed an estimated 460,800, higher than most of the estimates frequently cited in the mainstream media, but lower than the controversial 2006 Lancet study that estimated between 400,000 and 655,000 excess deaths.

The authors of the study, which was published in PLOS Medicine, detail a more rigorous methodology than has ever been employed for previous Iraq War mortality estimates.

But even this may be an undercount. John Tirman, Executive Director at the MIT Center for International Studies and author of The Deaths of Others, told me in an email that the new study’s estimate of deaths of displaced people, approximately 56,000, is “likely to be more like 100,000 or even greater, but it’s almost impossible to say without more research—i.e., a survey among the displaced.”

Whatever the exact number, what’s certain is that it continues to grow. According to the International Crisis Group, the violence in Iraq is “as acute and explosive as ever.” And as Antiwar.com’s own Kelley Vlahos wrote recently, Iraqis are dying in “numbers not seen since the bloody days of 2008.”

Unfortunately, Americans dramatically under-estimate how many Iraqis died as a result of their former president’s war of choice.

“While even the most conservative estimates of mortality in Iraq,” Al Jazeera America reports, “have reached six figures, polling in the U.S. (PDF) and U.K. (PDF) have shown public perception to be that the civilian death toll from the war is in the neighborhood of 10,000.”

That is an embarrassment of enormous magnitude. But one is careful not to be surprised. Back in 2011, a University of Maryland poll found that 38 percent of Americans still believe the U.S. had “found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.”

So not only do Americans refuse to accept the reality of why the U.S. attacked Iraq, but they resist the facts about the consequences of the war. The notion that we went to war on false pretenses and that it directly led to the deaths of about 500,000 people is too much to bear for flag-waving Americans.

If their ignorance weren’t so offensive, it might be excusable. The reality is that a group of people that the American electorate twice empowered at the voting booths made decisions to act criminally and killed hundreds of thousands of people needlessly by attacking and occupying a country that posed no threat to us.  They get away with this mass murder, in part, because of the mass ignorance of Americans.

A death count statistic can never truly depict the unimaginable suffering caused by the U.S. in Iraq. But the 10,000 civilians America believes were killed by the war is not an acceptable representation of the ~500,000 Iraqis that actually died and the millions that had their lives torn apart.

I shudder to think how many Americans know that more than 6,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in 2013, two years after the U.S. withdrawal.