Antiwar Radio can now be heard Monday through Friday, 12-3pm Eastern at Liberty Radio Network.
For you long time listeners, Antiwar Radio will continue to air on KAOS Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, KPFK Pacifica Radio 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara, KUCR 88.3 FM in Riverside, and Antiwar.com.
Judge Andrew Napolitano interviews Kelley Vlahos on Barack Obama’s order to assassinate American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
Chicago’s South Side is indulging itself in a bit of nostalgia for the ’80s and ’90s. Michelle Obama’s hood is overrun with gang-related murders; deaths are at the same rate as US soldiers dying in both major theaters of the US’ “War on Terror.” Government must do something, declares two Illinois state senators who represent parts of the city. I know — a good old fashioned military occupation, like what worked so well in our wars and Kent State and whatnot.
“John Fritchley and LaShawn Ford, Democrats who represent the north and west sides of the city, said troops were needed to ‘stabilize communities’ in Chicago just as they had done in Iraq and Afghanistan,” explains the Telegraph.
These men are talking about the “surge,” or what those of us against the war labeled “escalation.” Iraq was in the throes of vicious violence that was killing over a thousand civilians (and who knows how many others who were labeled militants for intermittent or single acts of resistance) per month. The Bush Administration decided sending many tens of thousands more hastily trained troops into the mix would be a great idea, ignoring the fact that much of the violence was likely due to the presence of foreign troops. The troops were sent >> fast-forward >> violence is down in Iraq! The surge worked!
What’s missing in that fast-forward blip is what really happened in 2007. Many — most? –Americans can’t usually be bothered with the truth, especially when it’s all long and stuff. Recap:
1) Sadr ordered his men to stand down, apparently sickened by the recent violence between his followers, and other Shi’ites and the government.
2) The Awakening (Sahwa) councils, Sunni groups who were revolting against al-Qaeda-in-Iraq’s senseless slaughters, began receiving large sums of money from the US to only fight AQI, and not US troops as well, as they had been doing. The verdict is yet out on what happens when the money stops and Maliki, or whoever is in power, decides to turn on this now-well-trained movement.
3) This is the big one: the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad was essentially complete. No more violence was necessary for many partisan sectarians. Juan Cole did some extra parsing of this in 2008.
All of these pointy complicated facts were mushed into a smooth ball for easier digestion — our Glorious Soldiers had won the day. If you disagree you’re a commie or a terrorist symp who hates America. This actually succeeded in convincing some antiwar types, if I recall.
Candidate Obama, however, seemed not to be fooled. Then, when it was no longer politically tenable, he changed his mind. We now know this is Obama’s typical flip-flopping treachery, but this was one of his first major public instances. And now he’s got his own surge.
For their parts, reports the Chicago Tribune, the mayor and the governor oppose adding another layer of force to Chicago’s already well-armored police.
“You have to look at long-term solutions. You can’t just put something temporary in there,” said Mayor Richard Daley. “People have to get involved in their community, family by family and block by block.”
Chicago police are trained in the state and federal constitutions, says Mark Donahue, president of the city’s police union.
“With the guard coming in, it’s making a statement that your constitutional rights will be diminished,” Donahue said. “They don’t have the training that Chicago police officers do.”
The governor can send the Guard troops in, but in this case will only do so at Daley’s request.
So should we add PTSD-affected soldiers to the ranks of possibly also-traumatized police on the admittedly well-armed but nonetheless civilian streets of Chi-town? That’s a surge I don’t see working well. But maybe when the violence ends once everyone kills each other, they’ll proclaim another “mission accomplished.”
If troops end up occupying our cities, it will be thanks to simplistic lies told by men with authoritarian minds. We can blame President Barack Obama for backing up Bush’s surge fairy tales and painting military intervention a panacea for all threats, foreign and domestic. It’s now okay for Americans across the political spectrum to trust guns and bombs as an organizing principle of civilization.
I like this theme, and have written about it here before, as has Justin Raimondo. Simply: the world isn’t made more just for gay people by inclusiveness being extended to history’s largest murder organization. Lesbians don’t have an equal right to kill. It’s not progressive to include transsexuals in the American project to garrison the globe. And so on. To promote this theme, and to culture-jam in general, I made a page on Facebook entitled Don’t Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which includes a few links to sympathetic essays. So far, it’s a few people I know and some other general military or christianist flunkies who don’t seem to have even glanced at the content. The description is clear:
“In the fight for equality, gay people now claim the right to join in our government’s pointless, counterproductive, and expensive wars. This page is for those who think the equal right to kill isn’t something worth fighting for.”
I invite those who agree to “Like” the page, join in the discussion, and make this a more well-known position. US-Liberal types embrace gays in the military automatically, unthinkingly — “gay” = “good.” But gays who kill for the state are killers like anyone else.
Anwar al-Awlaki certainly makes for an interesting topic of conversation. The New Mexico-born cleric has not only spent the past few years as a vigorously outspoken critic of US foreign policy in the Middle East but has used the Internet quite successfully to get his message out, and it seems a message with more than a little currency in the invasion-weary Arabian Peninsula.
But Awlaki’s real claim to fame, at least recent fame, comes from an announcement last week that President Barack Obama had made Awlaki the first American citizen to officially grace the CIA’s assassination list.
The reasons for Awlaki’s impending assassination are vague, to say the least. Though officials have repeatedly accused Awlaki of being “in al-Qaeda,” he is not currently accused of any crimes and the only specific accusation against him is that he has criticized US foreign policy, and that this has made it easier for al-Qaeda to recruit.
Since this isn’t illegal officials insist there is something more that he is doing, but what that something is has never been stated or even really implied. Even Awlaki’s family seems to believe that the criticism is the real issue here, and his father suggested a “deal” whereby Anwar would stop criticizing the US in return for being removed from the assassination list.
But the media seems eager to fill in where the government has failed, and make the case for what a bad guy Awlaki really is. The Washington Times, light on details as ever, has declared Awlaki “the new bin Laden.” The only specific allegations made in the piece are his “thoughtful, well-researched” arguments and that he has potentially inspired other people who later launched attacks.
The accusation would be farcical if there weren’t a grain of truth in there, but Awlaki has become the new bin Laden indeed, at least in that he’s taken over bin Laden’s role as the war party’s bogey-man.
The cleric’s life is now an open book, except for the part where he actually did something to get assassinated. FoxNews.com is running an article which can only be described as a “reverse-birther” story, claiming that Awlaki may have lied about his place of birth on his application to Colorado State University to get additional financial aid.
The article cites Ray Fournier, a security official, as saying the US has been looking basically since 9/11 “tirelessly to find a reason to arrest or detain the American-born cleric.” Added Fourier about the apparently ill-gotten $20,000 grant: “that’s the taxpayers’ money.”
The penalty for lying on this application, however, is a fine of up to $20,000, and up to five years in jail. The penalty is not, and has never been, assassination.
Former Guantanamo guard Specialist Brandon Neely meets prisoners Shafiq Rasul and Ruhal Ahmed via internet on the BBC’s Newsnight.
Part 1
Part 2
(Hat tip to Anders K of Youtube’s Antiwar Radio channel.)
