7/11/2011, “Obama’s Secret Wars: How Our Shady Counter-Terrorism Policies Are More Dangerous Than Terrorism,” AlterNet, Fred Branfman
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“Obama should be held accountable for vastly expanding the military establishment’s worldwide license to kill.”
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“Obama should be held accountable for vastly expanding the military establishment’s worldwide license to kill.”
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“Although President’s Obama’s partial Afghan troop withdrawal announcement has received more attention, his June 29 “National Strategy for Counterterrorism” is of far greater long-term significance.
This remarkable document states that the U.S. government intends
to ”disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa’ida and its
affiliates and adherents,” in the following ”areas of focus”:
“The Homeland, South Asia, Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, Europe, Iraq, Maghreb and Sahel, Southeast Asia (and) Central Asia.”
This assassination strategy is already operational in six Muslim countries with a combined population of 280 million:
“The Homeland, South Asia, Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, Europe, Iraq, Maghreb and Sahel, Southeast Asia (and) Central Asia.”
This assassination strategy is already operational in six Muslim countries with a combined population of 280 million:
- Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, which has become a laboratory experiment for urban drone assassinations.
The London Sunday Times reported a year ago that ”President Obama has secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US special forces … with American troops now operating in 75 countries.“ There are presently 60,000 Special Operations forces worldwide, with 7,000 U.S. assassins unleashed upon Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq.…
President Obama, a former constitutional law lecturer, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and rhetorical advocate of the Rule of Law cannot
possibly reconcile his previously stated beliefs with his presently
creation of an “industrial-size killing machine” that sees U.S. leaders unilaterally hunt, kidnap and murder any person anywhere on earth — including “the Homeland” — whenever they feel like it,
may well have made the same calculation. But this ”counterterrorism” program not only formalizes extrajudicial state killing formerly associated in the public mind only with the Gestapo and KGB. It also drastically weakens, not strengthens, U.S. national security. …It is true that America badly needs an alternative to occupying foreign lands. But a worldwide assassination program that motivates countless potential suicide bombers, weakens friendly governments, strengthens U.S. foes and increases the danger of nuclear materials falling into the hands of anti-Americanterrorists, is hardly more “cost-effective counterterrorism.” On the contrary. It exponentially increases America’s enemies
If manned helicopter strikes in the middle of Baghdad, with pilots hovering over and discussing their targets, can murder a Reuters journalist for carrying a camera and a doctor trying to rescue him — as revealed in the Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” video – one can only imagine the drone-caused civilian carnage in remote areas of both Pakistan and Afghanistan that are
- without outside oversight or their victims enjoying any legal or human rights whatsoever.
- which called the strategy “more efficient counterterrorism,”
- while doing them comparatively little damage….
- “For Every Dead Pashtun Warrior, There Will Be 10 Pledged to Revenge.”
- without knowing how many civilians were among the 1900 people it has murdered
If manned helicopter strikes in the middle of Baghdad, with pilots hovering over and discussing their targets, can murder a Reuters journalist for carrying a camera and a doctor trying to rescue him — as revealed in the Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” video – one can only imagine the drone-caused civilian carnage in remote areas of both Pakistan and Afghanistan that are
- inaccessible to the outside world.
- Its basic premise —
- that there is a fixed quantity of “al-Qaeda leaders,
Does it really make sense to kill a handful of top leaders, who can be easily replaced by often more competent deputies, at the cost of motivating entire populations to support killing Americans?
The latest example is Yemen where, the Washington Post has reported,“attacks on electricity plants and oil pipelines have left Yemen’s economy on the edge of collapse, with the most damaging strike carried out in retaliation for a U.S. counterterrorism raid.” After the U.S. assassinated a tribal chief’s innocent son, he retaliated by cutting Yemen’s main oil pipeline. By aiding Yemen’s economic collapse,
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Pakistani militants focused almost entirely on their immediate surroundings. But now, as a result of U.S. war-making in Pakistan, former CIA counterterrorism chief Grenier has explained that “it’s not just a matter of numbers of militants who are operating in that area, it also effects the motivations of those militants…They now see themselves as part of a global Jihad. They are not just focused on helping oppressed Muslims in Kashmir or trying to fight the NATO and the Americans in Afghanistan, they see themselves as part of a global struggle, and therefore are a much broader threat than they were previously.
So in a sense, yes, we have helped to bring about the situation that we most fear.”"…
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