Tag: US Foreign Policy

CIA Secrecy and Drone Strikes Affect on US Foreigh Policy

From torture and black sites to continued drone strikes on sovereign countries, the CIA has been secretly undermining US foreign policy around the world but mostly in the Middle East and Near Asia.

MSNBC’s host Rachel Maddow discusses how the CIA making deals for black site torture facilities undercut the State Department calling for open disclosure about the prisoners that were being held in those countries.

She is joined by Philip Zelikow, counselor to the State Department from 2005 to 2007, to discuss the conflict between the CIA and State Department.

It isn’t just the secret dealing to cover up the crime of torture that is damaging foreign policy, drone strikes that allegedly target Al Qaeda and ISIS leaders have angered the governments of the countries that have been attacked. The effectiveness of these strikes are dubious since there is no evidence of their effectiveness. What is certain is that the strikes have killed more civilians than terrorists and made Americans less safe.

Scott Horton, human rights attorney and contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, joined Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman to the US secret foreign policy of drone sites and torture black sites.

At least nine Pakistanis were killed Sunday in a U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan, the first reported drone strike of 2015. News accounts of the strike are based on unnamed Pakistani government and security officials. The Obama administration has said nothing so far. For years, the United States did not even publicly acknowledge the existence of the drone strikes. The drone program is just one example of the national security state’s reliance on secret operations. The recent Senate Intelligence Committee report revealed another example: the shadowy network of overseas CIA black sites where the United States held and tortured prisoners. The report also noted the CIA shrouded itself in a cloak of secrecy keeping policymakers largely in the dark about the brutality of its detainee interrogations. The agency reportedly deceived the White House, the National Security Council, the Justice Department and Congress about the efficacy of its controversial interrogation techniques



Full transcript can be read here

Stop Listening to Morons

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Surface To Air Missiles Kill People

I know I’m a silly and naive hippie. Very Serious People know the importance of arming the rebels, and the rebels of the rebels, and of the governments fighting the rebels, and of the random people who might just be good guys today but who knows about tomorrow, because it’s what we know how to do and our friends get rich in the process.

But, you know, weapons kill people. That’s what they’re for.

Atrios

We need to stop arming morons but most of all we need to stop listening to them.

In the wake of the tragic crash of Malaysian Air Flight 17 yesterday that took the lives of 290, there is a lot of ranting and finger wagging among war hawk conservatives who believe this tragedy could have been averted of we had just given the new Ukrainian government weapons. Considering the clear possibility that the plane was taken down by a Russian made Soviet era surface to air missile, the logic of these neo-cons is baffling. The US backing, arming and training rebels and rogue governments hasn’t worked very well in the past and isn’t working out very well today in either the Middle East or Latin  and South America

Charlie Pierce thinks we should stop listening to morons, in particular a couple of our elected morons, who have never seen a war they didn’t like or a terrorist under every rock, want more weapons and more war. Sen. John “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran” McCain (R-AZ):

“It’s just been cowardly,” McCain said. “It’s a cowardly administration that we failed to give the Ukrainians weapons with which to defend themselves.” He speculated that the Russian separatists who allegedly shot down the plane “may not even have occupied and had access to these weapons, which apparently they got at an airfield,” [..]

“First, give the Ukrainians weapons to defend themselves and regain their territory. Second of all, move some of our troops in to areas that are being threatened by Vladimir Putin, in other countries like the Baltics and others. Move missile defense into the places where we got out of, like the Czech Republic and Poland and other places. And impose the harshest possible sanctions on Vladimir Putin and Russia. And that’s just for openers.”

This from the man who wanted to arm the Syrian rebels who were affiliated with Al Qaeda, some of whom are now trying to overthrow the American backed Iraqi government. John, please, just please, retire.

And of course the call for throwing more weapons into the mix wouldn’t be complete without some good ol’ fear mongering for Rep. Peter King (R-NY)

“[W]e need more leadership from the president,” King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on MSNBC. “He gave this a passing reference in his speech in Delaware, then went on to tell Joe Biden jokes and take the usual shots at Republicans – which is fair game, but not on this day – and then to go to New York and go to two fundraisers. I mean, I can’t imagine [former Presidents Dwight] Eisenhower or [John F.] Kennedy or [Ronald] Reagan doing that.”

Ronnie Reagan? Seriously. The man who slept through the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over the Kamchatka Peninsula by Soviet forces in 1983 and took three days to make a statement? Pete, get a grip

More of what Charlie said about arming morons:

I often refer to the scene featuring the great character actor Philip Bosco, as a judge in the small upstate New York town that is the setting for the vastly underrated Paul Newman movie Nobody’s Fool. Newman is before the judge because he has punched a local cop — played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman — and, in response, the cop had fired off a warning shot that frightened an old woman a few blocks over. Bosco listens to the story and then addresses the police chief. “You know my views on arming morons,” Bosco says. “If you arm one, you have to arm them all. Otherwise, it isn’t good sport.”

It is becoming plain that the atrocity visited on the Malaysian jetliner is a direct result of arming morons. The New York Times obtained audiotape, allegedly from the people who shot down the plane, and these guys sound like they shouldn’t be trusted with a lemon zester, let alone a surface-to-air missile. And it is quite plain that the one thing this situation doesn’t need is to arm more morons, or to have another superpower come bungling in. Either by accident or by design — and Josh Marshall is right to point out that, if it’s the former, that’s infinitely worse — Vladimir Putin is responsible for a horrendous crime, and one that weakens his international standing. The only thing that would bail him out would be a flood of American arms to our own set of morons. The only thing that would bail him out would be if we all started listening to John McCain again.

We do know that the separatists in Eastern Ukraine have been armed by the Russians and have taken credit for bring down other planes over the last several weeks. If this is true, the culpability for this tragic loss of lives lies directly at the feet of Vladimir Putin, he alone has the power to stop this. Like Putin, the US needs to stop arming morons and stop listening to them as well.

Whither America?

Crossposted from Antemedius

The other day, on April 15, veteran journalist, war correspondent and truthdig.com columnist Chris Hedges was interviewed on RT News about the state of American society, repeating his oft stated warnings about the long corporate assault on and takeover of politics, the seeming death of reason and critical thinking in public discourse, and the development of a feudalistic “totalitarian democracy” in which the vast majority of the population is reduced through a media manufactured state of ignorance, inability to think clearly, and entertainment dazed complacence to a state of serfdom as a renewable ‘resource’ for a capitalism defined by American and multinational big business, and critiquing from this perspective the US budget developments of the past few days.

The budget is closing American schools and libraries across the country while firing teachers and taking away collective bargaining rights, Hedges notes, while banks and the largest corporations are not paying any taxes, including Bank of America, Exxon Mobil, and GE. Protesters gathered on Saturday April 17 at New York City’s Union Square for the Sound of Resistance protests, part of the US Uncut tax weekend protests challenging the banks, most notably Bank of America, for avoiding paying taxes.

usuncut.org’s about page states that:

US Uncut is a grassroots movement taking direct action against corporate tax cheats and unnecessary and unfair public service cuts across the U.S. Washington’s proposed budget for the coming year sends a clear message: The wrath of budget cuts will fall upon the shoulders of hard-working Americans. That’s unacceptable.

Obama seeks to trim $1.1 trillion from the budget in the next ten years by cutting or eliminating over 200 federal programs, many dedicated to social services and education. For instance, it cuts in half funding to subsidize heating for low-income Americans; limits an expansion of the Pell grant program for students; and decreases Environmental Protection Agency funding by over 12%.

Meanwhile, Republicans are using their new House majority to slash spending even more brutally. The GOP has made it clear that they are bent on raiding funds for Social Security, Medicare, education; determined to kill health care reform; and gut needed investments in infrastructure, climate change and job creation, at a time when America needs it most.

These cuts will come on top of very painful austerity measures made at the state-level across our nation–worth hundreds of billions–since the recession began.

In short, budget cuts demonstrate that Washington has abandoned ordinary Americans.

What is making the situation worse is the ignorance of politicians and others leaping around he fringes. Hedges also reminds that the US is the only industrialized nation in the world that argues over the existence of evolution. Magical thinking, combined with a military superpower, is frightening, he says. “We invest emotional energy on the ridiculous and the sublime… the liberal class has been decimated… what used to be unconstitutional is now legal“, he says, pointing to illegal searches under the Patriot Act and corporate bailouts under the health care legislation. The rights and needs of citizens are being ignored in favor of corporations.

Whither America?

While all across the blogosphere and in mainstream media I watch people argue about which faction of the ‘corporatist party’ to elect in 2012, I’m reminded strongly here of something Chris Floyd wrote nearly four years ago, in September 2007:

US Libya Intervention Is Aggression

Glen Ford, co-founder of the Black Agenda Report and author of The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion, talks with Paul Jay of The Real News Network about the Libya “humanitarian intervention” by the US, the UK, France and the other “coalition” member countries, with his analysis of the causes and goals of the intervention, saying that…

…it is an imperial assault. We don’t need to lose sight of the forest just because individual trees are acting this way and that. What we’re seeing is a unified Euro-American assault on a major oil producer. But the context must include what people are calling the “Arab Spring”, this Arab nationalist reawakening. And that had Washington and all the smaller imperial capitals very, very confused and off-balance. They desperately wanted to find some way that they could appropriate to themselves some part of the Arab reawakening. Libya has provided that opportunity to them, or they have provided themselves with the opportunity to somehow identify with rising Arab nationalist forces, which they will of course call democratic, even though if they come to power in Libya it will be by force of United States and European arms.

[snip]

They targeted [Gaddafi] because they had the opportunity. They also, as I said earlier, were desperately seeking a way to put themselves on the right side of the Arab reawakening, and this was an opportunity. As well, it was what the Saudi’s wanted. It’s well known, it’s been known for a very long time, that the Saudi leadership and Gaddafi were at knife’s edge. Gaddafi liked to bait them and, well, badmouth them, and kings and monarchs don’t like that. So it was an opportunity to take him out. And just because he was collaborating with the United States and the Europeans, collaborating with AFRICOM in terms of operations to find al-Qaeda, just because he was doing that does not mean he was considered reliable. What the imperialists want is a regime that will totally open up the country to Western corporate penetration. They cannot tolerate independence of any kind. They can’t tolerate any nationalism except their own French nationalism or United States nationalism. And that’s why they’re so off balance with his reawakening of Arab nationalism.



Real News Network – April 5, 2011

US Libya Intervention Is Aggression

Glen Ford: The US intervention does not have humanitarian objectives

…full transcript follows…

The US, Saudi Deal over Libya


You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a “yes” vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya – the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, “This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner.”

As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to “seduce” three other members to get the vote.

Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.

Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.

More… from Pepe Escobar today

The Curious Libya ‘opposition’

Who exactly are these rebels we’re supporting?

A short quote from a very exhaustive annotated article:

The so-called Libyan opposition itself is a hodge-podge mix of political opportunists, ex-CIA-trained Mujahideen guerillas such as Abdel Hakim al-Hasidi of the so-called Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who openly admits to close ties to al-Qaeda going back to Afghanistan.12 That certainly raises the level of incredibility of Washington’s most bizarre military crusade of recent times.

As well, the opposition includes former senior Gaddafi regime members who saw greener grass on the US, British and French-backed opposition side, and outright cutthroats who, encouraged by Washington, London or Paris smelled the chance to grab control of one of the richest lands on Earth.

Their “opposition,” unlike in Tunisia or elsewhere, was never “non-violent.” It was an armed revolt from the git-go, a war of tribe against tribe, not of surging aspirations for democracy. NATO member countries are being told by Washington to back one band of tyrants to oust another whose agenda does not comply with what the Pentagon calls Full Spectrum Dominance.

On The Ground? Libyan Civilians Fired On By US Team



via Real News Network – March 23, 2011

Libyan civilians injured in US pilot rescue

Channel 4: After hosting a party for a stricken U.S. pilot,

Libyan civilians are fired upon and injured by U.S. rescue team.

Libya, Democracy and Hypocrisy, and American Exceptionalism

Crossposted from Antemedius

Both the powerfully seductive myth of American Exceptionalism and the loudly proclaimed goal of “humanitarian intervention” in Libya’s civil war appear to be driving the narrative in US media and from the US Government.

But the history of US involvement and war in Vietnam and in the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and occupations, historically illustrate quite clearly the level of “concern” the US Government has for civilian populations, and US domestic policies the past few years at least illustrate the same level of “concern” re the American people. Why anyone would think developments in Libya will be different from those of any other US foreign “intervention” is somewhat of a mystery.

On Tuesday morning Paul Jay of The Real News spoke with Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabashi about the Libyan situation and US intentions there.

   JAY: So, Hamid, you have been studying the Libyan situation for years, and you’ve written about the Iranian situation. You teach at Columbia. So, first of all, what’s your take on what’s happening as we speak?

   DABASHI: Well, there are two takes. One is to take everything on face value that United States and its European allies are in this to protect the civilians and establish a no-fly zone.

   But we, given the history of United States and its European allies, have every reason to doubt that this indeed is the agenda.

   What has happened is–and for this difficulty, Muammar al-Gaddafi himself is the principal culprit–a peaceful, by-and-large peaceful revolutionary uprising in North Africa that has come to conclusion, perfect conclusion, peaceful conclusion in Tunisia and in Egypt, has been bloodied.

   And what we are witnessing today in the aftermath of this military operation by US and its European allies is further bloodying of a peaceful revolutionary uprising.

   In other words, what Muammar al-Gaddafi has done, the last and lasting contribution of Muammar al-Gaddafi to these revolutionary uprising, is to give United States and European allies a military foothold in the revolutionary uprising in North Africa.

   I see the events in Libya, the military operation on the eighth anniversary of US-led invasion of Iraq, in tandem with Secretary of State Clinton telling in effect the Egyptians that you had a peaceful revolution because of your military, and your military is our military, and then going to Tunisia to tell the Tunisians that she’s there to help them.

   In other words, what the US and its European allies are doing are trying to use and abuse the criminal atrocities of Gaddafi to get a foothold, diplomatic and military foothold, in the peaceful revolutionary uprising that we are witnessing in North Africa.

   …

   The United States and European allies had already intervened in the battle between Muammar al-Gaddafi and Libyan people on the side of Gaddafi, by arming Gaddafi to his teeth, both United Kingdom and United States.

   Also, professors from Harvard University to Princeton to Johns Hopkins, etc., were on the payroll of Muammar al-Gaddafi to whitewash his criminal atrocities and present him as something pleasant and acceptable. These are the contexts. So, suddenly, from the same political culture, from the same military culture, you cannot expect a situation that they are going in with shining armor to defend the civilians.



Real News Network – March 22, 2011

Democracy and Hypocrisy in Libya

Hamid Dabashi: Foreign intervention using crimes of Gaddafi

to strengthen their hold on Northern Africa

UPDATED: U.S. Launches Missiles: AlJazeera: Who Will Lead The Military Intervention In Libya?

AjJazeera Live Feed (h/t Momcat) 4:45PM PST:

Early Saturday Morning:

The UN Security Council gives the go-ahead for outside military intervention in Libya, but who will lead the operation and where will be the centre of command and control? Western diplomats insist that Arab League forces must be part of the offensive. Meanwhile, the Gaddafi regime has declared an immediate ceasefire, but will words become action? Inside Story discusses.



AlJazeeraEnglish – 19 Mar 2011

[UPDATES 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 below the fold]

Liberated Libyans Reject US Intervention



Real News Network – March 1, 2011

TRNN EXCLUSIVE: Liberated Libya Rejects US Intervention

On the streets of liberated Benghazi people say no to McCain, Lieberman and any US intervention

…transcript follows…

U.S. World and Regional Credibility

This aired yesterday, 11 February 2011, morning prior to the results later in the day, night there, of the total collapse of the Mubarak reign of rule, but is pretty much spot on about us and especially that whole region of the planet and it’s free people under autocratic rule supported by us.

Egypt: A Revolution Co-opted By The Regime It Opposes

“The news is more evidence of the close ties between Israel, the United States and Mr Suleiman, who is tipped to replace Hosni Mubarak as Egypt’s president”, writes Christopher Hope in a February 09 article in the UK Telegraph, who explains his sourcing as “The close relationship has emerged from American diplomatic cables leaked to the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph.”


Mr Suleiman is Israel’s preferred candidate to replace 82-year-old Mr Mubarak. A secret hotline between Mr Suleiman and the Israelis was said to be “in daily use”, according to US diplomatic cables.

[…]

Mr Suleiman worked hard to position himself as the main Egyptian link with Israel. According to the cable, he was blocking attempts by the Israelis to form links with other members of the Cairo government.

This was, according to Mr Diskin, because of Mr Suleiman’s “desire to remain the sole point of contact for foreign intelligence”.

The efforts paid off. In 2008, Mr Suleiman was named as Israel’s preferred successor to Mr Mubarak and the new secret direct hotline was in daily use. By early 2009, Dan Harel, deputy chief of staff at the Israel Defence Staff, was reporting that “on the intelligence side under Suleiman co-operation is good”.

[snip]

Mr Suleiman has already won the backing of Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, to lead the “transition” to democracy after nearly three weeks of demonstrations calling for Mr Mubarak to resign.

As far as I know now, even after the military takover of Egypt this morning by Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the High Military Council that took control of Egypt on Friday, Omar Suleiman remains Egypt’s Vice President, presumably having taken over the duties and the powers of the President after Hosni Mubarak resigned this morning. This is an assumption I’m making here – if anyone has differing information about Suleiman’s role now, please let me know.

……….

Professor Gilbert Achcar of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, grew up in Lebanon, and is currently Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. His books include The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder, published in 13 languages, Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, co-authored with Noam Chomsky, and most recently the critically acclaimed The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives.

In this interview from Feb. 08, 2011 Achcar talks with The Real News Network’s Paul Jay about the Egyptian protest movement, about the Egyptian Army, and about the illusions that many harbored and still harbor about the role and intentions of the Egyptian military in the sweeping revolutionary movement that developed over so many years of oppression of ordinary Egyptians and flowered into the mass movement we’ve all been watching the past couple of weeks:

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