A View From The Left -WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

A 9/11 Retrospective:

WASHINGTON'S 15-YEAR AIR WAR

In response to al-Qaeda’s brief set of air strikes against U.S. targets, Washington launched an air campaign that has yet to end, involving the use of hundreds of thousands of bombs and missiles, many of a “precision” sort but some as dumb as they come, against a growing array of enemies. Almost 15 years later, American bombs and missiles are now landing on targets in not one but seven largely Muslim countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen)… In our world, there is only one type of barbarism: theirs… Perhaps this September 11th, it’s finally time for Americans to begin to focus on our endless air war in the Greater Middle East, our very own disastrous Fifteen Years’ War.  Otherwise, the first explosions from the Thirty Years’ version of the same will be on the horizon before we know it in a world possibly more destabilized and terrorizing than we can at present imagine.   More

 

Will Either Clinton or Trump End the Forever War?

The key to understanding the Forever War -- and the legal basis for virtually every counterterrorism operation since 9/11 -- is the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a 60-word law passed in the days after the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. The legislation grants the president the authority to use military force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and those who harbored them. But in the nearly 15 years since it was passed, the AUMF has been stretched to give legal cover to a war without boundaries against groups that didn't exist in 2001 -- groups like ISIS… "Because neither the President nor the Congress have a clear vested interest in eliminating the 2001 AUMF, it is difficult to imagine that it will go away anytime soon," Elizabeth Beavers, policy and activism coordinator at Amnesty International, told me in an email. "And as long as it exists, this state of war will be on autopilot, relieving both the President and Congress of the political accountability that comes with debates and votes."  However, some close observers believe that the war has become so entrenched that it will continue even if the 2001 AUMF is eventually revoked. "The Forever War is unlikely to end, regardless of who is next in the White House, and regardless if whether or not the 2001 AUMF is repealed,"   More

 

Inspector General Report: Pentagon Misreporting $$Trillions

The Department of Defense continues its (largely successful) quest to be the biggest financial black hole in world history. A recent report by the Inspector General [PDF] found that the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (OASA) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis (DFAS Indianapolis) made unsupported journal voucher (JV) “adjustments” totaling up to $6.5 trillion by year end… Given that improper adjustments were made and records were removed, the report found that “the data used to prepare the FY 2015 AGF third quarter and year-end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. Furthermore, DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.”  In other words, the Pentagon has been caught, once again, not keeping track of where the money is going and remains unable to go through an audit—a problem that has been persistent for decades, even after a law passed in 1996 that required all federal agencies to conduct annual audits.  More

 

Donald Trump promises huge boost in military spending

Republican Donald Trump vowed to boost military spending by tens of billions of dollars on Wednesday, outlining plans for major increases in the number of active troops, Navy ships and submarines, and fighter planes as he works to convince skeptics in both parties that he’s ready to lead the world’s most powerful military…  The United States currently spends more than $600 billion a year on the military, more than the next seven countries combined.   More

 

Hillary Clinton’s National Security Advisers Are a “Who’s Who” of the Warfare State

Hillary Clinton is meeting on Friday with a new national security “working group” that is filled with an elite “who’s who” of the military-industrial complex and the security deep state.  The list of key advisers — which includes the general who executed the troop surge in Iraq and a former Bush homeland security chief turned terror profiteer — is a strong indicator that Clinton’s national security policy will not threaten the post-9/11 national-security status quo that includes active use of military power abroad and heightened security measures at home. It’s a story we’ve seen before in President Obama’s early appointments. In retrospect, analysts have pointed to the continuity in national security and intelligence advisers as an early sign that despite his campaign rhetoric Obama would end up building on — rather than tearing down — the often-extralegal, Bush-Cheney counterterror regime.   More

 

The rising cost of Islamophobia: Muslims and immigrants increasingly targeted in U.S.

Three Bangladeshi Muslims in New York and a Lebanese man in Oklahoma were murdered in a recent spate of anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Khalid Jabara, a 37-year-old Christian immigrant from Lebanon, was shot and killed on the evening of Aug. 12 by his neighbor, 61-year-old Stanley Majors. His murder was the culmination of years of epithets (“dirty Arabs” and “Moo-slems”) and malevolence by Majors, who had an “unusual fixation” with the Jabara family.  In broad daylight on Aug. 13, Bangladeshi Imam Maulama Akonjee and his assistant, Thara Uddin, were shot execution-style in the back of their heads as they walked home from prayer at a mosque. A few weeks later on the night of Aug. 31, Nazma Khanam, a 60-year-old Bangladeshi woman, was stabbed multiple times as she strolled home  And while the macabre details of these killings is horrifying, the context in which they occurred remains the most disturbing and consequential part.  More

 

The Shameful Spectacle of Denying People Their Vote

Every once in a while, the curtains part and we get a glimpse of the ugliest, most shameful spectacle in American politics: the Republican Party’s systematic attempt to disenfranchise African-Americans and other minorities with voter ID laws and other restrictions at the polls…  The ostensible reason for these laws is to solve a problem that doesn’t exist—voter fraud by impersonation. Four years ago, you may recall, a Republican Pennsylvania legislator let slip the real reason for his state’s new voter ID law: to “allow” Mitt Romney to win the state. In the end, he didn’t. But Republicans tried mightily to discourage minorities, most of whom vote Democratic, from going to the polls.  Now, thanks to documents that surfaced in a lawsuit, we have an even clearer and more egregious example of attempted disenfranchisement, this time in North Carolina. As The Washington Post reported, the documents show “that North Carolina GOP leaders launched a meticulous and coordinated effort to deter black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.”  More

 

‘AND THEN THE DOGS CAME’: Dakota Access Gets Violent, Destroys Graves, Sacred Sites

On the afternoon of September 3, a procession of prayerful water defenders, consisting of men, women, and children, walked on foot up to the original protest site where the first demonstrations took place in early August. Unbeknownst to them, Dakota Access construction workers were fast at work, approximately a mile up the road, bulldozing the earth, destroying graves and sacred sites, while creating a path for pipe to be laid… Construction workers jumped into their trucks, and Frejo says they started to use the vehicles like weapons, going through the crowd erratically and coming very close to hitting some… Approximately eight dog handlers, hired by Dakota Access, led the barking and snarling dogs right up to the front line.  “The women joined arms, and we started saying ‘Water is life!’ A dog came up and bit my leg, and right after that a man came up to us and maced the whole front line,” Young Bear said… That evening, a press conference was held up at the construction site. Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II, and Tribal Historical Preservation Officer Tim Mentz, confirmed that treasured sacred sites were destroyed, and Dakota Access knew about those documented sites.  More

 

A Pipeline Fight and America’s Dark Past

This week, thousands of Native Americans, from more than a hundred tribes, have camped out on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, which straddles the border between the Dakotas, along the Missouri River. What began as a slow trickle of people a month ago is now an increasingly angry flood. They’re there to protest plans for a proposed oil pipeline that they say would contaminate the reservation’s water; in fact, they’re calling themselves protectors, not protesters… Pictures from that confrontation recall pictures from Birmingham circa 1963. But the historical parallels here run much deeper—they run to the original sins of this nation. The reservation, of course, is where the Native Americans were told to live when the vast lands they ranged were taken by others. The Great Sioux Reservation, formed in the eighteen-sixties, shrunk again and again—in 1980, a federal court said, of the whole sad story, “a more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.” … History offers us no chances to completely erase our mistakes. Occasionally, though, we do get a chance to show we learned something.   More

 

A HISTORY OF RESISTANCE

At Standing Rock and across indigenous territories, indigenous peoples are resisting hundreds of years of dispossession, subjugation, and elimination committed in the name of capitalist accumulation and white possession. As indigenous people put their bodies on the line to resist the Dakota Access Pipeline, they are fighting for their sovereignty while offering an alternative relationship to land, water, and each other…  The people who have endured centuries of dispossession and attempted elimination — the poorest of the poor, the most likely to be killed by law enforcement, the most easily forgotten — are still here and still fighting. They have built alternatives within and beyond capitalism for hundreds of years. They are the carriers of traditions of indigenous resistance and resurgence simultaneously rooted in Lakota land and history, and global in scope… At Standing Rock, disparate tribes have set aside differences and come together as one. People from indigenous nations across the continent have travelled thousands of miles to stand with them. Indigenous people are rallying in support from New York City to San Francisco. Together, they are envisioning a future without a Dakota Access Pipeline, and enacting a future where indigenous nations exercise their rights to define a more just, equal, and sustainable path forward, as stewards of land, water, humanity, and each other.  More

 

Who's Banking on the Dakota Access Pipeline?

When the Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for the 1,100-mile Dakota Access Pipeline in July, executives at the corporations behind the plan probably thought their path forward was clear. They’d moved easily through the permit process, seemingly dodging the concerns of people affected by the pipeline, and were ready to go ahead with construction… Powerful oil and gas companies are taking appalling steps to override the Sioux’s objections, using their immense financial resources to push for building this pipeline, which will further line their pockets. But behind the companies building the pipeline is a set of even more powerful Wall Street corporations that might give you flashbacks to the 2007 financial crisis.  More

 

48 Words at 4 AM Is All Network News Has to Say About Pipeline Protests

The broadcast news networks have aired exactly one report on the Dakota Access Pipeline protests since the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe began an encampment against the project in April, according to a search of the Nexis news database… Also missing from what is so far the entirety of broadcast TV news’ coverage of the Dakota Access protest is any mention of the threat the pipeline poses to water resources—the pipeline crosses the Missouri River just half a mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation—or the climate destruction facilitated by pipelines designed to ship fracked oil out to consumers.   More

 

*   *   *   *

NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AND NUCLEAR HYPOCRISY

The apparent new testing of a nuclear weapon by North Korea is certainly bad news for nuclear proliferation. But the “outrage” expressed by the US – the only nation to have actually used nuclear weapons and which is evading its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty by planning an expensive “modernization” and expansion of its nuclear weapons arsenal – and by Israel, which is not a signatory to the NPT, has a nuclear arsenal estimated in the hundreds of weapons and which helped Apartheid South Africa to become a nuclear power -- reeks of hypocrisy.  So does the hysteria over a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program. Unlike its enemies, Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has long advocated a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East.   Meanwhile, the US is apparently not going to rule out the “first-use” of nuclear weapons.  Few Americans are probably aware that nuclear “first-strike” has been the long-standing US policy – or that the old Soviet Union pledged not to be the first to use nuclear weapons as far back as 1982.

 

Obama Flinches at Renouncing Nuke First Strike

Ever since President Truman ordered two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, the United States has reserved the right to initiate nuclear war against an overwhelming conventional, chemical or biological attack on us or our allies. But peace advocates — and more than a few senior military officers — have long warned that resorting to nuclear weapons would ignite a global holocaust, killing hundreds of millions of people… In a talk to the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association on June 6, Deputy National Security Advisor Benjamin Rhodes promised that President Obama would continue to review ways to achieve his grand vision of a nuclear-free world during his last months in office. Obama was reportedly considering a “series of executive actions” to that end, including a landmark shift to a “no first use” policy.

Two-thirds of adult Americans surveyed support such a policy. So do 10 U.S. senators who wrote President Obama in July, proposing a no-first-use declaration to “reduce the risk of accidental nuclear conflict” and seeking cut-backs in his trillion dollar plan for nuclear modernization over the next 30 years.   More

 

Media Trumpet Another Phony ''Secret Nuclear Deal'' Story

The stories were based on claims in a report co-authored by David Albright, the head of the Institute for Science and International Security, who has long been treated by corporate media as the leading "independent" expert on Iran's nuclear program…  Albright's attack on the Obama administration and the Joint Commission was only the latest installment in the current campaign by pro-Israeli media and political opponents of the JCPOA to claim existence of "secret side deals" between the Obama administration and Iran. Just six weeks ago, the Associated Press correspondent in Vienna, George Jahn, published a story that falsely portrayed Iran's report to the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] on its plan for implementation of the agreement as such a "secret side deal." The agreement reached between Iran and the IAEA on the issue of alleged past Iranian nuclear work, which included arrangements for taking environmental samples at Iran's Parchin military facility, was also treated by JCPOA opponents as a "secret side deal."   More

 

IAEA: Iran Is Keeping Its End of the Nuclear Bargain

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is reporting that Iran has so far complied with its obligations under the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which went into effect in January and limits Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons. The IAEA report, which is confidential but was apparently shown to the Reuters news agency, “did not point to any violations in Tehran’s observance of the deal”:   “Throughout the reporting period, Iran had no more than 130 metric tonnes of heavy water … Iran’s total enriched uranium (up to 3.67 percent purity) stockpile did not exceed 300 kg,” the report said, citing the nuclear deal’s limits on the two substances.  More

 

‘Moral Idiocy’ Department. . .

US DEFENSE SECRETARY: “Russia sowing seeds of global instability”

In a hard-hitting speech at Oxford University, Carter emphasized deep skepticism about Russian intentions in Syria, even as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry considered traveling to Geneva on Wednesday for more talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Their weekend discussions, on the sidelines of an economic summit in China, failed to produce an agreement on more cooperation in Syria…  “Despite the progress that we made together in the aftermath of the Cold War, Russia’s actions in recent years - with its violations of Ukrainian and Georgian territorial integrity, its unprofessional behavior in the air, in space, and in cyberspace, as well as its nuclear saber rattling - all have demonstrated that Russia has clear ambition to erode the principled international order,” Carter said.   More

 

AMERICA’S TRUE ROLE IN SYRIA

Syria’s civil war is the most dangerous and destructive crisis on the planet. Since early 2011, hundreds of thousands have died; around ten million Syrians have been displaced; Europe has been convulsed with Islamic State (ISIS) terror and the political fallout of refugees; and the United States and its NATO allies have more than once come perilously close to direct confrontation with Russia.  Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has greatly compounded the dangers by hiding the US role in Syria from the American people and from world opinion. An end to the Syrian war requires an honest accounting by the US of its ongoing, often secretive role in the Syrian conflict since 2011, including who is funding, arming, training, and abetting the various sides. Such exposure would help bring to an end many countries’ reckless actions.   More

 

'What Is Aleppo?' Asks Gary Johnson--and NYT Gives Three Wrong Answers

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, when asked in an MSNBC interview (Morning Joe, 9/8/16) what he would do about the battle raging over the Syrian city of Aleppo, responded, “What is Aleppo?”  That’s troubling, that a presidential candidate would be unaware of one of the main battlefields in one of the world’s deadliest conflicts. But even more troubling is that the New York Times, the US paper of record, can’t seem to figure out what Aleppo is, either…  The New York Times ran a correction on its misidentification of Aleppo. But then it had to run a correction on the correction—because the first correction misidentified Aleppo as the capital of Syria. The actual capital of Syria is Damascus.

If history and the polls are any guide, Gary Johnson will probably not be elected president in November. But the New York Times is and will likely continue to be the country’s most influential newspaper—so its gaps in knowledge are far more worrisome.  More

 

Obama administration arms sales offers to Saudi top $115 billion

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, other military equipment and training, the most of any U.S. administration in the 71-year U.S.-Saudi alliance, a report seen by Reuters has found.  The report, authored by William Hartung of the U.S.-based Center for International Policy, said the offers were made in 42 separate deals, and the majority of the equipment has yet to be delivered. Hartung told Reuters the report would be made available publicly on Sept. 8.  The report said U.S. arms offers to Saudi Arabia since Obama took office in January 2009 have included everything from small arms and ammunition to tanks, attack helicopters, air-to-ground missiles, missile defense ships, and warships. Washington also provides maintenance and training to Saudi security forces.   More

 

Senators to Introduce Measure Opposing $1B Arms Sale to Saudis

A bipartisan push against a $1.15 billion arms deal to Saudi Arabia is gaining steam in protest of Riyadh’s bombing campaign in Yemen — but remains split on whether to oppose the sale or block it outright. Multiple congressional aides tell Foreign Policy that Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut are preparing legislation, to be filed this week, opposing the U.S. package of tanks, ammunition, and machine guns to Saudi Arabia. It follows a letter last week from more than 60 House lawmakers who sought to delay the arms sale after a series of Saudi-led airstrikes reportedly killed civilian targets in August.   Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who helped lead the House’s letter campaign, praised his Senate colleagues for “taking action” against the arms sale. “Once the public learns the facts of the Saudi military’s atrocities in Yemen, they will call for this arms sale to be rejected and for the U.S. to withdraw its support of the Saudis in this conflict,” he told FP on Wednesday.  Spokespeople for Paul and Murphy declined comment.  More

 

Please call the Capitol Switchboard at 1-855-86-NO WAR (1-855-686-6927) to urge both of your senators to join Murphy and Paul in blocking bombs to Saudi Arabia.

Urge Senator Warren and Senator Markey to support a resolution of disapproval against the Saudi arms deal by signing the petition at MoveOn.

 

64 U.S. Lawmakers Seek Delay of Billion-Dollar Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia

In a sign that frustration is growing in the U.S. Congress over Saudi Arabia, a bipartisan group of 60 lawmakers has signed a letter seeking to delay the Obama administration’s planned sale of $1.15 billion in arms and military equipment to Riyadh. The letter, addressed to President Barack Obama, cites the growing number of civilian casualties in Yemen caused by the Saudi-led military coalition and the Obama administration’s failure to rein in its Arab ally…  The proposed sale, approved by the State Department on Aug. 9, includes up to 153 tanks, ammunition, hundreds of machine guns, and sundry other military equipment. Congress has 30 days to block the sale, but the lawmakers appear irritated that notification of the sale came in the middle of their summer recess.  More

 

A copy of the letter with the members’ signatures can be found here. All the House members from Massachusetts except Kennedy and Moulton signed the letter.

 

House Expected to Pass Bill Allowing 9/11 Lawsuits Against Saudi Arabia

The House is expected to fast track a bill on Friday that would let the families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the terrorist plot, ushering in a showdown with the White House, which has threatened to veto the legislation. The bill, which was passed unanimously by the Senate this year, was not debated on either chamber’s floor…  The measure highlights a growing desire to examine Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, a relationship that has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy in the Middle East for decades. Lawmakers also appear to have felt intense pressure from families of the victims, who have pushed for the legislation to be passed before the 15th anniversary on Sunday of the attacks.  The Saudi government, which has long denied any involvement, has warned that it might liquidate hundreds of billions of dollars of American assets if the bill becomes law, although many experts say they believe it is an empty threat.  More

 

And, right on schedule, the Washington Post publishes a laudatory op-ed about Saudi Arabia written by a key leader of the US Israel Lobby.  Israel has long been pursuing a de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia against Iran.

 

“In Saudi Arabia, a revolution disguised as reform”

Today, it’s hard to be optimistic about anything in the Middle East. And yet having just visited Saudi Arabia, in which I led a small bipartisan group of former national security officials, I came away feeling hopeful about the kingdom’s future. That may seem paradoxical when some portray the Saudis as both “arsonists and firefighters” in the struggle with radical Islamists. While Saudi funding of madrassas internationally has contributed to the spread of a highly intolerant strain of Islam, I wonder whether a lag effect is causing the Saudis to be singled out for behaviors their leadership no longer embraces. In any case, that is certainly not the Saudi Arabia I just encountered.   More

 

US sends 500 more troops to Iraq to prepare for Mosul battle

The United States has increased its forces in Iraq by almost 500 troops in the last week to support the operation to take Mosul from the Islamic State group, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday. The increase in personnel and equipment is needed to meet the Iraqi government goal of recapturing Mosul before the end of the year, Col. John Dorrian, the Baghdad-based spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve told reporters at the Pentagon… in the last week, U.S. forces based in Iraq have risen from about 4,000 to 4,460, he said. The additional forces are assisting with the “tremendous amount of work going on” to set the pre-battle conditions to defeat the estimated 3,000 to 4,500 Islamic State group fighters estimated in Mosul, Dorrian said. The additional U.S. forces are part of the 101st Airborne Division, 2nd Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Their deployment was announced in August to help establish a base of operations at Qayyarah Air Field West.  More

 

Documents Show U.S. Military Expands Reach of Special Operations Programs

The United States is spending more money on more missions to send more elite U.S. forces to train alongside more foreign counterparts in more countries around the world, according to documents obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act.

Under the Joint Combined Exchange Training program, which is designed to train America’s special operators in a variety of missions — from “foreign internal defense” to “unconventional warfare” — U.S. troops carried out approximately one mission every two days in 2014, the latest year covered by the recently released documents.  At a price tag of more than $56 million, the U.S. sent its most elite operators — Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and others — on 176 individual JCETs, a 13 percent increase from 2013. The number of countries involved jumped even further, from 63 to 87, a 38 percent spike.   More