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Libya 2.0? After Sowing Chaos with 2011 Invasion, US Bombs Destabilized Nation
At least 40 reported dead following strikes on northern city of Sabratha
Feb 19, 2016
The United States on Friday conducted air strikes in Libya, a country described as having "all but collapsed" since the NATO military intervention there five years ago.
Local officials say that at least 40 people were killed from the strikes in the early morning, with others critically wounded, news agencies report. The location of the strike was a reported Islamic State training camp in the northern Libyan city of Sabratha.
The Pentagon said that it was not clear yet whether the target of the attack, Noureddine Chouchane, was among those killed.
Chouchane, a Tunisian national, has been linked to attacks in 2015 on a Tunis museum and a beach in the resort town of Sousse.
"He facilitated the movement of potential ISIL-affiliated foreign fighters from Tunisia to Libya and onward to other countries," the Associated Press reports Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook as saying.
The Guardian reports that the new
airstrike, the third by the US in Libya since June, raised questions about the US opening another front against an enemy whose strength in Libya has grown in the chaos resulting from Nato's 2011 war aiding the revolutionaries that killed dictator Muammar Gaddafi. But some officials suggested that the strike on Chouchane was a target of opportunity, rather than the inaugural shots of a long-telegraphed initiative. The two previous strikes hit an Isis base in Derna in November and an al-Qaida gathering at Ajdabiya in eastern Libya in June.
As journalist Glenn Greenwald and professor of international relations Vijay Prishad both indicated in early-morning tweets, Friday's bombing should be read as an indication of the Obama administration's failed strategy in Libya:
Last month, after speaking with his French counterpart, Gen. Pierre de Villiers, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "It's fair to say we're looking to take decisive military action against ISIL [in Libya] in conjunction with a legitimate political process."
The strikes come just days after President Obama said, "With respect to Libya, I have been clear from the outset that we will go after ISIS wherever it appears, the same way that we went after al Qaeda wherever they appeared."
"We will continue to take actions where we've got a clear operation and a clear target in mind. And we are working with our other coalition partners to make sure that as we see opportunities to prevent ISIS from digging in, in Libya, we take them."
But this reflects an approach akin to "a game of whack-a-mole spanning multiple unstable foreign countries," argues Paul Pillar, professor at Georgetown University for security studies.
He explains:
Opening up a real military front against [ISIS in Libya] with Western armed forces might seem to be an appropriate going to where the action is, but it also would perpetuate a fundamentally flawed conception of counterterrorism as revolving around military offensives against whatever presence on the ground has been established by whatever radical group currently worries us the most.
[...]
The underlying problem in a place such as post-Gaddafi Libya is a lack of good governance or of any governance. Inadequate governance has multiple bad effects, including the sort of chaos that violent extremists exploit. Libya does not have a governance problem because ISIS is there; ISIS is there because Libya has a severe governance problem.
Yet another fallacy in common thinking about counterterrorism is that whacking the offending group is progress. It is not, if what is left after the whacking is just more of the inadequate governance that led to the group establishing its presence there in the first place.
Others similarly described the governance problem. From the Guardian earlier this week:
"Libya is becoming a scenario whereby you will have three governments," says Ludovico Carlino of IHS Jane's, a London defense analyst. "An intervention [without a unity government] will probably cause more anarchy and chaos."
The reporting adds this comment from Guma El-Gamaty, the rebel government's London envoy during the revolution: "We are now suffering the legacy of Gaddafi, the lack of institutions, no democracy, the lack of knowing how to come together."
Reuters reports: "A U.N.-backed government of national accord is trying to win support but is still awaiting parliamentary approval. It is opposed by factional hardliners and has yet to establish itself in the capital Tripoli."
Last month, in an article entitled "The U.S. Intervention in Libya Was Such a Smashing Success That a Sequel Is Coming," Greenwald wrote that since the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya, the country.
so predictably -- has all but completely collapsed, spending years now drowning in instability, anarchy, fractured militia rule, sectarian conflict, and violent extremism. The execution of Saddam Hussein was no vindication of that war nor a sign of improved lives for Iraqis, and the same was true for the mob killing of Qaddafi.
[...]
the much bigger question was when (not if, but when) the instability and extremism that predictably followed the NATO bombing would be used to justify a new U.S.-led war -- also exactly as happened in Iraq.
[...]
Just as there was no al Qaeda or ISIS to attack in Iraq until the U.S. bombed its government, there was no ISIS in Libya until NATO bombed it. Now the U.S. is about to seize on the effects of its own bombing campaign in Libya to justify an entirely new bombing campaign in that same country.
And in a statement Friday, Prashad said, "The U.S. Air Force should have named this current bombing run in Libya 'Operation Deja Vu.' It is the third such strike at ISIS. What is not clear is the strategy being followed by the U.S. Occasional bombing runs have not stopped ISIS from fully taking Sirte and now expanding along the edge of the Gulf of Sidra."
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In Retrospect: A Year of Sharpening Contradictions
Dec 30, 2015
Note: The horrific murder of 12 persons and the wounding of 11 in the attack on the staff of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo by terrorists on January 7 this year was followed on the evening of 13 November by six coordinated attacks, killing 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan theater.
The first of these sanguinary attacks was inspired by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen. Until November, this group was the most determined and successful in attacking and getting up attacks on the West, including the underwear bomber of 2009 over Detroit. It was also AQAP literature that helped convince the San Bernadino killers to shoot up their workplace. The latter were also seeking to contact al-Qaeda in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front).
The Saudi-led war on the Zaidi Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen has unleashed AQAP, which has al-Mukalla but also now the city of Zinjibar in Abyan province. The Houthis aren't dangerous to the US or Europe, but AQAP is a proven menace. The Saudis & allies have apparently invested almost nothing in curbing Yemen's al-Qaeda compared to their massive bombing campaigns and troop intervention against the Houthis.
As for the Nusra Front or al-Qaeda in Syria, it is a formal ally of the Saudi-backed Army of Conquest. Some of the 30 CIA-vetted Syrian rebel groups to whom the Saudis are used to provide T.O.W. anti-tank rockets, by now mostly hard line Salafis or Muslim Brotherhood, have occasionally had tactical field alliances with al-Qaeda. It wouldn't be fair to say that the US is supporting al-Qaeda in Syria (again, it is implicated in radicalizing the San Bernadino two). But let us say that it is allied with allies of al-Qaeda, making the same mistake as in the 1980s, when it supported Salafi Mujahidin allied with Arab al-Qaeda against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Despite the hype about Daesh, other al-Qaeda offshoots remain very dangerous, but AQAP and the Nusra Front are being ignored, or in the case of the latter, even indirectly supported by the US and its allies.
The Nov. 13 Paris attacks appear to have been inspired by Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), though the shadowy, tiny networks of radicals in the Brussels and Paris slums likely did not actually need much encouragement to attack the French capital. France has been a significant player against the radical groups in West and North Africa, and had been bombing Daesh in Iraq alongside the US. It had intelligence of a Daesh assault on France last summer and so started bombing al-Raqqa, the Daesh capital in northeastern Syria, in September, in hopes of disrupting the planning process. They were too late.
As horrid as the Paris attacks were, they were the work of a tiny, tiny group of European Muslims. Almost all European Muslims oppose such violence (3/5s of French Muslims are secular-minded and not religious). European Muslims until 2015 were responsible for relatively little terrorism in Europe compared to separatist groups or the white supremacist far right. In 2011 Anders Breivik, a far right Islamophobe, killed 77 people in Norway, far outstripping the per capita toll taken by the Nov. 13 gang in Paris.
Part of the backlash to the two big Paris strikes, by AQAP and Daesh, in 2015 was the rise of the Donald Trump presidential campaign, which demonizes Muslims in general, speaking of excluding them from the United States and closing mosques. Trump and his followers are falling for the trick of "sharpening contradictions," a key technique of insurgencies, as I explained after Charlie Hebdo:
[These attacks] were in my view a strategic strike, aiming at polarizing the French and European public.
The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world (ex-Soviet ethnic Muslims often also have low rates of belief and observance). Many Muslim immigrants in the post-war period to France came as laborers and were not literate people, and their grandchildren are rather distant from Middle Eastern fundamentalism, pursuing urban cosmopolitan culture such as rap and rai. In Paris, where Muslims tend to be better educated and more religious, the vast majority reject violence and say they are loyal to France.
Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.
This tactic is similar to the one used by Stalinists in the early 20th century. Decades ago I read an account by the philosopher Karl Popper of how he flirted with Marxism for about 6 months in 1919 when he was auditing classes at the University of Vienna. He left the group in disgust when he discovered that they were attempting to use false flag operations to provoke militant confrontations. In one of them police killed 8 socialist youth at Horlgasse on 15 June 1919. For the unscrupulous among Bolsheviks-who would later be Stalinists- the fact that most students and workers don't want to overthrow the business class is inconvenient, and so it seemed desirable to some of them to "sharpen the contradictions" between labor and capital.
The operatives who carried out this attack exhibit signs of professional training. They spoke unaccented French, and so certainly know that they are playing into the hands of Marine LePen and the Islamophobic French Right wing. They may have been French, but they appear to have been battle hardened. This horrific murder was not a pious protest against the defamation of a religious icon. It was an attempt to provoke European society into pogroms against French Muslims, at which point al-Qaeda recruitment would suddenly exhibit some successes instead of faltering in the face of lively Beur youth culture (French Arabs playfully call themselves by this anagram term deriving from wordplay involving scrambling of letters). Ironically, there are reports that one of the two policemen they killed was a Muslim.
Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, then led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, deployed this sort of polarization strategy successfully in Iraq, constantly attacking Shiites and their holy symbols, and provoking the ethnic cleansing of a million Sunnis from Baghdad. The polarization proceeded, with the help of various incarnations of Daesh (Arabic for ISIL or ISIS, which descends from al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia). And in the end, the brutal and genocidal strategy worked, such that Daesh was able to encompass all of Sunni Arab Iraq, which had suffered so many Shiite reprisals that they sought the umbrella of the very group that had deliberately and systematically provoked the Shiites.
"Sharpening the contradictions" is the strategy of sociopaths and totalitarians, aimed at unmooring people from their ordinary insouciance and preying on them, mobilizing their energies and wealth for the perverted purposes of a self-styled great leader.
The only effective response to this manipulative strategy (as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani tried to tell the Iraqi Shiites a decade ago) is to resist the impulse to blame an entire group for the actions of a few and to refuse to carry out identity-politics reprisals.
For those who require unrelated people to take responsibility for those who claim to be their co-religionists (not a demand ever made of Christians), the al-Azhar Seminary, seat of Sunni Muslim learning and fatwas, condemned the attack, as did the Arab League that comprises 22 Muslim-majority states.
We have a model for response to terrorist provocation and attempts at sharpening the contradictions. It is Norway after Anders Behring Breivik committed mass murder of Norwegian leftists for being soft on Islam. The Norwegian government launched no war on terror. They tried Breivik in court as a common criminal. They remained committed to their admirable modern Norwegian values.
Most of France will also remain committed to French values of the Rights of Man, which they invented. But an insular and hateful minority will take advantage of this deliberately polarizing atrocity to push their own agenda. Europe's future depends on whether the Marine LePens are allowed to become mainstream. Extremism thrives on other people's extremism, and is inexorably defeated by tolerance.
Let me conclude by offering my profound condolences to the families, friends and fans of our murdered colleagues at Charlie Hebdo, including Stephane Charbonnier, Bernard Maris, and cartoonists Georges Wolinski Jean Cabut, aka Cabu, and Berbard Verlhac (Tignous)- and all the others. As Charbonnier, known as Charb, said, "I prefer to die standing than to live on my knees.".
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Iraq: A Nation Destroyed by American Contempt
Jun 16, 2015
Iraq's dismal health situation is testimony to the invasion of the country by foreign forces, including now the takeover of important parts of its territory by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The Iraqi people have been the subject of mass executions, rape, torture and, in addition, the destruction of the country's infrastructure. The international community has been mostly deaf to the needs of Iraqis, who have undergone difficulties much greater than during the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Dr. Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization Director-General stated recently, "The situation is bad, really bad, and rapidly getting worse," as she launched a new humanitarian plan for Iraq. If they don't receive appropriate support, 84% of all health projects and centers run the risk of closure before the end of June.
It is estimated that since January 2014, 2.9 million people have fled their homes, 6.9 million Iraqis need immediate access to essential health services, and 7.1 million need easier access to water, sanitation and hygiene assistance. Presently, 8.2 million people in Iraq need immediate humanitarian support.
Women and children have not been spared the brutal consequences of the war. Survivors of gender-based violence and rape experience trauma and depression, and suicides among women and girls have risen markedly in recent years. Children's health status has deteriorated markedly in the last 12 years. In addition, they have been used as suicide bombers and human shields and have been killed by crucifixion or buried alive.
Iraqis health status is a reflection of the deterioration of the country's health system. Medical facilities, which in the 1980s were among the best in the Middle East, have deteriorated significantly after the 2003 invasion. It is estimated that during the war 12 percent of hospitals and the country's two main public health laboratories were destroyed.
Sanitary conditions in hospitals remain unsatisfactory, and medications and trained personnel are in short supply. Even basic health care is unavailable in regions of the country under armed conflict. As a result of the collapsed sanitation infrastructure, the incidence of cholera, dysentery and typhoid fever has increased. Malnutrition among children and other childhood diseases have also increased.
Doctors in the thousands have been leaving the country and those that remain are under constant threat to their personal safety. As Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) stated, "Until now, it is extremely difficult to find Iraqi doctors willing to work in certain areas because they fear for their security."
Despite some government aid and reconstruction plans, several remote areas are excluded from state reconstruction and development efforts, leaving thousands of Iraqis without access to essential health care up to this day. As a result, thousands of Iraqis are obliged to sell their homes and possessions to seek health care abroad.
The widespread environmental damage caused by the war, including the degradation of forests and wetlands, destruction of wildlife, and increased air pollution, will have long-term impacts on people's health. In addition, medical researchers have expressed their concern about people's health being seriously affected by the use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium by American and British forces.
The continuing conflict has exacted a heavy toll on all Iraqis' mental health and quality of life. "Many Iraqis have been pushed to their absolute limit as decades of conflict and instability has wreaked devastation. Mentally exhausted by their experiences, many struggle to understand what is happening to them. The feelings of isolation and hopelessness are compounded by the taboo associated with mental health issues and the lack of mental healthcare services that people can turn to for help," said Helen O'Neill, MSF's head of mission in Iraq.
We are facing nothing less than the almost total destruction of a country by an ill-advised invasion whose consequences are still being felt. Some day, somebody will have to respond for it.
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I Am a Patriot. Stop This Madness. No More Killing In Our Names.
Nov 17, 2014
On Thursday, November 13, I dropped down in my seat at the hearing room of the House Armed Services Committee on the Administration's Strategy and Military Campaign against ISIL, a little depressed at what was to come. More war, less hope for peace. Just two days earlier, on Veterans Day, I was at the widely advertised and well attended "Concert for Valor" on the National Mall. Veterans Day was previously known as Armistice Day, started after WWI as a day to celebrate an end to war. Now it's a day to glorify warriors, and I was threatened with arrest for having a sign that read "Celebrate the Peacemakers."
The moment I sat down in the Congressional hearing and heard the conversation between Chairman Buck McKeon and the witness Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a warm rush of thoughts came over me that made me feel very nostalgic. Here I was, after 13 years that has not only brought our country deeper in wars, deeper in debt, but also made us less safe and less free. I started thinking about my father. He fought in the "good war", World War II. He was only 18 years old when he was sent off to war. Then came my older brother. He joined the army to go to Vietnam because he got a low number in the draft lottery. Meanwhile, my sister joined the anti-war movement--marching, fighting and being beaten at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago trying to end that war and get our brother back, alive. I remembered my father's disappointment that his son had to go fight for his country thousands of miles away while our hometown city of Detroit burned with racism--a racism that disregarded the rights of so many who were also fighting for their country in foreign wars.
And now me, protesting for 10 years against a crazy, endless war in the Middle East that my country's leaders can barely understand, let alone explain to its people. For my two boys, growing up in the wake of 9/11, all they know is war.
I sat there listening to the war talk, unable to recall what it was like before 9/11 - before endless war, hate, and division. Before "Take off your shoes and your belt" at the airport. Before "No signs allowed" on the National Mall. Before NSA watching over us "for our own safety."
And then it happened. I felt a rush of freedom and patriotism--the same feelings I used to have before being told to live my life in fear. I wanted those values again. I know the truth. I've been there. Seen it. My father, brother and sister taught me. "You live in the United States, land of the free, home of the brave" they said. Their words were ringing in my ears. "You are a patriot, my son," my mother told me when I was arrested for protesting in the House Gallery at the beginning of the Iraq war. Yes I am! A Patriot! I serve my country with my consciousness and fearlessness in the face of a fearful nation and government intimidation.
I will stand up to Secretary Hagel and this spineless Congress, I decided. I will smile and tell them that they don't know what they are doing and that I will not be part of their insane wars. Ha! Enlightenment! The Emperor has no clothes! It is my job, my service to this country, my children, in the memory of my father and the brave ones before me to shout it out.
"American intervention is the problem!" I stood up and shouted out. I'm not weak but strong, able to do this duty for God, country and family. "Stop this madness!" "No more killing in our names!" Proudly, I held up my not-allowed-in Congress sign that said: "There is no military solution."
Forward toward freedom, I thought. "Bring our war dollars home!" I shouted. Oops, swish, boom. I am dragged out the door of the hearing room by several police. Smash, clink, clank. I face into the wall in the hallway immediately outside the House chamber. Cuffs on. A smile on my face. I am my father's son and a good brother, I thought. This is the "good war." I am a patriot, serving my country the best that I know how. I smile more, shout more. "We are America, we can use diplomacy, we can lead the way to peace. Hallelujah!"
So wake up America, fear ye not! Blessed are the peacemakers for they can get bullied off the National Mall by Park Police, arrested in Congress for holding signs, or carted off in paddywagons. But their voices will never be silenced.
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When Will US Admit Boots on Ground in Iraq (3000 Troops)?
Nov 08, 2014
President Obama's announcement that he will send 1500 more troops to Iraq was made on a Friday, a day usually reserved in Washington for the release of bad or embarrassing news that officials hope won't still be fresh enough for Monday's newspapers and so will quietly sink.
That these troops will be sent with Iraq soldiers to al-Anbar Province belies the administration's repeated denial that it will put boots on the ground. There will soon be 3000 US troops in Iraq. They will be at the scene of battles, embedded with Iraqi units (apparently in the hope that the Iraqi troops will be too embarrassed to run away en masse again in front of foreign guests).
The growing size of the US contingent is not the only news. The US is reestablishing a "command" in Iraq, which administration officials view as necessary to rebuild, or more frankly to build, an Iraqi army. Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (in office 2006-2014) appears to have installed so many corrupt and incompetent officers on the grounds they were loyal to him that the institution may as well not exist. Half of enlisted men are said to be ghosts, who don't show up to their postings because they can bribe their commanding officer into letting them be absent.
If there are US troops on the front lines in al-Anbar, where ISIL has been expanding its reach in recent months, then unfortunately, there are likely to be US casualties. These are boots on the ground, even if there are not combat platoons going into battle by themselves.
If ISIL really is a dire threat to US security, as administration officials maintain, then they should go to the US public with the news that they are going to have to put thousands of US forces on the ground in Iraq. So far they are trying to spin us, and to pretend that there are just some trainers and advisers. It is far more than that; US special operations forces will be operating in Iraq brigades, likely in part to paint lasers on targets for US warplanes to bomb.
In an age of weasel words and Orwellian diction, it would be refreshing to hear Mr. Obama call this escalation what it is. It is not as if he will be running for office again or needs to win a popularity contest.
For more:
Obama Authorizes 1,500 More Troops for IraqA senior military official says that American military advisory teams will now go to Iraq's western Anbar province where Islamic ...
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American Weapons, Provided to Syrian Rebels, Fall into Hands of al-Qaeda
Nov 04, 2014
The al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (the Succor Front) not only took the territory of the moderate Muslim Syria Revolutionaries Front this weekend, it also polished off the Movement of the Resolute .
The Movement of the Resolute (Harakat al-Hazm) represented itself as secular, but had its roots in a fundamentalist group backed by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, the "Time of Muhammad" Front.
Last spring the Movement of the Resolute revealed that it had American TOW anti-tank batteries and access to other weapons. The TOWs were apparently supplied to them via Qatar or Turkey with American acquiescence.
Syrian al-Qaeda has swept into rural Idlib Province, taking over the checkpoints of the Free Syrian Army miderates.
This development is so disturbing because the current Obama administration plan is to train and arm the very sorts of people who were just defeated by al-Qaeda. The introduction of American heavy weapons into the midst of a civil war is not a very healthy development, since weapons inevitably travel between groups (through graft or conquest). We have just been given a preview of something that could happen a lot- migration of US heavy weaponry and even "moderate" fighters- to ISIL and al-Qaeda.
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Rouhani: Western Intervention 'Put Blades in the Hands' of ISIS Extremists
Iran's president tells UN General Assembly that US invasions and 'certain intelligence agencies' gave rise to militants that 'now spare no one' in Iraq and Syria
Sep 25, 2014
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday criticized Western nations for sowing extremism in the Middle East and paving the way for the rise of the Islamic State (referred to as ISIS or ISIL) through military interventions and "strategic blunders."
"Certain intelligence agencies have put blades in the hands of mad men who now spare no one," said Rouhani in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. "All those who have played a role in founding and supporting these terror groups must acknowledge their errors."
Rouhani directly criticized the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, declaring, democracy "cannot be transplanted from abroad."
The Iranian president echoed the pro-war tone of President Obama while urging a regional response. "I am struck that these murderous groups call themselves Islamic," said Rouhani. "The right solution to this quandary comes from within the region and regionally provided solution with international support and not from the outside the region," he declared.
Rouhani also criticized U.S.-led sanctions against Iran as a key barrier to diplomacy. "The people of Iran, who have been subjected to pressures, especially in the last three years as a result of continued sanctions, cannot place trust in any security cooperation between their government with those who have imposed sanctions and created obstacles in the way of satisfying even their primary needs, such as food and medicine," he said.
"No one should doubt that compromise and agreement on this issue is in the best interest of everyone, especially that of the nations of the region," he said.
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US Senate Approves $500 Million to Arm Syrian Militants
Lawmakers back president's plan to expand new war in the Middle East
Sep 19, 2014
Despite loud warnings from many quarters--including foreign policy experts, the anti-war left and dissenting CIA analysts--that such a move could prove disastrous, the U.S. Senate on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to approve $500 million in government funds to help arm, train, and support so-called moderate military forces inside Syria.
The 78-22 vote--which came packaged as part of a continuing resolution for broader government spending--received bipartisan support with only 9 Democrats, 12 Republicans, and one independent (Sen. Bernie Sanders) voting against it. (See the full roll call vote here.)
Approved earlier in the week by the House of Representatives, the legislation is now headed for President Obama's desk where he is likely to sign it.
Obama has said that he does not think he needs Congressional approval for his overall strategy to confront the militant group known as the Islamic State (or ISIS) that has no taken over large swaths of territory in both Iraq and Syria. Simultaneously, however, the president has tried to garner as many visible signs of support from lawmakers as possible. The votes this week offer him plenty of cover as the Pentagon continues to make plans for expected, though deeply controversial, airstrikes against ISIS targets inside Syria.
As Obama has deployed increasing numbers of ground troops back into Iraq in recent weeks and expanded the U.S. bombing campaign, lawmakers have largely stood aside.
Explaining his vote against Thursday's measure, Sen. Sanders said, "I fear very much that supporting questionable groups in Syria who will be outnumbered and outgunned by both ISIS and the Assad regime could open the door to the United States once again being dragged back into the quagmire of long-term military engagement."
On Thursday, filmmakers at Brave New Films released a succinct anti-war video arguing against Obama's flawed strategy in Iraq and Syria, saying that the president and those who back him are making the same mistakes that have plagued U.S. foreign policy for decades.
"Since 1980," the narrator of the films states, "we have militarily intervened at least 35 times in more than 27 countries. We keep bombing, we continue spending trillions of dollars, but we're no safer as a result."
Watch:
How Perpetual War Fuels Terrorism • BRAVE NEW FILMSSince 1980, we have militarily intervened at least 35 times in more than 27 countries. We keep bombing, we continue spending ...
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ISIS, 9/11, and the Terrorism Time Loop
Sep 11, 2014
As we mark another anniversary of the attacks in 2001, it seems as if little has changed. We appear to be caught in a time loop where history keeps repeating itself again and again. If it was al Qaeda in 2001 that represented the pinnacle of all things evil that animated the US invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq, today its al Qaeda's evil twin Islamic State that is prompting air strikes in Iraq and upcoming airstrikes on Syria as well. Once again the moral outrage over the killing of innocent Americans, this time two journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, serves to enable the US government to both carry out interventions in the Middle East and justify its domestic counter-terrorism policies.
Virtually absent in the media circus around ISIS is an honest discussion of how the US War on Terror, rather than halting the growth of violent Islamist groups, actually fosters fundamentalism.
To be clear, the US did not create ISIS. That is, it did not fund and train ISIS in Syria in the way that it funded and trained the Mujahideen (from which al Qaeda emerged) to fight its proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Rather it is US actions in the Middle East that have created the conditions for the rise of a group like ISIS. Al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq until after the US invasion. Al Qaeda in Iraq was formed in 2004, and was the precursor organization to the current ISIS. It is the US's reliance on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates to push back against the so called Shia Crescent (Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad in Syria, and for a time the Sunni Hamas) that prompted rich donors in the Gulf States to channel funds to ISIS in Syria. It is US and various dictatorships' support of counter-revolutionary forces opposed to the Arab Spring of 2011 that allowed reactionary groups to grow while thwarting progressive ones. And finally, it is the US's destruction of Iraq and its support for the Shia government that excluded and oppressed the Sunni that allowed ISIS to take control of such large parts of that country.
In short, it is the US's War on Terror, and the part played by various regional actors that have fostered the rise of this virulent form of fundamentalism. ISIS represents a nightmare for the US because it threatens to drag the entire region into a sectarian conflict and to destabilize the orderly flow of oil.
But ISIS also represents a dream in terms of US propaganda. It serves to bolster the aims of the Global War on Terror and to justify a vastly expanded national security state. Since the Snowden revelations there has been growing concern among Americans of the gigantic surveillance apparatus of the NSA. There has been a greater skepticism of drone wars. The box office success of Dirty Wars and its Oscar nomination is an indication of a growing war weariness among the American public. It is this war fatigue that scuttled the intervention into Syria that was proposed last year.
What better to marshal collective anger than a horrendous group like ISIS that cold bloodedly kills Americans, that ruthlessly destroys anyone who disagrees with it, that persecutes religious minorities and is the very prototype of the evil terrorist threat? This threat has justified air strikes in Iraq, increased surveillance in Syria as well as a greater escalation including airstrikes by the US, and regional and international involvement in both countries over the coming weeks and years. In short, the very thing that causes ire among Jihads (Osama bin Laden was particularly incensed by US troops in Saudi Arabia), and that allows them recruit, is what the US proposes to do.
People in the establishment who realize that, and who understand that the US can't win a conventional war, are proposing instead that the US amp up JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) the shady underground outfit of trained killers that is unaccountable even to Congress. This is the very organization that is the subject of extensive critique in Scahill's book Dirty Wars.
Also, what better to justify the ten-fold increase in the number of people on the no-fly list in the Obama era than the threat of the "homegrown terrorist" like Douglas McCain of Minnesota who it is believed traveled to Syria to fight for ISIS? US officials have emphasized again and again that about 100 Americans are part of ISIS and therefore represent a grave threat to the homeland. This bolsters domestic counter-terrorism strategies from arbitrary arrests, to deportation, mass surveillance, and entrapment.
Here is an interview I did with the KPFA radio station's nationally syndicated radio program Letters and Politics on ISIS, terrorism and the media: https://soundcloud.com/kpfa-fm-94-1-berkeley/isis-terrorism-and-the-media
Some of the themes I discuss in this interview are dealt with in more depth in my talk (see below). I lay out how the terrorist threat was constructed in the US in the 1970s and how this threat was racialized in the 1980s and 1990s in the political sphere, as well in the news and by Hollywood. Finally, I discuss the banalization of the terrorist threat in the 2000s and the Obama era.
Back in 2001 some commentators suggested that the attacks on the twin towers be treated as a criminal act. In other words, they stated that Osama bin Laden and others in al Qaeda who were responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans should have been tried in the World Court and brought to justice. Yet, this is not the course of action that the US government pursued. Instead it launched a Global War on Terror that would go on indefinitely. The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, passed by Congress three days after 9/11, established the War on Terror as an open-ended, perpetual, global war.
The reason for this is strategic. In a nutshell, it provided the Bush administration and the neoconservatives with the "pearl harbor" moment that they had articulated in a report the previous year that would enable them to realize their vision of a new Middle East. It was about advancing empire; a project that the Obama administration continued in new and old ways.
But what allowed the War on Terror brand to succeed was the decades of work in the political, news media and cultural spheres that had primed the American public to accept war as the appropriate response to 9/11 (as outlined in my talk). And here we are again in 2014.
"Manufacturing the Terrorist Threat" on YouTube:
Manufacturing the Terrorist Threat: From the 1970s to the Obama EraProf. Deepa Kumar lays out how the terrorist threat was constructed in the US in the 1970s and how this threat was racialized in ...
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Obama "Strategy" to Bomb Syria, Escalate in Iraq Pilloried by Progressives
Presidents plan to 'degrade and destroy' militants in Middle East region will only make the situation worse, argue critics
Sep 11, 2014
President Obama delivered a national televised address on Wednesday night and told the American public that he now plans, with or without Congressional approval, to dramatically expand U.S. military operations against the militant faction known as the 'Islamic State' (aka ISIS and ISIL) by sending more U.S. combat troops to Iraq and initiating a bombing campaign in neighboring Syria.
"There are very thoughtful and long term plans that can eliminate extremism in Iraq and Syria, but the U.S. military intervention, and continuing to support some Iraqi factions against others, will only delay real solutions." --Raed Jarrar, AFSCIn the fourteen-minute speech, Obama vowed to "degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL," but progressive and anti-war critics were immediate and scathing in their denouncement of Obama's plans with many expressing outrage that the president who once vowed to end the era of perpetual war--and was first elected in large part for his criticisms of the Bush Administration's illegal and ultimately disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003--continues to make such misguided and increasingly reckless foreign policy decisions.
Watch the speech (read it):
President Obama Addresses the Nation on the ISIL ThreatSpeaking from the State Floor in the White House on September 10, 2014, President Obama addressed the nation on the situation ...
Writing for The Progressive in the wake of Obama's announcement, Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC challenged the entire premise of the president's plan by saying, "Escalating military actions against this violent extremist organization is not going to work."
"The President's citing of the success of American military policy in Somalia and Yemen show how intellectually and morally dishonest this administration." --Matthew Ho, Center for International Policy
She continued, "A military strike might bring some immediate satisfaction, but we all know revenge is a bad basis for foreign policy, especially when it has such dangerous consequences."
Instead, Bennis laid out six steps to help resolve the regional crisis that would not involved bombing raids or sending additional to weapons to warring factions.
In his response to the Obama plan, Raed Jarrar, the policy impact director for the American Friends Service Committee, said the strategy is misguided because--like the guiding mindset of the entire 'Global War on Terrorism' launched after 911-- it is "still based on the myth that extremism can be defeated by military force."
He pointed out that the word "political" or mention of a concerted diplomatic settlement to end the crisis was never raised in Obama's speech. Jarrar continued:
Bombing Iraq and Syria into moderation and stability is one of the main underlying assumptions of the President's strategy. While I wish there was a way to get rid of extremism this easily, this is why the President's plan will not work:
There are very thoughtful and long term plans that can eliminate extremism in Iraq and Syria, but the U.S. military intervention, and continuing to support some Iraqi factions against others, will only delay real solutions.
- The U.S. tried this before, and failed. Actually, the U.S. tried to destroy ISIS while we had a full-on military occupation of the country with over 100,000 boots on the ground. The group, dubbed as ISI [Islamic State of Iraq] at the time, was weakened but -- as we can all see now -- was never defeated.
- Our Iraqi 'partners' are not that different from ISIS. They're brutal, corrupt, sectarian and dysfunctional. Although the White House makes it seem like we're stepping in to support our good friends to get rid of the one bad guy, facts in Iraq suggest that there is no legitimate Iraqi force that the U.S. can support. As Reuters reported earlier this week, in a piece entitled 'Iraq's Shi'ite militia, Kurds use U.S. air strikes to further own agendas,' 'Shi'ite militia and Kurdish forces fought under their own banners and the least visible flag was that of Iraq.' A Kurdish commander quoted in the piece described the Shi'ite militia he's coordinating with as the 'Shi'ite ISIS.' Human Rights Watch and other international organizations have documented numerous war crimes and gross human rights violations committed by Iraqi factions supported directly and indirectly by the U.S.
- Like in Syria, where the White Houses refuses to lump all armed opposition factions into one umbrella, Iraq has other armed opposition groups behind the uprising. These groups include remnants of the old regime and army, tribal militias, and other local groups. None of these agree with the ideology of ISIS, but they tolerate or coordinate with it hoping to get some leverage in addressing their legitimate grievances. Rather than attempting to draw a wedge between them and ISIS, the President's plan will end up uniting them.
Matthew Hoh, a former U.S. Marine and diplomat who resigned over the failed policy in Afghinstan and now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, said in a statement:
"A rational observer of United States intervention in the swath of land that runs from Libya to Afghanistan would come to a simple conclusion: U.S. military action leads to chaos." --Prof. Vijay Prishad, Trinity College
The President's citing of the success of American military policy in Somalia and Yemen show how intellectually and morally dishonest this administration, like the previous administration, is. Both nations are chaotic and violent and American military action, particularly drone strikes that often kill innocents have not diminished al Shabaab in Somalia or al-Qaeda in Yemen, rather those groups continue to operate and enjoy the recruitment benefits of American airstrikes against Somalia and Yemeni civilians, as well as how American actions play into their propaganda narratives and raison d'etre.
A more apt comparison would have been Afghanistan, where a continued U.S. military policy of picking sides in a foreign civil war has seen American troops beginning their 13th year in combat in Afghanistan, violence against civilians at its highest level, the Taliban stronger and more confident than they have ever been, and Afghanistan's government in Kabul in its most severe political crisis since 2001.
What President Obama stated last night, which if put into policy will in effect be a re-invasion of Sunni lands by Shia and Kurdish forces backed by American firepower, will greatly exacerbate the Iraqi Civil War and will revert Iraq to the bloody days of 2006.
Vijay Prishad, professor of international studies at Trinity College, argued that the strategy Obama has put forth does have precedents--both from his own presidency and that of his predecessor--and that they all prove the shortsightedness and disastrous results of the military approach. In an essay published Wednesday, Prashad wrote:
"Obama is the 4th consecutive US president to announce bombing of Iraq." --Glenn GreenwaldA rational observer of United States intervention in the swath of land that runs from Libya to Afghanistan would come to a simple conclusion: U.S. military action leads to chaos. Examples are legion, but the two most dramatic are Iraq and Libya.
In both cases, the U.S. bombed the state institutions to smithereens. It takes a hundred years to build state institutions. They can be destroyed in an afternoon. The chaos that followed in both countries was the ideal condition for the flotsam of al-Qaida. In Iraq, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (2004) morphed into the Islamic State of Iraq, and eventually ISIS. In Libya, during the NATO bombardment, radicals in Benghazi created Ansar al-Sharia, which slowly leaned toward al-Qaida's ideological worldview. In both cases, it was the U.S. bombardment that facilitated the condition for their emergence.
A policy determined to battle al-Qaida on the world stage has ended up with the expansion of al-Qaida. A CIA analyst told me in 2003 that the danger of the heavy-handed war on Afghanistan was that it would simply scatter al-Qaida fighters around the world. "When you smash the mercury hard," he said, "it will spread around." This is precisely what occurred, as al-Qaida veterans from their U.S.-backed Afghan jihad against the Soviets, now became anti-American fighters across the planet.
During and immediately following the televised address, progressive journalists and foreign policy experts on Twitter exploded in critical response to Obama's so-called "strategy" to deal with the Islamic State.
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