U.S. Terrorism

Excerpts from an article by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic on U.S. Terrorism in Pakistan.

 "It is a continuous tension, a feeling of continuous uneasiness. We are scared," he laments. 

"You wake up with a start to every noise."  

...They are trapped. Terrified. Powerless.  

Remember how you felt on 9/11? Every day, U.S. foreign policy makes innocent people feel even worse. 

...

Ponder a few interviews from the report -- decide for yourself. 

All these stories take place in Northwest Pakistan's tribal areas, a remote part of the country filled with poor people. Most are guilty of nothing at all. A minority are militants. Even among them, almost none poses an imminent threat to the American homeland. Just traveling to the nearest major city requires a journey of hours or even days spent traversing multiple military checkpoints. There are Taliban, some of whom pose a threat to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and other bad guys fighting the dodgy Pakistani government. Some locals sympathize with the bad guys. Many others want no more to do with them than you want to do with the nearest street gang to your house. Why haven't you eradicated it? That's why they haven't gotten rid of the militants.  

An interview with a typical mother is as good a place to begin as any. She described what happens when her family hears an American drone hovering somewhere overhead. "Because of the terror, we shut our eyes, hide under our scarves, put our hands over our ears," she told her interviewer. Asked why, she said, "Why would we not be scared?" Said a father of three from a different family unit, "drones are always on my mind. It makes it difficult to sleep. They are like a mosquito. Even when you don't see them, you can hear them, you know they are there." 

Said a day laborer, "I can't sleep at night because when the drones are there ... I hear them making that sound, that noise. The drones are all over my brain, I can't sleep. When I hear the drones making that drone sound, I just turn on the light and sit there looking at the light. Whenever the drones are hovering over us, it just makes me so scared." Added a politician, people "often complain that they wake up in the middle of the night screaming because they are hallucinating about drones." 

Would you have nightmares if they flew over your house? 

"When children hear the drones, they get really scared, and they can hear them all the time so they're always fearful that the drone is going to attack them," an unidentified man reported. "Because of the noise, we're psychologically disturbed, women, men, and children. ... Twenty-four hours, a person is in stress and there is pain in his head." A journalists who photographs drone strike craters agreed that children are perpetually terrorized. "If you bang a door," Noor Behram said, "they'll scream and drop like something bad is going to happen." Do your kids?  

The terrified parents react there as they would here. Many pull their kids out of school, fearing they'll be killed by drones if they congregate in big groups. Kids make the same decision for themselves: "The children are crying and they don't go to school," says Ismail Hussain. "They fear that their schools will be targeted by the drones."
Faheem Qureshi is still just a teenager.  

Back in 2009, he was the sole survivor of the first drone strike that President Obama ordered. He was "one of the top four students in his class before the drone strike fractured his skull and nearly blinded him," the report states. He's struggled ever since. "Our minds have been diverted from studying. We cannot learn things because we are always in fear of the drones hovering over us, and it really scares the small kids who go to school," he told his interviewer. "At the time the drone struck, I had to take exams, but I couldn't take exams after that because it weakened my brain. I couldn't learn things, and it affected me emotionally. My mind was so badly affected." 

Of course, it isn't just parents and children who are affected.  

Safdar Dawar, who leads an organization of tribal journalists, gave a superb description of what life is like for every innocent person in North Waziristan: "If I am walking in the market, I have this fear that maybe the person walking next to me is going to be a target of the drone. If I'm shopping, I'm really careful and scared. If I'm standing on the road and there is a car parked next to me, I never know if that is going to be the target. Maybe they will target the car in front of me or behind me. Even in mosques, if we're praying, we're worried that maybe one person who is standing with us praying is wanted. So, wherever we are, we have this fear of drones." 

Said Fahad Mirza, "We can't go to the markets. We can't drive cars. When they're hovering over us, we're all scared. One thinks they'll drop it on our house, and another thinks it'll be on our house, so we run out of our houses." Some refuse to leave their houses. Funerals are sparsely attended. Friends no longer visit one another's homes. Yet no one ever feels safe anyway. 

Some go crazy from the stress.  

Others just go homeless. 

Says the report, "In North Waziristan, extended families live together in compounds that often contain several smaller individual structures. Many interviewees told us that often strikes not only obliterate the target house, usually made of mud, but also cause significant damage to three or four surrounding houses." 

A 45-year-old farmer with five sons had that experience: 

A drone struck my home... I was at work at that time, so there was nobody in my home and no one killed... Nothing else was destroyed other than my house," he explained. "I went back to see the home, but there was nothing to do -- I just saw my home wrecked... I was extremely sad, because normally a house costs around 10 lakh, or 1,000,000 rupees [US $10,593], and I don't even have 5,000 rupees now [US $53]. I spent my whole life in that house... my father had lived there as well. There is a big difference between having your own home and living on rent or mortgage... I belong to a poor family and my home has been destroyed. 

Said another man interviewed in the report: 

Before the drone attacks, it was as if everyone was young. After the drone attacks, it is as if everyone is ill. Every person is afraid of the drones. 

America is terrorizing these innocent people.

Have you any deal-breakers?

First of all I'd encourage you to read the whole article by Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic.  But if you don't have time, below are some of the points made that are most salient to the theme of this blog.

I find Obama likable when I see him on TV. He is a caring husband and father, a thoughtful speaker, and possessed of an inspirational biography. On stage, as he smiles into the camera, using words to evoke some of the best sentiments within us, it's hard to believe certain facts about him:     

1. Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue. 

1. Obama established one of the most reckless precedents imaginable: that any president can secretly order and oversee the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. Obama's kill list transgresses against the Constitution as egregiously as anything George W. Bush ever did. It is as radical an invocation of executive power as anything Dick Cheney championed. The fact that the Democrats rebelled against those men before enthusiastically supporting Obama is hackery every bit as blatant and shameful as anything any talk radio host has done.  

1. Contrary to his own previously stated understanding of what the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution demand, President Obama committed U.S. forces to war in Libya without Congressional approval, despite the lack of anything like an imminent threat to national security. 

...

Sometimes a policy is so reckless or immoral that supporting its backer as "the lesser of two evils" is unacceptable. If enough people start refusing to support any candidate who needlessly terrorizes innocents, perpetrates radical assaults on civil liberties, goes to war without Congress, or persecutes whistleblowers, among other misdeeds, post-9/11 excesses will be reined in. 

If not? 

So long as voters let the bipartisan consensus on these questions stand, we keep going farther down this road, America having been successfully provoked by Osama bin Laden into abandoning our values. 

We tortured. 

We started spying without warrants on our own citizens. 

We detain indefinitely without trial or public presentation of evidence. 

We continue drone strikes knowing they'll kill innocents, and without knowing that they'll make us safer. 

Is anyone looking beyond 2012? 

The future I hope for, where these actions are deal-breakers in at least one party (I don't care which), requires some beginning, some small number of voters to say, "These things I cannot support."   

Are these issues important enough to justify a stand like that? 

I think so. 

...

But if you're a Democrat who has affirmed that you'd never vote for an opponent of gay equality, or a torturer, or someone caught using racial slurs, how can you vote for the guy who orders drone strikes that kill hundreds of innocents and terrorizes thousands more -- and who constantly hides the ugliest realities of his policy (while bragging about the terrorists it kills) so that Americans won't even have all the information sufficient to debate the matter for themselves?

...

The whole liberal conceit that Obama is a good, enlightened man, while his opponent is a malign, hard-hearted cretin, depends on constructing a reality where the lives of non-Americans -- along with the lives of some American Muslims and whistleblowers -- just aren't valued. Alternatively, the less savory parts of Obama's tenure can just be repeatedly disappeared from the narrative of his first term, as so many left-leaning journalists, uncomfortable confronting the depths of the man's transgressions, have done over and over again.   

...

Keen on Obama's civil-libertarian message and reassertion of basic American values, I supported him in 2008. Today I would feel ashamed to associate myself with his first term or the likely course of his second. I refuse to vote for Barack Obama. Have you any deal-breakers?  

An example of the moral filth that functions like Viagra to the average American Christian

ACLU sues over refusal to comply with FOIA requests re drone wars

As a result the ACLU has gone to court to argue that the CIA cannot deny the existence of a programme that has been so widely reported, including in great detail in off-the-record briefings by administration and agency officials. Jameel Jaf

fer, the deputy legal director of the ACLU, said: "It is preposterous. The assertion that this programme is a secret is nothing short of absurd.

"For more than two years, senior officials have been making claims about the programme both on the record and off. They've claimed that the programme is effective, lawful and closely supervised. If they can make these claims, there is no reason why they should not be required to respond to [FOIA] requests."

...

"The memorandum justifying the legal basis for the targeted killing has now been requested by at least 10 members of Congress and three different lawsuits but it remains so secret that that acknowledging its existence is a classified matter."

It's secret because there is no justification.

Read the rest here.

Criminal Act vs Motive

Analogous Story

Note:  I wrote this in January of 2010.  I updated it slightly for today's post.


Here's a hypothetical story. Disclaimer: I did not have any particular person in mind, it is completely made up. Any similarity to any living person is purely coincidental.

A man kills another man in a violent act of cold blooded murder. The murdered man had an affair with the murderers wife. The murdered man has a history of promiscuous relationships with married women. The murderer is known to be a guy with a bad temper and tendency towards violence and even being abusive to his wife.

Who is guilty of the crime here? The murderer of course. He should be convicted and tried and subject to the highest form of punishment for his act. In deed, there is not much to like about this guy and perhaps even his wife will now be better off if he is put in jail and kept away from her.

Could the murder have been avoided? Most definitely. If the murdered guy had not had an affair with this particular women, he would not have been murdered by the woman's husband. But that's not to say that he wouldn't have encountered another man who might have reacted similarly. The problem is this guy's life style. He needed to stop being promiscuous and that would give him the greatest chance to avoid harmful conflict with another angry man in the future.

By pointing out the moral flaws of the murdered man are we saying that it is his fault that he was murdered? No, not at all. And to suggests that the murderer is not to blame for such a terrible act because the murdered man was the cause would be simply outrageous and totally unacceptable as well as completely un-just.

Application

Now let's apply this story in an analogous way to the 9/11 attacks and US foreign policy.

The terrorist acts of 9/11 were terrible and inhuman acts of violence against civilians. They were despicable deeds which should be punished. All who planned and participated in them should be found and brought to justice. But what was the motive and why did this small group of men do these terrible things?

Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attackers have stated the following as the primary reasons for making war on the US:

• US Position against Muslims in Palestine (support for Israel). 
• Occupation of the Land of the Two Holy Sanctuaries (Islamic holy land).
• US actions in Iraq. Pre 9/11 this would have been enforcement of a blockade and no-fly zones where thousands of civilians were killed by starvation and aerial bombing. 
• US support for tyrannical governments in: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and other middle eastern Gulf States.

By taking note of these positions, does it mean that we are saying it is our fault that the 9/11 attacks occurred? Not at all. Like the story I made up, this gives no excuse what so ever for doing such a heinous act against innocent civilians. Analysis of motive has no bearing on the guilty party in the crime. The perpetrators of the attacks and all who helped or planned the attacks should be hunted down and brought to justice.

But it is important to note that our politicians and leaders are unwilling to acknowledge these reasons as being the primary motives. In fact, they are giving misleading motives to the attackers. For example, statements are made such as, "They hate us for our freedom." Why would politicians do this? What would they gain by having these misleading motives accepted by the general public?

The founders of our country were against interventionism. They wanted free and open relations with all. They believed in a military for the purpose of defending the country. By pointing out the motives of the 9/11 attackers and other terrorists acts against this country I hope to ignite a strong reaction against our meddling in the affairs of other countries. Our results in these interventions are extremely poor. We seldom get what we are seeking by doing it. We are better off not being the policeman of the world. We are better off setting a good example for other countries to follow. While I don't excuse the 9/11 attackers for what they did, it is safe to say that if we did not have military bases in the middle east, and if we were not propping up repressive dictatorships, and if we did not give unquestioning support to Israel, we very likely could have avoided 9/11 all together. Let's get a grip on foreign policy by going back to the golden rule. How do we want other nations to treat us? Let's start treating them the same way!

Counter argument: it doesn't matter what they say or what their motive was, they are Islamic extremest. Everyone knows that Islam is all about killing infidels and eternal rewards for engaging in Jihad. We should wipe these guys off the face of the earth.

This is basically a statement of a genocidal policy. I personally am not comfortable with it. I have more faith in the Gospel message to change and transform the Islamic world. I don't see a need to be an agent of judgment and I as a Christian am not called to such a mission. I would not vote for any politician who articulated this kind of mission or thought. Would you?

Update: related content

Many conservative Christians will offer up the Quran as a fundamentally violent primary scripture of the Islamic faith. I am not an expert on the Quron but I believe it is important to listen to people who have experience with Islam and know the language. One such person is Professor Juan Cole. Here he provides counter examples of passages in the Quran for those who characterize Islam and the Quran as violent.

You seriously think, Christian, that Jesus wants you to back this?

"I find myself caught between the need to follow the drone debate and the need to avoid unpleasant memories it stirs. I used drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – during the nadir of my military career that was an operational tour in Afghanistan. I remember cuing up a US Predator strike before deciding the computer screen wasn't depicting a Taliban insurgent burying an improvised explosive device in the road; rather, a child playing in the dirt." (Read the rest)

There is no excuse for this. Ever. It only makes sense if you are hoping to provoke endless blowback to stimulate endless military spending. As ethics, it is murder. As foreign policy, it is suicide as well as homicide.

And the sheer self-righteousness of it all... The Bush Administration assuring us that we had to invade Iraq because Hussein had "unmanned aerial drones" that could reach the Eastern Seaboard. And we still act like we have the moral high ground. Stop it. Just make it stop!

Look before you leap

Krauthammer: only an impenitent sociopath is qualified for US foreign policy; Obama is not enough

I'll point out the obvious about this horrible piece later.

But K. lists among O's sins the following:

a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup

Yes, we should have kept lying about our past "sins" (I'm sure there's no such category for a hyperpower, in K's worldview, only for the client states or should-be client states).

And Christians just looooove K. But O is the antichrist.

Who benefits from our aggression in Aghanistan, and how?

On this date in 1980 began the US Gov's full scale proxy war using Iraq against Iran

From Wikipedia:

In addition to fellow Arab support, the United States and west European countries began to support the Iraqis. Saddam Hussein was given diplomatic, monetary, political, and military support by the US, including massive loans, political clout, and intelligence on the Iranian deployments using American spy satellites. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan removed Iraq from the list of countries "supporting terrorism", and sold weapons such as howitzers to Iraq via Jordan and Israel.^[61] France sold Iraq millions of dollars worth of weapons, including Gazelle helicopters, Mirage F-1 fighters, and Exocet missiles. Both the United States and West Germany sold Iraq pesticides and poisions that would be used to create their infamous and illegal chemical weapons,^[61] and other weapons, such as Roland missiles, while the US and Great Britain blocked any UN resolutions against Iraqi chemical weapons uses, and even accusing Iran of using them as well. The US also gave intelligence to the Iraqis which allowed them the coordinate their attacks against the Iranians, often using chemical weapons.^[61] At the same time, the Soviet Union, angered with Iran purging and destroying of Iran's nation communist party (Tudeh Party), resumed massive shipments of weapons to Iraq again. The Iraqi air force was speedily rearmed with Soviet and French fighter jets and helicopters. Iraq also bought weapons such as AK-47's and RPG's from the Chinese. The depleted tank forces were replenished with Soviet tanks, and the Iraqis were rearmed in the face of renewed Iranian attacks. Despite the fact that Iraq had started the war, Iran was portrayed as the aggressor, and would seen as such until the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War (when Iraq would be condemned). Nevertheless, both sides distrusted each other, partularly after the Iran-Contra Scandal in 1986. Saddam was angered that the US was giving weapons to the Iranians as well (although they were much fewer).

It is a bit ironic to me that just as we once removed Iraq from the terrorist list so that they could fight a proxy war for the US Government, so the day before the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq War it is reported that the Federal State is about to remove a terrorist cult from the terrorist list so that they can use them in acts of terrorism against Iran.

In recent years, it has enlisted Washington luminaries in both parties to speak on its behalf or appear at rallies. Among them are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Democratic Party leader Howard Dean, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, former FBI Director Louis Freeh and President Obama’s  former national security advisor, James L. Jones.

Some of the officials reportedly were paid tens of thousands of dollars in fees. The group also spent considerable sums on full-page newspaper advertisements and other media.

Critics of the MEK faulted the Obama administration for bowing to the lobbying effort, warning that the appearance of U.S. support for a group that many Iranians view as traitorous could weaken Iran’s pro-democracy movement. Some current and former U.S. officials have called for arming the MEK to conduct attacks against Iran, which experts say could tip the United States and Iran closer to war.

“It’s a gift to [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei,” Iran’s supreme leader, said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group that opposes the government in Tehran.

“At a moment when the United States is trying to put pressure on the Iranian regime through sanctions, and have that economic hardship for the people translate into them putting pressure on their own government, that policy is undermined if the balance of public anger is directed to the U.S. rather than the regime itself,” Parsi said.

Got that? The MEK is delisted because they have renounced violence and become some hope to  arm them for acts of violence. Perfect.

Have to begin somemwhere....

I should have started this blog back in ... I was going to write 2007... or 2003... probably 1991. Or 1812.

This is not a pacifistic blog. God is a warrior. Sometimes war is necessary. Since no American alive to read this can remember such a war, that is an almost irrelevant detail, but I mention it anyway.

As I said. This is not a pacifist blog. God is a warrior. Jesus has a sword. And he will be using it on the US sooner or later for all the bloodshed that the US not only commits, but that Christians applaud for.

That's what this blog will be about.