Month: August 2011

The United States government has been hyping a supposed link between Iran and al Qaeda operatives, positing in particular that a “safe haven” in Iran exists as “six terrorist operatives form a network that funnels money and personnel from the Gulf to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan via Iran.” Leaving aside the limited evidence ever given for such accusations, has America any right to condemn others for engaging in exactly the behavior it engages in every day?

Coincidentally, Iran condemns the U.S. for supporting anti-Iranian terrorism all the time. Do the accusations have merit? Take, for example, recent moves by U.S. officials to remove Mujahedin-e Khalq from its terrorism registry, which would qualify it to receive U.S. funding, despite what Iran calls “a compelling record of terrorist activities.” Also note that U.S. officials during the Bush administration “suggested re-arming MEK and using it to destabilize Iran.” Is this not actively supporting and attempting to provide safe haven for terrorism? Or take instead the “cyber-terrorism, commercial sabotage, targeted assassinations, and proxy wars that have apparently been under way in Iran.” Do these qualify as acts of terrorism? No, because they are committed by America.

Let’s broaden the analysis. At this very moment the U.S. is actively supporting and fighting a war in Libya on behalf of a rebel group who has been committing acts of terrorism and reportedly has ties to al Qaeda. In Somalia, U.S. money and weapons are indirectly funding the U.S. designated terrorist group al Shabaab. In Afghanistan, U.S. money and weapons have also been funding insurgent groups deemed terrorists by the U.S. government. In Colombia, the U.S. is not only funding and arming paramilitary terrorist groups with atrocious human rights violations, but is also funding the corrupt government who commits horrible acts of state terror on the Colombian people.

If any of this qualifies as funding and cooperating with terrorists – and it quite obviously does – I’m not really sure where the U.S. gets off criticizing Iran for allegedly doing the same thing on a comparatively infinitesimal scale. It’s also important to note that my parallels have been kept mostly to non-state terror, but if we include the state terror America supports it begins to reveal America’s well earned place at #1 top supporter of terror on planet Earth. Even still this barely scratches the surface.

It should also be noted that this isn’t merely about hypocrisy and being principled and consistent. American policy is currently in violation of its own laws which prohibit providing material support or resources to terrorists. This means America should be in the process of prosecuting its own leadership, instead of, say, attempting to justify aggressive actions against Iran for behaving just like America.

 

Check out Antiwar.com’s Angela Keaton on Adam vs. The Man talking about Syria:

There have been plenty of reports that the incompetent Afghan war planners have allowed significant amounts of weapons and money to get into the hands of those we are ostensibly there to fight. This kind of thing is doubly counterproductive given that our entire set of policies towards the Middle East – including Israel-Palestine, support for dictatorships, military bases, aggressive wars and occupation – are the fuel for the engine of anti-American violence, never mind that we actually contribute guns and butter to our frontline foes.

But now there are reports that this inadvertent support is happening not just in Afghanistan but in Somalia with newfound boogiemen in al Shabaab:

Bad news in America’s five-year-old proxy war against al-Qaida-allied Somali insurgents. Half of the U.S.-supplied weaponry that enables cash-strapped Ugandan and Burundian troops to fight Somalia’s al-Shabab terror group is winding up in al-Shabab’s hands.

[…] The Pentagon has been striking at al-Shabab since at least early 2007, with special forces, armed drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by Navy ships. But most of the fighting against the Islamic terror group, which has lured as many as 50 Somali-American kids to Mogadishu and even sent one on a suicide mission, is done by the roughly 9,000 Ugandan and Burundian soldiers belonging to the African Union’s peacekeeping force in Mogadishu, codenamed “AMISOM.”

In exchange, Washington pays the troops and sends them regular consignments of guns, rockets and ammo. Between 2007 and 2009, the bill for U.S. taxpayers came to around $200 million — and has probably doubled since then.

[…] So the Ugandans sell their excess weaponry to intermediaries who then sell it on to al-Shabab. And to keep up their racket, the peacekeepers make sure to shoot at every opportunity, burning through “an extraordinary amount of ordnance” to justify continued arms shipments from Washington.

How bad is it? “In April of 2011 the U.N. determined that 90 percent of all 12.7 x 108 millimeter ammunition [in Mogadishu] was from an AMISOM stock created in 2010,” Pelton revealed. “An RPG captured from al-Shabab was analyzed and determined to have been delivered by DynCorp to the Ministry of Defense in Uganda. The contract was to supply weapons and ammunition to the Ugandan forces in Mogadishu.”

Somehow defense planners never learn. The urge to fight wars and maintain dominance through proxies – whether client states or rough-and-tumble guerrillas – has historically led to backlash, betrayal, and blowback (as our first Afghan war sufficiently illustrates).

As a sign of deteriorating relations between the US and Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari voiced hopes that the United States and Pakistan could establish “clear terms of engagement.” Clearly acknowledging the Abottabad raid that netted Osama bin Laden, Zardari expressed frustration at the remarkable gray area that plagues Pakistani-American relations:

In the absence of well-defined and documented terms of engagements, wrong plugs may be pulled at the wrong times by any side that could undermine the bilateral relations…

Terms of engagement should be clearly defined and specified so that any dispute could be settled amicably through the available institutions.

Zardari also mentioned that he would like to see more communication concerning drone strikes, although this is not likely to happen unless there are serious repercussions put on the table by Pakistan.

The United States has essentially laughed in the face of Pakistan whenever the issue has been discussed. In the immediate aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death, both the Pakistani government and Pakistani people were outraged at America’s lack of respect for Pakistani sovereignty. In a poll from the Pew Research Center, an astonishing 63% of Pakistanis disapproved of the raid, despite 55% of Pakistanis disapproving of al-Qaeda. Couple those polling numbers with 62% of Pakistanis disapproving of American counterterrorism efforts, the conclusion that can be drawn is pretty sensible: bin Laden represented resistance to the great, American superpower, despite his own atrocious misgivings.

Unfortunately, the idea that Pakistan must be scrutinized and brutalized in order to mitigate or eliminate the “never ending” terrorist threat is so firmly engrained in the intelligence establishment’s mode of thought that any reduction in anti-American hostilities seems farfetched unless conventional wisdom is challenged. We will continue to bomb, shoot, photograph, and set up fake vaccine clinics until the nearly-failed state is firmly and completely under the thumb of the United States. Unless, of course, Pakistan decides to take a firm stand.

While $800 million of the Pakistani gravy train has been halted, two thirds of it remain unaffected. Both countries remain in a delicate balance: Pakistan is strategically vital to winning the war in Afghanistan while Pakistan cooperation ensures that the bills are paid and the guns are bought. President Obama and the rest of the gang in Washington need Pakistan just as much as Pakistan needs America, if not more so. Expulsion of American forces, contractors, and other mercenaries would be a repudiation of America’s militarized foreign policy that has ruled the establishment for much of the 20th and 21st century. The embarrassment would be worse than Benjamin Netanyahu’s public rebuke of Obama’s farcical peace deal. Pakistan would also suffer a debilitating blow, but for a country that is already considered a failed state by many, this would be a fraction of the devastation.

Once Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal becomes an imminent concern, things could get downright ugly.

Justin Logan, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, notes the gap between public opinion and U.S. foreign policy at the National Interest blog:

It’s a bit striking how different public opinion and elite opinion are regarding U.S. foreign policy. One useful juxtaposition I’ve found is using National Journal’s “national security insiders” polls and contrasting them with polls of the public. Two recent examples:

– In a June “insiders” poll, 57 percent of the experts said that President Obama should remove a “modest” number—“5,000 or fewer”—of troops from Afghanistan this summer. A March poll from the Washington Post/ABC News indicated that 73 percent of the public favored “substantial” withdrawals this summer.

– In the new insiders poll, 70 percent of experts favor keeping troops in Iraq beyond the deadline in President Bush’s SOFA agreement with that country. (It’s not clear exactly how they would have us do so, considering Iraqi politics.) Contrast that with a poll from Gallup last August that asked the more leading question whether Washington should “keep its troops in Iraq beyond 2011 if Iraqi security forces are unable to contain insurgent attacks and maintain order in Iraq.” The answer to that question, according to the public, was 53 percent “leave regardless,” 43 percent “stay if Iraqis cannot maintain order.”

When Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton asked members of the Washington foreign-policy elite what the public thought about 11 international political questions, the elites only gave the correct answer on two of the 11 issues.

He’s quite right to point this out. I was reminded of this 2005 study from American Political Science Review (PDF) which assessed multivariate foreign policy preferences and their influence on actual policy, considering business, elite opinion, labor, and the general public. It found that business interests along with elite opinion within the foreign policy establishment basically dictate foreign policy.

The strongest and most consistent results are the coefficients for business, which suggest that internationally oriented business corporations are strongly influential in U.S. foreign policy…Business people (along with experts) are estimated to exert the strongest effects on policy makers overall and, especially, on administration officials…

And as for the public, the researchers favored their models to account for possible miscalculations in their models’ emphasis in popular opinion:

Even with these reduced and refined models, the public does not appear to exert substantial consistent influence on the makers of foreign policy…A more plausible interpretation of these borderline-signifcant coefficients, however, is that the public simply has no effect at all…In short, in spite of generous model specifications, the effect of public opinion on the preferences of foreign policy makers appears to be to be – at best – modest when critical competing variables are controlled for. In general, public opinion takes a back seat to business and experts.

Even accounting for the overwhelming evidence that the public is disregarded when constructing foreign policy in this supposedly democratic state, we should keep in mind the vigorous indoctrination the public goes through as a result of the media, which also primarily reflects business and elite opinion. The public are more dovish, as Logan evidences, but once the general hawkishness of even supposedly left-wing media is accounted for, the public would likely have even more anti-interventionist stances.

Note also Senator Obama’s spirited campaign rhetoric against corporate control over government policy and even President Obama’s railing against the influence of special interests in our democracy, reminding us all along the way that his predecessor’s policies were overly aligned with these business elites. He then gave 80 percent of his top campaign donors senior positions in government and doubled down on all of Bush’s foreign policies (and ramped up a few new ones). Unfortunately, this fooled far too many people, only some of whom now admit their gullible folly.

Addendum: Let it be said that the falling for Obama’s lies is not nearly the most prominent obstruction in the way of changing corporate control over foreign policy or any other policy. The more fundamental “gullible folly” is the constant belief that any particular candidate can change this aspect of our government as opposed to rethinking the government’s relationship with corporations towards one of separation. If we have an antiwar movement that wants less business influence in constructing foreign policy, yet continues to support active integration of the public sector and the private, we have little hope of overcoming this systemic feature of our “democracy.”