Category: News

Last week I wrote about the news that the Obama administration is considering whether to assassinate another American citizen in a drone strike. The Associated Press reported the target is an American citizen and member of al-Qaeda, “and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.”

Something that was clear at the time of the report, although I failed to mention it explicitly, is that this information was obviously leaked to the press at the direction of President Obama. This leads to a troubling question, asked astutely by Noah Feldman at Bloomberg News:

White House officials are leaking to the news media that they are considering whether to use drone strikes to kill an unnamed American in Pakistan. This behavior is bizarre as a matter of national security: If a terrorist really poses an imminent threat, how exactly does the administration have time to test the political waters before taking him out?

The answer lies in the administration’s deliberately convoluted language guiding legal and policy decisions in the drone war. In a speech on drone policy in May, Obama said a drone strike is permissible if it preempts a “continuing and imminent” threat to the U.S., and if the target can not feasibly be arrested.

In reality, “continuing” is the operative word here and “imminent” is stuck in there to give the appearance of adherence to the international laws governing the use of force. According to a leaked Justice Department legal memo, the Obama administration essentially dropped the requirement of “imminence.”

“The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states. All that’s necessary to decide on a target is for a high-level U.S. official to say the targets are “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaeda or “an associated force.”

The use of force – which includes dropping bombs from unmanned aerial vehicles – is prohibited by international law unless the UN Security Council approves it or it preempts an imminent attack. As Feldman notes, the Obama administration’s deliberate leaking of this wrangle over whether to kill another American without due process indicates a desire to “test the political waters” before going ahead and assassinating the suspect. By this very fact, it is evident that the suspect poses no immediate, imminent threat – which a recent Congressional Research Service report defined as an overwhelming threat that allows “no moment for deliberation.” Clearly, this doesn’t apply here and the same has been true for the vast majority of drone strikes.

It’s getting a little trite to say it, but it is not a stretch to say Obama’s view of presidential power is reiterative of Nixon’s:

In the Obama administration’s drone war, there are two sets of laws. First, there is constitutional and international law which the United States and he, as president, is obliged to follow. Then there are much broader, mostly secret bureaucratic rules and unorthodox interpretations of the first set of laws.

Often times, the administration will violate or supersede the first set of laws. Unless you intend to completely marginalize yourself from mainstream politics, you don’t dare suggest that these criminal violations be prosecuted. Instead, “serious people” are supposed to understand that the administration is following its own set of rules.

But what happens when the second set of laws is violated? Then are we allowed by polite company to demand accountability and prosecution?

In its investigation of a December drone strike in which four Hellfire missiles struck a wedding procession in Yemen, killing 12 and injuring 15, Human Rights Watch says the Obama administration appears to have violated its own self-imposed rules, which the president referenced in a speech in May.

A deadly US drone strike on a December 2013 wedding procession in Yemen raises serious concerns about US forces’ compliance with President Barack Obama’s targeted killing policy, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 28-page report, “A Wedding That Became a Funeral: US Drone Attack on Marriage Procession in Yemen,” calls on the US government to investigate the strike, publish its findings, and act in the event of wrongdoing. The December 12 attack killed 12 men and wounded at least 15 other people, including the bride. US and Yemeni officials said the dead were members of the armed group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), but witnesses and relatives told Human Rights Watch the casualties were civilians. Obama said in a major address in May that US policy requires “near-certainty” that no civilians will be harmed in targeted attacks.

“The US refusal to explain a deadly attack on a marriage procession raises critical questions about the administration’s compliance with its own targeted killing policy,” said Letta Tayler, senior terrorism and counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “All Yemenis, especially the families of the dead and wounded, deserve to know why this wedding procession became a funeral.”

According to Obama’s own explanation of his policy, there has to be “near-certainty” that the target is present and that no civilians will be killed, that it preempts a “continuing and imminent” threat to the U.S., and that the target can not feasibly be arrested. Not only has the administration failed to show that these criteria were met, it has refused to even acknowledge the strike took place.

Obviously, the first set of laws seem also to have been violated: “The attack on the wedding procession also may have violated the laws of war by failing to discriminate between combatants and civilians, or by causing civilian loss disproportionate to the expected military advantage.”

Notice that there isn’t even the slightest pretension of the rule of law in America. Hardly anybody, aside from human rights organizations that get no play in the big media outlets, is calling for prosecutions or even investigations. In practice – and even in theory – laws simply do not apply to the executive branch.

The United States met secretly this week with spy chiefs from Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The subject was the Syrian civil war and how to better support the rebels, which are by and large al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.

David Ignatius at the Washington Post:

Western and Arab intelligence services that support Syria’s struggling opposition gathered for a two-day strategy meeting in Washington last week that appears to signal a stronger effort to back the rebels.

The spymasters’ conclave featured Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s minister of the interior, who will now supervise the kingdom’s leading role in the covert-action program.

The Nation‘s Bob Dreyfus says this is “a sign that the [Obama] administration’s commitment to diplomacy is fading, and that Obama is prepared to let the covert operators go to work with a freer leash.”

“Sources” told David Ignatius that these Arab countries “agreed to coordinate their aid so that it goes directly to moderate fighters rather than leeching away to extremists of the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).”

That is not a credible promise. For years now, aid from Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE has been going to Sunni extremists and most likely contributed significant military and political gains of the al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups, over the less popular and less numerous “moderate” groups. Even if these regimes were sincere in their efforts to keep lethal aid from al-Qaeda-linked groups (which is dubious) the logistical challenges associated with making sure only “moderate” rebels get the aid are steep enough to doubt such a covert program’s effectiveness.

Ignatius even explains how “aid flows have been disrupted by political infighting between Turkey and Qatar, on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia and Jordan, on the other.” Extremists got their hands on this aid in any case: “The situation has been especially chaotic in northern Syria, south of the Turkish border, where the al-Qaeda affiliates have taken advantage of the confusion.”

In addition to this, Ignatius also notes, the CIA has been covertly training and arming Syrian rebels inside Jordan.

One would have thought we were passed this. After the failed effort in Washington to boost support for Syrian rebels and the bumbling screw up that was the Obama administration’s quickly-aborted plan to bomb Syria, it seemed as if power brokers in the White House and Capitol Hill came to grips with the fact that there were no good options. A no-fly zone would worsen the humanitarian situation and produce a dangerous power vacuum with the end of the Assad regime and boosting arms supplies to the rebels seemed dumber and dumber due to the increasingly extremist make-up of the opposition. The political science literature is pretty clear on this: civil wars in which competing foreign powers support both sides tend to last longer and reach stalemate, making both the humanitarian and the strategic circumstances all the worse.

Given these realities, the Obama administration’s continued efforts to meddle in the Syrian civil war lack common sense. It won’t save lives (as liberal interventionists are wont to claim as their motivation) and it will either produce further stalemate or, although it’s extremely unlikely, generate the collapse of the Assad regime (which would consequently increase the position of jihadist groups). None of these are desirable outcomes.

The New York Times speculated the other day about why the Obama administration was apparently changing its mind on more active support for the rebels: “Mr. Obama’s apparent willingness to drop objections to supplying the rebel groups with heavier weapons may simply be an acknowledgment that Saudi Arabia and gulf states that are frustrated with American policy are now prepared to do so anyway, without Washington’s blessing.”

Ah yes, Saudi Arabia – the tail that wags the dog. Either that or Obama’s ‘do-something’ mindset simply hasn’t yet been exhausted.

Another extremely important article from The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher reveals that “the National Security Agency and its British counterpart…targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution.”

The intelligence agencies “collect[ed] the IP addresses of visitors” to a WikiLeaks website and attempted to target WikiLeaks supporters. The documents, leaked by Edward Snowden, also reveal NSA surveillance of other activist groups on the internet.

“Illustrating how far afield the NSA deviates from its self-proclaimed focus on terrorism and national security, the documents reveal that the agency considered using its sweeping surveillance system against Pirate Bay, which has been accused of facilitating copyright violations,” Greenwald and Gallagher report.

Facilitating copyright violations. Scary right? Pirate Bay is a site known to offer “music, movies, games and software” and this does tend to conflict with the system of government-granted intellectual property privileges, which is a crock in the first place.

The important point is that this reporting yet again reveals how little the NSA cares about terrorism. When NSA officials or their congressional supporters get in front of a camera, practically everything out of their mouth is an attempt to justify expansive NSA surveillance on the grounds that it is necessary to protect Americans from terrorism. More and more that excuse is revealed to be utterly dishonest.

As has been widely reported, the NSA targets private businesses for purposes of economic espionage, like with Brazil’s oil company Petrobras. And in October President Obama had to order the NSA to halt surveillance of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The New York Times reported back in December that “Secret documents reveal more than 1,000 targets of American and British surveillance in recent years, including the office of an Israeli prime minister, heads of international aid organizations, foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses.”

Add to that the fact that all three branches of government in some way have come out publicly to say that NSA’s bulk collection of phone records (which Diane Feinstein justifies by claiming it could have prevented 9/11) doesn’t do anything to actually thwart terrorist attacks and you have a clear picture of how terrorism is used to fear-monger Americans into accepting systematic infringements on their privacy rights.

Pursuing copyright infringements is the kind of petty government initiative that is transparently about maintaining state power and punishing disobedience. The same is true for surveillance of WikiLeaks. The economic espionage, similarly, is about gaining an edge over peer competitors in the international state system.

As Jay Stanley of the ACLU has explained, “national security is the justification for our security establishment’s existence and powers, but self-preservation, defense of prerogatives and reputation, and expansion of powers is truly mission number one.”

NSA surveillance is not about fighting terrorism. It isn’t even about eliminating privacy. It is about strengthening the state.

Saudi Arabia, the brutal authoritarian theocracy that the democracy-promoting Washington claims as one of its closest allies, has a bit of a history of pressuring the U.S. into Middle East wars. The 1991 First Gulf War to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was fought largely in defense of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom also encouraged the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003. And the Saudi king has repeatedly urged Washington to attack Iran to secure Saudi interests in the Sunni-Shia regional divide.

Saudi Arabia also has a rather incriminating and duplicitous history of harboring Islamic extremists of the al-Qaeda, jihadist type. They helped the U.S. fund the mujahideen in Afghanistan. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis (and they were directed by a Saudi, named Osama bin Laden). There is even a classified record that members of Congress have claimed indicates the Saudi government’s role in the 9/11 attacks.

Since the start of Syria’s civil war, foreign jihadists have been flooding the country – many of them coming from Saudi Arabia. Al Monitor reports:

Estimates of the number of Saudis fighting in Syria range as high as 2,500. Some are hardened veterans of earlier jihads in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq. A few are compatriots of Osama bin Laden. Others traveled to Syria from the kingdom, despite individual travel bans imposed for dissident activities at home. Some traveled directly through major Saudi airports, leading many observers to conclude they were encouraged by the authorities to leave the kingdom and go fight Assad. For over two years, the Saudi government seemed to turn a blind eye to travel by its citizens — even political dissidents — to Syria.

Kuwait, which has close ties to the Saudi government, “is a major source of private funding for Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official arm in Syria,” Al Monitor reports.

Interesting enough, but that is not the big piece of news from this Al Monitor report. The big news is this: “King Abdullah will make a major push for a more vigorous American effort to oust Assad when he hosts Obama [late next month]. The Saudis have been openly disappointed that Obama has not used force to get rid of Assad or provided more assistance to training and arming the Syrian opposition.” Now, the report says, the Saudis are trying to persuade Obama to impose regime change in Syria by promising to cut back on its support for jihadists.

To sum up, Saudi Arabia’s policy on Syria amounts to funding groups considered by Washington to be terrorists and to lobbying the President of the United States to destroy the Damascus government. The two initiatives are deeply intertwined given that a collapse of the regime in Syria would mean chaos and huge ungoverned spaces, which foreign funded jihadists could thrive in.

I’ve been hammering away on the issue of entangling alliance for months now, but where is the outrage on Saudi Arabia? The U.S. government continues to help prop up and arm the Saudi government and yet it supports terrorism and is trying to suck the U.S. into another dangerous and endless military quagmire in the Middle East. Where are the belligerent members of Congress, the Peter Kings and Charles Schumers, condemning Saudi Arabia? They condemn other countries for much less.

All too often, the details of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation are glossed over. But recently, during a Knesset speech by the German Speaker of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz, one detail of such a life came under increased scrutiny.

Schultz brought up the issue of water insecurity in the West Bank, which led Israel’s right-wing representatives like Naftali Bennett to walk out in protest. Schultz worried that Palestinians don’t have sufficient control of or access to their own water resources, given that Israel essentially exercises control over their sovereignty. Bennett slammed the notion as ludicrous and the controversy became a debate over data and numbers.

The Jerusalem Post tries to clear up the facts:

The truth is that on average the Palestinians in the West Bank are allocated 60-70 liters of water per day, though there are areas in Zone C where there is no running water and the daily water consumption is only 20 liters per day. According to Mekorot(2011 figures), the average water consumption in Israel is 100-230 liters per day (including desalinated water).

There are no official figures regarding the average water consumption of the Jewish inhabitants in the territories (why?), but it is assumed to be much higher (some say even double) the figure for Israelis within the Green Line.

Anecdotes about West Bank Palestinians lacking access to sufficient water supply while they peer over the walls of a Jewish settlement block with pristine blue swimming pools are not exaggerated. A complex network of infrastructure leaves hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unconnected to the West Bank’s water networks when, of course, the Israeli settlements are not so unconnected.

More importantly, note the Post’s explanation of how Palestinians in the West Bank are allocated certain amounts of water by Israel. Palestinians can have water when and how Israel says they can. That is the central indignity of living under occupation.

And as Amira Hass at Haaretz notes, “Israel doesn’t give water to the Palestinians. Rather, it sells it to them at full price.”

“The Palestinians would not have been forced to buy water from Israel if it were not an occupying power which controls their natural resource, and if it were not for the Oslo II Accords, which limit the volume of water they can produce, as well as the development and maintenance of their water infrastructure,” Hass adds.

The overwhelming reality of the Israeli occupation is that it controls the excruciating minutia of every detail of Palestinian life, from access to water, to building permits, to freedom of movement and expression. It is suffocating. And yet, Israel manages to frame the U.S.-led peace negotiations in a way that depicts Israel as the weaker, more vulnerable side.