Somali Sources: US Missile Missed al Qaeda Suspect

For some reason this story has not yet made the news in the U.S.:

On Monday, March 3, the U.S. Navy fired a Tomahawk missile at a house in Somalia where they claimed an al Qaeda member, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, wanted for questioning by the FBI for involvement in the African embassy bombings in 1998, was hiding out.

CNN reported that 6 people, 3 women and 3 children, were killed and another 20 were injured. Two houses were destroyed.

Now the Daily Nation out of Nairobi, Kenya, is reporting that Nabhan was not at the site at the time of the attack:

A US missile strike against the Somali town of Dobley may have missed its target – Kenyan terror suspect Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan. …

The Tomahawk missile fired from the sea may have hit when the suspect, born in 1968 in Mombasa, had already left the location, the sources added.

But the police are not ruling out that Mr Nabhan may be among the 20 people wounded in the attack.

Mr Nabhan is a close ally of another wanted terrorist suspect Harun Fazul, and are believed to be always together.

Other sources close to Mr Nabhan said they did not believe he was killed. “I think it’s just propaganda to try and find out where he actually is,” said one source.

The current war in Somalia, a greater humanitarian catastrophe than even the crisis in the Darfur region of the Sudan, was started by the United States back in December, 2006, in the name of catching 3 al Qaeda suspects.

Congress Defends Gaza Assault 404-1

Today Congress passed a resolution (HR 951) condemning Palestinian rocket attacks that include a strident defense of recent Israeli tactics in the Gaza Strip. The resolution also condemned Iran and Syria for “sponsoring terror attacks,” and demanded that Saudi Arabia publicly condemn Palestinian actions.

The resolution was originally introduced in January, but contains new language including a passage saying that that “those responsible for launching rocket attacks against Israel routinely embed their production facilities and launch sites amongst the Palestinian civilian population, utilizing them as human shields” and “the inadvertent inflicting of civilian casualties as a result of defensive military operations aimed at military targets, while deeply regrettable, is not at all morally equivalent to the deliberate targeting of civilian populations as practiced by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups.”

Although 23 Congressman abstained or voted “present,” only one bravely voted no: Rep. Ron Paul.

Dennis Kucinich Winning for Congress

Dennis Kucinich is far ahead in his bid to win re-nomination to his Congressional seat in Cleveland.

He is currently getting 53% in a five-way race, with his nearest opponent getting 31%. Kucinich will have a Republican opponent, but he has not received less than 60% in the general election in the past decade.

In Defense of Non-Violence

I’m writing this in response to an article in last week’s Haaretz entitled ‘Palestinians’ doomsday weapon, non-violence, fails test’. It’s a better article than the title might lead one to believe and accepts an important underlying premise: that non-violence from the Gaza Strip would be a serious blow to the Israeli government. However, the article does make a couple of significant errors which I hope to correct now:

  • The article wrongly suggests that the increased rocket fire out of Gaza last week was in response to the non-violent protest at the border. In fact Israel’s General Yadlin has pointed out that rather it was a direct result of assassinations of several key Hamas military experts
  • The theme of the article is that we have no clue what the Israeli military strategy to counter non-violence is, and that they probably don’t even have one

It is this later claim that I wish to discuss, because it is this later claim which misinterprets the entire strategy of non-violence and leads to the article’s false conclusion that non-violence has simply failed of its own accord.

Rather, we know precisely what strategy the Israeli military employs in response to non-violence, because it is the only strategy available to it. Indeed it is the only strategy militaries ever employ in response to non-violence, and we saw it clearly this weekend.

Escalation.

Seeing the path of non-violence to its necessary conclusion is not easy for precisely this reason: that every act of non-violence defiance is met with an act of increasingly disproportionate violence in the hopes of realizing a violent response and vindicating the claim that the posture of non-violence is an insincere one.

Today, Israeli ground forces begin their pullout from the Gaza Strip. The mainstream press treats this as a response to international condemnation for the large civilian death toll. Hamas sees it as vindication of their violent resistance and claims ‘victory’. But both of these are mistaken. Israeli troops are leaving the Gaza strip because they achieved their goal: they provoked a response.

It takes a very special brand of determination to see non-violence through in the face of attacks on soccer-playing children and troops marching through suburbs killing civilians. Yet it is precisely this determination which must follow, if those deaths are not to be in vain.

The people of the Gaza Strip must hold firm in their resolve for non-violence. They must make it clear to the Israeli military that they will not be swayed, nor will they respond violently. They must leave the Israeli government with only two choices: acquiescence or committing genocide. And despite what Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister or anyone else may say, they must remain confident that Israel cannot choose the latter.

This weekend may have been a setback for non-violence, but it is nothing resembling failure. Non-violence remains not just an option for the Palestinians in the face of occupation, but at the end of the day, the only one.