Obama and the "Yes-You-Can" terrorists

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President Obama’s speech, announcing his intent to reign in America’s global war on terror is playing out with a certain grisly irony here in England, a country reeling from the latest terrorist act.

The media here is filled with ghastly images of a man, clad in a jacket and woolen cap, glaring at the camera, a knife and meat cleaver in his bloody hand—just after he and his partner hacked to death and tried to behead a young British soldier in Woolwich in southeast London two days ago.

 What is particularly alarming is the similarity of these two newest terrorist murderers in the name of Islam to the two brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon last month, to the 23 year-old son of Algerian immigrants, who shot down seven people in France a little more than a year ago. 

In England, as in the earlier attacks in the U.S. and France, the terrorist killings provoked a wave of horror and outrage across the country. Islamic leaders denied such dastardly deeds had anything to do with the true faith. The murders were condemned as the totally senseless, cowardly act of unhinged killers, their minds deranged by radical Islamist claptrap.

“Britain will never buckle,” said Prime Minister David Cameron. “The terrorists will never win because they can never beat the values we hold dear.”

In fact, however, as one of the two killers in Woolwich talked to a horrified onlooker before the police arrived, in his own mind, at least, their actions were quite rational. They were in retaliation for Britain’s participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone.” the man with the meat cleaver said. “Your people will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers everyday. We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same.”

He went on, “So what if we want to live by the Sharia in Muslim lands? Why does that mean you must follow us and chase us and call us extremists, kill us?”

“Rather, your lot are extreme. You are the ones. When you drop a bomb, do you think it picks on a person? Or rather your bomb wipes out a whole family?’

The investigation in London is just getting underway, but there is no evidence that the two men of Nigerian parents were part of al-Qaeda or any sophisticated terrorist network. One of them had converted from Christianity to Islam, but they were what the British authorities call “self-starters,”a potentially far more dangerous threat to Britain and the West than al-Qaeda itself.

They were almost certainly swayed by radical Islamic clerics in England or via the Internet, such as the fiery English-language sermons delivered by Anwar al-Alwaki, an Al Qaeda preacher based in Yemen. An American citizen, he was killed in a drone strike in 2011. But the West’s dilemma is that his call for wannabe jihadis to launch whatever bloody attacks they can conjure, echoes on—as does the motto “Just Do It.”   

That’s also the story behind the bombings at the Boston Marathon, perpetrated by the two young Tsarnaev brothers, immigrants from the restless Muslim nation of  Chechnya. Here again, there is yet no evidence that they received any serious terrorist training or were acting as agents of any sophisticated network. Like the two men in Woolwich, they were freelancers--carrying out their own murderous schemes, inspired by nationalist cum religious sentiments, abetted by on-line instructions about bomb-making.

Their motives?  The surviving brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was determined to make them clear. As he lay bleeding from his wounds, hidden from the police inside a boat in the back yard of a Watertown, Ma., he wrote a message on the interior wall of the cabin.

The note said the bombings were in retaliation for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims "collateral damage" in the same way innocent victims have been in the American-led wars. "When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims," Tsarnaev wrote.

Again, in March 2012, France was traumatized by the murderous outburst of another young Muslim in Toulouse.  Mohammed Merah, 23, first gunned down three French soldiers—one of them Muslim—then three days later he methodically shot four more people—a rabbi and three students at a nearby Jewish School.  

He attacked the military base, Merah later told police, because of France’s involvement in Afghanistan; and the Jewish school because “The Jews kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine.” He was also outraged, he said, by France’s ban of the full veil.

As in Woolwich and Boston, the immediate suspicion that Merah was somehow linked to al-Qaeda; but it turned out that it wasn’t. As I blogged at the time, Merah had been to Pakistan and Afghanistan, but there was no evidence that this former petty criminal was part of any serious terrorist network.

That being the case, how on earth can the authorities in the U.S. and Europe deal with the threat of such “Just-Do-It” jihadis?  

Since 2005, for instance, British security services have prevented more than a dozen terrorist plots on British soil, including a scheme to blow up airliners with liquid-based bombs, to targeting shopping centers and nightclubs with fertilizer-based explosives, to taking out the London stock exchange. But the two Woolwich killers slipped through.

This, despite the fact that, according to reports here, both of them had been on an MI-5 watch list. One had apparently been arrested while attempting to travel to Somalia to join a radical Islamic group.

But after that, what should the authorities have done? Hold him for life? Let him go but keep him under constant surveillance? With some 2.5 million people of Muslim descent in England? Many of them unemployed, alienated from their government and its tendency to follow the lead of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East. How do you keep a handle on them all?

French authorities also singled out Mohammed Merah for special attention after his trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan. But Merah shared space on that watch-list with some 600 other radicals from right to left just in the Toulouse area alone. Don’t forget, there are more than five million people of Muslim descent in France, many of them also bitter, unemployed, poorly housed.

French authorities have also foiled terrorist plots over the past few years, but there is no way they could have predicted that a young man like Mohammed Merah, who first turned to Salafism in a French prison, would migrate from radical “attitude” into full-blown terrorism. Indeed, apparently before he set out to avenge his Moslem brothers for France’s military role in Afghanistan, Merah had earlier tried to enlist in the French army, presumably to go to Afghanistan to fight against Islamic radicals.

Thus, there are certainly other precipitating factors—apart from ideology alone--that transform young men and women into terrorists. The elder Tsarnaev brother in Boston, for instance, had been a promising amateur boxer. He was apparently radicalized when the people running the Golden Gloves championships restricted  admission to American citizens only. That decision meant the end to Tsarnaev’s boxing career and turned him towards religious extremism.

But, the only real common ground among the terrorist killers have been the statements they’ve issued themselves: Their bloody actions, they’ve all claimed, are retribution for the policies of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East and Central Asia, the lurid pictures of collateral damage from Drone strikes, and the continued shame of Guantanamo. 

Ironically, all those actions were supposedly undertaken to make the U.S. and its allies safe from terrorism.

Will the apparent shift in America’s policy announced by President Obama change that fatal dynamic? It depends on whether or not he now backs up his high-flying rhetoric with concrete action.

Mali: Mission Accomplished! Hollande’s Bush Moment:

Still No Crazy Glue in Sight

As Colin Powell famously warned George H.W. Bush on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, “if you break it, you own it.” 

France is not responsible for “breaking” Mali. The country was already a West African basket case long before the French intervention.

But France, which enraged many Americans by refusing to participate in the invasion of Iraq, now finds itself stuck with the results of their own intervention.  And there’s no crazy glue in sight.

That’s what I wrote a couple of months ago after President Francois Hollande dispatched French troops to Mali. 

The irony today is that not only is there no obvious solution to Mali’s plight, but Hollande himself is having enormous problems running his own deeply troubled country. 

Back in January Hollande’s aides hoped that a forceful intervention in Mali would give the lie to the charge that he was a feeble, indecisive leader.

But now, in mid April, with 4,600 French troops in Mali, the magazine L’Express is running an abject photo of Holland on the cover, over the humiliating headline: “M. FAIBLE.” (Mister WEAK). Similar devastatingly mocking jibes fill the media—from all sides of the political spectrum.

Indeed, with Hollande confronting a major domestic political crisis, after his Budget Minister-in charge of collecting taxes--admitted to having stashed money in secret bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore, the president’s popularity is still plummeting (now about 20%).

It’s being driven ever lower by France’s abysmal economic situation,  mounting crime and racial tensions. With three of Hollande’s own ministers now publicly challenging the government’s economic program, the ineluctable conclusion is that no one’s really in charge.

Yet this is the same man who is supposedly leading the battle to save Mali from ruin.

When France intervened in January, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius vowed the action would be over in “a matter of weeks.”

Now in mid April, 4,600 French troops are still in the country, supported by about 6,000 soldiers from several African states. Led by the French, they’ve retaken most of the major population centers from the jihadists who had threatened to overrun the country. They’ve also pummeled rebel redoubts in the North, reportedly killing hundreds of radicals and destroying tons of equipment.

Yet the situation is still tense. Islamists who had faded into the villages and rugged mountains are still capable of deadly hit-and-run attacks. And the ethnic Tuaregs in the North, who began the rebellion, are still demanding autonomy or independence.

Hollande  is also out on a limb. Though he claimed he was acting to protect Europe from radical Islam spreading in Africa, he has received precious little support from his European allies. Nor—aside from some important intelligence and logistics support—has he received much real backing from the United States.  After Iraq and Afghanistan, no one is rushing to get involved in yet another quagmire.

Meanwhile the Mali adventure is costing France—whose budget is already in disarray-- close to three million Euros a day—probably much more. By this summer, the cost will probably have risen to at least half a billion Euros…and counting.  

Hollande’s predicament now is not that different from the one facing President Obama in Afghanistan: how to drastically decrease France’s involvement in Mali without making it look like France has cut and run, leaving an unseemly chaos in his wake.

The solution: France will turn over the mess in their former colony, as soon as possible, to a new “democratically-elected” Malian government.  

Thus it was that Hollande dispatched Foreign Minister Fabius to Bamako to lay down his dictat to the major political actors:  presidential and legislative elections were to be held by July.

The rebel Tuaregs were supposed to lay down their arms, though they still occupy Kidal and a part of Northern Mali; a French reaction force would stay in place to ensure that “the terrorists” didn’t come back.

We imagine the plans also include a kind of George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” moment: A beaming Hollande attending the inauguration of Mali’s new leaders. He salutes the sacrifice of the heroic French and African troops, vows undying support for the future of France’s former colony--and continues to withdraw French troops.

By the end of 2013 only 1000 French troops will be left to work with a UN Peacekeeping Force from other mainly African countries.

That’s the deal. The problem, according to many observers, is that attempting to hold meaningful--never mind democratic-- elections by July is just a wishful figment of Hollande’s desperate imagination--a frail fig leaf for France.

Even if Mali were secure, the idea that it might be possible to organize a real campaign in a country twice the size of France, draw up lists of electors when at least 400,000 Malians from the north have fled south or to their African neighbors, is a chimera.

With no time for new political leaders or parties to organize and present themselves, the field is left to the same threadbare, corrupt politicians who presided over the country’s ruin and final collapse in 2012.

After that debacle, it turned out that what had once been trumpeted as a showcase for post-colonial government in Africa, was in fact a  “Potemkin” democracy—all façade, no substance.

Which will probably be the upshot of the elections scheduled for July (if they actually take place.)

The scenario after that: those 1,000 French troops, with 10,000 soldiers and police from the new U.N. force—many of them poorly equipped and trained—will somehow maintain order in Mali’s restive towns and cities and vast hinterlands, while the new government struggles to resolve the country’s huge problems, made even more desperate by the changing climate of the Sahel.   

Bottom line: fifty years after it became independent, Mali has still to rely on its former colonial ruler to keep the country intact.   

But after half a century, France, like the other once great powers, no longer has the appetite nor the resources to play a colonial role. Hollande, as we’ve noted, is having a hell of a time, just attempting to rule his own restive nation.

Nor for that matter does the United States have much in the way of state-building zeal these days. President Obama would much rather deal with terrorist threats through killer drones, than boots on the ground and massive aid programs.

Which means that imposing elections for July on Mali, though a flawed, cynical step, may be the only realistic way forward. It may at least get some kind of political process sputtering again. 

And France and the rest of the world will provide some aid, some investment, some military training—and Mali and its peoples will almost certainly endure decades more of political turbulence and strife.

Their desperate situation will be mirrored in the turmoil, which may also last for decades, of failing states across the region, from Tunis to Libya to Egypt to Syria.

After all, the reverberations of the French Revolution, which took place in 1789, are still being felt in France to this day. 

Drone Wars: Ragheads--4000 vs Americans- 3

Earlier this week, NBC News revealed a secret Department of Justice memo entitled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa’ida or An Associated Force.” 

NBC’s scoop has since fueled mounting outrage over the Obama administration’s drone policy. What is most troubling about the indignation, however, is how much it’s focused on the fact that, my God, President Obama is even using drone’s to knock off his own people.

Or as a shocked Rachel Maddow put it, “Even an American citizen can be killed.”

Senator Ron Wyden proclaimed, “Americans have a right to know when their government thinks it’s allowed to kill them.”

The American the Justice Department memo referred to was Nasser al-Awlak, a radical Islamic cleric and American and Yemeni citizen, suspected of being head of operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninusula. He was also implicated in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood Texas and the attempted 2011 Times Square bombing by Faisal Shahzad.

Two weeks after he was blown apart in Yemen in 2011, his 16 year-old son was obliterated in another drone strike, also directed under the CIA’s secret guidelines.

The son’s death was much more shocking than his father’s.

One other American has also been killed by Drone strikes.

But, much more shocking is the fact that over the past few years, U.S. drones have made mincemeat out of an estimated 3000 to 4000 others—non Americans--in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia.  At least 200 of them were children.

The figures are very rough because no one--certainly not the U.S. government--is releasing an accurate count.  The London based Center for Investigative reporting, which attempts to track the drone strikes, has been able to identify by name only a few hundred of the actual victims. Who knows what their political affiliations really were? 
Or even less, what considerations—legal and otherwise—went into justifying their demise?

“It’s a terrifying situation.” Jennifer Gibson, an American lawyer in London with Reprieve, an organization taking on the “drone war” issue. “There are villages in Pakistan,” she says “that have drones flying over them 24 hours a day. Sometimes they’ll stay for weeks. But my clients and people there have no way of knowing if they are being targeted. Or what kind of behavior is likely to get them killed. They don’t know if the person riding beside them in a car or walking with them in the marketplace may be a target.It’s terrorizing entire communities. Even after an attack, there is no acknowledging by the U.S. government, no response at all, absolutely no accountability. And the vast majority of casualties don’t even have names attached to them.”

Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, told a conference in Geneva that President Obama's attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, carried out by the CIA, would encourage other states to flout long-established human rights standards. He suggested that some strikes may even constitute “war crimes”.

But, few Americans seem to carry about U.N. rapporteurs. It’s only when Americans are potential targets for those drones, that Congress and the media get stirred up.

And they’re probably right. A recent poll taken by Farleigh Dickinson University’s Public Mind, found that by a two to one margin (48% to 24%) American voters say they think it’s illegal for the U.S. government to target its own citizens abroad with drone strikes.

But, when it comes to using drones to carry out attacks abroad “on people and other targets deemed a threat to the U.S.” voters were in favor of a margin of six-to-one [75% to 13%].

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Centre for Constitutional Rights (The CCR) have been demanding a court hearing in the United States to determine whether the former head of the CIA Leon Panetta was guilty of having depriving Nasser al-Awlak and his son of their constitutional right to life.

Maria LaHood, an attorney with the CCR frankly admitted to me that they are concentrating on the two American cases, because that’s the really the only way to get Americans to focus on the problem. Also because that’s really the best hope they have of getting an American court to actually agree to hear their case.

‘What we’re also hoping” she says, “is that if we do get anywhere with this case, then we can get a legal interpretation from the court that would apply to everyone--not just Americans. But getting a court to hear this case is going to be a battle in itself.”

Reprieve is also active in the courts—in Pakistan. Though the Pakistani ambassador in Washington has complained about the drone strikes, his government has done little to prevent them.  Reprieve now is backing a case in Peshawar to oblige the Pakistani government to take action against the drones--to protect the constitutional right to life of its own citizens.

What particularly concerns Reprieve attorney Jennifer Gibson is the very nature of the convoluted 16-page memo that describes the Justice Department’s rationale for okaying the killing of an American, even outside of a war zone.

“If the U.S. has such vague, ambiguous standards where Americans are concerned, if they they’ve set the bar so low for their own citizens, who knows what the standards are for killing non Americans?”

In other words, if Justice Department lawyers labored so mightily on producing a memo setting the guidelines for killing an American citizen, one can only presume that the guidelines must be much different for those who inhabit the rest of the world.

When do we see that memo?

Mali: No Crazy Glue in Sight

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There is a massive, historic upheaval gong on—one chaotic Islamic country after another--spanning more than 7000 miles of the globe—a huge tectonic shift—from Western Africa to the Western frontiers of China.

And, despite a military budget larger than most of the rest of the world combined, the Pentagon and Barack Obama, are basically consigned the roll of on-lookers, cautiously kibitzing from the side, occasionally trying to influence things. Often, not even leading from behind.

Mali, at the Western end of that volatile crescent, is a case in point.

As Colin Powell famously warned George H.W. Bush on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, “if you break it, you own it.” 

France is not responsible for “breaking” Mali. The country was already a West African basket case long before the French intervention.

But, as things now stand, France “owns” the shattered country. And there’s no crazy glue in sight.

In other words, France, which enraged many Americans by refusing to participate in the invasion of Iraq, now finds itself stuck with the results of their own intervention.

French President Francois Hollande’s dilemma is how to finesse that predicament—without making it look like France has cut and run, leaving an unseemly chaos in his wake.

Hollande made his conundrum clear during his visit this past Saturday to Mali when he announced that France “will stay as long as necessary, but its purpose is not to stay.”  

Not that different a straddle from the problem the U.S. faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In fact, France’s sputtering economy can ill-afford this military adventure. More than 10% of the population is unemployed, factories continue to shut down, automobile sales slumped 15% in January, public employees are out on strike, etc. etc.

But to whom does France hand-off the ominous situation it confronts in Mali?

What passes for leadership in that country is a “transitional regime” the product of a military coup against the previous regime, which was corrupt, ineffectual, totally unable to deal with the growing crisis.

Which was why it was overthrown. Somehow, elections are going to have to be organized, which also means negotiating some kind of settlement with the Tuaregs of Northern Mali, who have been demanding attention from the central government for decades. It was their rebellion that was hijacked by the jihadis-some of whom were linked with Al Qaeda. 

But what to do about those jihadis? In fact, the big question now, is where they hell are they? As far as is known, they took very few casualties. In most cases, without a shot being fired from the ground, they evaporated back into the desert or from wherever they came--often long before the French troops arrived.

But they’ve still got their arms, their jihadist ideals, and their income flowing in from traditional smuggling activities.

So, do they just disappear or launch hit-and-run attacks against troops sent to hunt them down? Or wait until most of the French pull out?

Up till now, the majority of French still back Hollande’s Mali expedition. But what happens if the French army—which lost just one soldier in the entire three week campaign--what happens if they start taking casualties, or more French civilians get taken hostage by jihadi groups?  Or French targets elsewhere are attacked?

What happens if the French-backed Malien army commits more outrages on the civilian population? What happens if the French feel obliged to overstay their visit, and—like the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan--become viewed as occupiers rather than liberators.

The French have been talking about turning over frontline duties to African troops. But the Malien army is woefully trained, and equipped, its officers are said to be up to their helmets in cigarette and drug smuggling, often in cahoots with the radical Islamic groups they were supposed to be keeping at bay.  

There are also thousands of other African troops from West Africa, who have been arriving in dribs and drabs in various states of readiness and training. They also lack weapons, logistics support, skill in desert fighting, and, above all, money to pay for their operations.

[Indeed some countries volunteer for such operations because it’s a great way to have someone else pick up the tab for their own over bloated armies.]

So, apart from training those troops, who’s going to pick up the tab? Again, France finds itself scanning the horizon for help.

Earlier this week, the President of the Ivory Coast announced at a donors’ conference in Ethiopia that the price tag for the “African-led International Support Mission to Mali” would be $950 million. That’s to cover not just military deployment and logistics, but humanitarian assistance, and at least the down payment on future development.

But despite the supposed crisis that threatens not just Africa, but Europe as well, the assembled delegates came up with only $450 million, less than half the amount requested.

Among the donors, Japan, which pledged $120 million, the United States, $96 million, Germany, 20 million.

But the most outrageous pledges came from the governments of India and China --$1 million dollars—each!

This is China, mind you, that, with hugeinvestments throughout West Africa, has an enormous amount at risk if political instability spreads.

The last thing the Chinese want, however, is for their projects--and thousands of their citizens--throughout the region to also become targets of Islamic radicals.

Let the French handle this one.

That same caution, fueled by the bitter lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, has kept France’s allies on the sidelines, supplying aircraft to transport French troops and refuel French fighter jets, as is the U.S., but staying clear of any front-line roles themselves.   

Washington has wanted to keep an arms length from the conflict in order not to offer the jihadis a rallying point to inflame recruits.

But the U.S. is providing pilotless drones to track the rebels. And the problem is that to be effective, those drones will also have to be armed with missiles to take out the rebels they track down.

What happens as the inevitable cases of collateral damage start rolling in?  

As a nod to the French, the British finally decided to send 350 soldiers, but only to serve as instructors for the African troops. There is no way they’re going to be involved in ground combat.

Indeed Prime Minister David Cameron, delivered one of the most pessimistic verdicts on the situation, when, during a recent visit to Algeria, he declared Britain’s determination to deal with “the terrorism threat” in Mali. “It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months, and it requires a response that…has an absolutely iron resolve…” 

Or, as one retired French colonel blogged, “war against non-state organizations is a war of Sisyphus. We’re in the Sahel for a long time.”

Drone Wars: the end of History?

Drone Wars: the end of History?

NYT Jan 25, 2013LONDON — A prominent British human rights lawyer [Ben Emmerson] said on Thursday that a United Nations panel he leads would investigate what he called the “exponential rise” in drone strikes used in counterterrorist operations, “with a view to determining whether there is a plausible allegation of unlawful killing….”

“This form of warfare is here to stay, and it is completely unacceptable to allow the world to drift blindly toward the precipice without any agreement between states as to the circumstances in which drone strike targeted killings are lawful, and on the safeguards necessary to protect civilians.”

Awesome Engineering Co.

Memo To all Sales Staff:

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Big News!

The Liquidator, our new unmanned aerial vehicle, is now in full production. But we’re after far more than the U.S. market. More than seventy countries already have drones—armed and unarmed. That’s just for starters. Every self-respecting head of state is going to want his own fleet.  

And the Liquidator will be the flavor of the decade.

It can takeoff, land and hover for a week without need of a human operator.

And it can't be fooled.  From six miles up, thanks to our new Awesome Laser Optical Scanner (ALOS), it can zoom in to photograph the face of anyone below, as well as capture the underlying bone structure, with amazing resolution.

This means there is no way the bad guys (or gals) can conceal their identity by growing beards, dyeing their hair, losing weight, or undergoing radical plastic surgery.

The next sales point is also sensational: The Liquidator can work totally on its own. Its scanner can instantly interface with a database of all known or suspected bad guys in any intelligence agency’s files, or from the new global terrorist data base that we offer as an additional service. At the same time, the ALOS can also assess the area around the target for risk of “collateral damage.” [cd]  

Note: for an extra 1$million per unit, we will equip the Liquidator with a CDR (collateral damage regulator) that permits the operator to dial in the degree of cd judged acceptable for any given assignment.

The operator then has an option. A.  Let the Liquidator run on “auto-kill” . That means that once is positive confirmation of the bad guy target, and the cd is acceptable, the on-board missile is automatically fired. Absolutely no time-wasting intervention required from the operator.

Option B. Of course, the operator can also make the kill decision himself, if there is, for instance, the need clearance from higher up the command chain.

Most of our clients follow the precedent established by President Barrack Obama, who established his own terrorist kill list. This enables him to wipe out the bad guys without encumbering legal procedures, yapping congressmen, or public trials that provide a soapbox and cheap publicity for the “terrorists” or whatever and their hysterical rants.

We expect this system to continue spreading worldwide. [In fact, we know of one European country where the wife of the President gets to have her own kill list; and another state where the Prime Minister gave kill privileges to his 16 year old mistress—though she only gets to have five people on the list at a time.]

As part of this presentation, we include a new interactive: How the history of the world would have been totally changed—maybe even ground to a halt--if kings, czars, sheikhs, imams, tribal chiefs, presidents, and dictators-for-life, had had something like The Liquidator at their disposal in years gone by.  

The Brits, for example, could have blown to smithereens early on Jomo Kenyatta, No way he would have survived to become glorified as the founding father of Kenya. Ditto Robert Mugabe branded as a “terrorist” in what used to be known as Rhodesia. Ditto Michael Collins of the IRA.

In the 1940’s, London also could have knocked off a couple of future Israeli Prime Ministers, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir , who organized the bloody-minded Irgun revolt against England, bombing a hotel and murdering British police.

Going back even earlier, George III could have nipped the Boston Tea Party in the bud; taken out Paul Revere before he’d even saddled up. Hell, America might still be British.

In the same way, the French would have dispatched Ben Bella, wiped out the FLN before most people even knew what FLN stood for, and Algeria would still be French. So, perhaps, would Vietnam, if they’d targeted Ho Chi Minh when they should have.

And the Germans, if they’d had the Liquidator the Warsaw Ghetto uprising would have been still born, Jean Moulin and the French Resistance would have been turned into road kill. Same thing for the Soviets:  No Hungarian revolution. No Prague Spring. 

Best of all, they’d have shredded Osama Bin Laden, long before he’d even thought about turning his bearded crazies against America.

Batista would have splattered Fidel and Che all over the Sierra Maestra in Cuba.

Same story for jokers like Geronimo, Zapata, and Pancho Villa.

And Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in 1861 in Virginia would also have been instantly squelched: No need to put him into the history books by publicly hanging the guy, then flaying and beheading the corpse. The Liquidator would have accomplished all that, and more--but discretely.

 I mean, guys, when you think about it, what we’re really offering our clients is a real shot at The End of History.

U.S. to Defend Israel?Key question never answered.

Several questions asked in the third presidential debate were never clearly answered. One of the most vital concerns Israel: What exactly is the U.S. commitment to that country?  It's a question that an American president may suddenly be confronted with, some chaotic night at three A.M.

The reporter moderating the debate attempted to get an answer.

BOB SCHIEFFER: “Red lines, Israel and Iran. Would either of you —Would either of you be willing to declare that an attack on Israel is an attack on the United States, which of course is the same promise that we give to our close allies like Japan?

And if you made such a declaration, would not that deter Iran? It’s certainly deterred the Soviet Union for a long, long time when we made that — when we made that promise to our allies.

[[Good question…a request to clarify what has been a very intimate but imprecise relationship--challenging an American president --or future president--to make a stark commitment to Israel on his own accord, without seeking the consent of the Senate or Congress. Which, who knows, one chaotic night at three in the morning, he might be called upon to do.]

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first of all, Israel is a true friend. It is our greatest ally in the region. And if Israel is attacked, America will stand with Israel.

I’ve made that clear throughout my presidency. And —

[Just a minute, he didn’t really answer…but the moderator was there:]

MR. SCHIEFFER: So you’re saying we’ve already made that declaration?

[Good question, but dodged again:]

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I will stand with Israel if they are attacked.

[Unasked question: What does  “stand by” mean, Mr. President? Cheer from the sidelines? Send emergency arms, dispatch rockets to shoot down incoming missiles, as was done in past crises by the U.S? 

But Obama went on.]

OBAMA: And this is the reason why, working with Israel, we have created the strongest military and intelligence cooperation between our two countries in history. In fact, this week we’ll be carrying out the largest military exercise with Israel in history, this very week.

[Unasked Question: Does that mean, Mr. President, that American armed forces would become directly involved if Israel were attacked?…if say, its perimeter defenses were overwhelmed?  If the Arabs or Iranians were marching on Tel Aviv?

If not, what is the point of carrying out the “largest military exercises in history” with Israel? Exercising for what?”]

[Next to a question about economic sanctions against Iran…]

OBAMA: …the reason we did this is because a nuclear Iran is a threat to our national security and it’s threat to Israel’s national security. We cannot afford to have a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world.

[Unasked question: Nuclear arms race? Hasn’t Israel had nuclear weapons for decades now, Mr. President? ]

[And now to Romney on Israel:]

MR. ROMNEY: Well, first of all, I — I want to underscore the — the same point the president made, which is that if I’m president of the United States, when I’m president of the United States, we will stand with Israel. And — and if Israel is attacked, we have their back, not just diplomatically, not just culturally, but militarily.  

[Unanswered Question: Uh, again, what does that mean, Governor? Would you commit boots on the ground? Cruise missiles? Destroyers? Under what circumstances?]

[Then, when the subject of Egypt’s shaky new government came up]

OBAMA: They [the Egyptians] have to abide by their treaty with Israel. That is a red line for us, because not only is Israel’s security at stake, but our security is at stake if that unravels.

[Mr. President, could you explain why America’s security is dependent on a treaty between Egypt and Israel?]

[If these question weren’t asked during the debate, did any one hear them raised afterwards-- by any of the army of pundits?]

Iran and Israel: Obama's blindspot Intact

In the brief interview he gave ABC before the Superbowl, President Obama declared “I’ve been very clear that we’re going to do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and creating an arms race, a nuclear arms race, in a volatile region.”

Sounds like a very laudable goal, right. Except for the fact that, as I recently blogged, the nuclear arms race in the Middle East is already under way. It began almost fifty years ago when Israel developed the bomb.

According to a 2007 study by the Federation of American Scientists, “Estimates for Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile range from 70 to 400 warheads. The actual number is probably closer to the lower estimate. Additional weapons could probably be built from inventories of fissile materials.”

In other words, as I wrote, “One of the most uncommented on ironies today is that Israel is threatening military action to prevent Iran from continuing the same clandestine route to nuclear weapons that Israel took; just as Israeli planes destroyed nuclear reactors in Syria and Iraq to prevent those countries from following Israel’s lead”

Indeed, Israel, probably has more nukes today than either India or Pakistan. Speculation is that they could be fired from long-range artillery, dropped as bombs, or delivered as warheads from Israeli submarines or via Israel’s Jehrico 1 and 2 Missiles.   There has also been conjecture about nuclear land mines, suitcase bombs, and missiles fired from Israelis submarines.

A parallel irony, as I pointed out, is the fact that, for the past fifty years, every American President has refused to publicly recognize the fact of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

On Superbowl Sunday President Obama kept the tradition intact.

Of course, so did ABC News and reporter Matt Lauer who let Obama’s statement go unchallenged. But, hey, that’s what the mainstream media has done for years.

Whatever your views on this crisis, how are we supposed to discuss it--never mind resolve it--with such a political blind spot.

Check it out the missing issue yourself as you follow the breathless coverage of the current crisis. 

What Obama Should have told AIPAC

The Presidents Speech-Or What Obama Should have said to AIPAC

My fellow Americans, I could say it is an honor to speak again before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. I could also dish out the usual rhetoric you expect from American political leaders of both parties,-—an emotional, iron-clad guarantee to maintain America’s undying support for Israel, the embattled outpost of democracy, and so on and on and on, to great applause..  

But —as befits a conversation among long time friends - I’d rather be frank.  

As we all know, the reason I’m here is because you are the most powerful lobby in Washington—the mightiest senators and congressmen live in terror of your disapproval. Your decision on who to support will be a key factor in the coming Presidential elections.

That power has brought you innumerable victories.  Though Israel is one of the smallest nations, altogether since World War II it has received more foreign aid from the U.S. than any other country. Though we condemn Iran’s nuclear program, we still officially ignore the fact that Israel has had the bomb for more than 40 years.

Our leaders have gone along with the fiction that Israel is somehow a key strategic asset for the U.S. in the Middle East, when, in fact, the opposite is true. Our unwavering support of Israel has won us the hostility of the entire Arab and much of the Moslem world.

O.K. But that’s the past. Today the U.S. and Israel face huge new challenges in the Middle East.  And I have decided that provoking your disapproval is a risk I must take…for the sake of America—as well as Israel..

We can no longer afford to confuse supporting the State of Israel, with supporting the policies of the leaders who control the Israeli government at a particular time. The interests of the two are not necessarily the same. Particularly when, in my view—and the view of many Israelis as well—those policies undermine the long-term security of the Israel.

As President of the United States, I was elected to serve the interests of all 300 million Americans——not a tiny minority, numbering just 2.2% of our population.  Of course, we value your great contributions to all facets of our society and our culture, but that does translate into continuing to give AIPAC the right to call the shots on a key element of our Middle Eastern Policy.

Indeed, within the American Jewish community itself, there are new lobbying groups, such as JPAC, who are highly critical of Israel’s current leaders, and make it clear that AIPAC may not represent the consensus of American Jews.

As I have said, the government of Israel can no longer put off serious negotiations  with the Palestinians.  Population growth and the current uprisings sweeping the region are certain to work against Israel’s long-run security.

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Netanyahu, has made it more than clear that his government has no real interest in taking the steps needed to convince the Palestinians that negotiations would be worth their while. This is not just me saying this. The Prime Minister’s political opponents and important Israeli commentators are saying it as well.

Therefore, as President of the United States—of all Americans —I am today announcing a change in policy towards the Middle East. I have decided that we will no longer stand in the way of the Palestinian drive for a United Nations resolution next September to recognize the existence of a Palestinian State. I realize that resolution will not actually create a state —but it may be the best way to start the process going.

I am also calling once again on the government of Israel to cease the construction of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. I made that same request a few years ago, but backed down when Prime Minister Netanyahu refused.  I was wrong to back down. It will not happen again.  

The Israeli government charges that Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is, and we have labeled it as such. I call upon Hamas to reconsider its aims if it truly wants to achieve a settlement with Israel.

On the other hand, many violent groups once labeled terrorist organizations—such as the IRA --changed their tactics with the lure of peace negotiations.  Indeed, at one time in their careers two of Israel’s most renowned leaders—Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir-- were condemned as terrorists themselves.

I realize this new policy may well subject me to a barrage of the most virulent political attacks--from right wing TV talk shows to lurid ads filling our media, to congressional resolutions. It will be charged that all along I—Barrack Hussein Obama-- have been secretly plotting with radical Islam to destroy Israel. And after Israel, the United States.  

They will say of course, that I am anti-Semitic—a charge that is leveled these days against any prominent individual who criticizes the current government of Israel. An irony, since—as I’ve said--some of the strongest attacks on Israeli’s current policies come from Israeli Jewish commentators and politicians themselves.

I understand the emotional storm that is roiling this audience right now—I can hear the boos and catcalls. I can feel your enormous upset. But I ask you members of AIPAC --before you and your allies unleash an attack against me in the media and in the Congress and local communities across the country--I ask you, by unleashing such a massive campaign—if in the end, isn’t there a danger that such a massive campaign may demonstrate to the American people –to all the American people—exactly the point I have been making in this speech? That is-- the extent to which your lobby has distorted the workings of our democratic system.

In short, in the end, your attempt to defeat my desire to pursue a policy that is in the interests of all Americans—as well as the State of Israel-- could lead to your own downfall.

Think about it. And thanks for letting me talk.

Follow me on Twitter @barrylando

Whose War on Terror?

At a time when the White House is spending hundreds of billions and has dispatched killer teams to liquidate Osama Bin Laden and lesser targets, imagine what the leaders of other countries might do if they were to declare their own War on Terror. Cuba, for instance. That question is provoked by a disturbing new documentary chronicling the past half century of Cuban-American relations and titled, “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand up.”

Written and Directed by radical, Emmy-award-winning filmmaker Saul Landau, the report shies away from revolutionary cant and vague rhetoric. Instead, Landau backs up his case with research and interviews that, taken together, represent a damning indictment of U.S. policy. Most of the facts he cites are not news to those who have closely followed relations between Cuba and the U.S. since February, 1959 when Castro came to power. But the great majority of Americans have not paid attention. And most of what they have been told has been filtered through a Cold War prism that continues to warp U.S. -Cuban relations to this day.  

Washington’s war against Castro began long before May 1961 when he declared himself a Marxist-Leninist. Indeed, almost from the time that Castro marched into Havana and made it clear his revolution was the real thing, American Presidents—Republican and Democrat--have attempted to combat and then overthrow his regime by every possible means, from an embargo that strangled the country’s economy, to allowing Cuban exiles operating from Florida to attack Cuba’s refineries, infrastructure, sugar cane fields, and assassinate government officials.  Of course, there were also notorious attempts by the CIA to kill Fidel himself. And then came the disastrous Bay of Pig’s Invasion in 1961.   

Incredibly, after Cuba charged—accurately—that the U.S. was behind the invasion, U.N. Ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, had the gall to “categorically” deny the allegation:  “The United States has committed no offense against Cuba and no offensive action has been launched from Florida or any part of the United States”

As part of the agreement ending the Missile Crisis in the Fall of 1962, President Kennedy pledged that the U.S. would not invade Cuba, but the White House and the CIA continued to support the radical exile groups based in the U.S. intent on using terror and violence to topple Fidel.

According to Landau’s report, for instance, in October 1976, the CIA had information that one of the Cuban exiles linked to them was planning to plant a bomb on a Cuban airliner—but the U.S. never informed the Cuban government. All seventy-three passengers were killed. Altogether, the Cubans estimate that more than three thousand of their people have been died in such terrorist acts.

All this, of course, would have been immediately denounced and  massively  countered by the United States --if such a campaign had been waged against the U.S. or its allies by the likes of Iran, North Korea, Hamas--or Cuba.

On several occasions, Castro attempted to negotiate with the U.S. government. And there were Americans who argued for a change in policy. As John Burton, the former President of the California Senate put it,  “We do business with all sorts of bad quote undemocratic countries without free elections, but we pick on Cuba because we can, because they're small because they're political benefit to doing it in Florida.”

Even after the end of the Cold War, millions of voters in Florida still view the struggle to bring down Castro as a holy crusade, which is the reason no American President—including Obama--has had the guts to change course. In effect, Florida is the only state with its own foreign policy. One of the best comparisons is the lock that the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. has had on  America’s Mideast policy.

In the face of unrelenting attacks from U.S. territory, Castro’s government did what any government would have done: it dispatched intelligence agents to the U.S. to infiltrate radical exile Cuban groups and thwart their plans.

One of the groups they targeted was “Brothers to the Rescue”, flying small planes out of Florida to buzz Cuban cities, dropping anti-Castro leaflets and propaganda.  According to Landau’s report, the group was also experimenting with weapons that could be fired from the air.

In 1996, Fidel Castro told visiting Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico:  “You’ve got to tell your government to get control of these people.” As Fidel declared, “What would the U.S. do to if the Cubans flew over Washington?  How long would that plane last?” Richardson relayed the message to Morton Halperin point man for Cuba on Clinton’s National Security Council staff. Halperin said he would raise the issue with the FAA. The flights continued.   

Again, a top Cuban official asked Saul Landau to alert Halperin that there would be drastic consequences if the U.S. didn’t stop the flights. According to Landau, Halperin indicated he would have the FAA cancel the licenses of the exile Cuban pilots. But the FAA didn’t. And on February 24,1996 Cuban Migs shot down two of three small Cessnas over international waters, killing their passengers. Clinton, who reportedly had been hoping to loosen American policy towards Cuba, instead was forced by political pressure to further tighten the embargo.

Radical Cuban exile groups also targeted Cuba’s vital tourist industry, warning potential visitors they would turn the island into a free-fire zone. They bombed several Havana hotels, injuring and killing the innocent.

According to Landau, in 1998 Fidel Castro gave a letter to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez to transmit to President Clinton: to stop the violent exile groups, Cuba would be willing to cooperate with the FBI. An FBI team was dispatched to Havana and the Cubans supplied them with substantial information about exile terrorist activities.

Instead of dismantling those exile groups, the FBI used the information to discover the identities of the undercover agents in Florida working for the Cuban government. On September 12, 1998, five Cuban intelligence officers were arrested in Miami and charged with, among other things, conspiracy to commit espionage and murder. Among the allegations--they had giving the Cuban government the information needed to shoot down the “Brothers” illegal flights.

The Cubans denied that charge, but spent more than a year in solitary confinement and—most important—were denied a motion to move the trial from Dade County, an area seething with anti-Castro sentiment. They were found guilty and received maximum sentences; in the case of one of them, two life sentences without possibility of parole. Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down their appeal to have the trial remanded for change of venue.

A couple of months later, on the other side of the world, a CIA contract operative, Raymond Davis, was arrested by Pakistani authorities after killing two men in Lahore, presumably part of America’s War on Terror. After a barrage of calls to Pakistani officials from the highest levels in the U.S. government and the payment of “blood money” to the murdered men’s relatives, Davis was quietly released to American authorities and spirited out of Pakistan.

 Meanwhile, in Florida the most prominent of the radical Cuban exiles—those proudly linked to the campaign of terrorism against Castro’s Cuba--remain free and the toast of many inside and outside the exile community.