Obama foreign policy has rightly increased America hatred around the world and of course danger for all Americans-Branfman, AlterNet, July 2011

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7/11/2011, “Obama’s Secret Wars: How Our Shady Counter-Terrorism Policies Are More Dangerous Than Terrorism,” AlterNet, Fred Branfman

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“Obama should be held accountable for vastly expanding the military establishment’s worldwide license to kill.”
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“Although President’s Obama’s partial Afghan troop withdrawal announcement has received more attention, his June 29  “National Strategy for Counterterrorism”  is of far greater long-term significance. This remarkable document states that the U.S. government intends to ”disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents,” in the following ”areas of focus”:  

“The Homeland, South Asia, Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, Europe, Iraq, Maghreb and Sahel, Southeast Asia (and) Central Asia.” 

This assassination strategy is already operational in six Muslim countries with a combined population of 280 million:

• Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, which has  become a laboratory experiment for urban drone assassinations.

The London Sunday Times  reported a year ago that ”President Obama has secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US special forces … with American troops now operating in 75 countries.“ There are presently  60,000 Special Operations forces worldwide, with  7,000 U.S. assassins unleashed upon Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq.…

President Obama, a former constitutional law lecturer, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and rhetorical advocate of the Rule of Law cannot possibly reconcile his previously stated beliefs with his presently creation of an “industrial-size killing machine” that sees U.S. leaders unilaterally hunt, kidnap and murder any person anywhere on earth — including “the Homeland” — whenever they feel like it,

• without outside oversight or their victims enjoying any legal or human rights whatsoever.

Whatever his personal beliefs at this point, the president likely hopes that this “counterrorism strategy” will help protect him from inevitable Republican attempts to blame him during the 2012 presidential campaign for the likely losses the U.S. will sustain in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the next 16 months. And normally principled liberal supporters like the Center for American Progress,

• which called the strategy “more efficient counterterrorism,”

may well have made the same calculation. But this ”counterterrorism” program not only formalizes extrajudicial state killing formerly associated in the public mind only with the Gestapo and KGB. It also drastically weakens, not strengthens, U.S. national security. …It is true that America badly needs an alternative to occupying foreign lands. But a worldwide assassination program that motivates countless potential suicide bombers, weakens friendly governments, strengthens U.S. foes and increases the danger of nuclear materials falling into the hands of anti-Americanterrorists, is hardly more “cost-effective counterterrorism.” On the contrary. It exponentially increases America’s enemies

• while doing them comparatively little damage….

Newly appointed CIA Chief Petraeus has now been tasked with expanding his failed counterterror policies worldwide. He will seek to integrate military and CIA assassination capabilities; vastly increase and make more deadly a drone airforce, both that of the CIA and a U.S. Airforce which alone plans to  quadruple its drone force and  now “trains more pilots to operate drones than to fly bombers or fighter jets”; and he will increase the numbers and geographic scope of  60,000 Special Operations assassins and their backup support….

• “For Every Dead Pashtun Warrior, There Will Be 10 Pledged to Revenge.”

Obama counterterrorism advisor John Brennan sought to package Obama’s strategy as consisting of only surgical strikes on known al-Qaeda leaders, making the delusional and fanatic claim that in the last year “there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.” In fact, Reuters reported 13 months ago that “the CIA received approval to target … a wider range of targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas … in many, if not most cases, the CIA had little information about the foot soldiers killed in the strikes.” The evidence clearly indicates that the U.S. has since conducted hundreds of strikes in Pakistan

• without knowing how many civilians were among the 1900 people it has murdered
  

-- only 56 of whom were named as “al Qaeda and Taliban Leaders” by the strongly pro-drone Long War Journal.

If manned helicopter strikes in the middle of Baghdad, with pilots hovering over and discussing their targets, can murder a Reuters journalist for carrying a camera and a doctor trying to rescue him — as revealed in the Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” video – one can only imagine the drone-caused civilian carnage in remote areas of both Pakistan and Afghanistan that are

• inaccessible to the outside world.

This strategy is thus not only immoral and illegal, but poses a clear and present danger to U.S. national security. In return for killing a handful of “al-Qaeda leaders” it dramatically increases the ranks of potential anti-U.S. suicide bombers, weakens friendly governments, strengthens U.S. foes, and increases the risk of nuclear materials falling into unfriendly hands. 

• Its basic premise —

• that there is a fixed quantity of “al-Qaeda leaders,

adherents and affiliates” whose death reduces the threat to the U.S. – is simply wrong. As Cowper-Coles has explained, “for every dead Pashtun warrior, there will be 10 pledged to revenge.“…

Does it really make sense to kill a handful of top leaders, who can be easily replaced by often more competent deputies, at the cost of motivating entire populations to support killing Americans?

The latest example is Yemen where, the Washington Post has reported,“attacks on electricity plants and oil pipelines have left Yemen’s economy on the edge of collapse, with the most damaging strike carried out in retaliation for a U.S. counterterrorism raid.” After the U.S. assassinated a tribal chief’s innocent son, he retaliated by cutting Yemen’s main oil pipeline. By aiding Yemen’s economic collapse,

• U.S. counterterrorism is increasing support for terrorism.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Pakistani militants focused almost entirely on their immediate surroundings. But now, as a result of U.S. war-making in Pakistan, former CIA counterterrorism chief Grenier has explained that “it’s not just a matter of numbers of militants who are operating in that area, it also effects the motivations of those militants…They now see themselves as part of a global Jihad. They are not just focused on helping oppressed Muslims in Kashmir or trying to fight the NATO and the Americans in Afghanistan, they see themselves as part of a global struggle, and therefore are a much broader threat than they were previously.

So in a sense, yes, we have helped to bring about the situation that we most fear.”"…


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