Category Archives: Terrorism

Diplomatic Immunity From The Dangers Of Occupation

Barack Obama, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Government, Individual Rights, Islam, Just War, Terrorism, War

Our government’s only legitimate function is to protect American lives, one by precious one. Yet under “W,” ordinary Americans were regularly beheaded in the theaters of war Genghis Bush launched. None of their representatives stateside bargained for their lives or staged showy Congressional hearings to probe their forsaken security.

“President Bush sat bone idle, never lifting a bloodstained finger to haggle for his countrymen.”

The helpless faces in televised pleas of Americans such as Private First Class Keith Maupin, Paul Johnson, Nick Berg, and American engineers Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong; the depraved indifference of my countrymen to their plight—these haunted me throughout 2003-2004, documented in columns such as “AFTER THEIR HEADS ROLL, AMERICA’S DEAD REMAIN FACELESS.”

Now, Republicans are attempting to saddle a war president by any other name—Barack Obama—with the blame for the “resurgence” of terrorism in America’s occupied territories, when the same anger was evinced by the occupied under Bush, and it will persist under future Republican leaders.

One voice of sanity on foreign policy is “departing Congressman” Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. Kucinich, who will be sorely missed, made a cameo today during the “House Hearing on Attack on U.S. Consulate in Libya,” where he asked about al-Qaida’s presence in Libya. Lt. Col. Andrew Wood said: ‘Their presence grows everyday. They are certainly more established than we are.'”

More from Kucinich via Reason:

Departing Congressman Dennis Kucinich said at today’s hearing on security failures in Benghazi that rather than engaging in partisanship Congress ought to look at its role in failing to curb American interventionism as what led to the terrorist attack in Benghazi on 9/11, saying extremists exist and are more powerful in Libya because the U.S. “spurred a civil war” there, “absent constitutional authority, might I add.”
Kucinich blamed “decades of intervention” on the rise of extremists in the region and asked why no lessons from Iraq were drawn on Libya.
“Interventions do not make us safer,” Kucinich said, “they are themselves a threat to America,” before asking how much more Al-Qaeda there is in Libya now than before the U.S. intervention (the only answer he got was that they have a bigger presence in Libya than the U.S. does.” He also asked how many surface-to-air missiles were still missing since the U.S. intervention. Between 10 and 20,000, according to one of the witnesses.

Talking Turkey

Foreign Policy, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Terrorism, The West

Ever wonder what’s up between Turkey and Syria? Mainstream media is unlikely to talk turkey about the developing conflict between the two countries on their shared border.

Robert Fisk of The Independent fills in the blanks:

…Bashar al-Assad is a despot, his regime is awful … BUT. When it comes to international law, to moral compromise, to sheer hypocrisy, the Western powers take the biscuit. La Clinton raves on about Syrian depravity when Syrian shells slaughter a Turkish woman and her four children – which they did – but gives succour to the gunmen who torture and kill and suicide-bomb the regime’s supporters inside Syria.
…And another story that isn’t being told. Syrian shells exploding in Turkey are largely landing in the province of Hatay (Akçakale is further east), but what is not being reported is that until 1939, Hatay was part of Syria – and that Syria still claims this coastal province as Syrian territory. The real story – since it involves Europe and Hitler – should be told. For hundreds of years, this territory was Syrian. Alexandretta (now Iskenderun) was the finest port in Syria. But as the power of Nazi Germany grew in the 1930s, the French, who then held the League of Nations mandate for Syria, decided to hand the whole place over to the Turks – in the hope that Turkey would join the Allied side against Hitler.
A fraudulent referendum was held and the mass of Arabs in the province – tens of thousands of them Alawites, who form the backbone of Assad’s regime today – fled south, along with an almost equal number of Armenians who had survived the 1915 Turkish genocide. Today, the children and grandchildren of those Armenians tacitly support the Assad regime.

MORE.

UPDATED: Anything Obama Can Do, I Can Do Deadlier: That Sums Romney’s Foreign Policy

Barack Obama, Constitution, Elections, Foreign Policy, Just War, libertarianism, Old Right, Republicans, Terrorism, War

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow stares into the Romney foreign-policy abyss, and demolishes Obama’s challenger for going AWOL, and allowing Americans to continue to drift unmoored. In fact, from Maddow’s impassioned plea, I hazard that if Mitt Romney fleshed out the details of an Old-Right, anti-interventionist stand, exposing the immorality of Obama’s adventurism and violations abroad, he’d get her respect, and, if not her own vote, that of many of her pals on the left.

Yes, on rare occasions, Rachel Maddow does surprise with a streak of independence. If I understood Maddow’s latest televised monologue–and I do believe I am not giving her undue credit—she is challenging Mitt Romeny to say something meaningful, anything, about US foreign policy. And, in particular, about Obama’s worldwide drone assassination program, which she, like any decent human being, abhors.

That’s all you’ve got. how about this. what would you do differently if the answer is we’d be stronger, that’s not an answer. we deserve a politics that is capable of giving us choices or setting up a debate about competing reasonable ideas about handling the controversial things the government does in our names.
I know what the obama administration’s position is on Afghanistan. because he’s the president. i have no idea what mitt romney would do differently in Afghanistan, if anything. i know what the obama’s administration is on drones. i frankly find that position hair raising. i know what the obama administration’s position is on Pakistan. i know mitt romney thinks pakistan is very important. is it inconceivable somebody would ask him why, how, what his plan would be when it comes to that country? politics should move us some distance toward debate and decision making on the hardest problems we face as a country. that is not what we’re getting from our politics right now. if we’re not getting it now, when…”

Obama, says Maddow, is “using flying killer robots to do kill people all over the world.” She invites Romney to step into the void,

and his “answer is that he also thinks killing bin laden was a good idea. [and that] he wouldn’t crash [a drone] in iran. any questions? it is days like this when you realize that however important this presidential campaign is and this decision is, that we as a country have to make between these two candidates, our politics are essentially failing right now. they’re essentially impotent now for debating questions like this one. choosing between candidates is supposed to be the way we choose between policies in important thing that affect our country including national security. but our politics have been allowed to shrink if one side doesn’t want to talk about it, we’re not going to debate it as a country. let people in Washington figure it out. a new report out today says our secret drone policy, which we’ve been implementing for the better part of a decade, may be radicalizing the residents with a radical country. we’re not going to debate that at all. that’s not a policy matter that’s bort some national discussion. no competing ideas about maybe a choice in course. this is what the democratic president is doing. the republican party has no competing ideas on this at all? nothing to say? with this policy, due process that we afford people, that we kill people, the due process ultimately consists of the president of the united states making the call.
…but we are in the process of picking who’s going to be the next president and we’re not asking where these two men stand on that issue or if they think they should have that power. if that power should exist. if we’re not going to ask these questions now. look at this week. you have president obama at the UN talking about the policy of Pakistan and Hillary Clinton meeting the president of Pakistan on the same day. you have the developing story of the drone attack yesterday that killed an al qaeda leader. and you have a presidential campaign. but the conversation when it comes to this stuff is, “he seems like jimmy carter.” i read that he was a one-term president once. really? that’s all you’ve got. how about this. what would you do differently? if the answer is we’d be stronger, that’s not an answer. we deserve a politics that is capable of giving us choices or setting up a debate about competing reasonable ideas about handling the controversial things the government does in our names. i know what the obama administration’s position is on afghanistan. because he’s the president. i have no idea what mitt romney’s [is]…

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UPDATE (9/26): In reply to the Facebook thread: MRP, as per usual, your position is in contradiction to mine. As I’ve replied to you many times, and in almost every post or column of mine, yours is standard anarchism, and it goes as follow: “Don’t say anything, for it is nothing really. Do not comment on policy, for it compromises precious libertarian purity. Do not apply your mind to the issues of the day to enlighten your readers and bring them closer to liberty, for no enlightenment other than the immediate and absolute application and acceptance of the non-aggression axiom can be entertained.” Pretty much. I’m sorry, Myron, but, like it or not, what Maddow said is important. Objectively speaking. And my anti-war readers are better informed for understanding how truly remiss Romney is for not breaking with the Bush-McCain axis of evil. It takes no intellectual effort whatsoever to adopt a default position of intellectual ennui and superiority.
Finally, I am unconvinced Romney is as bad a man as is Obama, on a personal level. Romney is just a conformist, and pig ignorant in terms of political philosophy.

Eleven Years Of Terrorizing Ourselves By Myron Pauli

Homeland Security, Islam, Liberty, Terrorism, The State

ELEVEN YEARS OF TERRORIZING OURSELVES – BY MYRON PAULI*

In the early 20th Century, the “Great Powers” played a reckless game of imperialism, competing to control the globe – Germans in Windhoek, French in Zhanjiang, Brits in Lusaka, Turks in Mosul, Italians in Asmara, and Austrians in Sarajevo and Russians in Lushunkuo.

As part of this recklessness, the Russian “intelligence services” helped the Serbian Black Hand who assassinated Serbian King Alexander and Queen Draga (born September 11) in 1903. Later on, the Black Hand assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand that set up the orgy of bloodletting known as World War I. During that war, the German “intelligence services” sent Lenin to Russia to start another orgy of bloodletting. The term “blowback” often describes the whirlwind unleashed by these “intelligence services.”

Following Britain’s World War I “victory,” they decided to control the Arab world with hand-picked corrupt monarchs with names like Farouk and Feisal. After World War Two, the Soviet Empire countered with “secular nationalists” like Gamal Nasser, Assad, and Hussein.

In 1979, America decided to counter the Soviets by backing militant Moslems in Afghanistan and throughout the Moslem world. In this, America was assisted by the Saudis, Pakistanis, and Israelis. The Soviets got suckered into invading Afghanistan which only increased American support of Mujahedin hotheads.

When the Soviets left, the Americans moved in– and became the new target of the hotheads. The ultimate blowback came on 9/11/01. Added to this was the anthrax attacks from some disgruntled Army employee and the “DC Sniper” and you have all the domestic “terrorism” visited on America. I am not counting semi-manufactured “foiled attempts,” where FBI provocateurs find (typically) low-IQ minority misfits to “agree” to do nonsense like shooting fighter planes with Stinger missiles as a real attack on the USA – nor pathetic plots like shoe-bombers, “liquid-mixing”-bombers and underpants-bombers whose nuttiness was only exceeded by the even-nuttier response.

Total damage is a little over 3000 people and a couple of ugly buildings – most assuredly a tragedy. A greater number of lives could be saved by following Mayor Bloomberg’s dietary advice. The money we have wasted since could have built hundreds of buildings. Far greater than the damage caused by “terrorists” in the US has been the response.

The greatest expense have been the idiotic wars (beyond that of just chasing Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan performed by Special Ops working with the “Northern Alliance” in 2001) in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan which have left refugees (tomorrow’s terrorists) and instability.

Next comes generally bloated military spending – the favorite of the “Republikeynsians” (bragged about in TV ads throughout Virginia in 2012). But as bad as a wasted aircraft carrier or a gold-plated golf course in Germany might be, even worse is the damage we are doing to our souls.

Far worse is the paranoid surveillance state that we are imposing – first on the rest of the world but also on ourselves. Due process of law, a concept that goes back to the Magna Carta, is utterly discarded. Incarceration without trial, death by drone, Patriot Acts, NDAA, a government that considers the lives of its people to be completely public; but its own machinations to be completely secret; self-serving leaks of lies to increase war fever, groping grandmas at bus stations …. – the list goes on and on ad infinitum.

A new Department, “Homeland Security” – gives billions to arm local police to the hilt. I remember when people debated whether American police should carry guns or be disarmed like the British Bobbies. Now, the police, BATF, DEA and SWAT teams are often armed for a D-Day invasion on your house.

Tasers are routinely used at traffic stops. Laws multiply and their enforcement becomes increasingly arbitrary. Urban neighborhoods and our southern border are devastated by the idiotic “war on drugs” that continues regardless of the evidence of its insanity.

In the hands of an Obama, Bush, or Romney, these powers are frightening enough; should the US suffer bankruptcy, I shudder to think of what USA Fuhrer might arise to abuse such power. The subsequent abuses might make 9/11/01 as forgotten as Queen Draga’s birthday!

As Ben Franklin forewarned, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.