Bush's 'War' On Terror Comes to a Sudden End (Dana Priest)

[freemason9]

You have to understand that OBL is, ultimately, a religious freak/fanatic that we can finally brutalize without hesitation.

[chlamor]

Obama is completely on board with the 'war on terror' political propaganda mechanism. He's been clear about this. His position is not so different than the Bush admin except in the way it is presented more gracefully.

Obama will manage the Empire with more smokescreens and lie much more artfully than the flunkie cowboy but in no way does he represent any meaningful departure from the decades long narrative of the National Security State. Quite the contrary, he embraces and embodies this post-modern American Exceptionalism.

Pak & Afghanistan central front in terror war: Obama
24 Jan 2009, 0234 hrs IST, ET Bureau


NEW DELHI: US president Barack Obama called Pakistan along with Afghanistan the epicentre of terrorism threatening world security and said that his administration would tackle both countries as a single problem.

His comments were immediately appreciated in India, which has maintained that terror coming out of Pakistan is a threat to not just India but the international community. The linking of Afghanistan and Pakistan as one problem is also being seen here as a positive development for the region.

The new president, who has not been shy of overturning decisions and changing policies of his predecessor, is clearly looking at reshaping policy saying that Pakistan and Afghanistan countries were the “central front” in the war on terror. He further said that the “deteriorating” situation in the region was “truly an international challenge of the highest order.”

“This is the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism,” Mr Obama was quoted as saying. He further argued that the problem of terrorism in the two countries could not be solved in isolation and that there has to be a regional approach to it. “There, as in the Middle East, we must understand that we cannot deal with our problems in isolation,” he said.

Mr Obama also maintained that the problem of terror in the region would not be resolved immediately as insurgency has deep roots. “The American people and the international community must understand that the situation is perilous and progress will take time. Violence is up dramatically in Afghanistan. A deadly insurgency has taken deep root. The opium trade is far and away the largest in the world,” Mr Obama said .

His remarks further indicated that the new administration is working fast to reshape policy for the region. “We are pursuing a careful review of our policy,” he said.

Mr Obama was speaking after naming former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke as special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mr Holbrooke, who is known as the main architect of the agreement that ended the war in Bosnia, had written in Foreign Affairs before the US elections that there was a need for new policies with regard to the tribal areas in Pakistan. He had written that Pakistan had the ability to destablise Afghanistan at will and that countries like India should be given a stake in the development of Afghanistan.

“This is a very difficult assignment as we all know,” Mr Holbrooke said after his appointment. Reports said that he would soon be undertaking a visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

At the same time, the new US president also chalked out his plan to improve the economic condition of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan. “There is no answer in Afghanistan that does not confront the al Qaeda and Taliban bases along the border, and there will be no lasting peace unless we expand spheres of opportunity for the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Anyway the new administration has already announced that the US would be tripling non-military aid to Pakistan but conditional to the action against insurgents in the tribal belts of Pakistan.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/New ... 024258.cms

"I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges," Obama said, "but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

- Barack Obama, speech, delivered at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack. Yes, just like former maverick John McCain, who has refashioned himself as a mindless rubber stamp for the most inane policies of the miserably failed Bush administration. Both candidates are embracing, rather than challenging, the fundamental irrationality of Bush's "war on terror," which substitutes hysteria for rational analysis in appraising the dangers the country faces.

- Robert Scheer

Obama in Berlin: Terrorism is a Global, Not National, Challenge
Friday July 25, 2008
updated August 1, 2008

Barack Obama's speech to the people of Berlin on July 24 placed terrorism alongside other dangers that have been enabled by the global "closeness" of the post-Cold War world. In his speech, terrorism, environmental degradation, global traffic in drugs and nuclear materials, and human security were all framed the same way, as challenges that all nations have to face cooperatively.

A week later, Eric Egland reminds in a New York Times op ed that the US and Europe already cooperate: "We already have a counterterrorism partnership with the European Union. And it works. Indeed, despite news media caricatures of aggressive Americans feuding with pacifist Europeans, both groups are quite serious about protecting citizens by working together."

Nevertheless, it is new to approach counterterrorism as a supra-state global issue.

Gore in 2000 also understood that security threats must be dealt with globally in the post-Cold War world. His view, and Obama's in 2008, differ from the conventional view that security is intrinsically a state issue. In the 20th century, the only way that two states might take responsibility for each other's welfare was through alliances and pacts. In our time, media and transport and finances link us across borders, forcing us to take responsibility for each other, whether we pledge allegiance or not.

I liked the speech, and the way it ranked terrorism as one of a number of threats that face us. That description, instead of over-the-top characterizations of Al Qaeda as an existential threat, reflects the way the world really works. Although Obama is widely perceived as an idealist, in this particular area, he displays a realistic grasp of the security environment.

The current Administration, oddly enough, appears less realistic, despite the strong talk and military approach to counterterrorism. John McCain sounds nostalgic to me, in his wish that border control could solve terrorism, as if we could just shut our doors, pretend that globalization had never happened, and be done with the world outside when it proves to be threatening.

Of course, a potential attack on American soil threatens American citizens. But we'll more effectively reduce the potential of a serious attack with a globalist, rather than nationalist, approach. As Obama put it in Berlin, "The poverty in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow." We may think that poverty in Somalia is not our problem. If so, we should probably think again.

This framing could renew the moribund coalition by always pointing out we all have a stake in the security of imperiled states, such as Afghanistan. From Berlin, Obama:

This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.

http://terrorism.about.com/b/2008/07/25 ... llenge.htm

[compared2what?]

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Be nice to Pan.

No Guantanamo and continuing the massacre in Afghanistan and Pakistan is progress over keeping Guantanamo and continuing the massacre in Afghanistan and Paksitan as planned. It's a fucked up calculus - on the other hand, it's not like our opinions of it, whether we're happier in the one state than in the other, affects anything at all.

The next step is for Pakistan to speak up and demand an end to these strikes, bring their complaint to the rest of the world. My feeling is that they can get traction and this will be slightly likelier to work with Obama than was the case on Bush. The rest of the world is ready to see an end to the Pakistan-Afghanistan actions, I believe.

It's fucked. Basically, you need to see those 1.8 million people and many more return to the streets of Washington, this time to stay and shut down traffic until the wars are done. That task is the same now as it was before, except before it was less likely to cause a policy change. Yeah, I really believe that. It's up to us, collectively.

.

Yes, it absolutely is. Also, I know it's not worth very much, because I'm not very good at it, but I try to be nice to everyone who isn't trying to seriously hurt people who are weaker than they, as best as I can distinguish who is or isn't doing that. And I so totally if pitifully apologize to any putative people hurt by me owing to my wrong judgment of them.

And...to just step right to it: What are we collectively ever going to be capable of doing if we don't read that article and recognize that Dana Priest is trying to tell us that Obama's actions are intended to forestall and soothe our collective outrage in order to avoid having anyone held more than nominally accountable for it -- ie, plus ca change.

Because she's doing everything she can get away with doing to send that signal. There's only one sentence in the entire article in which she herself initially appears to be affirmatively doing what she's trying to non-explicitly say that Obama's doing -- ie, sweep it under the rug. ("At the time, there was consensus in Congress and among the public that the United States would be attacked again and that government should do what was necessary to thwart the threat.") Otherwise, look at what she's pointing at, in how much detail, and how often. Note that she recurs to the motif of shifting public sentiment as the force that brought about the change several times, while never very emphatically attributing agency to Obama. She almost certainly didn't write the hed, although she may have enough clout to veto one if she hates and despises it enough to go to the mat for it. And even as it stands, it can be read as less than a standing ovation for the 44th President of the United States.

MacCruiskeen: I don't know if it's too much to hope for, myself. But I'd bet my bottom dollar that Dana Priest thinks it is.

And lo and behold, look what happened -- on a weekend, slow news traffic -- within not very many hours that might make you say to yourself: Plus ca change.

It's always been collectively up to us. We collectively did what we're accustomed to both saying and thinking the Bush administration did, for pity's sake. Hope really is audacious, because I have some, and I've got some nerve to, given what I know of us collectively firsthand, from myself being a part of it. Shame on me.

[compared2what?]

Not that nothing ever comes to a sudden end.

Dan Rather's career, for example.

[Penguin]

Noiw its official - Obama hunts for Osama!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ja ... air-strike

President orders air strikes on villages in tribal area



Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for his first military action yesterday, missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan which killed at least 18 people.

Four days after assuming the presidency, he was consulted by US commanders before they launched the two attacks. Although Obama has abandoned many of the "war on terror" policies of George Bush while he was president, he is not retreating from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.

The US believes they are hiding in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, and made 30 strikes last year in which more than 200 people were killed. In the election, Obama hinted at increased operations in Pakistan, saying he thought Bush had made a mistake in switching to Iraq before completing the job against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The US marine corp commander said yesterday that his 22,000 troops should be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gen James Conway said "the time is right" to leave Iraq now the war had become largely nation-building rather than the pitched fighting in which the corps excelled; he wanted the marines in Afghanistan, especially in the south where insurgents, and the Taliban and al-Qaida, benefit from both a nearby safe haven in Pakistan and a booming trade in narcotics.

Obama has warned that he is prepared to bomb inside Pakistan if he gets relevant intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. He had also said he would act against militants along the border if the Pakistan government failed to.

The US missiles were fired by unmanned Predator drones, which hang in the sky gathering intelligence through surveillance and, when commanded and directed by remote control, to launch attacks.

The strikes will help Obama portray himself as a leader who, though ready to shift the balance of American power towards diplomacy, is not afraid of military action.

The first attack yesterday was on the village of Zharki, in Waziristan; three missiles destroyed two houses and killed 10 people. One villager told Reuters of phonethat of nine bodies pulled from the rubble of one house, six were its owner and his relatives; Reuters added that intelligence officials said some foreign militants were also killed. A second attack hours later also in Warizistan killed eight people.

The Pakistan government publicly expressed hope that the arrival of Obama would see a halt to such strikes, which stir up hostility from Pakistanis towards the government; in private, the government may be more relaxed about such attacks.

There is a lot of nervousness in the new administration about the fragility of Pakistan, particularly as it has nuclear weapons, but it also sees Afghanistan and Pakistan as being linked. In the face of a Taliban resurgence, there is despair in Washington over the leadership of the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, and there will not be much disappointment if he is replaced in elections later this year.

But Washington insists on seeing as one of its biggest problems the ability of the Taliban and al-Qaida to maintain havens in Pakistan. Obama on Thursday announced he was making veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke a special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, spoke by phone to the Pakistan president, Asif Ali Zardari.

[Penguin]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17841.html

Why the Gitmo policies may not change

There may be less than meets the eye to the executive orders President Obama issued yesterday to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and prohibit the torture of prisoners in American custody. Those pronouncements may sound dramatic and unequivocal, but experts predict that American policy towards detainees could remain for months or even years pretty close to what it was as President Bush left office.

“I think the administration’s commitment to close Guantanamo is heartening; the fact they want to give themselves a year to do it, not so much,”, said Ramzi Kassem, a Yale Law School lecturer who represents prisoners like inmate Ahmed Zuhair, who was captured in Pakistan in 2001. “That would bring men like my client to eight years imprisonment for no apparent reason.”

Here are a few of the delays, caveats and loopholes that could limit the impact of Obama’s orders:

1. Everyone has to follow the Army Field Manual—for now…

Obama’s executive order on interrogations says all agencies of the government have to follow the Army Field Manual when interrogating detainees, meaning the CIA can no longer used so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which have included waterboarding, the use of dogs in questioning, and stripping prisoners.

However, the order also created an interagency commission which will have six months to examine whether to create “additional or different guidance” for non-military agencies such as the CIA. One group that represents detainees, the Center for Constitutional Rights, deemed that an “escape hatch” to potentially allow enhanced interrogations in the future.


White House counsel Greg Craig told reporters such fears are misplaced. “This is not an invitation to bring back different techniques than those that are approved inside the Army Field Manual, but an invitation to this task force to make recommendations as to whether or not there should be a separate protocol that's more appropriate to the intelligence community,” he said.

The distinction Craig made between “protocols” and “techniques,” though, seems less than clear.

“For now, they’re punting, saying they’ll comply with what’s in the Army manual…but at some point in the future this commission may revert to the executive” to recommend harsher techniques, said Kassem, adding that he was concerned about how transparent the commission’s recommendations would be.

“I’m happy to postpone that discussion [on “enhanced interrogation”]… on the condition that [it] happens transparently,” he said.

A Columbia law professor who worked on detention issues at the State Department under President Bush, Matthew Waxman, said Obama is wise to leave open the possibility of different guidance for the CIA’s experienced interrogators. “I’ve worked on drafts of the Army Field Manual,” Waxman said. “It’s designed to be in the hands of tens of thousands of people who may not have a lot of training or supervision.”

2. Obama ordered a 30-day review of Guantanamo conditions—by the man currently responsible for Guantanamo.

A section of Obama’s order on Guantanamo entitled “Humane Standards of Confinement” orders Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to spend the next thirty days reviewing the current conditions at the Caribbean prison to make sure they’re legal and follow the Geneva Convention. It seems doubtful that Gates, who has been atop the chain of command for Guantanamo for more than two years, will suddenly find conditions that were just fine on Monday of this week are now flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention.

“He’s not exactly impartial,” Kassem said.

Waxman pointed out that adhering to the Geneva Condition is “already the law,” and deemed that section of the order “bizarre.”

Page 2 at link,...

[JackRiddler]

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It is worth noting that Obama's orders to end torture and close Guantanamo, though hailed in the main, also came under immediate fire from the right with information that could have only originated in the Pentagon.

Technical loopholes in such orders don't always matter. The bureaucracy responds in the sense in which the order is meant, if they like it. That seems to be what's happening with the stem cell provisions; truth is, almost everyone's for that. But a resistant bureaucracy can find ways to circumvent even airtight provisions.

Even Clinton with his avowed globalism and muscle policies was not as bad as the pressure from the military and the right wing made him be; the example with him would be the Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy, which was forced on him by Powell. Well, actually, I think it was one of his original sins - he should have asked instead for Powell's resignation.

But it's not that easy. Remember the 1994 atmosphere, at least in the media, of a White House under siege, with bizarre attacks happening in the vicinity every other week, including the fellow who crashed a Cessna into the building? (On the night of Sept. 11th, if that means anything.) Safe to assume Obama understands that, and what happened even to a committed anti-Communist like JFK.

Again, this isn't to make excuses for someone who's been very open in his rhetorical support for continued war, military solutions and 'service'. But imagine the generals came to him a couple of days ago with a plan to launch missiles at targets in Pakistan, under a program that they've already been running for close to two years, and he told them to lay off until he'd figured out more about the situation. How do you think they would react? What ripples would it have?

Understanding the duplicity of the corporatist globalist imperialist two-party duopoly under capitalism (did I name all the relevant ideologies?) is not enough. Sometimes even the people must learn how to play the game. Challenging Obama to live up to some theoretical face-value as a champion of peace, and mobilizing in large numbers for that, makes it more possible to actually happen.

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[compared2what?]

.

It is worth noting that Obama's orders to end torture and close Guantanamo, though hailed in the main, also came under immediate fire from the right with information that could have only originated in the Pentagon.

Technical loopholes in such orders don't always matter. The bureaucracy responds in the sense in which the order is meant, if they like it. That seems to be what's happening with the stem cell provisions; truth is, almost everyone's for that. But a resistant bureaucracy can find ways to circumvent even airtight provisions.

Even Clinton with his avowed globalism and muscle policies was not as bad as the pressure from the military and the right wing made him be; the example with him would be the Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy, which was forced on him by Powell. Well, actually, I think it was one of his original sins - he should have asked instead for Powell's resignation.

But it's not that easy. Remember the 1994 atmosphere, at least in the media, of a White House under siege, with bizarre attacks happening in the vicinity every other week, including the fellow who crashed a Cessna into the building? (On the night of Sept. 11th, if that means anything.) Safe to assume Obama understands that, and what happened even to a committed anti-Communist like JFK.

Again, this isn't to make excuses for someone who's been very open in his rhetorical support for continued war, military solutions and 'service'. But imagine the generals came to him a couple of days ago with a plan to launch missiles at targets in Pakistan, under a program that they've already been running for close to two years, and he told them to lay off until he'd figured out more about the situation. How do you think they would react? What ripples would it have?

Understanding the duplicity of the corporatist globalist imperialist two-party duopoly under capitalism (did I name all the relevant ideologies?) is not enough. Sometimes even the people must learn how to play the game. Challenging Obama to live up to some theoretical face-value as a champion of peace, and mobilizing in large numbers for that, makes it more possible to actually happen.

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That's just crazy talk, honey.

[JackRiddler]

That's just crazy talk, honey.

Um, which part?

[compared2what?]

Forgive me. What I meant was: I respectfully dissent.

[JackRiddler]

Forgive me. What I meant was: I respectfully dissent.

Um, which part?

[Code Unknown]

No, no, Mac, Obama is bad, bad, bad. Please stop suggesting that anything good can come from his presidency. It can't, and it won't, and I'll see you in the gruel line in the dissident camps this summer where we can apologize to those who saw the looming fascist dictatorship while we were blinded by irrational hope and silly hero worship.

Pan, why don't you give it a rest for a while?

Seriously. Jesus.

[vigilant]

You have to understand that OBL is, ultimately, a religious freak/fanatic that we can finally brutalize without hesitation.

huh? i didn't understand that.

[compared2what?]

Forgive me. What I meant was: I respectfully dissent.

Um, which part?

It would be way off-topic; I just have a respectfully dissenting view of Ole Tax-Exempt-Dollar Bill Clinton's foreign policy agenda. But it doesn't belong here, really. Basically, I posted in haste, for which I apologize.

[vigilant]

Not that nothing ever comes to a sudden end.

Dan Rather's career, for example.

amen....