Take for instance Barack Obamas global assassination campaign, or drone war in media-speak. It is now common knowledge (among the mildly informed, anyway) that said campaign is only nominally discriminate, and furthermore essentially pointless, assuming its point is not to foster extremism. Last year, leaked government documents confirmed what was already suspected: most of those killed by Barry Os drone fleet are unidentified people who happen to be standing near the intended target, who for one reason or another (were not allowed to know) was selected for summary execution.
What is the effect of this policy? Its not difficult to figure out. Lets suppose for a moment that these remote control airstrikes really were surgicalthat they didnt result in dead civilians. It would still be an exercise in futility. Wiping out a single terrorist, no matter his rank, doesnt eliminate his position: he can and will be replaced. Would it disrupt the relevant cells operation? Does it matter? Disrupt it enough and it will splinter, and now youve got two cells instead of one, and perhaps the new one is more monstrous than the original. ISIS, lets remember, was first an al-Qaeda franchise. The latter group, whose side weve taken against Syrias elected president, now seems like the JV team (credit to Obama for the awkward analogy) to the formers Varsity. Needless to say, U.S. foreign policy, in its liberal interventionist form, facilitated the rise and expansion of ISIS; the group that now, according to most Republicans, presents the gravest threat to our national security.
To label the drone war as merely futile, however, is disingenuous. Counterproductive is a better word, although probably still too charitable. We take out one militantreducing him to a greasy spot on the groundand another springs up to take his place. Thats futility. But in the process, people living in Pakistan and Somalia and Yemen observe that the U.S. is not bound by any standard principle of law, least of all the one guaranteeing a criminal suspect due process. How, one wonders, are they expected to feel about that? If the American Empire says youre fit to die, youre fit to die, and thats an end of it. Interesting concept. Of course, such tyranny would never be tolerated here at home, where a criminal defendants right to a fair trial remains (for the most part) inalienable and uncontroversial. No so for foreigners suspected by the U.S. government of terrorist activity in their own countries, with whom the U.S. is not at war and over whom the U.S. has no jurisdiction in any reasonable sense of the word.
The American public may not care very much about the extrajudicial killing of a few supposedly dangerous Muslims living in Somalia. (CNN doesnt tell them to worry about it, so why should they?) They do, however, seem to care about anti-Americanism in the Muslim world, the threat of global jihad, etc.and rightfully so. These are serious issues; they should be treated as such. Heres an axiom: if were going to take an issue seriously, the very least we can do is make an effort to understand it. Why does Salafism (i.e. Wahhabism, i.e. Saudism) continue to spread like wildfire over the Middle East and beyond? Why do so many Muslims have, in the words of Donald Trump, a tremendous, tremendous hatred for the U.S.?
It couldnt have anything to do with the continuous, illegal bombing of Muslim-majority countries. That would be too straightforward an answer, and moreover contradictory to the narrative our policy-makers, always looking out for the weapons industry, like to spin for us. There is, however, Occams razor, which would insist that we stop dismissing simple, obvious explanations. One such explanation might be that Obamas drone fetish, even without the civilian death toll, certainly doesnt make the terrorist recruiters job any less difficult (and in fact does precisely the reverse). Another might be that, by shoring up the medieval sadists governing Saudi Arabia and oppressing its population, the U.S. indirectly (or perhaps directly) promotes the ideology underpinning every Wahhabi terrorist gang in the world, whether JV or Varsity.
Saudi Arabia. The worlds most prolific exporter of oil. Also the worlds most prolific exporter of Wahhabi extremism, that omnipresent threat to civilization were allegedly so bent on eradicating. It was reported that our dear leader was cold-shouldered upon his recent arrival to the great pious kingdom. The impudence! Have the Wahhabi princes no appreciation for the Obama administrations generosity? After all, $50 billion in munitions sales is nothing to sneeze at, particularly when those munitions are earmarked for war crimes. The United States has given Saudi Arabia, and its Wahhabi coalition, carte blanche to commit atrocities against civilians in Yemen: American bombs, including illegal cluster bombs, are being used to blow up schools, hospitals, mosques, etc., in the name of well, nothing, really. What more could the Saudis want! More weapons? All they have to do is ask. Obama distributes smart bombs like candy.
The civil war in Yemen represents the latest, though not quite the greatest (which says a lot), failure of American foreign policy. With our weapons and whole-hearted support, Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabi pals have managed to do to Yemen what NATO did to Libya. In other words, Yemen is now a failed state with no central government and a massive power vacuumideal conditions for terrorists, in this case al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, to exploit. Naturally, all of this is underreported by Western media, since we have no enemy on whom to cast blame. You may hear the occasional whisper about Ayatollah culpability, but thats about it.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen every time the same result. To say that the U.S. has failed to learn its lesson is erroneous. Ive seen no evidence that U.S. policy-makers are interested in learning any sort of lesson, nor that they actually desire a better outcome to begin with. Theyre not merely inept, as so many like to insist; theyre cynical, and profoundly so.
Terrorism is useful. It can be, and is, cited to justify almost anything: extravagant military budgets, abrogation of civil liberties, alliance with nefarious regimes, arbitrary detention, torture, war. They all matter, but the last one matters most. If the objective really is to defeat terrorism, as defined by us, then our policy is irrational; in fact it meets the famous definition of insanity. Plainly, bombing volatile societies and unleashing dormant sectarian violence does nothing to contain terrorism. Plainly, it has the opposite effect. Terrorists draw strength and support from chaos and carnage; if you think Cheney et al. were oblivious to that fact, Ive a got a plot of land to sell you. Bush may be simple, and its certainly possible that he derived his conception of war from the pictures, but his cabinet was a sly bunch; a bunch whose loyalty was not to our nations security but rather to the Pentagon and the weapons manufacturers.
Before Bush was sworn in by the Supreme Court, Dick was pushing for a bigger military budget. Little did he know that he neednt bother! The events of 9/11 were a windfall for the jingoists, damage to the Pentagon notwithstanding. Terrorism was no longer an abstract threat; the threat was all too palpable, all too urgent, and nobody was prepared to question the governments response, which was not to invade the country that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers, but rather the one in which the plots ringleader, another Saudi, happened to live. The U.S. could have invaded Canada that October (surely there were some Bin Laden sympathizers loitering in that country)we just wanted a show of military might, projected wherever.
Thats the terrorism effect. Thats why Saddam Hussein, our long-time ally and Israels great existential threat of the day, was suddenly charged with sponsoring terrorism. Casting Saddam as a Bin Laden advocate, however false, gave us a solid pretext for war. The consequence of that warISISgives us a solid pretext for more war, etc. As long as terrorism exists, we can go to war, and as long as we go to war, terrorism will exist. Meanwhile the Pentagons budget continues to swell. The War on Terror, then, is a self-sustaining enterprise.
The beauty of Obamas global assassination campaign is that it allows us to bomb without declaring war. We dont have to worry about running out of countries to invade; we can drone our allies if we so choose. That being said, no war machine is complete, and no Empire content, without the occasional full-scale invasion. Iran has been in the crosshairs for a long timeever since they had the nerve to overthrow the iron-fisted dictator we kindly installed for them. Predictably, the Iranian nuclear agreement, Obamas most significant foreign policy achievement, has done nothing to curb the hawks appetite. Indeed, many of Republican presidential candidate have assured us that, as commander in chief, they would make it their first order of business to tear up the internationally-recognized treaty.
At the other end of the aisle, H.R. Clinton, the superprepared warrior realist, derides the prospect of normalizing relations with Iran. Back in 2008, she demonstrated her warrior spirit, boasting of her preparedness to totally obliterate the 80 million people who live there, which would steer the U.S. into a nuclear conflict with Russia, quite possibly annihilating us all. (Lest you forget: Trump is the real danger.)
Clinton and her fellow jingos hate the nuclear deal, and the reason is simple: it eliminates a major pretext for war. After all, the case against Iran is identical to the case against Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism. And Israel at the center of it all. The Zionists lobbied hard for war with Iraq, and no one is lobbying harder for war with Iran. They intend to make Hillarys obliteration fantasy into reality. Lucky for them, and unlucky for the rest of us, she is almost certainly our next president, and no one is more subservient to their will.
Unsurprisingly, no presidential candidate has been asked whether they plan to adopt Obamas failed anti-terror policy, which is to fight terror with more terror, forever fanning the proverbial flames. Perhaps failed is not quite an accurate description, though, as that word implies a wish to succeed. Presently theres no excuse to believe the Obama administration was ever serious about checking the scourge of Saudi-inspired terrorism. If Trump is right, and the Muslim world hates us, Obama was very much committed to aggravating that sentiment. Hes done a fine job.
This article was written by Michael Howard for American Herald Tribune on Apr. 24, 2016. Michael Howard is a freelance writer (of both fiction and nonfiction) and political activist from Buffalo, NY. His main areas of interest are American domestic and foreign policy.
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