Interventionist Addiction: US Troops In Central Africa

By Ted Galen Carpenter
October 21, 2011
Courtesy Of "The National Interest"

President Obama announced on October 14 that the United States would send approximately 100 “military advisers” to assist the Ugandan government, and probably the governments of South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well, to combat the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA, led by Joseph Kony, is a shadowy, cultish insurgent outfit with a vaguely Christian orientation. That factor was the apparent reason why some religious conservatives in the United States, most notably Rush Limbaugh, have spoken out in defense of the armed group.

Most evidence indicates that the LRA is a sleazy faction that has sown terror and bloodshed throughout several portions of Central Africa. Nevertheless, President Obama’s decision to involve U.S. military personnel in that conflict is disturbing on several levels. First, it is the latest example of an arrogant, unilateral presidential decision to send American troops into a combat setting. Obama cited his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and his responsibility for directing the foreign policy of the United States as justifications for this deployment. It is an interpretation of executive power that would make the Founders whirl in their graves. When it comes to matters of war and peace, Congress is supposed to make that determination, not the president. This decision adds yet another item to an ever-lengthening list of presidential abuses regarding the war power.

Second, the deployment of military advisers always entails the risk of escalation. The extreme version of that process occurred in Vietnam with the initial dispatch of a few hundred advisers. Soon there were thousands of combat advisers in the country, and ultimately vast numbers of combat troops were sent. Although that is unlikely to happen in this case (in large part because the American people probably would not tolerate it), the danger cannot be dismissed entirely. After all, even the intervention in Afghanistan was originally quite modest in terms of the number of personnel, but we now have nearly 100,000 troops on the ground. It would hardly be shocking if the original contingent of 100 in Central Africa becomes several hundred or more, if there are American casualties or the mission does not seem to be succeeding.

Third, and perhaps most important, this intervention is yet another example of an unnecessary and ill-considered armed humanitarian venture. The usually sensible Paul Pillar assures us that going after the Lord’s Resistance Army is justified and not like the missions in Somalia in the early 1990s or Libya this year. But it is very much like those interventions—as well as the U.S.-led wars in Bosnia and Kosovo—in one important way. It has no connection whatsoever to tangible (much less important) American economic or security interests.

Intervening in dangerous conflicts when such interests are not at stake fosters a very bad habit. Nasty things happen to innocent populations all over the world at any given time, and there will always be constituencies both in the United States and internationally wanting (often demanding) that Washington “do something” to stop the bloodshed. When decisions about using the U.S. military are detached from sober considerations about whether important American interests are at stake, the door is wide open for every manner of ill-conceived crusade.

The U.S. political and policy elites increasingly display signs of being addicted to interventionism, with the American people paying the price in both blood and treasure for that addiction. Sending troops to Central Africa to meddle in an utterly murky conflict is a symptom that the interventionist addiction is growing worse.

War Breeds War, Peace Breeds Prosperity

"Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness."
– Thomas Jefferson

By Lee Wrights,
October 15, 2011
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

War breeds war. That is all it can do. War does nothing but devour valuable resources and destroy precious lives for the sole purpose of perpetuating itself. As Randolph Bourne wrote, "War is the health of the State." War is a mechanism used by the ruling elites of the State to coerce and control the people, so it becomes essential that whenever one war is complete, another is instigated elsewhere so that the mechanism keeps running.

On the other hand, peace breeds prosperity. If War is indeed the “health of the State,” then Peace can be nothing less than the “health of the People.” Being at peace means valuable natural resources can be preserved and used at home where we need them most. Being at peace means young fathers and mothers can live and enjoy free trade, not only among themselves but with the world, instead of dying capriciously and unnecessarily, for political gain or to line the pockets of those who profit from their sacrifice. 

With the Internet, the world today is literally our marketplace. War shuts down part of that marketplace, but peace allows that marketplace to thrive. The War on Terror declared after the tragic events on September 11, 2001 has led to one war right after another. This caravan of conflict has plunged us deeper into debt as we sacrifice our precious natural resources, not the least of which are our brave men and women. In fact, those who volunteer to defend and protect the Constitution are those we should be most concerned about. They should be working in America, not dying in Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya, or wherever the warmongers who control our government care to send them! 

We have tried war, over and over again. We never prosper from war, and the problems caused by war only make things worse. As the old ’60s song goes: “…all we are saying is, give peace a chance.” Even a quick review of history reveals, when there is no war people prosper. There have been economic booms, scientific advancements, and cultural progress after every conflict America has fought, beginning with our War of Independence. 

History also teaches us that the key elements to prosperity are freedom and peace. You do not go to war with people you like, or with people you know, or with people with whom you are trading and doing business. Even after our fledgling republic was nearly torn asunder by civil war which literally pitted brother against brother and nearly destroyed the South, our reunited nation and all of her people advanced and prospered after peace was restored.

Despite common belief, World War II did not end the Great Depression, but in fact delayed the recovery. “Tanks, bombs, and helicopters have limited uses outside of military applications,” writes Art Carden, assistant professor of economics and business at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. and an adjunct fellow with the Oakland, California–based Independent Institute. “The labor that was used to produce them was not available to produce consumer goods and services; in fact, people went without consumer goods.” The boom began after the war, when the troops came home.

Instead of teaching our young people to kill, we should be teaching them about commerce and trade. In a word: business. But because war has become America’s business, some would even say its chief industry, all other business suffers. Now any good accountant will tell you, in order to have a successful business you must be able to show a profit, and the bottom line is — war doesn’t pay. That is what makes it such a lousy business for our nation to get into. With the one exception of defending the country from foreign attack, war only takes, giving nothing in return, save economic ruin and human heartaches. The natural resources and manpower eaten up by an imperialistic war machine are lost forever to starving job markets and industry at home. 

The young people who have volunteered to serve in our military, for what they were told and believed was a noble cause, have sacrificed more than enough. It’s time for America to end the deceit engineered to gain their loyalty and trust and to stop dishonoring their sacrifice by wasting their lives in dishonorable, futile, and endless conflict. Bring them home where they can work for themselves and their families, prospering in a peaceful country. The biggest favor we could do for most of our troops would be to retire them so they can come home and go to work. We need prosperous patriots more than we need hallowed heroes. We can make this country great again, but it will require peace. Peace breeds plentiful production, while war can only breed devastating destruction. 

You say you want to do something about jobs? Stop occupying everything from public streets to private parks. Occupy Congress and tell them to stop killing people all over the world, stop making new enemies every chance they get, and get out of the way of creative and productive entrepreneurs so that Americans can once again start producing the best goods and services on the planet! Bring our job force home, America! Open the world to trade by declaring peace!  Maybe — just maybe — once again the "Made in America" tags you see will begin to rival the number of tags that read "Made in China."

The world needs the goods and services Americans can potentially produce more than it needs some planetary protection from evil that America can’t possibly provide. War is waste. Peace is production. War breeds war. Peace breeds prosperity. What do you believe America needs more of right now? Which could you use more of right now? 

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."
– Albert Einstein

Welcome To The New America

By Dr. Brian Phillips,
October 24, 2011
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

“Ummmm, guess you ought to be more careful when associated with and visiting known terrorists. I love them drones!!”

“Terrorists are selfish too. Your kid was the one who decided that he would start killing people. He sealed his own fate and we took him out. Maybe we should all start looking at his family with a cocked eye also since they were the one who bred it and let it loose on the world.”

“I believe the term is ‘collateral damage.’ The family knew the dangers of being in the vicinity of Anwar al-Awlaki or anyone known or suspected of involvement with al-Qaeda. It is no secret that the U.S. is aggressively pursuing the terrorists, yes, their son/brother/father was indeed a terrorist. Anyone who associates or supports terrorists is also a terrorist. I have no sympathy/guilt regarding the deaths of the al-Awlakis in Yemen. They chose to be our enemy. We did not chose to be their enemy. This should serve as a warning to anyone that we will pursue and kill terrorists wherever they are. If you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you may become collateral damage.”

“I hope it gives the next bomb-tossing fanatic good reason to reconsider choosing to participate in terrorism.”

All of the above are actual user comments from ABC News and Washington Postarticles on the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son. Anwar was killed in an U.S. drone attack in Yemen on Sept. 30. His son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed in a similar attack in Yemen on Oct. 14. Both were American citizens.

Abdulrahman was killed while having dinner outside with some of his friends, and, though he was never suspected or charged with terrorist activity, he became the third American citizen killed by a U.S. drone in the last three weeks (North Carolinian Samir Khan was killed alongside Anwar). None of the three were charged, arrested, or tried — only sentenced and executed. Anwar al-Awlaki was killed for suspected terrorism, Samir Khan for being with him, and Abdulrahman for eating dinner near suspected terrorists.

The drone attacks have drawn praise from many media sources and politicians, as well as the majority of Americans who know of the attacks. In an “Open Channel” poll by MSNBC, Americans were asked, “Should the U.S. kill citizens overseas without affording them due process?” The results:

• 79.3 percent (31,941 votes) said, “Yes, if they are involved in plotting terror attacks against the U.S.”
• 19.1 percent (7,686 votes) said, “No, U.S. citizens have the right to be tried in a court of law regardless of what they are accused of doing.”
• 1.7 percent (667 votes) were not sure.

Government Humiliates 95-Year-Old Woman; The People Feel Safe

In June, a 95-year-old cancer patient in a wheelchair was given a pat-down search by agents of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in Florida. The woman was also made to remove her adult diaper for inspection by the agents. A Baltimore Sun article covering the incident reported these details but went on to call the TSA’s actions “appropriate.”

In July, a federal court ruled that the TSA’s full-body “naked” scans were constitutional despite revealing the genitals and “privates” of passengers. Those who refuse the scans are subjected to more “hands on” searches by agents. Yet, a poll conducted by CBS News found that over 80 percent of Americans support the use of the full-body scanners.

The PATRIOT Act became law in 2001 and was extended by President Obama in May of this year. The act was proposed as a counterterrorism bill, and it allows government agents to conduct “roving surveillance” of suspects, American and foreign. The surveillance includes wiretaps, access to bank records, e-mail and other online communication, phone calls, library records, credit card usage, and even the searching of one’s home with or without a warrant. Agents may conduct such searches and surveillance without the knowledge of the suspect.

Additionally, bank employees, Internet providers, and anyone else asked to hand over a suspect’s records must do so with or without a warrant, and they are forbidden by the act to speak of it to anyone.

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center found that the American public had actually warmed up to the PATRIOT Act since its inception. In February, only 34 percent of Americans saw it as a threat to civil liberties, compared with 39 percent two years ago. Republican support for it has remained high, at nearly 60 percent, and Democratic support has also increased, though not to the same level.

Government Robs Citizens Of Liberty; The People Sleep

When the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, it is said that a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked what form of government had been decided upon. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

It has not been kept.

The American Republic was established upon the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law established therein. It was founded upon the idea that the people elect representatives who actually represent them and their rights as defined by those laws and who will seek to protect the people from the abuses of government that can creep into any nation.

The American Republic was established with a judicial branch that swears to do the same, using the bench to enforce the rule of law rather than politicize it.

The American Republic was established with an executive officer, the president, who, though elected by the people, may not even begin office until he swears an oath before God to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

That America Republic is no more.

Representatives and senators have authorized unconscionable laws like the PATRIOT Act, depriving Americans of basic civil liberties in name of “national security.”

Judges have upheld the molestation of citizens in airports and dared call it “constitutional,” though the TSA has not apprehended one single “terrorist” since its inception in 2001. What’s more, the agents are paid by American tax dollars.

Meanwhile, America’s president (and many more before him) starts one undeclared, unconstitutional war after another with nations who pose no real threat. In the name of “protecting America,” he has ordered the assassinations of her citizens through drone attacks — without charge, without arrest, and without trial.

Yet the disappearance of the Republic cannot be blamed merely upon Congress, judges, or the president. Yes, it is true that they have played their part, and no small part at that. But America has been dismantled by her citizens.

The great Dutch statesman Abraham Kuyper once said, “In any successful attack on freedom the state can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the citizen who forgets his duty … and so loses the power of his own initiative.”

Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

American citizens have remained willfully ignorant of their rights and their Constitution, and willful ignorance is inexcusable. Sacrificing duty for comfort and safety for liberty, Americans find themselves with none of the above.

The assassinations, indignities, and crimes described above are tragic, but far more tragic is the endorsement they received from the American people.

If the American Republic is to be restored, it will come through the awakening of the citizens to a true knowledge of their rights granted by Creator and Constitution, to a love of true liberty, not false promises of “safety.”

While such an awakening may seem a mere pipe dream to some, remember more sage counsel from the Founding Fathers. Samuel Adams said, “It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men.”

If Americans refuse to wake up, then the tyranny that now controls them is earned. In the words of Alexander Hamilton: “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.”

Targeted Killing and The 'War On Terror'

A secret US memo authorised the killing of radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki for his alleged role in an al-Qaeda affiliate [EPA]


The CIA's Extrajudicial Killing Of Anwar Al-Awlaki Raise Troubling Legal Questions.

By Jonathan Hafetz
Last Modified: 19 Oct 2011 19:15
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"


The United States' recent killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen has prompted renewed debate over the CIA's predator drone programme. That the US government asserts the right to eliminate a terrorism suspect far from any active theatre of war may seem striking, particularly when that suspect is an American citizen. But it is hardly a novel claim. The US position on targeted killing instead reflects the logical culmination of its counter-terrorism policies during the past decade.

As thresholds matter, the secrecy surrounding Awlaki's killing shows a troubling parallel to the type of secrecy on national security matters that existed during the Bush administration. President Obama has yet to disclose the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo that, according to press accounts, justified killing Awlaki. As the New York City Bar Association explained in a recent letter, the rule of law requires that the United States provide "a through and transparent legal analysis" of its position on targeted killings. While some information contained in the OLC memo might need to be redacted to protect sensitive information, the memo's legal reasoning should be disclosed.

The administration has, to be sure, provided a summary description of its position on targeted killing. Two top administration officials - State Department Legal Advisor Harold H Koh and senior counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan - have both addressed the subject in public speeches. But their general remarks, however thoughtful, are no substitute for the full analysis contained in the legal memo.

Other details have emerged from government leaks to the press. The New York Times' Charlie Savage recently published an account of the OLC memo, as related to him by anonymous government officials. Savage reports that the memo, which totals approximately 50 pages and followed months of interagency deliberations, was drafted to assess the legality of killing an American citizen such as Awlaki. Such second-hand accounts, however, are necessarily selective and incomplete. They depend on whatever information the reporter's source deems appropriate to share, which is then filtered through the reporter. An OLC memo should provide a balanced legal analysis; leaked accounts, by contrast, inevitably give the administration's best points while discounting or ignoring counter-arguments.

Fair Game

A full assessment of the administration's position on targeted killing must therefore await release of the memo. Yet, the information currently in the public domain does allow us to draw some conclusions.

As reported, the memo determined that Awlaki could be killed by the United States if he could not be feasibly captured because he was taking part in the war between the United States and al-Qaeda. The memo further concluded that Awlaki posed a significant threat to the United States and that Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him.

The war against al-Qaeda, the memo reasoned, was not limited to traditional battlefields like Afghanistan. Nor for that matter was it limited to al-Qaeda itself. Instead, the memo explains, the war extends to "associated forces", such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the organisation in which Awlaki allegedly played a leading role. By analogising the drone strike on Awlaki to the killing of an enemy soldier in a traditional war, the memo avoids a series of potential prohibitions, including an executive order banning assassinations and a federal statute prohibiting Americans from murdering other Americans abroad.

Despite President Obama's rhetoric of change, the memo highlights important continuities in US counter-terrorism policy since 9/11. Like Bush, Obama has adopted the framework of a global "war on terror", even as he has abandoned the phrase. In this war, the United States may target terrorism suspects located far from any battlefield when those individuals pose an "imminent threat" - a term, the New York Times article suggests, that the government appears to define loosely.

The rationale for targeted killing mirrors the Obama administration's justification for the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The administration argues that it may detain members and supporters of al-Qaeda, just as the United States held German and Japanese as prisoners of war during World War II. The same logic lies behind targeted killings - only there, the United States claims that it may use deadly force against at least some al-Qaeda members where capture and detention is not feasible.

Constitutional Violations

Criticisms of the Obama administration have focused heavily on Awlaki's American citizenship. A New York Timeseditorial, for example, called the OLC memo an "insufficient foundation for a momentous decision by the government to kill one of its citizens, no matter how dangerous a threat he was believed to be".

Awlaki's citizenship should not be ignored. US citizens are owed certain obligations by their government, including protecting them from harm. The Awlaki case seems to calls those protections into question.

American citizens are also understood to have constitutional rights, regardless of where they are located. By contrast, the extent to which non-citizens outside the United States are protected by the constitution remains an open question. In approving Awlaki's killing, the administration thus necessarily determined that targeted killing was constitutional, notwithstanding the constitution's prohibition against depriving a person of life without due process of law.

Focussing only on citizenship, however, obscures larger concerns about targeted killing. The United States' increasing use of Predator drones predominantly affects non-citizens. Tethering criticism of targeted killing to its potential impact on a relatively small number of US citizens suggests that the killing of non-citizens - whether as targets or as collateral damage - poses no problem. This asymmetrical approach to the rights of non-citizens legitimates criticisms of the United States as an imperial power concerned only with furthering its own interests, regardless of the costs to others.

Furthermore, the legal analysis of targeted killings under international law does not vary based on the target's citizenship. As numerous scholars have argued, targeted killing is problematic under the international law of war.

Notre Dame Law School professor Mary Ellen O'Connell, for example, has described the US position on targeted killing as "illegal, immoral, and dangerous".

Far-Reaching Powers


One problem lies in the United States' expansive view of war itself. While there is still an armed conflict in Afghanistan, there is no armed conflict in Yemen. The US position, however, rests not on a target's connection to the Afghan conflict, but rather to an amorphous, global, armed conflict against al-Qaeda and "associated groups" - a conflict that, conveniently, has proven sufficiently malleable to accompany the shifting focus of US counter-terrorism operations from Afghanistan and Iraq to Yemen and the Horn of Africa. The distinction is important because outside of armed conflict, peacetime law applies and prohibits extrajudicial killing absent exceptional circumstances.

Also, targeting rules differ depending on the type of armed conflict in which a nation is engaged. In a traditional, state-versus-state conflict (known as international armed conflict), one state may kill a member of an opposing state's armed forces even when that person is not on the battlefield. But in an armed conflict against a non-state actor (known as a non-international armed conflict), states are more constrained in their ability to kill opponents.

As Melbourne Law School professor Kevin John Heller explains, in a non-international armed conflict the target must either be a civilian who is directly participating in hostilities or an individual who exercises a "continuous combat function" in the terrorist group. The mere fact that the United States believes an individual is dangerous is insufficient.

These distinctions are not mere technicalities, but have potentially far-reaching implications for human rights and global stability. The United States may think it can wield its targeted killing power wisely. The American public, for its part, may care little for legal niceties when it hears that their government has eliminated individuals like Awlaki, who allegedly inspired several terrorist plots against the United States through his fiery sermons. But such thinking is shortsighted.

The US targeted killing policy encourages other states to expand their counter-terrorism operations in similar ways - ways that might seem less attractive when the same principles are invoked in different contexts. The United States, for example, might feel differently if Russia were to target Chechen rebels in Georgia, or if India were to target Pakistani-backed forces in Kashmir.

Targeted killing, moreover, illustrates how US concerns about terrorism seem to justify any means deemed necessary to improving security. A similar dynamic helps explain the United States' resort to torture in the interrogation of detainees after 9/11 - a decision whose consequences will continue to be felt for years to come, even if most controversial methods, such as waterboarding, have been abandoned. This is not to equate current US targeted killing policy with the US torture programme under the Bush administration, which was based on a calculated attempt to circumvent the law. Rather, it is to suggest how the war on terrorism can twist the law so that it accommodates the government's never-ceasing demand for new powers to counter the terrorist threat.

Jonathan Hafetz is a professor at Seton Hall Law School and the author most recently of Habeas Corpus after 9/11: Confronting America's New Global Detention System (NYU Press 2011).

The Secret War Against Iran

By Brian Ross
April 03, 2007 5:25 PM
Courtesy Of ABC NEWS

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight.

Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.

Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian soldiers and border guards it says it has captured and brought back to Pakistan.

The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians.

"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.

"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said.

Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.

Last month, Iranian state television broadcast what it said were confessions by those responsible for the bus attack.

They reportedly admitted to being members of Jundullah and said they had been trained for the mission at a secret location in Pakistan.

The Iranian TV broadcast is interspersed with the logo of the CIA, which the broadcast blamed for the plot.

A CIA spokesperson said "the account of alleged CIA action is false" and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the Jundullah group.

Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.

A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that context.

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Terrorism Breeds Terrorism

"If You Can't OutBreed The Enemy, Cull `Em."

By Paul Balles
May 19, 2009
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"

Reuters reports "Ninety-three children and 25 adult women are among a list of 140 names of Afghans who villagers say were killed in a battle and U.S. air strikes last week, causing a crisis between Washington and its Afghan allies."

American Colonel Greg Julian disputed the numbers, saying, ""Well I could give you 140 names too. The problem is there is no evidence of that number of graves ... Are those real people? Did they ever actually exist? I can give you a list of 53 girls names with their ages."

The politicians argue: "The air strikes are not acceptable," Karzai said. "Terrorism is not in Afghan villages, not in Afghan homes. And you cannot defeat terrorists by air strikes."

"But White House National Security Advisor James Jones said on Sunday that U.S. forces need air power to protect themselves: 'We can't fight with one hand tied behind our back.'"

As Dan Spielberg points out in "Lew Rockwell":

Barack Obama sold himself to the country as someone who would bring massive 'change' to the policies of the U.S. government, but of course when it comes to the favourite activity of that cancerous organism, warring against wholly innocent civilian populations in foreign countries, there will be no change.

Ron Paul makes the point: "We are inciting the very terrorism and extremism we are trying to stop." By bombing Afghans and Pakistanis, adds Paul, "We are helping the Taliban and other enemies to actually gain numbers and strength"

Meanwhile the US Congress has introduced bills to increase the aid to Pakistan from $500 million to $1.5 billion at a time when the USA is nearly bankrupt and doesn't have enough money to support Americans at home.

None of this can possibly help the USA. As Paul observes, "we are adding to the numbers of our enemies and increasing the threats to our security here at home." When will America learn that its actions are creating tomorrow's terrorists?

According to Muriel Kane, "Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal will be taking over command of US forces in Afghanistan, pending Senate approval." McChrystal headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that previously reported to Dick Cheney, with no congressional oversight.

Kane notes, "Famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh recently described the JSOC as an "executive assassination wing" controlled for many years by the office of former Vice President Dick Cheney."

Jeremy Scahill says, "Pentagon officials are spinning another cover-up," following the bombing that killed up to 130 people in Afghanistan. He also reports, "...as many as 2,000 (Afghans) poured into the streets of the provincial capital, chanting ‘Death to America’.”

Disgustingly, the Pentagon attempted to blame the Taliban for the murders, saying that they had done the killing with grenades.

Neoconservative commentator Mark Steyn writes in America Alone, "If you can't outbreed the enemy, cull `em." That's an attitude Americans have learned well. The US military in the Middle East practices it regularly.

Chris Hedges drew a shocking word picture of American involvement in Afghanistan:

The bodies of dozens, perhaps well over a hundred, women, children and men, their corpses blown into bits of human flesh by iron fragmentation bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes in a village in the western province of Farah, illustrates the futility of the Afghan war.

Hedges conveys the lesson of his picture:

We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat.

It's time to stop making excuses for American military barbarism abroad. It's time to stop creating terrorists by US terrorism in the Middle East.

We Tortured To Justify War

Dick Cheney keeps saying "enhanced interrogation" was used to stop imminent attacks, but evidence is mounting that the real reason was to invent evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida.

By Joe Conason
May. 14, 2009
Courtesy Of The Salon Media Group

The single most pertinent question that Dick Cheney is never asked -- at least not by the admiring interviewers he has encountered so far -- is whether he, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush used torture to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. As he tours television studios, radio stations and conservative think tanks, the former vice-president hopes to persuade America that only waterboarding kept us safe for seven years.

Yet evidence is mounting that under Cheney’s direction, "enhanced interrogation" was not used exclusively to prevent imminent acts of terror or collect actionable intelligence -- the aims that he constantly emphasizes -- but to invent evidence that would link al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein and connect the late Iraqi dictator to the 9/11 attacks.

In one report after another, from journalists, former administration officials and Senate investigators, the same theme continues to emerge: Whenever a prisoner believed to possess any knowledge of al-Qaida’s operations or Iraqi intelligence came into American custody, CIA interrogators felt intense pressure from the Bush White House to produce evidence of an Iraq-Qaida relationship (which contradicted everything that U.S. intelligence and other experts knew about the enmity between Saddam’s Baath Party and Osama bin Laden’s jihadists). Indeed, the futile quest for proof of that connection is the common thread running through the gruesome stories of torture from the Guantánamo detainee camp to Egyptian prisons to the CIA's black sites in Thailand and elsewhere.

Perhaps the sharpest rebuke to Cheney's assertions has come from Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired Army colonel and former senior State Department aide to Colin Powell, who says bluntly that when the administration first authorized "harsh interrogation" during the spring of 2002, "its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaida."

In an essay that first appeared on the Washington Note blog, Wilkerson says that even when the interrogators of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the Libyan al-Qaida operative, reported that he had become “compliant” -- in other words, cooperative after sufficient abuse -- the vice-president’s office ordered further torture of the Libyan by his hosts at an Egyptian prison because he had not yet implicated Saddam with al-Qaida. So his interrogators put al-Libi into a tiny coffin until he said what Cheney wanted to hear. Nobody in the U.S. intelligence community actually believed this nonsense. But now, al-Libi has reportedly and very conveniently "committed suicide" in a prison cell in Libya, where he was dispatched to the tender mercies of the Bush administration's newfound friends in the Qaddafi regime several years ago. So the deceased man won't be able to discuss what actually happened to him and why.

Wilkerson's essay was followed swiftly by an investigative report in the Daily Beast, authored by former NBC News producer Robert Windrem, who interviewed two former senior intelligence officers who told him a similar story about a different prisoner. In April 2003, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi official named Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi, who had served in Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat. Those unnamed officials said that upon learning of Dulaymi's capture, the vice-president's office proposed that CIA agents in Baghdad commence waterboarding him, in order to elicit information about a link between al-Qaida and Saddam. Evidently that suggestion was not enforced by Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraq Study Group who controlled Dulaymi's interrogation.

The same kind of demands were directed toward interrogators in Guantánamo, according to the testimony of former Army psychiatrist Charles Burney, who testified that he and his colleagues interrogating prisoners at the detention camp felt "pressure" to produce proof of the mythical link.

"While we were there, a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," he told the Army inspector general. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." In other words, they were instructed to use abusive techniques, as recounted in the investigation of torture by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Looking back, we now know that coerced confessions -- and in particular the questionable assertions by al-Libi -- were highlighted by administration officials promoting the case for war with Iraq, in the landmark Cincinnati speech by President Bush in October 2002 and in Colin Powell’s crucial presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003, the eve of the war.

Whether Bush, Cheney and their associates were seeking real or fabricated intelligence, they knowingly employed methods that were certain to produce the latter -- as American officials well knew because those same techniques, especially water torture, had been used to elicit false confessions from captured Americans as long ago as World War II and the Korean conflict.

Cheney now claims that he preserved the country from terrorism and saved thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives. We need a serious investigation, with witnesses including the former vice-president under oath, to determine what he and his associates actually did with the brutal powers they arrogated to themselves -- because instead their actions cost thousands upon thousands of American and Iraqi lives, all in the service of a political lie.

-- By Joe Conason

America Creating Talibanization In Pakistan

By Jalal Ghazi,
Posted: May 15, 2009
Courtesy Of The New America Media

Editor’s Note: Arab media are disappointed with Pres. Barack Obama’s Pakistan-Afghanistan strategy. The U.S. focus on the Taliban’s assault on women’s rights ignores the fact that the military attacks are actually helping to unite Pashtun tribal groups under the Taliban banner, says NAM contributor Jalal Ghazi.

The specter of a Taliban takeover of Pakistan has been haunting Western media. As the fighting between Pakistani forces and the Taliban intensifies, Arab media are pointing the finger at the United States. The Obama Administration does not understand Pashtun cultural traditions, say the media. It is using force first, just as the Bush administration had done. In fact, the air strikes killing many civilians are actually creating more “Talibanization,” say Arab media.

Western media’s major focus is Taliban’s treatment of women. A video of a Pakistani teenager being whipped on her buttocks was played by Western televisions over and over, turning the Swat Valley crisis into women vs. the Taliban.

“This is how the Taliban dispenses justice,” said an ABC report. “Whipping a teenager 13 times because they say she was alone with a man who was not her husband.” “The video of the flogging has galvanized women and civil society groups to protest against ‘Talibanization,’” reported the BBC. CNN featured a woman who had fled Swat Valley out of fear of the Taliban.

Arab media, however, regard the collapse of the Swat Valley peace agreement as a catastrophe. Many Arab televisions focused on the suffering of the hundreds of thousands who were forced to flee from the fighting areas to poorly prepared camps lacking food and water. Arab media do not condone the Taliban’s treatment of women, but they see what is happening in the Swat Valley as much bigger than women vs. Taliban.

Arab political observers believe that the U.S. decision to oppose the agreement showed a lack of understanding of the Pashtun tribes who make up the backbone of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Arab observers warn this will only increase the Taliban and al Qaeda influence.

Political analyst Hasan Abu Ghaniya told Al Arabiya, “Implanting Islamic Sharia is not a wild idea that is newly introduced by the Taliban, Sharia is rather widely accepted in the region and it is the major uniting factor between all tribal leaders there.” He added, “Different leaders emerge in different regions of the tribal area of Pakistan and take on the responsibility of leading the area. It is well known that these leaders are responsible for implementing the Sharia law and Islamic courts.”

In order to help women in Afghanistan and Pakistan tribal areas, a coordinated international effort must be made to build the infrastructure and empower women there with better economic and social opportunities. Abu Ghaniya told Al Arabiya, “The infrastructure must be built in the region which is desperately needed, and schools must be opened.” Force, he said, was the “wrong strategy” and should be the last resort.

Obama apparently wants to be tougher than Bush, which is evident in the increase of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and the escalation of unmanned drone strikes against the so-called “valuable targets,” including recent ones that killed more than 100 civilians in the Afghan province of Fara. That has strengthened the bond between al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

Abu Ghaniya explained that, unlike the Taliban in Afghanistan, which has one supreme leader - Mullah Omar- the Pakistani Taliban have many local leaders. In some cases, these leaders are at odds with one another, but after the U.S. air strikes and repeated Pakistani government military operations, they have become more united under the Taliban banner.

Pakistani political observer Abdel Ghafar wrote on Al Jazeera’s website that different local Pashtun leaders decided to join the Taliban after U.S. attacks in their areas when they realized that the Pakistani government would not defend them.

For example, local leaders Baitullah Mahsud, Nazer Ahmad and Mullah Gul recently pledged allegiance to Mullah Omar and declared Osama bin Laden a religious mentor.

According to Al Arabiya, Mahsud, the leader of the Taliban in Northern Waziristan, has threatened the United States and Europe with attacks. This shows that local leaders in Pakistan are not only joining ranks with the Taliban but also they are drifting closer to al Qaeda’s international agenda by threatening to expand their attacks outside Pakistan.

Like many Arab analysts, Ghaniyah said that the solution is political not military. Obama must use “soft power.” A road map must be made to deal with economic and social crises in the region. Peace agreements must be respected, and local autonomy must be given to local regions.

Ghafar wrote for Al Jazeera that “negotiations have led to peace agreements between armed groups and the Pakistani government, but strangely all these agreements were criticized by the American administration and destroyed before being implemented.”

It is as if the United States insists on adding Pakistan to list of failed states, which now includes Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. Of course, the United States would also do well to remember that the Pashtuns have defeated other empires, including Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the armies of Alexander the Great.

Bring An End To ‘Triple Evils’

ISSUE IN-DEPTH: FIGHT AGAINST EXTREMISM: Bring An End To ‘Triple Evils’ By Abandoning War

This column is solicited to provide another viewpoint to an AJC editorial published today.

By Kevin Martin, Leslie Cagan
For the Journal-Constitution
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Courtesy Of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Saturday marked the tragic anniversary of the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but also the anniversary of his “Beyond Vietnam” speech one year earlier. In that 1967 speech at the historic Riverside Church in New York City, one of the most inspiring anti-war speeches ever delivered, King decried the “triple evils” plaguing our country —- “racism, extreme materialism and militarism.”

Were he alive, we believe King would urge President Obama to use his political and rhetorical skills to call on our people to cure these ills still so prevalent in our society. A first step would be ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq and, instead of sending an additional 21,000 troops, begin bringing home the troops in Afghanistan.

And we humbly suspect that King would have been with us Saturday in Manhattan when we and other peace advocates marched to Wall Street to call for an end to war and corporate bailouts and for investing in our communities and human needs, environmental restoration and a green economy for all. Or as King so concisely phrased it, to “rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.”

Most of the people of this country, and around the world, want Obama to succeed. However, his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, as well as the ongoing occupation of Iraq, threaten to make a shambles of his domestic economic agenda, as well as his presidency, as the Vietnam War did to President Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.

Haven’t we had enough of war? We need to devote all of our energy and attention to addressing the global economic and climate crises, and to improving education, housing and health care in this country, not squandering $12 billion per month on the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just as King said in 1967 about the Vietnamese people, the people of Afghanistan (and Iraq) today must see the U.S. as “strange liberators.” Unsurprisingly, the people of Afghanistan oppose an escalation of U.S. troops. An ABC News poll at the end of 2008 found that only 18 percent of Afghans support an increase in the U.S. military presence.

As to fighting terrorism, a RAND Corp. study released last year found that only 7 percent of terrorist organizations end their terrorist activities because they are defeated by the use of military force. Sending more troops is not the way to combat the dangers of terrorism.

Obama’s announcement of his Afghanistan and Pakistan policy did include some positive initiatives, including increased support for regional diplomacy and economic aid to the two countries. Those should be the cornerstones of U.S. policy aimed at helping to end the strife in a desperately impoverished country that has known little respite from war in decades. We also need an overall foreign policy based on building real security through international cooperation and human rights.

More war is still not the answer, and until fundamental changes are made in U.S. foreign policy —- an end to blank-check support for Israel, an end to U.S. occupation and military bases in Arab lands, an end to threats to Iran, an end to the chimera of the “global war on terror” (or whatever they call it now), an end to hypocrisy on nuclear proliferation, and concrete steps to address legitimate grievances in the Arab and Muslim world —- whatever we do in Afghanistan or Pakistan, short of a massive occupation that would be immoral and we can’t afford, is doomed to failure.

The president’s domestic economic agenda —- investing in resolving pressing problems on jobs, health care, education, housing and climate change —- is put at grave risk by our exorbitant (possibly over $3 trillion) and seemingly endless wars. We can’t afford to forgo the crucial investments we need to make our communities stronger. We simply can’t afford more war.

King observed in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech that the country’s commitment to a serious program of investment in human needs in the mid-1960s was “broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war.”

Can we afford to look back in 40 years and say the same thing about Obama’s domestic program and his presidency?

King’s words still ring, chillingly, across four decades, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Please join with us in calling for peace with justice, rather than an escalation of war. Join us in recognizing and acting on King’s “fierce urgency of now” as we “rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.”

> Kevin Martin is executive director of Peace Action and the Peace Action Education Fund.

> Leslie Cagan is national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice.

Christian Support Fr Killing Iraqi's

By Jacob G. Hornberger
Hornberger’s Blog Index
Friday, February 6, 2009
Courtesy Of The Future Of Freedom Foundation

Among the things about the Iraq War that I have never been able to understand is how American Christians have been able, in good conscience, to support this war. After all, no one can deny that neither Iraq nor the Iraqi people ever attacked the United States. That makes the United States the aggressor — the attacker — in this particular conflict. How could American Christians support the killing of Iraqis in such a war of aggression? How could they reconcile this with God’s sacred commandment, Thou shalt not murder.

One possibility is that Americans initially viewed the Iraq War as one of self-defense. Placing their trust in their president and vice-president, they came to the conclusion that Iraq was about to unleash WMDs on American cities. Therefore, they concluded, America had the right to defend itself from this imminent attack, much as an individual has the moral right to use deadly force to defend his life from someone who is trying to murder him.

But once the WMDs failed to materialize, American Christians did not seem to engage in any remorse or regret over all the Iraqis who had been killed in the invasion. It was all marked up as simply an honest mistake. At the same time, hardly anyone called for a formal investigation into whether the president and the vice president had intentionally misled Americans into supporting the war based on bogus exaggerations of the WMD threat.

After the WMDs failed to materialize, American Christians had an option: They could have called for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops. Instead, they did the exact opposite. They supported the continued occupation of Iraq, with full knowledge that U.S. troops would have to continue killing Iraqis in order to solidify the occupation.

That’s when Christians began supporting a new rationale for killing Iraqis: that any Iraqi who resisted the U.S. invasion or occupation was a terrorist and, therefore, okay to kill. Since terrorists were bad people, the argument went, it was okay to support the killing of Iraqis who were resisting the invasion and occupation of their country.

Yet, rarely would any Christian ask himself the important, soul-searching questions: Why didn’t Iraqis have the moral right to resist the invasion and occupation of their country, especially if that invasion and occupation had been based on a bogus principle (i.e., the WMD threat)? Why did their resistance convert them into terrorists? Why did U.S. troops have the moral and religious right to kill people who were defending their country from invasion and occupation?

Instead, people in Christian churches all across the land simply just kept “supporting the troops.” I suspect part of the reasoning has to do with the mindset that is inculcated in public schools all across the land — that in war, it’s “our team” vs. “their team,” and that Americans have a moral duty to support “our team,” regardless of the facts.

Among the most fascinating rationales for supporting the killing of Iraqis that American Christians have relied upon has been the mathematical argument. It goes like this: Saddam Hussein would have killed a larger number of Iraqis than the U.S. government has killed in the invasion and occupation. Therefore, the argument goes, it’s okay to support the invasion and occupation, which have killed countless Iraqis.

But under Christian doctrine, does God really provide for a mathematical exception to his commandment against killing? Let’s see how such reasoning would be applied here at home.

Let’s assume that the D.C. area is besieged by two snipers, who are killing people indiscriminately. Let’s assume that they’re killing people at the rate of 5 per month. That would mean that at the end of the year, they would have killed 60 people.

One day, the cops learn that the two snipers are parked in a highway rest area. There are also 25 other people there, all Americans, men, women, and children, and all innocent.

The Pentagon offers to drop a bomb on the parking lot, which would definitely snuff out the lives of the snipers. The problem is that it would also snuff out the lives of the other 25 people.

Under Christian principles, would it be okay to drop the bomb? I would hope that most Christians would say, No! As Christians, we cannot kill innocent people even if by doing so, we rid the world of those snipers. If we cannot catch the snipers except by dropping the bomb, then we simply have to let them get away. God does not provide a mathematical justification for killing innocent people.

Yet, isn’t that precisely the mathematical analysis that has been used by Christians to justify their support for the killing of Iraqis. What’s the difference?

In their blind support for “our team” and for “supporting the troops” in Iraq, American Christians seem to have forgotten an important point about government and God: When the laws or actions of one’s government’s contradict the laws of God, the Christian has but one proper course of action — to leave behind the laws of man and to follow the laws of God.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

Hornberger’s Blog Archives

America, Cowering To An Imaginary Enemy

America, Cowering To An Imaginary Enemy, Is Not The Country I Once Knew

Like McCarthy, Bush relied on a synthesised climate of fear. Obama inherits a nation that sees al-Qaida fiends at all turns

By Simon Jenkins In New York
Friday December 5 2008
Courtesy Of The Guardian

America seems much in need of Roosevelt's maxim to stop fearing fear itself. Virtually all comment on the Mumbai massacre has mentioned 9/11 and al-Qaida, and thus invited citizens to continue feeling afraid. No matter that Mumbai appears to have been primarily about Kashmir and the status of India's Muslims. No matter that Osama bin Laden has no dog in that fight. Any stick will do to elevate al-Qaida as America's enemy number one.

Last week, the CIA warned of a terrorist threat that "might be unleashed" during the presidential transition, a threat that George Bush described as "dangerously real". On Wednesday Barack Obama was formally told by a congressional inquiry that "it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction, either nuclear or biological, will be used in a terrorist attack" in his first year of office. The inquiry demanded that an official must be appointed "to oversee efforts to prevent such an attack", as if millions of Americans in and out of uniform were not doing that already.

Then London added its pennyworth, with a Home Office minister, Lord West, telling of "another great plot building up again" and a "huge threat" from al-Qaida. The purpose of all this scaremongering remains a mystery.

Reactions to Mumbai have seemed to suggest Americans are still seeking fellowship in their 9/11 pain, as after the London and Madrid bombings. Gone are the days when Americans would tell Britons to shrug off IRA terrorist attacks (many instigated from America) and grow up. Any explosion anywhere now abets the extraordinary 9/11 iconography, underpinning the politics of fear that has been the leitmotif of the Bush presidency.

Debating this presidency in New York on Tuesday night, I found myself pitted against Bush's impresario of fear, Karl Rove. Nothing in his master's glorious reign quite matched his "victory" over terror. The sense of unreality was equalled by Rove's supporters, to whom all who did not fear the "Islamofascists" were "liberal upper-east side elitists", an apparently crushing epithet. One assured me that Afghanistan would soon be won by merely "moving the surge" to Kabul. The whole evening was like the scene in Gone with the Wind where Southern gallants out-boast each other in predicting victory over the Yankees.

Rove was undeniably a master manipulator of fear politics, like Tony Blair's Alastair Campbell, who called him a "kindred spirit". Both Bush and Blair were led to portray al-Qaida in its Tora Bora cave as they had Saddam Hussein, as a threat to their respective realms. It was what the sociologist Ulrich Beck described as an exaggerated risk "exploited as an elixir to an ailing leader". On this the two leaders built a culture of self-validating counter-terrorism, where both the absence of any threat and the presence of one can be made equally supportive.

The media's fondness for describing any explosion as "al-Qaeda-linked" has turned what was a tiny, if efficient, cabal of fanatics into a global menace, ridiculously on a par with Hitler and postwar communism. Whoever said the political brain has advanced over time was mad.

On every visit to America I am stunned by the pervasiveness of fear. Terrified officials pounce on the slightest deviation from security rules. Americans must strip almost to their underwear to board even the shortest domestic flights. IDs are scanned in the meanest office blocks. Computers must be dismantled. National guardsmen troop out at dawn to protect New York installations "against the terrorist threat".

The repressive Patriot Act - mocking a patriotism that was once built on courage and the rule of law - remains in operation. Getting through American immigration with a brown face is an indignity that many Indians and Arabs of my acquaintance now simply refuse to endure. I had trouble even with a Baghdad visa in my passport.

Barack Obama, who is pledged to close Guantánamo Bay, is being challenged to say what he will do with what the conservative Weekly Standard asserts are "250 participants in the most devastating terrorist attacks in history" from "an enemy unlike any other this nation has ever faced". Britons should not smile at this hyperbole. The same madness afflicts Jacqui Smith's Home Office.

In the 1960s Richard Hofstadter, the American political scientist, puzzled over the anti-intellectualism of much of American public life, echoing the remark of the Puritan, John Cotton, in 1642 that "the more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan". Listening to the debate on Tuesday I realised how deep is that strand, how strong the line of descent to the war on terror from previous generations who likewise puffed up the mafia and home-grown communism.

The 1950s Kefauver commission on organised crime sought a foe to demonise as foreign, sinister and ubiquitous. The inquiry found that there was no national "mafia" worthy of the name, or of their attention, just disparate bunches of local hoodlums. Kefauver and the FBI, whose burgeoning empire depended on him, were furious. They had come to need the mafia and its menace to justify their budget, effort and status.

The same synthetic sense of fear enveloped the McCarthy hearings on communism. A grain of truth was exaggerated to boost McCarthy's standing as a defender of the people against a real and present danger, that of reds under every bed. Communism had to be erected as an internal weapon of mass destruction, and much cruelty resulted.

At least organised crime and communism posed genuine threats to American liberties. Al-Qaida does not, yet it has become the ruling obsession of Bush's courtiers. They see al-Qaida fiends on every side, bearded mullahs, caches of bombs, ricin and anthrax. The precautionary principle has become fanaticised. By treating the unknown as an enemy, we ensure that the unknown becomes one.

Most of the outrages committed by graduates of the Pakistan terrorism camps are locally motivated, and will continue as long as such motivation survives. A network of criminal suicide squads with no coherent programme has no conceivable hope of undermining western democracy. It can just set off bombs, and will always do so if front-line policing is weak and constantly overruled by a grand "counterterrorism" bureaucracy.

Just when America had won a real victory in the century-old combat with communism, it allowed itself to be terrified by a band of fanatics who, in part through America's negligence, "got lucky once" and pulled off a coup on 9/11. For seven years its behaviour at home and image abroad have been dogged by the reaction to it. The challenge to Obama, here as elsewhere, is immense.

The attractive feature of the America in which I once lived was its bold self-confidence. To find the survivors of the Bush presidency still cowering in a mental bunker afraid of a bunch of Arabs - and with British ministers for company - strips western democracy of a leadership that should be both heroic and sensible. It is surely an un-American activity.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk