100 Slaves 100 Enemies

Carry out the argument of the United States’s “war on terrorism” to its logical conclusion and this is what you get.

And what exacerbates anti-American sentiment, and therefore the threat of Terrorism? “American direct intervention in the Muslim world” — through our “one sided support in favor of Israel”; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, “the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan”

…

We can’t combat Terrorism by sending our military into Muslim countries. Doing that only exacerbates the problem, since it inevitably intensifies the anti-American sentiment that enables and fuels the terrorist threat. All of that is so basic. It’s been empirically proven over and over during the last decade. It’s not Noam Chomsky or Al Jazeera pointing out these basic truths, but instead, a 2004 Task Force handpicked by Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon to review and assess the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism efforts, principally the wars they were waging in Afghanistan and Iraq.

via Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

Through a tweet by Alison Kilkenny I was led to an op-ed piece written by Joseph Galloway (who is not, by the way, George Galloway). The title of the piece is “Afghanistan isn’t worth one more American life“. At first this would seem to be an anti-war statement, but only if we ignore the fact that other people besides Americans are involved. Right away Galloway is establishing worthy victims and unworthy victims. No mention of the death of Afghanis.

Next Galloway suggests that we should revisit the “Powell Doctrine” which consists of 8 questions that “must be answered with a loud YES before the United States takes military action.” Here are the questions:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?

2. Do we have a clear, attainable objective?

3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

4. Have all non-violent policy means been exhausted?

5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

6. Have all the consequences of our action been fully considered?

7. Is the action supported by the American people?

8. Do we have broad international support?

There is an important omission from the list: “Is invading another country legal?” Answer: NO. If one were to properly place this question at the top of the list it would quickly become apparent that the rest of the questions are irrelevant.

It has become the norm to forget about how we got into Afghanistan in the first place and ignore the fact that we had no right to invade that country. Instead the focus becomes, on both the left and right, the lives of US military personnel. Conservative hypocrite columnist George Will’s column “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan” is a perfect example of this. It was celebrated by the left as some sort of victory where the conservatives are finally coming around, but if you read the whole column like FAIR did, you’ll notice the next to last paragraph which they drew attention to during their latest Counterspin episode (at the 8:30 mark):

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Again, driving the point home of who are worthy victims and who are not. We should not be put in harm’s way. We should kill from a distance. We should invoke terrorism in a country, when we are supposedly fighting this sort of criminal activity in the guise of a war on an idea.

Of course, there’s a more fundamental reason to not be in Afghanistan other than “our guys” are getting killed. And that is that it is against international law. About a year ago Marjorie Cohn wrote a piece for Alternet.org titled “Afghanistan: The Other Illegal War“  that reminds us of this fact and includes the details of why this is so:

The U.N. Charter provides that all member states must settle their international disputes by peaceful means, and no nation can use military force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. After the 9/11 attacks, the council passed two resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in Afghanistan. Resolutions 1368 and 1373 condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and ordered the freezing of assets; the criminalizing of terrorist activity; the prevention of the commission of and support for terrorist attacks; and the taking of necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist activity, including the sharing of information. In addition, it urged ratification and enforcement of the international conventions against terrorism.

The invasion of Afghanistan was not legitimate self-defense under article 51 of the charter because the attacks on Sept. 11 were criminal attacks, not “armed attacks” by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. In fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, there was not an imminent threat of an armed attack on the United States after Sept. 11, or Bush would not have waited three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign. The necessity for self-defense must be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” This classic principle of self-defense in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the U.N. General Assembly.

Bush’s justification for attacking Afghanistan was that it was harboring Osama bin Laden and training terrorists. Iranians could have made the same argument to attack the United States after they overthrew the vicious Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and he was given safe haven in the United States. The people in Latin American countries whose dictators were trained in torture techniques at the School of the Americas could likewise have attacked the torture training facility in Fort Benning, Ga., under that specious rationale. Those who conspired to hijack airplanes and kill thousands of people on 9/11 are guilty of crimes against humanity. They must be identified and brought to justice in accordance with the law. But retaliation by invading Afghanistan is not the answer and will only lead to the deaths of more of our troops and Afghans.  

[full article]

Years ago Bill Maher asked something to the effect of, “What does raising the security alert to orange mean — am I supposed to wear a sweater before I leave the house?”

So now we know. Security alerts were meant to make you scared and vote for an incompetent fool who claimed that he would protect you.

Former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says pressure from fellow cabinet members to raise the nation’s terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election helped convince him it was time to quit working for former president George W. Bush.

via Was U.S. terror alert used for political reasons? – The Globe and Mail.

Frances Townsend is quoted in the article refuting these claims. And it makes me wonder if the reporters who write these articles have heard of a search engine called Google, where you can look up people and see what sort of record they left behind. They even get to use this thing called Lexis Nexis that I can’t afford to use to find everything ever printed about anyone. Except me, I suppose

This blurb from the Huffington Post doesn’t paint a pretty picture. It would seem there’s no point in taking Townsend seriously, especially since she went around telling everyone that Al Qaida was possibly/maybe/might disrupt the 2008 elections. So, it would seem she has a history of using fear as a way to try to manipulate an election. She’s a believer. She must be considering her praise for George Bush when she resigned (in 2007! all these dedicated yet quitter Republicans…), so why bother asking her opinion. She’s a shill for her master.

She’s now a commentator on CNN — her new master. What better way to boost her ratings than to jump into this fray.