The headline in the LA Times on December 31, 2009 was arresting: US special forces kill eight school children aged 12-17 and one adult in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. See: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-afghanistan-civilians31-2009dec31,0,3311323.story
I read the original report in Le Monde, which described the event as a “slaughter” of ten civilians…all of the same family. See here: http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2009/12/30/afghanistan-kaboul-confirme-la-mort-de-dix-civils-dans-une-operation-de-la-coalition_1286103_3216.html#xtor=RSS-3208
“Une unité des forces internationales basée à Kunar est descendue d'un avion dans le district de Narang de cette province, a fait sortir dix personnes de
trois maisons – dont huit écoliers de 13 à 17 ans et le reste de la même famille
– et les a abattues", indique le chef des enquêteurs afghans, Asadullah Wafa,
cité par le communiqué de la présidence afghane.”
[My translation: “A unit of the international forces based in Kunar Province, descended from a plane in the district of Narang in this province, and forced ten persons to exit three houses—of these(the ten)eight were schoolchildren of 13- 17 years old, and rest members of the same family—then slaughtered them”, indicated the head of Afghan inquiry, Asadullah Wafa, and cited by a communiqué of the Afghan president.”]
Apparently, US special-forces operating in Kunar district, landed from a helicopter and forced all the male members of the compound from their homes. Reports indicate the victims were killed in cold blood. Whatever happened, this was not an accidental “strike” by an unmanned drone, as some papers (as the Los Angeles Time) continued to suggest.
What is happening in Afghanistan? Why kill school kids? Was it revenge? A mistake? The probable answer: Our military has a not-so-secret policy of fighting terror with terror. This is well known fact, but little reported: that our special forces function as an "antidote" to the teror tactics of the Taliban. Their goal (USA Special Forces) is to keep the civilian population more fearful of the US, than of the Taliban. It has always been this way. Wring your hands in anguish, but that is just what we bought into when we supported an unjustified war of imperial aggression.
Write the President, your congressman and senator to urge them to stop the senseless killing and bring all our troops home. With our forces back in the US, we will have far fewer “terror” incidents such as the deaths of school kids in Kunar. Our actions in Yemen and Afghanistan only create the circumstances for more terror.
2. Another Case of Misuse of Military Might-The Christmas Bomber From Yemen
On or before December 17, 2009, freshman President Barak Obama met with his military advisors. The staff was eager and flush with “hot” new information about a little-known al Qaida operative, one Qasim al-Raymi, who it was just learned was to hold a rally that day in far-off Yemen. Here was a chance to “liquidate” a political adversary who had the potential to make trouble for a close ally, in neighboring Saudi Arabia. The view of the military in the room was that the elimination of this individual was necessary to "send a message" and be “quick and clean”. The general sitting accross from Obama, jerked his jaw upward, as he spoke, to stretch his neck skin away from his too-tight shirt collar.
“A cruise missile from our fleet in the Gulf of Aden, a short flight, and “poof!—problem solved,” smiled, the general whose stiffly-starched olive-drab shirt was studded with ribbons and polished brass insignias.
The young president looked around the table at the rugged, cleanly-shaved faces. He tapped his long thin finger on the circular gold escutchen of his Presidential Blackberry. It was set on the desk in fornt of him, its customary five-centimeters away from his leather-bound daily intelligence log book. He stared at the round Presidential seal for a few seconds. Then looked up:
“Do it!”, he said, firmly.
The men around the table turned to look at each other and each smiled knowingly.
The President arose, picked up his Blackbery and log book and turned to depart. As he moved from the table the men at the table stood up, the sounds of scraping boots and sliding chairs filled the still room. They remained at respectful attention as the President passed through the door.
"We got 'im!", whispered the general with the tight collar, to a man next to him.
A few hours later, in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Yemen, a destroyer slowly steamed a five mile-wide circular course as it waited for orders. The big gray ship slowed turned into the faint south-west wind as a long tubular missile rose out of the hold. With little action of the small knot of sailors on the forward deck, the missile blasted off the ship’s gently swaying deck. The shiped rocked slighlty as it rose off the deck leaving a billow of trailing white smoke. The long gray tube flew straight up into the blue sky to its cruising altitude, then it leveled off, as its internal gyroscopes hummed and its tail fins and stabilizers smoothly moved to correct its course toward Sanaa in Yemen.
On the foredeck, a lone junior officer stood away from a group of sailors . He craned his neck to watch the white contrail of the missile slowly twisting as it was distorted by the upper winds. The condensate dissolved in the dry air leaving behind a thin line of cirrus clouds in the deep blue sky. The sailor took a deep breath, his heart full of pride, as he thought of how he would describe this event to his buddies back home. He'd tell how he was on the board the very ship that sent a “strong message” to the Yemeni terrorists.
Minutes later, the blunt nose of the cruise missile, following its pre-programmed GPS signal turned earthward. It nose-dived toward a small cluster of homes and buildings in a narrow treeless valley. Eighty-two (82) civilians, mostly women and children were blown to bits as the nearly two-tons of high explosives detonated. Two hundred and thirteen (213) other individuals were injured, among them a few al Qaida sympathizers. The US and western press virtually ignored this mass killing of innocents in distant Yemen.
But later that day, a local paper, the Yemen Times ran a story on the “US aerial attack on a suspected al-Qaida training camp in southern Yemen”. The reporter quoted a local source who indicated that indeed 82 civilians had died and 213 were injured by the massive bomb. The source noted that most of them were women and children from a nomad community residing in the district…and that most of the casualties were located between one and two kilometers away from the jihadist’s camp.
Four days later—on Monday—two unmasked al-Qaida militants (showing their faces to prove that the US strike did not kill them) appeared at a rally at the very bomb site where so many were killed. They need not have collected fragments of the crusise missile with "made in USA" on it to show the locals. They knew where the massive bomb had come from. But the militants blamed the attack on the Americans anyway. The men vowed revenge for the killing of innocents by the "Crusaders".
Five days later, Time Magazine in a piece by Abagail Houslohner in a December 22, 2009 issue, wrote a prophetic commentary which essentialy stated that the action in Yemen was counterproductive. Indeed for President Obama the action would be highly counterproductive. The report stated that the American attack had weakened the official Yemen government and strenthened the insurgency-- and stirred up more anti-American hatred. See: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1949324,00.html
”At least 34 people died last week, when Yemeni forces hit suspected al-Qaeda targets in the southern governorate of Abyan and in Ahrab, a district northeast of the Yemeni capital Sana'a. Western and Yemeni media outlets reported that the United States provided Yemen with key intelligence and firepower to carry out the strikes, but to what extent is unclear. Yemeni state media reported that President Obama phoned Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to congratulate him on a job well done, and ABC News said that U.S. cruise missiles had been used.
But regardless of who did what, a primary target in the attacks — Qasim al-Raymi, the al-Qaeda leader who is believed to be behind a 2007 bombing in central Yemen that killed seven Spanish tourists and two Yemenis — is still at large. And reports of a U.S. role, and mass civilian casualties at the sites of the attacks, have sparked a public outcry and added to anti-American sentiments across the country. "They missed that individual," says Johnsen of the targeted al-Qaeda chief. "And at the same time, they ended up killing a number of women and children in the strike on Abyan. So now you have something where there are all these pictures of dead infants and mangled children that are underlined with the caption 'Made in the USA' on all the jihadi forums. Something like this does much more to extend al-Qaeda."
Indeed through the backlash that followed, the attacks have started to look like more of a boon than a bust for Yemen's al-Qaeda revival, as well as for other opponents of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime. Iran — which Yemen accuses of backing the Shi'ite Houthi rebellion in the north — headlined the attacks on its state-sponsored Press TV with: "Obama ordered deadly blitz on Yemen."
"The al-Qaeda threat in Yemen is real, but now after this operation, it will be greater," says Mohammed Quhtan, a member of Yemen's opposition Islamist al-Islah party. "Al-Qaeda will be able to recruit a lot more young people, at least from the tribes that were hit. And it will have reasonable grounds to attract more people from Abyan governorate, and from the Yemeni population in general."
That's a frightening prospect for a country on the brink of collapse. Yemen's economy is in tatters; its population complains of neglect and development woes; and Yemeni children suffer from a 50% malnutrition rate. Observers warn that poverty and unemployment are prime recruitment factors for al-Qaeda, something they say the U.S. government and other foreign powers should have done more to address. "If you're going to carry out [an attack] like this, you have to have done a great deal of field work, where you've sort of undermined al-Qaeda through development and aid so that when something like this happens, al-Qaeda can't easily replace the individuals that it has lost," says Johnsen. "But if you don't take those steps then the pool of recruits just starts to multiply exponentially."
More troubling still is that last week's assault doesn't necessarily indicate a renewed Yemeni commitment to fighting al-Qaeda. Analysts say Yemen has been slow to confront the al-Qaeda threat with the gusto that the U.S. has been pushing for, in large part because going after the Islamist group hasn't always been in the government's best interests. "If the government wants to fight [al-Qaeda] seriously, they can do it," says Ali Saif Hassan, the director of Yemen's Political Development Forum. But, he adds: "It's a matter of political decision — how much they will win, and how much they will lose." Sana'a has recently focused more of its attention on the rebel separatist movement in the south and on the recent Houthi uprising in the north than it has on al-Qaeda".
In a review of the Time Magazine article (December 22, 2009) Henry Adams of "United for Peace in Pierce County" an e-jounal at:
http://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-news-mainmenu-35/9253-commentary-us-strike-in-yemen-will-ultimately-prove-counterproductive.html summarized the story and added the following:
"Commentary: US strike in Yemen 'will ultimately prove counterproductive'
"C'est plus qu'un crime, c'est une faute," as Napoléon Bonaparte is supposed to have said of the assassination of the duc d'Enghien. -- On Tuesday Time magazine took a critical position vis-à-vis the U.S.'s failed attempt on Dec. 17, 2009, to kill with cruise missiles Qasim al-Raymi, an al-Qaeda leader in Yemen. -- The attack "appears to have resulted in a number of civilian casualties," Abigail Hauslohner said.[1] -- (That's putting it mildly.) -- As a result, it has "started to look like more of a boon than a bust for Yemen's al-Qaeda revival, as well as for other opponents of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime," she said. -- Princeton University Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen is predicting that the attacks will ultimately prove counterproductive. -- "Immediately after 9/11, a combined U.S.-Yemeni effort to decapitate the Islamist group's leadership in the country and dismantle its infrastructure met with considerable success, Johnsen says. But since 2006, al-Qaeda has managed to regroup and grow stronger as Yemen's government struggles to hold on to its territory amid multiple rebellions and rising poverty. Now, Johnsen adds: 'You can't just kill a few individuals and the al-Qaeda problem will go away.'"
Princeton expert, Mr. Gregory Johnsen's prediction was proved to be correct--only a short week after its publicaiton.
The Yemeni al-Qaida leader, Qasim al Raymi had no cruise missiles to respond to the US attack, but he did have a number of angry and well-motivated suicide bombers.
Thus, a week to the day after the cruise missile attack in Yemen, which killed 82 people, a young Nigerian man who had been in Yemen, prepared for jihad by sewing a condom filled with a white crystalline solid explosive known as PETN, (a highly explosive ingredient found in explosives such as Semtex or “Plastique”) into his underwear, and purchasing a flight on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and headed for Detroit Michigan on Christmas Day. Mr. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to ignite the charge as the plane approached Detroit. But there were three hundred people on that flight…one could only imagine the tragic results had he been "successful".
So understand this--in near-contemporaneity Mr Obama sent a half-a-million dollar, 20-foot long, US cruise missile with a ton and a half of high explosives into Yemen to kill and maim. In response, Qasim al Raymi sent a 23 year-old Nigerian out of Yemen with a few ounces of explosives sewn into his underdrawers to kill and maim. We killed and maimed nearly three-hundred innocents, he burned a hole in his underpants. The scenario is fitting for a Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon. That is how silly this so called "war on terror" is. One could almost laugh at it if one blocks out the horrible level of death and destruction.
Though Abdulmutallab failed, and no one save the bomber himself was injured, the political fall-out for Mr. Obama's was heavy. The irony is that Mr Obama's wish for keeping his aggressive persona under wraps regarding the December 17th Yemen attack was one of the factors that hurt him in the eyes of some of his fiercest detractors on the right. Obama's fall into Bush-style cowboy shoot-em-up behavior acted to motivate and galvanize a prompt revenge attack by the Yemeni militants. But the public was unaware of Mr. Obama's war-like actions preceeding the Christmas bomb attempt on a plane full of holiday travelers. But those of Abdulmuttalab were everywhere very big news.
The Obama Administration continues to be strongly criticized over its failure to intercept the young Nigerian. Other factors that helped stir criticism of Mr Obama are the fact that the young man’s worried father had alerted the American CIA in Nigeria about his son’s disappearance and “radicalization”, and as well, the fact that young Abdulmutallab had been placed on a “watch list”, all added to Mr. Obama’s embarrassment.
Our young President got burned. But has he learned anything from his too-close and cosy association with his “generals”. I think not. Obama appears to want to continue as a "good soldier" to his military subordinates. The facts: two days after his failed attempt to kill al-Raymi, he agreed to a second launch of cruise missiles (or a drone attack) on December 24th to asassinate a Moslem cleric (and native-born US citizen) known as Anwar al-Aulaqi. It is this cleric who had reputed e-mail contact with Major Nidal Hassan, the US army psychiatrist who killed thirteen soldiers at Fort Hood .
(See Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/24/AR2009122400536.html?hpid=topnews)
The attack on Aulaqi--who has no record as an active terrorist--was an act of national revenge for Alaqi's undefined and unproved involvement in the Fort Hood massacre. I can understand the military command at Fort Hood wishing for revenge, but that the President agreed to what is in effect an extrajurical execution--no facts, no jury, no judge is what we have here. Another question that should be raised here is was the extra-juridcal execution-attempt on al-Aulaqi legal in the US, or internationally? I think not. Would the killing of al Aulaqi be a US or international crime? The strike in Yemen on al-Aulaqi's house killed thirty people--of course, they were all described as “militants”. Noteworthy, is a more recent report which indicates that al Aulaqi was not home at the time and has survived. So all these deaths were for naught. See: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/12/31/152724/55.
So what about Mr. Obama, whose unwise and counterproductive use of lethal force, has cut a bloody swath of death and destruction across the Middle East in only a week? Eight kids in Afghanistan, eighty civilians in one strike in Yemen and another thirty in a house-attack to asassinate (a not-at-home US citizen, Moslem cleric who might have had contact with a home-grown terrorist) in another part of Yemen. Yet he has not been successful, has not made us safer (no more likely the opposite result) and has aroused a great cloud of damaging politcal opposition on his right. Plainly he has lost respect and hurt himself politically.
As they say Florida, "If'n you catch a ‘gator by the tail, you better be certain-sure he don’t turn around and bite you in the ass.”
To my sights, it looks like Obama got "bit in the ass" by acquiescing to the demands of his military advisors...It's time for him to throw his hands like President Kennedy, and take a long lonely look at his foreign policy and military options. Change is needed.
Get the picture?
rjk
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