After NATO Summit, U.S. To Intensify Military Drive Into Asia

“The Pentagon has indeed marked this as its Asia-Pacific century.”

>><<

http://www.opednews.com/articles/After-NATO-Summit-U-S-To-by-Rick-Rozoff-101117-274.html

Stop NATO
November 17, 2010

After NATO Summit, U.S. To Intensify Military Drive Into Asia

Rick Rozoff

Barack Obama, the latest rotating imperator of the first global empire, will arrive in Lisbon on November 19 to receive the plaudits of 27 North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and secure their continued fealty on issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan to a continental interceptor missile system, the continued deployment of American tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, participation in the Pentagon’s cyber warfare plans and expanded military missions in the planet’s south and east.

Perfunctory discussions of minor details notwithstanding, strictly pro forma to maintain the myth of NATO being a “military alliance of democratic states in Europe and North America,” the banners and pennants of 26 European nations, Canada and dozens of other countries contributing troops for the Afghan mission will be lowered in the presence of the leader of the world imperium.

No fewer than 38 European nations have supplied NATO troops for the Afghanistan-Pakistan war as well as providing training grounds and transport centers to support the war effort. As envisioned for at least a century, through peaceful means or otherwise, Europe has been united, not so much by the European Union as under the NATO flag and on the killing fields of Afghanistan. It is now relegated to the role of pre-deployment training area and forward operating base for military campaigns downrange: The Middle East, Africa and Asia.

So uncritically and unquestioningly compliant has Europe been in the above regards that Obama and the governing elite in the imperial metropolis as a whole have already looked beyond the continent for additional military partners. With the exception of fellow members of the NATO Quint – Britain, Germany, France and Italy (Britain more and Italy less than the others) – Alliance partners are accorded the same status and assigned the same functions as American territories like Puerto Rico, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands: Geopolitically convenient locations for live-fire military training and for troop, warplane and warship deployments.

Two millennia ago the Pax Romana of Augustus brought roads and ports, aqueducts and irrigation, amphitheaters and libraries, and Greek writers from Aristotle to Aeschylus to occupied territories. Bellum Americanum burdens its vassals and tributaries with military bases, interceptor missile batteries, McDonald’s and Lady Gaga.

In Lisbon Obama will chastise his NATO and NATO partnership auxiliaries and foederati, as is the prerogative and wont of the global suzerain and as his predecessor George W. Bush has done recently, for being chary of expending more blood and treasure for the war in Afghanistan. However, he will also display the magnanimity befitting his preeminent stature by patting his European satraps on their bowed heads and intoning, “Well done, good and faithful servants. You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.”

With the European continent placed securely under the multi-circled Achilles shield of NATO, U.S. nuclear weapons, an interceptor missile system and a cyber warfare command, Washington is moving to realms as yet not completely subjugated.
Africa has been assigned to the three-year-old U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and perhaps only five of the continent’s 54 nations – Eritrea, Libya, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe – have avoided becoming ensnared in bilateral military ties with the Pentagon and concomitant U.S-led military exercises and deployments.

The U.S. has also expanded its military presence in the Middle East: Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Yemen.

Two years ago Washington reactivated its Fourth Fleet for the Caribbean Sea and Central and South America and last year’s coup in Honduras and this September’s attempted coup in Ecuador are proof that the U.S. will not allow developments in Latin America to pursue their natural course unimpeded.

The U.S. has intensified efforts to forge and expand military alliances and deployments in the Asia-Pacific region, but there is still a small handful of countries there not willing to accept a subordinate role in American geostrategic designs. They are, to varying degrees and in differing manners, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Myanmar. Attempts to replicate the “color revolution” model used in former Soviet republics in Myanmar and Iran since 2007 have failed, “regime change” plans for North Korea are of another nature, and neither China nor Russia appears immediately susceptible to equivalents of the so-called Rose, Orange, Tulip and Twitter revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova, respectively. The preferred technique being applied to Russia at the moment is cooption, though its success is not guaranteed as the U.S. and NATO military build-up around Russia’s borders continues unabated.

What’s left is the military expedient. In the first half of November the quadrivirate in charge of U.S. foreign policy – President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen – all toured the Asia-Pacific area. Collectively they visited ten nations there: India, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Tonga.

Clinton and Gates were in Malaysia at separate times and both joined Mullen on November 8 for the annual Australia-United States Ministerial (AUSMIN) meeting in Melbourne, where the U.S. military chief called the 21st century the “Pacific century.” [1]

In India Obama secured what William Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, estimated to be the sixth largest arms deal in U.S. history. [2]

In Australia, Gates and Mullen won a backroom arrangement to move U.S. military forces into several Australian bases.

While in New Zealand, Clinton in effect renewed the Australia, New Zealand, United States (ANZUS) Security Treaty as a full tripartite mutual defense pact after a 24-year hiatus in regard to her host country.

On November 13 Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan “thanked the United States…for supporting Tokyo in a series of recent disputes with Russia and China” [3], an allusion to a statement by Clinton on October 27 that the U.S. would honor its military assistance commitment to Tokyo over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands dispute with China and her spokesman Philip Crowley’s affront to Russia five days afterward over the Kuril Islands, which he identified as Japanese territory. [4]

In a tete-a-tete ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Yokohama, the Japanese head of state “sought US President Barack Obama’s assurance on defence in the Asia-Pacific region,” as “Tokyo’s territorial disputes with China and Russia are becoming high priorities for Kan, who told Obama through a translator, ‘The US military presence is only becoming more important.'” [5]

Verbatim, Kan said:

“Japan and the United States, at this meeting of APEC, of pan-Pacific countries, we shall step up our cooperation. So we agreed on doing that. And in Japan’s relations with China and Russia, recently we’ve faced some problems, and the United States has supported Japan throughout, so I expressed my appreciation to him for that.

“For the peace and security of the countries in the region, the presence of the United States and the presence of the U.S. military I believe is becoming only increasingly important.” [6]

In return, Obama “voiced support for Japan to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and reaffirmed the U.S.-Japan security alliance.”

He also assured Kan that the U.S.-Japan alliance is “the cornerstone of American strategic engagement in the Asia Pacific” and “the commitment of the United States to the defense of Japan is unshakable.”

According to a U.S. armed forces publication, “While Obama’s support for the continuing security alliance is no surprise, it comes amid tension in Japan over China’s…claims on territory in the East China and South China seas.” [7]

In less than five months the Pentagon has made its military presence felt throughout the Asia-Pacific area:

The U.S. Marine Corps and Navy participated in Exercise Crocodile 10 in East Timor (Timor-Leste) from June 19-26, which included “weapons firing skills, amphibious assault serials, jungle training, flying operations, and a helicopter raid on an abandoned prison” and provided “an opportunity for multi-national forces to work together in the planning and conduct of a complex military exercise.” [8]

In October of 2009 2,500 U.S. and Australian troops engaged in maneuvers in the country, which marked the first U.S.-East Timor joint military exercise.

This July the U.S. led the multinational Angkor Sentinel 2010 command post and field exercises in Cambodia with American forces and troops from the host nation, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia and the Philippines.

For 40 days in late June and throughout July the U.S. led the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2010 war games in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii with 32 ships, five submarines, more than 170 planes and 20,000 troops from all four branches of the American armed forces and from Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand.

From July 25-28 the U.S. conducted joint war games with South Korea, codenamed Invincible Spirit, in the Sea of Japan/East Sea with the involvement of 20 warships including the nuclear-powered supercarrier USS George Washington, 200 warplanes including F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, and 8,000 troops.

The next month U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. Army Pacific presided over the Khaan Quest 2010 military exercise in Mongolia. In the same month American and British troops ran the Steppe Eagle 2010 NATO Partnership for Peace exercise in Kazakhstan.

USS George Washington and the USS John S. McCain destroyer led the first-ever joint U.S.-Vietnam military exercise, consisting of naval maneuvers in the South China Sea, in early August.

Less than a week later the U.S. and South Korea began this year’s Ulchi
Freedom Guardian military exercise in the latter country with 30,000 U.S. and 50,000 South Korean troops participating. [9]

In early September Washington and Seoul held an anti-submarine warfare exercise in the Yellow Sea.

At the end of the same month Indian troops joined U.S. marines and sailors in Exercise Habu Nag 2010, the fifth annual bilateral U.S.-India amphibious training exercise with that codename, in the South China Sea off the coast of Okinawa.

In October at least 3,000 U.S. troops participated in the nine-day Amphibious Landing Exercise 2011 in the Philippines. “The bilateral training exercise, conducted with the Armed Forces of the Philippines, is designed to improve interoperability, increase readiness and continue to build professional relationships between the two countries.” [10]

At the beginning of the same month U.S. warships and troops joined 6,000 Australian soldiers and counterparts from New Zealand for Exercise Hamel in northeast Australia, described in the local press as “massive war games.” [11]

Also in October, South Korea for the first time hosted a multinational military exercise with 14 members of the U.S.-created Proliferation Security Initiative, which included ships and military personnel from the U.S., Canada, France, Australia and Japan.

U.S. marines “conducted urban training exercises” in Singapore on November 6. A Marine Corps lieutenant present “gave a short class on identifying danger areas in a combat environment” and “talked about isolating them by sight, or suppressive fire, and the importance of gaining footholds in enemy territories.” [12]

On November 14 the U.S. and Indian armies completed the 14-day Yudh Abhyas 2010 military exercise in Alaska. Last year’s Yudh Abhyas featured the largest U.S.-India joint military maneuvers ever held.

100,000 American and another 50,000 NATO troops are fighting in the tenth year of their collective war in Afghanistan. The U.S. is escalating deadly drone missile strikes and NATO is increasing helicopter gunship raids in Pakistan.

The Pentagon has indeed marked this as its Asia-Pacific century.

1. U.S. Department of Defense, November 7, 2010

2. Business Insider, November 6, 2010 click here Obama, Gates And Clinton In Asia: U.S. Expands Military Build-Up In The East, Stop NATO, November 7, 2010, click here

3. Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 13, 2010

4. U.S. Supports Japan, Confronts China And Russia Over Island Disputes, Stop NATO, November 4, 2010, click here

5. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, November 13, 2010

6. The White House, November 13, 2010 Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Kan of Japan in Statements to the Press in Yokohama, Japan click here

7. Stars and Stripes, November 14, 2010

8. Australian Government, Department of Defence, June 24, 2010

9. U.S.-China Crisis: Beyond Words To Confrontation, Stop NATO, August 17, 2010, click here

10. U.S. Marine Corps, October 22, 2010

11. Australian Broadcasting Company, October 4, 2010

12. U.S. Marine Corps, November 9, 2010

October 27, 2010

Think Tank Report on US Japan Relations Has No Good Recommendations

The think tank Center for a New American Security has released a new report on the U.S. Japan Mutual Security Treaty and makes some recommendations. All the options being proposed involved some form of increased militarization of the Asia-Pacific region. Here’s an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal blog:

Indeed, a new report due out Wednesday from the Washington, D.C.-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS) sees the bilateral relationship at a — surprise, surprise — “turning point…amid a strategic environment of unprecedented complexity.” Yet the report also points out the half-century old U.S. Japan Mutual Security Treaty has had a solid track record of helping to keep the peace in the Asia-Pacific region. Among the more provocative suggestions for policymakers: consider pulling back some forward stationed U.S. military forces in Japan and moving them as far away as Guam or Hawaii.

The report, an advance copy of which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal, provides an overview of challenges facing the alliance timed to coincide with the upcoming Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting of regional leaders in Yokohama next month. It specifies several areas in need of “revitalization,” including greater interoperability of the two countries’ intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) programs. It also bluntly calls on Japan to create a National Security Council and to boost its arsenal by adding drones (“long-haul, unmanned aerial vehicles”), diesel attack submarines and naval mines. And the report suggests four core options for the U.S. military base presence in Japan:

1.) Retain and Harden: Maintain current base structure and bolster their potency by deploying more missile defenses and “pouring additional concrete on shelters and burying facilities.”

2.) Fortify Guam: Shift more American military personnel from Japan to the island of Guam while building up its air and naval facilities.

3.) Disperse: Spread the U.S. military footprint across more of Oceania by redeploying forces from Japan and improve access to military installations in Southeast Asia.

4.) Pullback to Hawaii: Move some U.S. forces in Japan to Hawaii and upgrade their capability to redeploy quickly during a regional crisis.

September 19, 2010

Creech 14 trial becomes referendum on drone warfare

Published on Saturday, September 18, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

A Peace Movement Victory in Court

by John Dear

“Fourteen anti-war activists may have made history today in a Las Vegas courtroom when they turned a misdemeanor trespassing trial into a possible referendum on America’s newfound taste for remote-controlled warfare.” That’s how one Las Vegas newspaper summed up our stunning day in court on Tuesday, when fourteen of us stood trial for walking on to Creech Air Force Base last year on April 9, 2009 to protest the U.S. drones.

We went in hoping for the best and prepared for the worst. As soon as we started, the judge announced that he would not allow any testimony on international law, the necessity defense or the drones, only what pertained to the charge of “criminal trespassing.”

With that, the prosecutors called forth a base commander and a local police chief to testify that we had entered the base, that they had given us warnings to leave, and that they arrested us. They testified that they remembered each one of us. Then they rested their case.

We called three expert witnesses, what the newspaper called “some of the biggest names in the modern anti-war movement:” Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson; Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and one of three former U.S. State Department officials who resigned on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and Bill Quigley, legal director for the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights. We presumed they would not be allowed to speak.

All fourteen of us acted as our own lawyers, and were not allowed any legal assistance, so members of our group took turns questioning our witnesses, and trying not to draw the judge’s wrath. Lo and behold, the judge let them speak, and they spoke for hours.

They were brilliant. They spoke about the meaning of “trespassing,” and the so-called necessity defense and international law, which allows citizens to break minor laws in adherence to a higher law. Ramsey Clark, looking like Atticus Finch on the stand, said it was a duty.

They cited the classic example of someone driving down a street, seeing a house on fire, noticing a child in the third floor window, hearing the screams, breaking through the front door, violating the no trespass law, and entering the house to save the child.

“[People] are allowed to trespass if it’s for the greater good — and there are certainly exceptions [to the law] when there is an emerging, urgent need,” said Quigley.

He cited the history of protesters who broke petty laws, from our nation’s founders to the Suffragists to the civil rights activists who illegally sat in at lunch counters. In the long run, we honor them for obeying a higher law, for helping to bring us toward justice, he said. Unfortunately, there is a gap between “the law” and “justice,” and so, he explained, the struggle today is to narrow that gap. The best test is through “a hundred year vision,” he explained. That is, how will this law and ruling be seen one hundred years from now?

The prosecutors challenged each witness, but their questions only enabled the witnesses to speak further on our behalf. When they were asked if they actually knew us, the prosecutors and judges were stunned to hear that they were our friends, in some cases, lifelong friends. When the prosecutors presented our experts’ articles from the internet in order to discredit them (such as Bill Quigley’s superb Common Dreams piece, “Time for a U.S. Revolution — Ten Reasons“), that only added fuel to their fire. Bill launched into an eloquent plea for citizens to stand up and work for nonviolent change.

Through carefully crafted questions, the defendants were able to extract several key points from their witnesses:

* Intentional killing is a war crime, as embodied in U.S. constitutional law.

* Drone strikes by U.S. and coalition forces kill a disproportionate number of civilians.

* People have the right, even the duty, to stop war crimes.

* According to the Nuremberg principles, individuals are required to disobey domestic orders that cause crimes against humanity.

After our experts testified, co-defendant Brian Terrell told the judge we would now call five of us to take the stand. The judge said he would not recommend that. So our group huddled together for a minute.

“He’s sending us a signal,” co-defendant Kathy Kelly said. “He’s telling us not to call any more witnesses, that if one of us testifies that we crossed the line under cross examination, he will have no choice but to find us guilty. Let’s rest our case.” So, despite days of preparation, we did.

With that, Brian Terrell stood up and delivered a short, spontaneous closing statement. It was one of the most moving speeches I have ever heard. Here are excerpts:

Several of our witnesses have employed the classic metaphor when talking of a necessity defense. There’s a house on fire, and a child crying from the window and there’s a no trespassing sign on the door. Can one ignore the sign, kick down the door and rescue the child?

It was a great privilege for us to hear Ramsey Clark, a master of understatement, who put it best. “Letting a baby burn to death because of a no trespass sign would be poor public policy.”

I submit that the house is on fire and babies are burning in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan because of the activities at Creech AFB.

The baby is burning also in the persons of the young people who are operating the drones from Creech AFB, who are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder at rates that even exceed that of their comrades in combat on the ground.

Colonel Ann Wright testified that soldiers do pay attention to what is going on in the public forum, and that they do respond to a “great debate” in the public sphere. There is no great debate going on about drone warfare in our country. Some have noted that the trend toward using drones in warfare is a paradigm shift that can be compared to what happened when an atomic bomb was first used to destroy the city of Hiroshima in Japan.

When Hiroshima was bombed, though, the whole world knew that everything had changed. Today everything is changing, but it goes almost without notice. I hesitate to claim credit for it, but there is certainly more discussion of this issue after we were arrested for trespassing at Creech AFB on April 9, 2009, than there was before.

Judge Jansen, we appreciate the close attention you’ve given to the testimony you’ve heard here. The question that you asked Bill Quigley, –“Aren’t there better ways of making change than breaking the law?”, is a question we are often asked and that we often ask ourselves.

It was a question that was asked of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 when he was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama. Several clergy people of Birmingham wrote a letter to Dr. King asking him the very same questions that you asked Professor Quigley. Isn’t there a better way? Why sit-ins? Why marches, why protests? Isn’t negotiation the better way?

Dr. King’s reply to these questions — in his famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail, which is regarded by many as one of the finest things ever written in the English language — heartily agreed that negotiation is the better way. But, he said that a society that refuses to face crucial issues needs “nonviolent gadflies” using direct action to raise the level of awareness and raise the level of “creative tension” for a society to rise from the depths of monologue to the majestic heights of dialogue, where the great debate that Colonel Ann Wright says we need, can happen.

The house is on fire. And we fourteen are ones who have seen the smoke from the fire and heard the cries of the children. We cannot be deterred by a No Trespassing sign from going to the burning children.

As he finished, Brian burst into tears and sat down. Many in the courtroom wept. Then Judge Jansen stunned us by announcing that he needed three months to “think about all of this” before he could render a verdict. He marked twenty five years on the bench just the day before, he said, and this was his first trespassing case and he wanted to make the best decision he could. There is more at stake here than the usual meaning of trespassing, he noted. The prosecutors were clearly frustrated and disappointed. With that, we were assigned a court date of January 27, 2011 to hear the verdict. As he left, he thanked the fourteen of us and the audience, and then seemed to give a benediction: “Go in peace!” Everyone applauded.

“By all accounts, the Creech 14 trial is the first time in history an American judge has allowed a trial to touch on possible motivations of anti-drone protesters,” the local paper said.

While I wish he had immediately found us Not Guilty and sent a signal to the U.S. military that these weapons are illegal, it was astonishing to watch this judge begin with his hostile directives and then slowly listen to the testimony of our friendly experts, and then conclude that he needed more time to seriously consider their argument. That alone was a minor victory. I wish everyone in the United States would take time to reconsider our drone program, beginning with the president, the Secretary of State, Pentagon officials, military officers, and Creech Air Force Base employees. The more one thinks about it, the more we realize how terrifying it is, and the harm it will inflict on the whole world for generations to come.

We saw that future as we walked onto Creech Air Force Base on April 9, 2009. We wanted to rescue the children and civilians who are being killing by our “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” as they’re called.

I hope and pray the judge will “think” about the drones, and issue a verdict on our behalf, on behalf of all the victims of our drones, on behalf of the world’s children, that we might reject the drones, learn nonviolent ways to resolve international conflict, and let everyone live in peace.

John Dear is a Jesuit priest, activist, and author of 25 books on peace and nonviolence. His latest book, Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings (Orbis), along with other recent books, A Persistent Peace and Put Down Your Sword, as well as Patricia Normile’s John Dear On Peace, are available from www.amazon.com. To contribute to Catholic Relief Services’ “Fr. John Dear Haiti Fund,” go to: http://donate.crs.org/goto/fatherjohn. He writes a weekly column for the National Catholic Reporter at www.ncronline.org. For further information, see: www.johndear.org.

September 12, 2010

Peace Crimes

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

John F. Kennedy, 1962

>><<

Source: http://www.truth-out.org/peace-crimes62612

Peace Crimes

Sunday 12 September 2010

by: Diane Lefer, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Hector Aristizábal lay on a table in Medellin, Colombia, his head covered with a black cloth. Twenty-eight years had passed since he was taken from his home by the US-trained military, secretly detained and tortured. Now, he had returned to his birthplace after years in exile in the US to spend a month working with peace and justice groups, and this night he was not in custody, but on stage. “Nightwind,” the play we created in 2004 about his experience and his brother’s abduction, torture and murder by a death squad, has toured the US and the world, including Afghanistan, to raise global opposition to the practice of torture. Performing it for the first time in Medellin, the city where the atrocities took place, Hector was nervous. He worried about the effect on the audience, people who had experienced these horrors first hand, but as he lay with his eyes covered, unable to see, he also felt vulnerable and worried for himself. Every day in Colombia, 20 people are disappeared. Massacres continue, as do right-wing paramilitary links to the Army and to high government officials and to the cocaine trade. Anyone could be in the audience – members of the military or paramilitary, that go on killing with impunity, and any one of them might decide, “This guy thinks he’s going to survive again. Not this time. Let’s finish the job.” Hector believed for the moment he was going to die.

While Hector was sweating it out on stage, I was back in Los Angeles and I was worried, too, because I was reading the text of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, in which the Supreme Court on June 24 decided that training people in nonviolent conflict resolution and international human rights law can lead to 15 years in a federal prison for providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

The case was brought because retired administrative law Judge Ralph Fertig wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be prosecuted under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and the later provisions of the Patriot Act for continuing his longstanding work in nonviolence with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and in helping that group prepare a case to bring to the United Nations. The Carter Center joined with an amicus brief as much of Jimmy Carter’s work in monitoring elections and entering conflict zones could be ruled criminal. Court after court agreed Judge Fertig’s work was legitimate and protected, but the Obama administration appealed, with Elena Kagan (then solicitor general) offering the argument. The Roberts court once more managed to ignore the Constitution and at the same time overreach. According to Judge Fertig, who spoke to the American Civil Liberties Union in Santa Monica in July, the chief justice chastised Kagan for not arguing the case strenuously enough. The decision went even further than the government’s argument sought in its chilling effect on free association and speech.

In Medellin, I guess it is material support for terrorism when to enter the poorest, most marginalized neighborhoods bus drivers and taxi drivers are forced to pay a “vacuna” – vaccination against getting killed – to the illegal paramilitaries who seek to control who gets in and who gets out alive. Thanks to the Supreme Court, zones where peacemaking is most needed are now off limits. As Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrant rights and national security for the ACLU of Southern California, has pointed out, if the decision in Holder v. HLP had come down in 2004, the provision of disaster relief to tsunami-devastated civilians in the Tamil Tiger-controlled region of Sri Lanka would have been a crime.

I sat with the decision in my hands and thought about Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who intends to introduce a legislative fix, and will no doubt endure a continuation of the personal attacks on him and his Muslim faith.

I thought a good argument can be made (by me, not by the Roberts court) that the US government’s real fear is not of terrorists, but of the “interference” of citizen diplomacy and humanitarian NGOs that provide alternatives to the default military response in conflict zones.

I thought that, as a US taxpayer, I’ve provided material support to state-sponsored terrorism and torture.

I thought of the “Nightwind” performance and discussion Hector and I offered in Los Angeles at a mosque that has been under attack because it was built with Saudi support, and two of the 9/11 hijackers at one time worshiped there. Were there any radical Islamists present? I doubt it, but I rather hope so. What a perfect audience for us to reach with a play that shows a torture survivor ultimately refusing the option of violence.

I thought of the work Hector has done on the West Bank to bring Israeli rabbinical students and Palestinian activists together. Did he first screen the participants to make sure there was no link to Hamas? I don’t think so.

I thought about how tired I am of hearing the Palestinian people blamed for not having produced a Martin Luther King Jr. or a Gandhi. In 1983, clinical psychologist Mubarak Awad established the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence. Five years later, when his work training people in the philosophy and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience was having an effect and showing success, an alarmed Israeli government had him deported from the occupied territories.

Meanwhile, in Medellin, the performance continued as Hector carried the audience with him through his pain, his desire for violent revenge and his transformation of that passion and energy into the commitment to work peacefully for justice.

The performance ended, but not the experience. Trained as a psychologist as well as an actor and director, Hector had audience members join him in a workshop he designed to allow them to express their emotions and release pain. People cried, screamed, remembered friends and family members who had been killed or disappeared.

“We need this,” said one of the event organizers. “All of us need healing but the programs we have here now bring together paramilitaries (from the AUC, designated by the US a foreign terrorist organization) and guerrillas (including from the FARC, designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization) and we ask people to tell their terrible stories. Then everyone goes home devastated. They go home alone.”

If you reopen the wound, you have to offer medicine. We want to return to Colombia next year to offer medicine, but if we do that, are we facing criminal prosecution when we return home?

As Hector says in our book, “The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism and Transformation,” “I like to think the work I do now is preparing me to go back to Colombia one day and sit in the same room with a worker, a peasant, a military person whose institution tortured me, a paramilitary like the ones who killed my brother, a guerrilla who would probably want to kill me because of how I criticized his movement and a CEO from a big company that I’ve called evil and we will talk about how we can all work together to rebuild our country.” I guess that makes Hector a terrorist.

I guess governments have figured out it’s easy to justify violence against a violent opponent and a terrorist is, therefore, the preferred adversary. Especially when the terrorist is the nonperson we must treat as radioactive and never talk to.

To governments like our own in thrall to the military-industrial complex and the illusion of military victory and the desire for top-down control, there’s only one reason nonviolent mass movements pose a threat: They work.

Diane Lefer is an author, playwright and activist whose books include “The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism and Transformation” (Lantern Books, 2010), co-authored with Colombian exile Hector Aristizábal and the short-story collection “California Transit” (Sarabande Books, 2007), which received the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. She is a frequent contributor of articles to LA Progressive.

August 31, 2010

Wolfowitz urges the U.S. to prolong its occupation of Iraq

Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, an arch Neoliberal hawk, argues that the U.S. should leave permanent troops in Iraq, a never-ending occupation along the lines of the “Korea model”. Such is the arrogance of Empire.

>><<

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31wolfowitz.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1283249016-edrlxMSEGOv9L9WYqT8Zqw#

Op-Ed Contributor

In Korea, a Model for Iraq

By PAUL D. WOLFOWITZ

Published: August 30, 2010

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN, who traveled to Iraq this week to mark the formal end of United States combat operations there, has claimed that peace and stability there could be “one of the great achievements” of the Obama administration. Of course, the largest share of credit belongs to the brave men and women of the American military, who have sacrificed so much and persevered through so much difficulty. Credit also goes to the Iraqi Army and police forces who have fought bravely and increasingly well, and to Iraq’s people, who have borne a heavy burden. But it is good that President Obama and his administration also claim credit, because success in Iraq will need their support.

My hope is that the president understands that success in Iraq will be defined not by what we withdraw, but by what we leave behind. At a minimum, we need Iraq to be a stable country, at peace both within its borders and with its neighbors. And we should help Iraq to one day become a leader of political and economic progress in the Middle East.

The aftermath of another American war is instructive. Fifty-seven years ago, an armistice ended the fighting in Korea — another unpopular conflict, far bloodier than the Iraq war, although shorter. Civilian casualties were horrendous, and the United States and its allies suffered more than half a million military casualties. The South Korean Army took the heaviest losses, but the United States also paid a high price: 33,739 killed or missing in battle and 103,284 wounded.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election, in part, on a promise to end the war. According to a poll taken in April 1953, three months before the armistice was signed, 55 percent of the American public thought the war had not been worth fighting, whereas only 36 percent thought that it had.

Yet when the war was over, the United States did not abandon South Korea. We had done so in 1949, when our post-World War II occupation of Korea ended, opening the door to North Korea’s invasion the following year. This time, instead, we kept a substantial military force in South Korea.

The United States stuck with South Korea even though the country was then ruled by a dictator and the prospects for its war-devastated economy looked dim. With all its failings, South Korea was nevertheless a haven of freedom compared with the bleak and brutal despotism of North Korea.

We also understood that stability on the Korean Peninsula was critical for the peace of an entire region — a region that involved Japan as well as the Soviet Union and China. Most important, abandoning South Korea would have risked squandering all that had been gained.

Although South Korea has assumed the principal responsibility for its own defense, there are still 28,500 American troops on the peninsula. Our continued commitment prevented another war and today South Korea is a remarkable economic success story. A series of democratic elections, starting in 1987, have made it a political success story as well.

Some similar considerations apply to Iraq today. First, Iraq occupies a key position in the Persian Gulf, a strategically important region of the world — a position that is all the more important because of the dangerous ambitions of Iran’s rulers.

Second, whatever the failings of Iraq’s democracy, it bears no comparison to the regime that other hostile elements would impose. With all its imperfections, Iraq today is more democratic than South Korea was at the end of the Korean War, and more democratic than any other country in the Arab Middle East (with the possible exception of Lebanon).

We have withdrawn so many of our troops and relinquished a combat role because Iraqi security forces have been able to take on most of the security burden. Their numbers have grown from about 320,000 in December 2006 to more than 600,000 at the end of last year; they are also becoming more capable.

Of course, numbers are only part of the story, and Iraqi security forces still need assistance from the American military. Not surprisingly, the enemy has increasingly focused its attacks on Iraqi soldiers and police officers as the United States withdraws, although Iraqi losses are still far below what they were earlier in the war. Since June 2003, about 10,000 Iraqi security forces have been killed, twice the total of the United States and the entire international coalition.

Even as our combat commitment ends, our commitment to supporting Iraq must continue. That means continued political support, including offering our help in resolving the current stalemate over forming a government. (It’s worth remembering that much of the difficulty the Iraqis are encountering arises from a Constitution and electoral system that the international community helped design. Moreover, this example of peaceful negotiations to create a government is something new in the Arab world.)

Our commitment must also include continued material support, particularly in the form of military and technical assistance. And though we have agreed to withdraw all our troops by the end of next year — a pledge that we must honor if the Iraqi government so desires — we need to remain open to the possibility of a mutually agreed longer-term security commitment or military presence for deterrence and support.

It is well worth celebrating the end of combat operations after seven years, and the homecoming of so many troops. But fully abandoning Iraq would damage the interests of the United States in the region and beyond. Maintaining a long-term commitment, albeit at greatly reduced cost and risk, is the best way to secure the gains that have been achieved with so much sacrifice.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was the deputy secretary of defense from 2001 to 2005.

June 9, 2010

Democracy Now!: Johan Galtung on “The Fall of the US Empire”

Democracy Now! features Johan Galtung on “The Fall of the US Empire”

The amount of money the United States has spent on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq surpassed the $1 trillion mark last week, according to the National Priorities Project Cost of War counter. To date, over $747 billion has been appropriated for the war in Iraq and $299 billion for the war in Afghanistan. The US is spending over $136 billion on the wars this year. I’m joined now by Johan Galtung, who has spent the past half-century pursuing nonviolent conflict resolution in international relations. He’s known as a founder of the field of peace and conflict studies.

Is the U.S. miscalculating China?

This Washington Post article describes how the Obama’s administration’s dismissive attitude towards “outbursts” by top Chinese officials may be a miscalculation of the real widely held sentiment of Chinese leadership. Not good, especially if the U.S. keeps provoking China with arms sales to Taiwan and an tightening noose of military bases.

>><<

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/07/AR2010060704762_pf.html

In Chinese admiral’s outburst, a lingering distrust of U.S.

By John Pomfret

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, June 8, 2010; A10

BEIJING

On May 24 in a vast meeting room inside the grounds of the state guesthouse at Diaoyutai in Beijing, Rear Adm. Guan Youfei of the People’s Liberation Army rose to speak.

Known among U.S. officials as a senior “barbarian handler,” which means that his job is to deal with foreigners, not lead troops, Guan faced about 65 American officials, part of the biggest delegation the U.S. government has ever sent to China.

Everything, Guan said, that is going right in U.S. relations with China is because of China. Everything, he continued, that is going wrong is the fault of the United States. Guan accused the United States of being a “hegemon” and of plotting to encircle China with strategic alliances. The official saved the bulk of his bile for U.S. arms sales to China’s nemesis, Taiwan — Guan said these prove that the United States views China as an enemy.

U.S. officials have since depicted Guan’s three-minute jeremiad as an anomaly. A senior U.S. official traveling on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s plane back to the United States dismissed it, saying it was “out of step” with the rest of the two-day Strategic and Economic Dialogue. And last week in Singapore, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates sought to portray not just Guan, but the whole of the People’s Liberation Army, as an outlier intent on blocking better ties with Washington while the rest of China’s government moves ahead.

But interviews in China with a wide range of experts, Chinese officials and military officers indicate that Guan’s rant — for all its discomfiting bluster — actually represents the mainstream views of the Chinese Communist Party, and that perhaps the real outliers might be those in China’s government who want to side with the United States.

Guan’s speech underscored that 31 years after the United States and China normalized relations, there remains a deep distrust in Beijing. That the United States is trying to keep China down is a central part of the party’s catechism and a foundation of its claims to legitimacy.

More broadly, many Chinese security experts and officials view the Obama administration’s policy of encouraging Chinese participation in solving the world’s problems — including climate change, the global financial crisis and the security challenges in Iran and North Korea — not as attempts to elevate China into the ranks of global leadership but rather as a scheme to enmesh it in a paralyzing web of commitments.

“Admiral Guan was representing what all of us think about the United States in our hearts,” a senior Chinese official, who deals with the United States regularly, said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with a reporter. “It may not have been politically correct, but it wasn’t an accident.”

“It’s silly to talk about factions when it comes to relations with the United States,” said a general in the PLA who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The army follows the party. Do you really think that Guan did this unilaterally?”

China’s fear of the United States was very much on display this past weekend during the Shangri-La Dialogue, where Gates and his Chinese counterparts clashed repeatedly throughout the program.

Gates said it was unnecessary for the PLA to hold the military relationship hostage because U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are, “quite frankly, old news.” The United States has provided military assistance to Taiwan since 1949, when the Nationalist government of China fled to the island after the Communist victory on the mainland; this assistance did not stop when Washington normalized relations with Beijing in 1979.

“You, the Americans, are taking China as the enemy,” countered Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu. Zhu rose to prominence in China in 2005 after he warned that if the United States came to Taiwan’s defense in a war with China, Beijing would abandon its “no first use” doctrine on nuclear weapons and attack the United States.

In January, Washington announced a $6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan, prompting China to downgrade its military ties with the United States. China’s stance on the issue is part of a concerted campaign to change a foundation of U.S. policy in the region — its security relationship with Taiwan. At the very least, Chinese officials said, they want the Obama administration to reiterate a commitment it made in a joint communique with China in 1982 to decrease arms sales to Taiwan.

The U.S. framing of Guan’s speech and the entire PLA as being out of step with the times is significant, analysts said, because the Obama administration could fall into a trap of expecting more from China than it can deliver. On the plane back to the United States, for example, U.S. officials predicted that despite Guan’s outburst, China would welcome Gates and that it would also begin to side with South Korea against North Korea following the release of a report in Seoul implicating the regime of Kim Jong Il in the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship on March 26. China did neither, and interviews with PLA officers indicate that the military is highly suspicious of the South Korean report.

U.S. officials have also expressed the hope that China would work harder to press Iran, for example, to engage in talks on its nuclear weapons program. The United States also wants China’s cooperation on slapping new sanctions on Tehran. China has shown more flexibility on this issue, but it is still unclear whether it will ultimately support sanctions.

Chinese analysts say the Obama administration ignores what China calls its “core national interests” — especially U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan — at its peril.

“For years, China has opposed arms sales to Taiwan among other things, but we were never strong enough to do anything about it,” said Cui Liru, the president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank run by the Ministry of State Security. “But our national strength has grown. And it is time that the United States pay attention.”

“This is not just a talking point that can be dismissed by your government,” he continued. “It is something that must be dealt with or it will seriously damage ties.”

June 8, 2010

Washington Post: Obama expands ‘secret war’ globally

President Obama is using more “extraterritorial” and “extralegal” tactics than Bush in the U.S. global and permanent state of imperial warfare. The following article from the Washington Post describes how the Obama Administration has expanded the use of special forces to conduct covert operations in 75 countries, up from 60 countries the year before. The U.S. is conducting illegal warfare in other countries without formal declarations of war or UN approval. Many civilians are killed in these long distance drone assassinations.

>><<

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304965_pf.html

U.S. ‘secret war’ expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role

By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, June 4, 2010; A01

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using “secret” forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed “things that the previous administration did not.”

‘More access’

Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush’s administration, when most briefings on potential future operations were run through the Pentagon chain of command and were conducted by the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We have a lot more access,” a second military official said. “They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly.”

The White House, he said, is “asking for ideas and plans . . . calling us in and saying, ‘Tell me what you can do. Tell me how you do these things.’ ”

The Special Operations capabilities requested by the White House go beyond unilateral strikes and include the training of local counterterrorism forces and joint operations with them. In Yemen, for example, “we are doing all three,” the official said. Officials who spoke about the increased operations were not authorized to discuss them on the record.

The clearest public description of the secret-war aspects of the doctrine came from White House counterterrorism director John O. Brennan. He said last week that the United States “will not merely respond after the fact” of a terrorist attack but will “take the fight to al-Qaeda and its extremist affiliates whether they plot and train in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond.”

That rhetoric is not much different than Bush’s pledge to “take the battle to the enemy . . . and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” The elite Special Operations units, drawn from all four branches of the armed forces, became a frontline counterterrorism weapon for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But Obama has made such forces a far more integrated part of his global security strategy. He has asked for a 5.7 percent increase in the Special Operations budget for fiscal 2011, for a total of $6.3 billion, plus an additional $3.5 billion in 2010 contingency funding.

Bush-era clashes between the Defense and State departments over Special Operations deployments have all but ceased. Former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saw them as an independent force, approving in some countries Special Operations intelligence-gathering missions that were so secret that the U.S. ambassador was not told they were underway. But the close relationship between Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is said to have smoothed out the process.

“In some places, we are quite obvious in our presence,” Adm. Eric T. Olson, head of the Special Operations Command, said in a speech. “In some places, in deference to host-country sensitivities, we are lower in profile. In every place, Special Operations forces activities are coordinated with the U.S. ambassador and are under the operational control of the four-star regional commander.”

Chains of command

Gen. David H. Petraeus at the Central Command and others were ordered by the Joint Staff under Bush to develop plans to use Special Operations forces for intelligence collection and other counterterrorism efforts, and were given the authority to issue direct orders to them. But those orders were formalized only last year, including in a CENTCOM directive outlining operations throughout South Asia, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

The order, whose existence was first reported by the New York Times, includes intelligence collection in Iran, although it is unclear whether Special Operations forces are active there.

The Tampa-based Special Operations Command is not entirely happy with its subordination to regional commanders and, in Afghanistan and Iraq, to theater commanders. Special Operations troops within Afghanistan had their own chain of command until early this year, when they were brought under the unified direction of the overall U.S. and NATO commander there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, and his operational deputy, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez.

“Everybody working in CENTCOM works for Dave Petraeus,” a military official said. “Our issue is that we believe our theater forces should be under a Special Operations theater commander, instead of . . . Rodriguez, who is a conventional [forces] guy who doesn’t know how to do what we do.”

Special Operations troops train for years in foreign cultures and language, and consider themselves a breed apart from what they call “general purpose forces.” Special Operations troops sometimes bridle at ambassadorial authority to “control who comes in and out of their country,” the official said. Operations have also been hindered in Pakistan — where Special Operations trainers hope to nearly triple their current deployment to 300 — by that government’s delay in issuing the visas.

Although pleased with their expanded numbers and funding, Special Operations commanders would like to devote more of their force to global missions outside war zones. Of about 13,000 Special Operations forces deployed overseas, about 9,000 are evenly divided between Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Eighty percent of our investment is now in resolving current conflicts, not in building capabilities with partners to avoid future ones,” one official said.

Questions remain

The force has also chafed at the cumbersome process under which the president or his designee, usually Gates, must authorize its use of lethal force outside war zones. Although the CIA has the authority to designate targets and launch lethal missiles in Pakistan’s western tribal areas, attacks such as last year’s in Somalia and Yemen require civilian approval.

The United Nations, in a report this week, questioned the administration’s authority under international law to conduct such raids, particularly when they kill innocent civilians. One possible legal justification — the permission of the country in question — is complicated in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, where the governments privately agree but do not publicly acknowledge approving the attacks.

Former Bush officials, still smarting from accusations that their administration overextended the president’s authority to conduct lethal activities around the world at will, have asked similar questions. “While they seem to be expanding their operations both in terms of extraterritoriality and aggressiveness, they are contracting the legal authority upon which those expanding actions are based,” said John B. Bellinger III, a senior legal adviser in both of Bush’s administrations.

The Obama administration has rejected the constitutional executive authority claimed by Bush and has based its lethal operations on the authority Congress gave the president in 2001 to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” he determines “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the Sept. 11 attacks.

Many of those currently being targeted, Bellinger said, “particularly in places outside Afghanistan,” had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks.

June 8, 2010

How does Rajin-Sonbong factor into the Cheonan-sinking controversy?

The Statehood Hawaii blog has posted analysis of the sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan in the context of the U.S. military expansion in the Pacific and suggests other factors that may be driving the concerted “official story” blaming North Korea that has been pedaled by the U.S., South Korea and Japan:

One other factor that none of the sites covering the sinking of the Cheonan mentions, is why the governments of South Korea, Japan and the U.S. is aligned and cooperating with this scenario.

Consider Rajin-Sonbong (Rason)

North Korea, China and Russia share borders and are separated by the Tumen river. The waters near Najin and Rajin, in the Sea of Japan, is an ideal waterway for the development of a state-of-the-art port. the waters near Najin are deep and do not freeze, directional currents allow for ships to move resources down towards the manufacturing corridor along the Eastern China Sea more quickly than with rail. This port development gives the DPRK trade opportunities that could potentially help lift North Korea from poverty, a result of imposed economic sanctions.

China who had previously signed a lease agreement with North Korea, receives a huge advantage for furthering its manufacturing base, and is renewing its contract over the 1st port at Najin for another 10 years. As China watchers have pointed out, this agreement gives China access to the Sea of Japan for the first time in over a hundred years and this has also given rise to unfounded concerns that China might use this base for military purposes.

After NATO Summit, U.S. To Intensify Military Drive Into Asia

A Peace Movement Victory in Court

Peace Crimes

In Korea, a Model for Iraq

With Rumored Manhunt for Wikileaks Founder and Arrest of Alleged Leaker of Video Showing Iraq Killings, Obama Admin Escalates Crackdown on Whistleblowers of Classified Information

In Chinese admiral’s outburst, a lingering distrust of U.S.

U.S. ‘secret war’ expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role