Privatization of ‘Obama’s War’

Michael Winship
Consortium News
June 5, 2009

Editor’s Note: President Barack Obama is making some moves on the international chess board – reaching out to the Muslim world, chastising Israel for its harsh treatment of Palestinians and seeking to bring Iran and hard-line Arab states into regional peace talks.

However, even as Obama makes those rhetorical and diplomatic moves, the wars in Iraq and, especially, Afghanistan grind on, with some disturbing similarities to George W. Bush’s approach, writes Michal Winship in this guest essay:

The sudden reappearance of former Vice President Dick Cheney over the last few months – seeming to emerge from his famous undisclosed location more frequently now than he ever did when he was in office – does not mean six more weeks of winter.

But it does bring to mind that classic country and western song, “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?” Or, maybe, “If You Won’t Leave Me, I’ll Find Someone Who Will.”

In his self-appointed role as voice of the opposition, Mr. Cheney has been playing Nostradamus, gloomily predicting doom if the Obama White House continues to set aside Bush administration policy, setting the stage for recrimination and finger-pointing should there be another terrorist attack on America.

Cheney’s grouchy legacy is the gift that keeps on giving. Just this week, The Washington Post reported for the first time that while vice president, Cheney oversaw “at least” four of those briefings given to senior members of Congress about enhanced interrogation techniques; “part of a secretive and forceful defense he mounted throughout 2005 in an effort to maintain support for the harsh techniques used on detainees…

…….full article here

Watching Obama Morph Into Dick Cheney

Paul Craig Roberts
Antiwar.com
May 21, 2009

America has lost her soul, and so has her president.

A despairing country elected a president who promised change. Americans arrived from every state to witness in bitter cold Obama’s swearing-in ceremony. The mall was packed in a way that it has never been for any other president.

The people’s good will toward Obama and the expectations they had for him were sufficient for Obama to end the gratuitous wars and enact major reforms. But Obama has deserted the people for the interests. He is relying on his non-threatening demeanor and rhetoric to convince the people that change is underway.

The change that we are witnessing is in Obama, not in policies. Obama is morphing into Dick Cheney.

Obama has not been in office four months and already a book could be written about his broken promises.

…….full article here

Buying Brand Obama

Chris Hedges
May 3, 2009

Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.

What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to reinflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next 15 to 20 years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, including the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan that have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush’s secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus.

…….full article here

Brown unveils new Afghan strategy

BBC News
April 29, 2009

Gordon Brown has outlined a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying co-ordinated action is needed to tackle terrorist threats there.

Mr Brown said the border area between the two countries was “a breeding ground” for terrorists and provided a direct threat to British security.

A further 700 troops will be sent to Afghanistan for a short period to boost security for elections there in August.

Opposition parties said the UK’s Afghan goals must be more clearly defined.

The Conservatives said its objectives needed to be “hard-headed and realistic”, focused squarely on enhancing security and disrupting terrorist training camps.

The Lib Dems said public support for the UK’s mission in Afghanistan was under strain and economic support was just as important to boosting security as military activity.

…….full article here

Red Cross report details CIA war crimes

Tom eley
WSWS.org
April 9, 2009

This week, the New York Review of Books released the full version of an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report detailing US Central Intelligence Agency torture of 14 “high value” terrorist suspects at prison “black sites” from 2001 until 2006. Earlier, it had produced excerpts of the report and an analysis by author Mark Danner.

The report makes explicit that the CIA violated the laws of war and basic human rights in its treatment of the prisoners, which included beatings, humiliations, sleep deprivation, and suffocation by water (“waterboarding”), among dozens of specifically named acts of brutality.

At several points, the 40-page report refers to CIA actions as illegal according to international law. The ICRC, based in Geneva, Switzerland, is the body tasked with overseeing observance of the laws of war. That it has declared acts carried out by US intelligence personnel as torture carries enormous legal weight.

…….full article here

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US rethinks Afghanistan strategy

BBC News
Mar 27, 2009

US President Barack Obama has confirmed a fundamental rethink of US strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan to combat an “increasingly perilous” situation.

He said growing radical forces in the area posed the greatest threat to the American people and the world.

He said an extra 4,000 US personnel would train and bolster the Afghan army and police, and he would also provide support for civilian development.

Both Pakistan and Afghanistan said they welcomed the new strategy.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said it would strengthen democracy in his country, while the Afghan government said Mr Obama had recognised that the al-Qaeda threat came mainly from Pakistan, and that it was a regional problem.

…….full article here

White House And Pentagon: Change, Continuity And Escalation

Rick Rozoff
Global Research
Mar 19, 2009

Few of his contemporaries and far fewer since knew of the nineteenth century French journalist and novelist Alphonse Karr, but most everyone is familiar with some variant of his quip plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: The more it changes the more it’s the same thing.

Anyone driving the streets of major American cities over the past year or more has seen a bumper sticker that simply read 01-20-2009.

The numbers indicated the date that George W. Bush would leave the White House.

Until last November no one knew who his replacement would be or even with which of the two major political parties he or she would be affiliated; it was enough to anticipate Bush’s departure as an end in itself.

Judging by other bumper stickers that often accompanied this one on a given vehicle, it was assumed that those who so adorned the back of it looked forward to the end of eight years of an aggressive foreign policy, one marked by the war in Iraq and, for anyone who had paid attention to other matters, that in Afghanistan and assorted counterinsurgency and proxy wars such as those in Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines.

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Empire of bases

Hugh Gusterson
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Mar 10, 2009

Before reading this article, try to answer this question: How many military bases does the United States have in other countries: a) 100; b) 300; c) 700; or d) 1,000.

According to the Pentagon’s own list PDF, the answer is around 865, but if you include the new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan it is over a thousand. These thousand bases constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country’s territory. In other words, the United States is to military bases as Heinz is to ketchup.

The old way of doing colonialism, practiced by the Europeans, was to take over entire countries and administer them. But this was clumsy. The United States has pioneered a leaner approach to global empire. As historian Chalmers Johnson says, “America’s version of the colony is the military base.” The United States, says Johnson, has an “empire of bases.”

…….full article here

Obama lays out Afghanistan war strategy

James Cogan
WSWS.org
Mar 11, 2009

The desperation at the heart of the Obama administration’s plans for escalating the war in Afghanistan was laid bare in the president’s interview with the New York Times last Friday.

Asked if the US-led forces were winning the war in Afghanistan, Obama bluntly stated “No”. The answer was the only one that could have been given. The armed insurgency against the US and NATO occupation has vastly expanded over the past several years.

Large areas of the ethnic Pashtun-populated southern provinces of Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan are effectively controlled by the Islamist Taliban movement or other anti-occupation forces such as the Hezb-e-Islami movement of warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The rate of occupation casualties has doubled this year compared with the same period in 2008, with 54 American and NATO dead so far. Attacks on the Afghan government security forces have tripled, according to the US Government Accountability Office. More than 50 Afghan police are being killed by insurgents per month. In many parts of southern Afghanistan, police do not leave their stations.

…….full article here