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There Is Nothing Brave About Murdering Innocents by Remote Control

14 Jul

By Glenn Greenwald

Whatever one thinks of the justifiability of drone attacks, it’s one of the least “brave” or courageous modes of warfare ever invented.

The effort to depict drone warfare as some sort of courageous and noble act is intensifying:

The Pentagon is considering awarding a Distinguished Warfare Medal to drone pilots who work on military bases often far removed from the battlefield.

[Army Institute of Heraldry chief Charles] Mugno said most combat decorations require “boots on the ground” in a combat zone, but he noted that “emerging technologies” such as drones and cyber combat missions are now handled by troops far removed from combat.

The Pentagon has not formally endorsed the medal, but Mugno’s institute has completed six alternate designs for commission approval. . . .

The proposed medal would rank between the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Soldier’s Medal for exceptional conduct outside a combat zone.

So medals would be awarded for sitting safely ensconced in a bunker on U.S. soil and launching bombs with a video joystick at human beings thousands of miles away. Justifying drone warfare requires pretending that the act entails some sort of bravery, so the U.S. military is increasingly taking steps to create the facade of warrior courage for drone pilots:

The Air Force has been working to bridge the divide between these two groups of fliers. First off, drone operators are called pilots, and they wear the same green flight suits as fighter pilots, even though they never get in a plane. Their operating stations look like dashboards in a cockpit.

And drone pilots themselves are propagating boasts of their own bravery more and more:

Luther (Trey) Turner III, a retired colonel who flew combat missions during the gulf war before he switched to flying Predators in 2003, said that he doesn’t view his combat experience flying drones as “valorous.” “My understanding of the term is that you are faced with danger. And, when I am sitting in a ground-control station thousands of miles away from the battlefield, that’s just not the case.” But, he said, “I firmly believe it takes bravery to fly a U.A.V.” — unmanned aerial vehicle — “particularly when you’re called upon to take someone’s life. In some cases, you are watching it play out live and in color.” As more than one pilot at Holloman told me, a bit defensively, “We’re not just playing video games here.”

Whatever one thinks of the justifiability of drone attacks, it’s one of the least “brave” or courageous modes of warfare ever invented. It’s one thing to call it just, but to pretend it’s “brave” is Orwellian in the extreme. Indeed, the whole point of it is to allow large numbers of human beings to be killed without the slightest physical risk to those doing the killing. Killing while sheltering yourself from all risk is the definitional opposite of bravery.

This is why the rapid proliferation of drones, beyond their own ethical and legal quandaries, makes violence and aggression so much easier (and cheaper) to perpetrate and therefore so much more likely. In the New York Times today, Thomas Ricks, echoing Gen. Stanely McChrystal, calls for the re-instatement of real conscription because subjecting all of the nation to the risks of combat is the only way to finally restrain America’s posture of Endless War (“having a draft might, as General McChrystal said, make Americans think more carefully before going to war”); conversely, cost-free, risk-free drone warfare does the opposite. If the mere act of taking steps that will result in the death of others makes one “brave,” consider all the killers who now merit that term: dictators who order protesters executed, tyrants who send others off to war, prison guards who activate electric chairs.

As for the claim that drone “pilots” are not engaged in the extinguishing of human life via video games, the military’s own term for its drone kills — “bug splat,” which happens to be the name of a children’s video game — and other evidence negates that. From Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone:

At first, many pilots resisted the advance of drones, viewing them as nothing but a robotic replacement for highly trained fighter jocks. . . . Now, given the high profile and future prospects of drones, pilots are lining up to operate them, volunteering for an intensive, one-year training course that includes simulated missions. “There is more enthusiasm for the job,” says Lt. Gen. David Deptula, a fighter pilot who ran the Air Force’s surveillance drone program until 2010. “Many pilots are excited about operating these things.”

For a new generation of young guns, the experience of piloting a drone is not unlike the video games they grew up on. Unlike traditional pilots, who physically fly their payloads to a target, drone operators kill at the touch of a button, without ever leaving their base – a remove that only serves to further desensitize the taking of human life. (The military slang for a man killed by a drone strike is “bug splat,” since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.)

As drone pilot Lt. Col. Matt Martin recounts in his book Predator, operating a drone is “almost like playing the computer game Civilization“ – something straight out of “a sci-fi novel.” After one mission, in which he navigated a drone to target a technical college being occupied by insurgents in Iraq, Martin felt “electrified” and “adrenalized,” exulting that “we had shot the technical college full of holes, destroying large portions of it and killing only God knew how many people.“ Only later did the reality of what he had done sink in. “I had yet to realize the horror,” Martin recalls.

Human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson recently recounted numerous cases of horrifying civilian deaths involving Pakistani teenagers whose lives were ended by drones, and she observed that “this PlayStation warfare is only risk-free for operators of these remote-controlled killers.” She added that the use of the term “bug splat” for drone victims “is deliberately employed as a psychological tactic to dehumanise targets so operatives overcome their inhibition to kill; and so the public remains apathetic and unmoved to act,” and that “the phrase has far more sinister origins and historical use: In dehumanising their Pakistani targets, the US resorts to Nazi semantics. Their targets are not just computer game-like targets, but pesky or harmful bugs that must be killed.”

I don’t doubt that some drone attackers experience some psychological stress from knowing that they are eradicating human beings with their joysticks and red buttons (though if it’s only “bugs” who are being splattered, why would the stress be particularly burdensome?). But that stress is nothing compared to the terror routinely imposed on the populations in numerous Muslim countries who are being targeted with these attacks. And whatever else is true, drone warfare is already so exceedingly cheap and easy that the temptation to use it regularly is virtually irresistible. Collectively venerating it as an act of “bravery” (of all things), deserving of war medals, is only likely to shield it even further from critical scrutiny and challenge.

Source

Deadly Drone Strike on Muslims in the Southern Philippines

28 Jun



Marking the first time the weapon has been used in Southeast Asia

Early last month, Tausug villagers on the Southern Philippine island of Jolo heard a buzzing sound not heard before. It is a sound familiar to the people of Waziristan who live along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, where the United States fights the Taliban. It was the dreaded drone, which arrives from distant and unknown destinations to cause death and destruction. Within minutes, 15 people lay dead and a community plunged into despair, fear and mourning.

Just as in Pakistan and other theatres of the “war on terror”, the strike has provoked controversy, with a Filipino lawmaker condemning the attack as a violation of national sovereignty.

This controversy could increase with the recent American announcement that it plans to boost its drone fleet in the Philippines by 30 per cent. The U.S. already has hundreds of troops stationed on Jolo Island, but until now, the Americans have maintained a non-combat “advisory” role.

A great example of using the war on terrorism to get us in the door:

Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States became involved in the region in pursuit of the elusive Abu Sayyaf, which it accused of having links with al-Qaeda.

Source

U.S. Navy’s Pacific Presence to Expand, Panetta Says

2 Jun

U.S. naval power in the Pacific will increase as the Pentagon rebalances American forces toward the Asia-Pacific region, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in Singapore while calling on countries to beef up their capacity.

By 2020, the “Navy will re-posture its forces from today’s roughly 50/50 percent split between the Pacific and the Atlantic to about a 60/40 split between those oceans — including six aircraft carriers, a majority of our cruisers, destroyers, Littoral Combat Ships, and submarines,” Panetta said today at the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Panetta is using his first visit to the annual Asian security conference to elaborate on the U.S. military’s revamped global strategy laid out in January. Pentagon officials have billed the approach as an effort to focus more attention on a region where China’s growing economic and military power is causing friction with its neighbors.

Countries in the region must develop their own military capacities as well as create rules to deal with territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Panetta said.

Panetta is trying to show support for allies in the region without encouraging them to be reckless in dealings with China, said Bonnie Glaser, an Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Panetta, more than any other U.S. official, has made it clear “we want the countries in the region to have the capability to defend themselves and not take for granted or rely on the U.S. to come and put out fires when there’s a problem,” Glaser said in an interview in Singapore.

Oil Reserves

Disagreements and clashes in the South China Sea have been building since 2009, according to “Stirring Up the South China Sea,” a report published in April by Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

Oil reserves in the South China Sea may be as much as 213 billion barrels, according to Chinese studies cited in 2008 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In the most recent incident, China and the Philippines have been in a standoff since April over the Scarborough Reef in the South China Sea, which is claimed by both countries.

The U.S. opposes coercion, provocation and the use of force to settle such disputes by either country and has told both China and the Philippines — a U.S. treaty ally — that they must resolve the matter peacefully under international law, Panetta said today.

Geographic Distribution

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea may be the best mechanism to resolve such disputes, according to the Congressional Research Service. The U.S. hasn’t ratified its participation in the convention. Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the U.S. Senate to do so in testimony last month.

The U.S. will increase the size and scope of military exercises in the region and expand port visits by Navy ships, Panetta said today. In 2011, the U.S. Pacific Command participated in 172 multilateral and bilateral exercises with 24 countries in the region, according to Panetta’s spokesman Carl Woog.

U.S. Navy warships as well as cargo and hospital ships attached to the Pacific Command made approximately 700 port visits during 2011, according to Captain Lydia Robertson, a command spokeswoman.

Panetta didn’t say how forces would be deployed across the Pacific from the U.S. West Coast to Guam, Japan and the Indian Ocean. His 60 percent estimate encompassed all ships to be based in Pacific waters, including three aircraft carriers in San Diego; two in Everett, Washington; and one in Yokosuka, Japan, according to Woog.

New Weapons

“The United States will have a significant forward deployed and rotational presence in the Asia-Pacific region,” Woog said in an e-mail. “We continue to work with partners and allies on a geographically distributed fleet in the theater.”

Panetta told his audience in Singapore that the U.S. is investing in new classes of weapons required to operate in the Asia-Pacific region.

He said that key to the strategy are new weapons such as Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that’s capable of evading enemy radar; new Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines built by General Dynamics Corp. (GD), and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc.; “improved precision weapons;” electronic warfare systems; a new Air Force long-range bomber and refueling tankers.

Sino-U.S. Relations

On a trip that will take Panetta from Singapore to Vietnam and India, his Asian counterparts may press him on how the strategy will affect them and what it will mean for U.S.-China relations.

The region’s leaders, such as Singapore’s Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen, have said a lack of clarity about the U.S. strategy risks creating friction if China sees the moves as an attempt to contain its increasing power.

“I reject that view entirely,” Panetta said today of the prospects for a clash with China. The U.S. refocus is “fully compatible with the development and growth of China,” he said.

China can advance prosperity and security in the region by “respecting the rules-based order” that has worked well for six decades, Panetta said.

During a 30-minute question-and-answer session after his speech, Panetta downplayed concerns that the U.S. shift to the Pacific might raise tensions with China. He emphasized a need to boost cooperation on common security challenges such as piracy and disaster relief while noting the “ups and downs” in relations.

`Not Naive’

“We are not naïve about the relationship and neither is China,” Panetta said. “We both understand the conflicts we have, but we also both understand that there really is no other alternative but for both of us to engage and to improve our communications.”

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono yesterday called on the U.S. and China to work together for the benefit of countries throughout Asia.

“With their enormous economic potential, it is natural that many countries want to build good relations with both China and the Unites States,” he said in a speech opening the conference last night. “Both the U.S. and China have an obligation not just to themselves, but to the rest of the region to develop peaceful cooperation.”

The Philippines and Vietnam have expressed alarm as China has confronted them over territorial disputes and oil exploration rights in the South China Sea. China’s neighbors reject its map of the sea as a basis for oil and gas development.

Military Exchanges

The Philippines and the U.S. have stepped up military cooperation and exchanges of high-level visits. Panetta and Clinton met with their Filipino counterparts Voltaire Gazmin and Albert del Rosario in Washington last month.

The U.S. is helping the Philippines draft a long-term military modernization plan that calls for the Pentagon to supply coastal patrol vessels and maritime radar as well as assisting the country in obtaining equipment from U.S. allies in the region, according to U.S. officials who spoke with reporters May 3 on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic matters.

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, will visit the Philippines after attending the security conference in Singapore, Panetta said.

Rotating Troops

The U.S. is moving away from an era of permanent bases it built in Europe after World War II that have proved to be expensive to maintain.

Instead, the Pentagon will seek arrangements for U.S. troops to rotate through the region. Australia already has agreed to host a contingent of Marines at its northern port city of Darwin, and the U.S. is working on “developing the same kind of approach in the Philippines and elsewhere in the region,” Panetta told reporters traveling with him to Singapore.

The U.S. is expanding partnerships with countries including India, Singapore and Indonesia, Panetta said. With current treaty allies such as Japan, the U.S. is stepping up joint military exercises and maritime surveillance missions as well as developing new missile-defense technologies, he said.

As part of the Asia-Pacific strategy the U.S. is trying to determine what combination of military advice, technical assistance and weapons sales will help each country in the region, Panetta told reporters.

Diplomacy, Trade

President Barack Obama’s administration also is pursuing diplomatic and trade measures to strengthen cooperation across the region, Panetta said.

Developing the new classes of weapons and the successful implementation of the Pentagon’s strategy depend on Congress averting budget cuts of about $500 billion over the next 10 years, in addition to the $487 billion in reductions already planned, Panetta told reporters.

The added cuts will take effect in January under a so- called sequestration mechanism, unless Congress and the president agree on an alternative to meet deficit and debt reduction goals.

If additional budget cuts take place, “it’s going to seriously impact our strategy and we may have to throw the strategy out the window,” Panetta said.

Source

Imperialism: A Beginner’s Guide

1 Mar

In waging its resistance to capitalist exploitation abroad, the worker’s movement has heavily involved itself in anti-imperialism in its actions and stances. In resisting this force, it is essential for us to have a coherent and consistent understanding of imperialism. What is it? What are its forms? What brought it about and how are we to resist it?

These questions and more have been engaged in full by the classical theorists of Marxism-Leninism and expounded upon in detail. As such, we at do not pretend that we can summarize every aspect of this phenomena in adequate detail in only one article. Rather, this article is intended as a beginner’s guide to understanding imperialism in general terms.

For more information, it is highly recommended that the reader consult the works of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Enver Hoxha on the topic, as well as other Marxist-Leninists who have engaged the subject of imperialism in our time.

Imperialism: What is it?

To put it simply, imperialism is the highest evolution of the capitalist system beyond the borders of individual nation-states, allowing for the exploitation of workers and material resources trans-nationally.

As capitalists consolidate their institutions and corporations into monopolies, fueling this expanding network of corporate conglomerates through the emergence of a finance industry which gives industrialists additional capital toward these ends, there is increased incentive to exploit material and human resources abroad.

What imperialism does is create a means for powerful capitalists in some countries to expand their empire into others, benefitting from the labor power and raw materials which would otherwise belong to another nation-state utilized for that state’s own industry, leading to drastically higher profits for the imperialists.

Imperialism as Capitalism’s Evolution

Imperialism is an inevitable evolution in a capitalist system. What drives this inevitability is the profit motive itself. Where the technology allows for the potential for reaping profits outside of the confines of national and state boundaries, where the need arises for commodities, for means of production and labor resources outside of the immediate surroundings of capitalists in their own country, the incentive to push beyond exists.

As well, the existence of other imperialist powers works to encourage increasingly colonialist attitudes towards those countries that already exist in a subservient position to imperialist powers. Why sit idly by when there is a profit to be made, and why sit on their hands when their rivals might take the opportunity sooner?

Imperialist War & Transnational Exploitation

This drive for colonies and client states has been a major motivation for war in post-feudal society. The early 20th century saw much in the way of imperialist competition over colonies and protectorates in Africa, Asia and Latin America by Germany, Great Britain, France, and other European countries.

It was in this context that the first genocides of the 20th century, those perpetrated by Germany against the Herero and Nama peoples, took place and set precedents for later genocides which would take place in that century. The drive for profits and power lead the leading capitalists to pour their funds into colonialist projects reaching over much of the face of the earth.

The United States played its part in the imperialist blood-letting as well, committing troops to the Philippines in 1899 as well as utilizing the opportunities presented in World War I and World War 2 to expand its influence into Europe and elsewhere. Nationalism and Racism: Imperialism’s fig-leaves

In order to get their populations to go along with bloody acts of imperialism, nationalism and notions of racial superiority have been implemented to justify the domination of other peoples. In 1899, the same year as the United States began its involvement in the colonial domination of the Philipines, Rudyard Kipling published a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden.” While there are those intellectuals who will defend Kipling for writing this as satire, the essential message of the poem is that imperialism is a positive mechanism for raising up backward and “savage” peoples. He writes:

 

Take up the White Man’s burden–

In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain

To seek another’s profit,

And work another’s gain.

 

Take up the White Man’s burden–

The savage wars of peace–

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hopes to nought.

 

 

This argument, that imperialism endeavors to colonize peoples “for their own good” and is necessary to raise people up from “backwardness” has been used in many an imperialist war. In the United States, as an emerging bourgeois state was trying to capture land and mineral resources from lands occupied by indigenous peoples, the massacre of Native peoples in the process of manifest destiny was made out to be, in part, a means of “taming the wild man.” What followed after decades of massacre, the indoctrination and abuse of children through boarding schools, theft of land and betrayal of treaties was not an “uplifting” of native peoples, but their destruction. Now, as imperialism suggests war as a means of “spreading democracy” in “backward regions of the globe,” one must heed the lesson that imperialism is not about helping the colonized, lest that “help” be helping them into a shallow grave.

National Liberation

In their defense against the bloody threat posed by imperialism, the workers and colonized peoples of the world have taken up one principle weapon to defending their lives, livelihoods and homelands from invasion and colonization. That force is national liberation, which comes as the result of a nation’s people organizing and fighting on behalf of their national sovereignty and independence from imperialist powers. It is national liberation movements that pose the greatest means of defense for peoples facing imperialist domination. When these movements continually exert pressure on invaders, from protests and strikes to taking up arms against their armies, national liberation movements sap energy from imperialist forces and make their occupations increasingly more costly. From the Eastern Front in World War II to decolonization in Africa and Asia, from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan to Palistine and elsewhere, national liberation struggles have fought to throw off the chains of imperialism. While some collaborate and preach reformist non-solutions to the travesty of colonialist violence and conquest, there are those willing to sacrifice their lives for liberation.

 

Internationalism

Imperialism can and must be fought on more fronts than this. Workers of all countries should lend their voices and action to both resisting the implementation of imperialist programs and policies on behalf of their own nation (like, for instance, protesting against the latest imperialist war) and supporting the struggles of those who fight on the front lines against imperialist invasion in their own countries. This force, this solidarity of workers the world over against imperialism and colonialism, is a prime example of internationalism. Internationalism is the consummate thorn in the side of imperialism both in practical and ideological terms. It not only works to resist nationalism and racism, the ideological grease that lubricates imperialism’s gears, but it also brings the battle to imperialism’s doorstep.

We saw such internationalism in the US anti-war movement during Vietnam and see it manifested today in the modern anti-war movement and solidarity work to lend support to movements abroad fighting imperialism. Just as imperialism does everything in its power to break national liberation movements through violence and economic repression (blockades, etc) imperialism also works to battle efforts of solidarity with colonized peoples at home, as we have seen through notorious domestic surveillance programs like COINTELPRO and in the recent raids on peaceful anti-war activists by Obama’s FBI.

Carry on the Struggle against Imperialism!

Imperialism is capitalism’s bloodiest and most hegemonic form. It is the most powerful and sadistic force arrayed against the workers of the world. It is a threat to us all, whether we are a Palestinian family fearing massacre at the hands of Israeli White Phosphorus attacks or an anti-war activist having the jack-boots of state-repression kicking down the door for daring to lend your voice to the cause of national liberation. This force is one that requires all of our work to resist, for there can be no peace nor justice in a world of the dominators and the dominated.

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