We are drone-blasting the ever-loving shit out of Yemen. I hope it works, because the alternative is that it doesn’t work, and a bunch of innocent Americans become the victims of a very dubious policy. I don’t know who we’re killing, but the idea must be that we need to do this in order to protect ourselves. I guess that I am just supposed to trust that they’re targeting the right people and not making the problem worse. The thing is, my trust has been worn thin. Very thin.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
“my trust has been worn thin. Very thin.”
I’ll second that. My first thought is “wagging the dog”. Like you, I hope not.
It’s amazing you still possess it.
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As AG so eloquently voices: It started as a comment and grew out into a diary … Drone Strikes Cause Fierce Blowback In Yemen
Some additional information after I posted diary:
What’s interesting is that this “blowback” has not, in a single case, expressed itself in the form of terrorism against the United States.
When the American-born leader of AQAP wanted to bomb an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2011, he had to recruit a Nigerian kid to carry the bomb.
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chinese proverb: “happiness to people with little knowledge”
Are you pretending, or just plain dumb with such comments to my posts. I suppose the evacuation of Embassy officials and US citizens out of Yemen was just a drill for the heck of it? I’m not going to sum up all the attacks originated from or motivated by AQAP. Read the articles yourself, do the work. Just keep flying those drones and Joe will be safe. What a bs.
I’m going to skip over the insecure-sounding assertions of superiority you felt the need to lead off with, and jump right to the substance.
The security precautions taken at American embassies around the world – most certainly not limited to Yemen – generated by the international conference call in which the al Qaeda command in Pakistan was directing actions in multiple locations – is not, in fact, evidence of something specific to Yemen, coming from Yemen, and caused by events in Yemen.
I’m not going to sum up all the attacks originated from or motivated by AQAP.
You mean the organization that was led by an American (until we killed him), and that had to recruit a Nigerian kid in order to carry out an attempted attack on the United States. I’m sure you’re not.
Emotional little thing, aren’t you?
I mean, seriously, how do you manage not to know that the US embassies in 19 separate countries were closed? It’s kinda been in the news, you know.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/04/cairo-middle-east-embassies-consulates/2616209/
Our terrorism is a non martyrdom modern version compared to their conventional strap on a bomb/jet version. This is terrorism.
Meanwhile, our excellent adventure in Iraq? Still not looking too liberated.
Kill one, make two hundred more. I don’t see a positive outcome from that strategy.
So where are they?
When can we expect to see these Iraqi and Afghan terrorists?
Why is it that almost all of the terrorists who have attacked the United States have come from US allies, and almost none of them have come from countries that the US has bombed?
Oh bullshit, Joe. We’ve already had this conversation. Go crawl back under your bridge.
No answer.
That’s what I thought.
Nice little emotional outburst, though. Not generally what you see from someone with a solid case to make.
I, on the other hand, am quite happy to keep talking about the facts in a level-headed manner.
For instance, by pointing out once again that every single one of the 9/11 hijackers came from countries that were US allies, and had never been attacked by the US.
And by pointing out that every person who has ever held the #1 or #2 position in al Qaeda has also come from a US ally that has never been subject to attack by the US.
And by pointing out that Yemenis carried out the USS Cole bombing back before there had ever been US military action taken in Yemen, while the AQAP attempt to bring down a jetliner over Detroit was organized by the American-born commander of AQAP, and carried out by a Nigerian (another US ally).
But don’t let the facts get in your way. You have your narrative and your very strong feelings, and really, that’s all you need.
You know very well what I’m talking about and you’re trying to change the subject. Where do you get all those nicely crafted talking points? From the U$ military, or some reich wing think tank?
Change the subject? I’ve been talking about the same subject the entire thread.
I have no idea what you are talking about, that is any different from I’ve said you’re talking about.
You paranoid kook. Believe it or not, there really are people who disagree with you.
Er. Um. $$$. Sheesh, talk about changing the subject.
But since you asked, my “talking points” about terrorism coming from undemocratic US allies, and not from countries that the US has attacked, is something I have never seen articulated anywhere, by any political pundits, think tanks, political candidates, or government organizations.
It’s something I came up with myself. I started off by noticing where the 9/11 hijackers came from, and looking around for all the information I could about jihadists attacks against the US and al Qaeda figures.
Actual, data-driven, quantitative analysis. Have you ever tried that to see if your “talking points, deep deep” match up with the evidence? Or did you just assume they do, because you checked your gut?
I think we both know the answer to that, don’t we?
Which has nothing to do with my original comment. As you well know.
Although, I have to admit, I misspoke in my comment about going back under your bridge. You’re actually much closer to the original usage of the word troll as it pertains to forums. You need to find some better lures, Joe. And you really need to find a quieter motor.
Stop telling me what I know.
If you can’t articulate your position, don’t put it on me to read your mind.
When you use the term “more” to describe the people “created” by killing al Qaeda operatives, you are describing the creation of more al Qaeda operatives. If that isn’t your intention – if you aren’t trying to express the idea that these drone strikes are creating more al Qaeda operatives – then you need to make your point more clearly.
And no, my arguing a different position from you does not make me a troll. Stop whining about how unfair it is that I argue with you, and do a better job articulating your argument.
Now I remember you, bud: you’re the guy who read my statement that terrorism comes overwhelmingly from countries in which the US is allied with repressive, undemocratic governments and repeated it back to me as “They’re just born evil,” right?
Either you have me confused with someone else, or you’re trying to change the subject again. I don’t believe in “born evil.” I never have.
Whoosh. Right over your head.
Don´t waste your time: Joe is always too pat to admit a chink anywhere in his talk. Perfect perfection.
What value do you think this personal sniping provides to the site?
To the discussion of the issue?
Do you think it accomplishes anything except highlighting that you hold a grudge about something?
What is this “trust” you speak of?
Americans? I think you mean “Yemenis.”
Anyway, the anti-drone outfit Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports zero civilian fatalities from drone strikes in Yemen in July. Let’s hope that remains true through August.
I’m beginning to question the chicken or the egg premise of AQ’s terrorism story. If our military, our drones, hell our State Dept as well as our allies, were to suddenly transport to Mars this afternoon, it would seem likely AQ would add their feathers to the caps of Talibanesque warlords and morph into the darkest side of their ideology. Complete with more terrorism.
How does one fight an enemy that will never stop, never die, is stateless, and thrives in the shadows? I’m pretty sure we’re out of alternatives, trust or not.
Ask the governor of New Jersey or Nevada. I’m very sure that characterization has been made frequently of organized crime, which is what al Quaeda amounts to once you strip away the political and military pretensions.
We are out of military alternatives; in asymmetric warfare, the imperial power is at a disadvantage from the start. It’s why Westmoreland/Petraeus dream of counterterrorism and winning the hearts and minds of the people by using the military to kill people does not work. How many more times do we have to test this seductive magic thinking.
What the US has forgotten is politics that is not cast in the framework of war.
What the US has forgotten is politics that is not cast in the framework of war.
Al Qaeda is not a political foe. Their political agenda is repellent to the vast majority of people in the Muslim world. They are a few thousand adherent to a death cult.
Talking about them as if they were Hezbollah or Hamas – organizations that command the loyalty of millions, against whom we are engaged in an ideological contest for hearts and minds, the way the West and the Soviets fought for the hearts and minds of Europe’s socialists during the early Cold War – attributes to al Qaeda much higher level of respectability than has ever been the case.
In political terms, al Qaeda isn’t the Tea Party; it’s the Manson Family.
Never said al Quaeda was a political foe. Thus my comparison to organized crime in the comment below.
Politics takes care of them where they are. Law enforcement takes care of them when they come onto US soil.
What the US has done by its single-minded military focus on al-Quaeda and related groups is elevate their political standing among folks who are nationalistic or inclined toward political Islam. It has also fanned the flames of domestic islamophobia in the US, which is a political issue.
The Bush administration case what the Clinton had administration had successfully handled through patient law enforcment as an act of war and a clash of civilizations. That was stupid on so many levels. The quicker we reverse that policy the quicker we will be rid of al Quaeda as a threat.
Your last statement is exactly correct and we didn’t drone Los Angeles to get rid of the Manson family.
What the US has forgotten is politics that is not cast in the framework of war.
Never said al Quaeda was a political foe.
What you said was that they were to be fought using political means. This makes them a political foe.
The quicker we reverse that policy the quicker we will be rid of al Quaeda as a threat.
But we have reversed the policy of viewing the conflict with al Qaeda as a clash of civilizations. The Obama administration is operating, contrary to your wishes, as though there is no cultural or political dimension to the war, and that it is fighting an esoteric, extremist cult that is vastly outside of the actual politics and culture of the Middle East.
Your last statement is exactly correct and we didn’t drone Los Angeles to get rid of the Manson family.
And if the LAPD were able to patrol the rural areas of Yemen and arrest people there, we wouldn’t be fighting a drone war there, either. Do you really not see the difference between a city in the United States that is under the legal and effective jurisdiction of American civilian authorities, and an isolated area of a country on the other side of the planet in which even the local government cannot operate on the ground?
“Your last statement is exactly correct and we didn’t drone Los Angeles to get rid of the Manson family.”
If we had a functioning, mostly non-corrupt police force in Yemen able to track down wannabe terror cells, we wouldn’t be using drones. So yes, human intelligence and ground resources are vastly preferable. But if you don’t have it, what do you do?
I don’t know that drones are the answer, but I’m just saying your comparison is inapt.
That was Los Angeles’s problem during the Yorty administration too, and somehow they seemed to find Manson and friends.
It all depends on who’s doing the buying and whether they stay bought.
Well yes, but “our” security agencies and the bloated, wasteful MIC must have an enemy of some sort to justify their terminal sucking at the Treasury’s teat. for several decades it was the “Communist threat” which was mostly horse crap, and that pathetically fell apart when the Berlin wall came down. Imagine the “surprise” when this eventually revealed the Soviet Union was bankrupt–in more ways than one.
after 9/11 the sham was nicely segued to the “Islamic terrorist threat”, comically using more or less the exact same Red Threat propaganda to brig about teh Fear– or apparently now it’s “just trust us, we know who/where the terrorist cells are, but we’re not going to tell you”.
I guess P.T. Barnum was wrong– You can fool all of the people, all of the time.
Weak, very weak.
How does one fight an enemy that will never stop, never die, is stateless, and thrives in the shadows?
It’s a mow-the-lawn problem, not a build-a-bridge problem. We’re never going to completely eliminate al Qaeda, just knock them down. As Panetta said when he took over as SecDef, the goal is to knock them down to the point that they are not a strategic threat to the US, but a threat on the level of an ordinary terrorist organization.
Yes, that was my point, thank you.
The narrative seems to be that there was a high-level encrypted message “conference call” among regional affiliates loyal to Zawahiri at which a new head of al Quaeda Arabian Peninsula was named and which included an affiliate in the Sinai. Not only have there been drone strikes in Yemen, supposedly killing among others 7 Saudis, but there was a report of Israel launching drone strikes on Eid hitting targets in the Sinai. The current Egyptian government is reported both to have authorized and not authorized, known and not known about the Israeli strikes.
Add to this the fact that Zawahiri is an Egyptian and you see either the al Quaeda strategy or the US concern that provoked the drone strikes. And that is the possibility of al Quaeda training camps in Yemen and Sinai, both strategic locations for actions against Egypt.
The ability to target the right people depends on the quality of the intelligence used to identify targets. And that depends on the trustworthiness of humint assets (always sketchy) or information from from the big NSA haystack (lots of false positives and false negatives) or high-resolution drone imagery.
If the Yemeni government is identifying the targets, it can be guaranteed that they are not exclusively al Quaeda but the sort of targets that Saleh used to provide the US.
The idea that we need to do this to protect the US homeland is laughable. IMO this is all about protecting our “allies” in the Middle East from real or imagined threats or internal political opposition even as they betray US interests.
But Yemen is going to want to order its own supply of drones in the near future, and the US will oblige with military aid in the form of a loan good only for purchase of US-made drones.
And that depends on the trustworthiness of humint assets (always sketchy) or information from from the big NSA haystack (lots of false positives and false negatives) or high-resolution drone imagery.
There is more to U.S. “signal intelligence” than the NSA “haystack.” There is also a lot of specifically-targeted gathering going on. If they managed to intercept this conference call, it is much more likely that had a “tap” (or whatever the hell they do these days) on the phone of one or more participants, than that they came across it in the haystack.
If the Yemeni government is identifying the targets, it can be guaranteed that they are not exclusively al Quaeda but the sort of targets that Saleh used to provide the US.
The idea that we need to do this to protect the US homeland is laughable. IMO this is all about protecting our “allies” in the Middle East from real or imagined threats or internal political opposition even as they betray US interests.M
Well, that’s quite a jump. You just went from a purely speculative “if” about how the targets in Yemen were selected, to calling it “laughable” that they weren’t targets identified as relevant to the conference call.
I pointed out that the narrative about the conference call coincided with the start of drone attacks. No one has explicitly stated that there was a connection.
I pointed out the strategic argument for preventing training camps opposite and within Egypt, which is a concern about allies.
I did not assume that the Yemeni government was identifying all targets, just pointed out that their agenda might not be the same as that of the US. And our concern for Yemen as an ally is its location at the entrance to the Red Sea and proximity to the Persian Gulf, two trade chokepoints.
Finally, if it is possible to specifically tap one or more participants, there is no need for the haystack at all. And certainly not a haystack of everybody’s communications.
And I stand by my statement that the idea that drone strikes in Yemen are necessary to protecting the US homeland is laughable.
No one has explicitly stated that there was a connection.
Well, except the President and the entire U.S. military and intelligence apparatus.
I pointed out the strategic argument for preventing training camps opposite and within Egypt, which is a concern about allies.
It’s 2013, and you think the presence of al Qaeda training camps is only a concern about allies?
I did not assume that the Yemeni government was identifying all targets, just pointed out that their agenda might not be the same as that of the US.
Yes, you do. Would you like me to quote your comment back at you? Where you asserted quite certainly that it was “absurd” to think that these strikes were aimed at a threat against the US, instead of against targets picked by the Yemeni government in their effort to fight the rebellion? You just did it AGAIN in the last statement of your comment. It’s clear you’re going to stand by that statement, no matter the facts and logic, even if it requires you to believe to contradictory things, just as long as you can fill in something to get you there.
Finally, if it is possible to specifically tap one or more participants, there is no need for the haystack at all. That makes no sense whatsoever. If one intelligence tool can work in some situation, then there is therefore no purpose in having another one? I guess that, since the FBI can tap gangsters’ phones, there is therefore no point in using street informants as well.
As I understand it, the preservation of records is the real point of the collection of U.S. call records. And the idea is that you can retroactively look at the phone records connected to a number of interest.
So, for example, if you have this conference call, you can look at all the numbers that phoned in, and then you can look at who they called in the U.S. in the past (or, who here called them), and you can use powerful computing to build up networks and understand how cells are organized and hopefully run down any cells that are here in the States.
There’s also a data mining component, where they search for key words, and I don’t know how that works for phone calls, or how they attempt to segregate out domestic calls from international ones.
It’s obviously useful to be able to do this network research, but the safeguards they put on access to this data has been insufficient, to say the least.
It’s obviously useful to be able to do this network research, but the safeguards they put on access to this data has been insufficient, to say the least.
Second that. There was a great diary on DKos about the problem and some potential solutions: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/10/1230254/-How-I-Learned-to-Relax-and-Not-Fear-the-Snowden-or
-the-NSA?detail=hide
I thought the point about network administrations (IT guys) vs. analysts and managers was interesting.
There is an intelligent version of the argument put forward above: that while the drone strikes aren’t creating terrorists, they are damaging our bilateral relations with countries like Pakistan, and with the general public in the Muslim world, as well as creating recruits for insurgent groups fighting against our allies. It’s quite clear that there is a great deal of truth in these claims.
Nonetheless, as truly crucial to American security as our bilateral relations with Yemen have always been to American security (umwut? you might ask), these costs need to be weighed against the benefit of preventing further 9/11 attacks by eroding al Qaeda’s ability to operate.
George Bush spent his presidency blowing off the fight against al Qaeda (allowing them to escape Tora Bora, invading Iraq, losing interest in Afghanistan once the government fell) because he believed that state relations were still the crucial factor in American security. I spent his presidency arguing that opposite – that after 9/11, non-state actors needed to viewed as the greater threat.
The most bothersome things to me are:
“A ridiculously elastic term”.
Exactly. I wonder how many commands have been issued by al Qaeda upper management which we were not informed of?
This one, with the dramatic closing of our embassies, a complicated decision since the business of the empire must go on at all cost– appears to be a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.
But this is all academic; what is truly astonishing is the “democratic” partisans here and elsewhere have only just recently expressed doubt regarding just what is going on.. even thought it has been going on for decades now.
Their faith in the system appears to go beyond religious faith.
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I was astonished. The Republicans will have a field day, a Global Threat of Terror, Obama please explain, the Al-Qaeda as we knew it had lost its striking power!? Not in my own perception. A true failure of US foreign policy, intelligence and the military. Three positions with new appointees. Who called the shots? Incomprehensble, the White House needs to elaborate. Of all places of extreme danger, Pakistan wasn’t on the list until yesterday! A small world for a future US citizen traveling abroad.
I too believe it was wagging the dog, the NSA illegal spy network needed defending. First a nice demonstration of its importance. A global threat of the ghost of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
Pakistan site with body count of suicide bombings and US drone attacks. The number of deaths and wounded by terror attacks is astounding!
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Cross-posted from my diary – US Drone Strikes Cause Fierce Blowback In Yemen.
Is it oil? It must be oil. They don’t grow opium there.
It’s always oil. That’s why we still have thousands of troops in Libya, and tens of thousands in Iraq.
If you want to be safe, you pick a country with no or negligible oil or gas, that’s too rugged and too anarchic to even run a pipeline through — some place like Afghanistan.
Because it’s always about oil. US imperialism is eternal, unitary, invariable. It never changes because it can’t change.
I’ll tell you what it is: nothing.
Yemen, like Somalia and the mountains of Pakistan, is a major producer of nothing.
Imperial America is working to control the world’s supply of nothing.
Wake up, sheeple! No war for nothing! No war for nothing!
Always the same two arguments:
1-Drone strikes etc. are morally repellent because of their intrinsic inability to be accurately targeted, and thus they actually make more enemies than they eliminate. When we kill the innocent we create an ever-expanding core group of anti-Americanism.
vs.
2-The terrorists are stateless and almost impossible to pin down down, so when we find some we have to strike quickly before they disappear.
Never a third point.
What is that third point? It is this:
“Anti-Americanism” is at least as old as the real thrust of the Monroe Doctrine, way back in 1823. It was couched in terms that referred to the European powers’ interests in further colonization of the Western hemisphere.
(From Wikipedia):
However, the real upshot of the Monroe Doctrine was that the U.S. claimed sole military and economic dominion over most of North and South America. It was the first shot in the centuries-long, world-wide U.S. economic imperialist war that is now culminating in the enmity of vast swaths of the population of the world. That gangster mentality is only today beginning to moderate, and it is doing so because of mounting opposition from massive financial entities like China and Russia plus the “terrorist” threat that has literally destroyed many of the perks that Americans held dear when they were the beneficiaries of the richest, most powerful mafia the world has ever seen. Backing off of the world’s feeding trough can be done, although the gluttonous appetite of Americans for “More!!! More!!! MORE!!!” would have to end and we would be forced to live within our own means instead of stealing at gunpoint from most of the rest of the world.
Do that…and I don’t care whether it’s called “isolationism,” pie-in-the-sky or simple good sense…harness the immense energies and resources of this country in a massive rebuilding/refocusing effort and within a decade the U.S. would once again be the land of the free and the home of the brave instead of the land of the fat and the home of the foolish.
What’s that you say?
Our currently most effective “enemies” would be rapidly reduced in the eyes of the people who support them to the gangsters and crude fundamentalist fossils that they really are once we withdrew our forces from their positions that support our own economic imperialist criminal activities. The so-called “big” enemies? China? Russia? Please. Atomic weapons have essentially ended wars between Goliaths like that. MAD. Mutually assured destruction is a fact. That’s why we haven’t had a nuclear Armageddon over the past 65+ years. Digital warfare? Same same. MADD. Mutually assured digital destruction. Bet on it. It’s not going to happen either. The functioning infrastructures of those countries would collapse under such attacks and there we jolly well would be, wouldn’t we. Back the the real “nuclear options.”
But NOOOOoooo…
We fuss and fume at each other on how best to continue our rape of the world.
Disgusting on the face of it.
Sorry folks. Time to slim down and wake the fuck up.
Any day now.
Aaaany day now…
Sigh.
Later…
AG
The moral thing to do is to put a couple carriers offshore, and do the bombing with dumb iron gravity bombs from F-16’s.
Sure, it’s less accurate, and more indiscriminate. But at least it’s not drones. There are people in those airplanes. And that makes all the difference.
The fundamental assumption here is that there is someone who you want dead. But dead in a moral way.
So, BooMan asserts that we are “drone-blasting the ever-loving shit out of Yemen.”
No, we are drone-blasting the ever-loving shit out of the people who are suicide-bombing Yemen. The people who captured two provinces of Yemen from the Yemenis, and installed a right-wing theocracy complete with crucifixions. The people driving truck bombs up to Yemeni gas terminals and staging firefights with Yemeni soldiers.
And, oh yeah, we’re winning and they’re losing. We’re blasting the ever-living shit out of them.
Good.