Just Foreign Policy News, December 5, 2011
Neocons concede it’s not about Iran’s nuclear program
Support the Work of Just Foreign Policy
Go Straight to the News Summary
I) Actions and Featured Articles
* Update: WaPo Ombud Investigating Iran "Quest for Nuclear Weapons" Claim
A key way that US media helped railroad the nation into war with Iraq in 2002-3 was by treating as "fact" key allegations about Iraq’s alleged WMD program which had not been proven – and which turned out to be false. Now the Washington Post is treating the unproven allegation that Iran has a nuclear weapons program as if it were a known fact.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/wapofactcheck
Update: The Washington Post Ombudsman called and said he is looking into our complaint. Thanks to everyone who took action! We’ll let you know in this space of any result.
Countdown to Drawdown
There are 97,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. When will it be zero?
http://www.countdowntodrawdown.org/counter.php
War-Weary Republicans Rebuke Romney On Afghanistan
On Wednesday night, the Senate adopted by voice vote an amendment calling on President Obama to speed up U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. The vote is a green light from the Senate to the White House for a faster military withdrawal that would save many American and Afghan lives and (at least) many tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.
http://www.truth-out.org/war-weary-republicans-rebuke-romney-afghanistan/1322838533
CSU Faculty Challenge Reinstatement of Study Abroad Program in Israel
Members of the faculty at California State University have written to the chancellor in opposition to reinstating CSU’s study abroad program in Israel. Their letter cites the Israeli government’s violations of Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires the Occupying Power to facilitate the proper functioning of educational institutions in occupied territories.
http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/studyabroad.html
McClatchy: Iraq/Afghanistan veterans’ health costs on pace to rival Vietnam
2.2 million have deployed; 6,300 have died; 46,000 have suffered non-fatal wounds; more than 600,000 have filed for VA disability benefits; more than 700,000 have been treated in the VA.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/05/131870/as-iraq-and-afghan-wars-end-costs.html
Help Support Our Advocacy for Peace and Diplomacy
The opponents of peace and diplomacy work every day. Help us be an effective counterweight.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate
II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Congress may be starting to catch up with the American people on Afghanistan, Katrina vanden Heuvel writes in The Nation, citing the recent Senate vote urging the President to expedite U.S. military withdrawal. She notes that the Merkley amendment was approved by a majority voice vote with only the out-of-touch and increasingly irrelevant John McCain shouting, "No!"
2) Leading U.S. neoconservatives Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute are now conceding that their problem isn’t with Iran having nuclear weapons per se, but with maintaining the balance of power in the region in favor of Israel, writes former AIPAC staffer MJ Rosenberg for Media Matters. For the neoconservatives, that requires overthrowing the Iranian regime and replacing it with one that will do our bidding (like the Shah) and will not, in any way, prevent Israel from operating with a free reign throughout the region.
3) The Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, allowing indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial, betrays Japanese Americans who remember internment during World War II, writes S. Floyd Mori of the Japanese American Citizens League in the San Jose Mercury News.
4) Pentagon officials say they oppose the congressional efforts to shield the Defense Department from hundreds of billions of dollars of mandatory cuts triggered by the failure of the congressional super committee, the National Journal reports.
5) General Electric Co and Rolls Royce threw in the towel on their drive to build an alternate engine for Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 joint strike fighter, Reuters reports. The Defense Department earlier this year canceled funding for the GE-Rolls engine, capping repeated efforts to persuade Congress to kill it. The Joint Strike Fighter project is the Pentagon’s costliest purchase ever at a projected $382.5 billion for more than 2,400 aircraft in three models over the next two decades.
Pakistan
6) Pakistan’s top military commander has issued orders to the country’s troops to return fire should they come under attack again from U.S. forces, McClatchy reports. "I want to emphasize and leave no ambiguity in the rules of engagement for everyone down the chain of command," Gen. Kayani said in the letter to his troops. "When under attack, you have full liberty of action to respond with all capabilities at your disposal. This will require no clearance at any level."
Iran
7) Defense Secretary Panetta warned Israel it should not consider unilateral action against Iran, Haaretz reports. Panetta said such an attack could disrupt the already fragile economies of Europe and the US, trigger Iranian retaliation against U.S. forces, and ultimately spark a popular backlash in Iran that would bolster its rulers. Panetta also warned that the effect of an Israeli strike is likely to delay Iran’s nuclear program by only one to two years "at best."
Afghanistan
8) The Afghan government has been talking about ending the US military’s controversial campaign of night raids for years, but now they see an opportunity to actually do something about it, the New York Times reports. In negotiations for a long-term strategic agreement between the two countries, the Afghans have made a no-compromise stand on abolishing or greatly limiting night raids, in which commandos go after people suspected of being insurgents in private homes. The US military is so enamored of the tactic that some generals have said that without night raids, the US may as well go home, the Times says. Afghans complain that because night raids involve soldiers going into private homes and often seeing the women who live there, they deeply offend Afghan cultural sensitivities and have an alienating effect out of proportion to their military value.
Israel/Palestine
9) The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says 825 Gazans have been killed by Israeli drone strikes in Gaza since 2006, the Washington Post reports. Most of those killed, according to PCHR, have been civilians mistakenly targeted or caught in the deadly shrapnel shower of a drone strike. By comparison, the New America Foundation says U.S. drones have killed at least 1,807 militants and civilians in Pakistan since 2006, the Post notes.
Haiti
10) Haitian President Michel Martelly says aid and fuel shipments from Venezuela are having a big impact in Haiti, AP reports. Venezuela is providing nearly all the fuel that Haiti consumes under preferential terms.
Syria
11) Iraq is ready to mediate between the Syrian government and its opponents to help end months of violence, an Iraqi official said. The official said Iraq was ready to receive the Syrian opposition to try to reach a solution to achieve the demands of the Syrian people and avoid bloodshed.
Cuba
12) US and Cuban church leaders called for normalizing relations between the two countries, the Religion News Service reports. "The half century of animosity between our countries must end," said a joint statement issued by the National Council of Churches and the Council of Churches of Cuba.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Bring Them Home—Now
Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation, December 5, 2011 – 12:40pm ET
http://www.thenation.com/blog/164963/bring-them-home-now
The American people have long been ahead of all but a few good politicians when it comes to the unacceptable costs of the war in Afghanistan, and the latest Rasmussen poll shows 59 percent of likely voters now want the troops home either immediately or within a year.
But maybe—just maybe—Congress is finally beginning to catch up.
"Like a slow train coming," said Matthew Hoh, a former Marine who resigned his Afghanistan post in protest and now is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.
Last week the cautious US Senate passed an amendment to an annual defense bill that would require President Obama to submit a plan for an expedited withdrawal that includes a timetable.
The previous attempt at similar legislation, introduced by former Senator Russ Feingold in May, garnered only eighteen votes. In June a bipartisan letter from twenty-seven senators urged only a "sizable and sustained" withdrawal of troops, but there was no call for a timetable. This time around Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley led the effort along with twenty cosponsors, including Republicans Mike Lee and Rand Paul, and it was approved by a majority voice vote with only the out-of-touch and increasingly irrelevant John McCain shouting, "No!"
"Romney and McCain have slammed President Obama for pulling US troops out faster than the Pentagon wants," writes Robert Naiman, policy director at Just Foreign Policy, "but Wednesday night, the Senate said: ‘We think you aren’t pulling out the troops fast enough.’ "
The amendment likely will next be taken up in a conference committee with the House where it has a good chance of making it into the final bill. (Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Republican Congressman Walter Jones are currently circulating a bipartisan letter to Obama urging an expedited withdrawal and reinvestment of those resources at home.) But whatever the outcome, Obama now has the political cover and pressure from Congress that was lacking two years ago when he announced his original surge plan, and last year when the administration announced that troops would remain through 2014.
"Most folks in the Senate like most folks in the country are tired of the war," said Hoh. "Every week it’s one bad story after another—either there’s a tragedy, or an incident that highlights the absurdity of what we’ve gotten ourselves into. We can see that we’re in quicksand–the more you struggle, the more you thrash about, the more effort you put into it–the deeper you sink. So we’ve got to find a way to get ourselves out of there."
[…]
2) American Enterprise Institute Admits The Problem With Iran Is Not That It Would Use Nukes
MJ Rosenberg, Media Matters, December 02, 2011 3:13 pm ET –
http://politicalcorrection.org/fpmatters/201112020008
Suddenly the struggle to stop Iran is not about saving Israel from nuclear annihilation. After a decade of scare-mongering about the second coming of Nazi Germany, the Iran hawks are admitting that they have other reasons for wanting to take out Iran, and saving Israeli lives may not be one of them. Suddenly the neoconservatives have discovered the concept of truth-telling, although, no doubt, the shift will be ephemeral.
The shift in the rationale for war was kicked off this week when Danielle Pletka, head of the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) foreign policy shop and one of the most prominent neoconservatives in Washington, explained what the current obsession with Iran’s nuclear program is all about:
"The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, "See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately." … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem."
[…] Hold on. The "biggest problem" with Iran getting a nuclear weapon is not that Iranians will use it but that they won’t use it and that they might behave like a "responsible power"? But what about the hysteria about a second Holocaust? What about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion that this is 1938 and Hitler is on the march? What about all of these pronouncements that Iran must be prevented from developing a nuclear weapons because the apocalyptic mullahs would happily commit national suicide in order to destroy Israel? And what about AIPAC and its satellites, which produce one sanctions bill after another (all dutifully passed by Congress) because of the "existential threat" that Iran poses to Israel? Did Pletka lose her talking points?
Apparently not.
Pletka’s "never mind" about the imminent danger of an Iranian bomb seems to be the new line from the bastion of neoconservativism.
Earlier this week, one of Pletka’s colleagues at AEI said pretty much the same thing. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Thomas Donnelly explained that we’ve got the Iran problem all wrong and that we need to "understand the nature of the conflict." He continued:
"We’re fixated on the Iranian nuclear program while the Tehran regime has its eyes on the real prize: the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East."
This admission that the problem with a nuclear Iran is not that it would attack Israel but that it would alter the regional balance of power is incredibly significant.
[…] On Monday, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) – AIPAC’s favorite senator – will keynote an event at AEI, with Pletka and Donnelly offering responses. It will be moderated by Fred Kagan, another AEI fellow and Iraq (now Iran) war hawk. The event is built on the premise that "ongoing efforts to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons have failed."
We all know what that means. AEI will, no doubt, continue to host these "it’s time for war" events through 2012 and beyond, or until President Obama or his successor announces either that the United States has attacked Iran or that Israel has attacked and we are at her side.
If you didn’t know any better, you might ask why – given that Pletka and Donnelly are downgrading the Iranian nuclear threat – AEI is still hell-bent on war. If its determination to stop Iran is not about defending Israel from an "existential threat," what is it truly about?
Fortunately, Pletka and Donnelly don’t leave us guessing. It is about preserving the regional balance of power, which means ensuring that Israel remains the region’s military powerhouse, with Saudi Arabia playing a supporting role. That requires overthrowing the Iranian regime and replacing it with one that will do our bidding (like the Shah) and will not, in any way, prevent Israel from operating with a free reign throughout the region.
This goal can only be achieved through outside intervention (war) because virtually the entire Iranian population – from the hardliners in the reactionary regime to reformists in the Green Movement working for a more open society – are united in support of Iran’s right to develop its nuclear potential and to be free of outside interference. What the neoconservatives want is a pliant government in Tehran, just like we used to have, and the only way to achieve this, they believe, is through war.
[…]
3) Internment specter raises ugly head in forgetful U.S. Senate
S. Floyd Mori, San Jose Mercury News, 11/27/2011 08:00:00 PM PST
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19413004
[S. Floyd Mori is national executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League.]
The oldest generation of Japanese-Americans, those whose earliest memories were of their lives and families being upended by internment without charge or trial in concentration camps during World War II, at least take comfort in the hope that America is now committed to never inflicting that experience on any other group of Americans or immigrants. But our trust in that commitment is being shaken by a bill poised to go to the Senate floor that could once again authorize indefinite detention without charge of American citizens and others now living peacefully in our country.
We have reason to believe in the commitment of Americans to say never again to indefinite detention. In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act officially declared that the Japanese-American internment had been a "grave injustice" that had been "carried out without adequate security reasons." In other words, the indefinite detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II was not only wrong, but unnecessary.
A bill on the Senate floor raises the question of whether the Senate has forgotten our history. S. 1253, the National Defense Authorization Act, has a provision in it, unfortunately drafted by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., that would let any U.S. president use the military to arrest and imprison without charge or trial anyone suspected of having any relationship with a terrorist organization. Although Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and more than a dozen of her colleagues are bravely calling for a halt to a damaging bill, they face significant opposition.
The troubling provision, Section 1031, would let the military lock up both Americans and noncitizens in the 50 states. There would be no charges, no trial, no proof beyond a reasonable doubt. All that would be required would be suspicion.
Although the details of the indefinite detentions of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the proposed indefinite detentions of terrorism suspects may differ, the principle remains the same: Indefinite detentions based on fear-driven and unlawfully substantiated national security grounds, where individuals are neither duly charged nor fairly tried, violate the essence of U.S. law and the most fundamental values upon which this country was built.
[…]
4) Pentagon Sides With White House Against Eliminating Automatic Cuts
Yochi J. Dreazen, National Journal, December 2, 2011 | 4:06 p.m.
http://nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/pentagon-sides-with-white-house-against-eliminating-automatic-cuts-20111130
The Pentagon is wading into the political fight over how to close the nation’s yawning budget deficit, with senior officials indicating that they oppose the growing congressional efforts to shield the Defense Department from the hundreds of billions of dollars of mandatory cuts triggered by the failure of the congressional super committee.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta supports the Obama administration’s hardline position about legislation designed to protect the Pentagon from up to $600 billion in sweeping cuts, Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters on Friday. The White House has promised to veto any bills shielding Defense from those cuts, arguing that spending reductions of that size shouldn’t solely be imposed—as many Republicans want—on domestic programs like Social Security and Medicare. "The secretary supports the president’s view on this, on the so-called detriggering mechanism," Little told reporters.
The new comments are likely to attract particular attention on Capitol Hill given Panetta’s frequent previous warnings that the cuts—coming on top of an already-announced $450 billion in reductions over the next 12 years—would devastate the nation’s armed forces.
[…] Panetta has made a similar point before. In the immediate aftermath of the super committee failure, he had said Congress should "avoid an easy way out of this crisis" and that lawmakers "cannot simply turn off the sequester mechanism."
Still, Little’s comments on Friday marked the first time a senior Pentagon official weighed in on the politically sensitive issue since significant momentum began to build in both the House and Senate to remove the mandatory cuts.
[…]
5) GE, Rolls drop push to build F-35 engines
Jim Wolf, Reuters, Fri, Dec 2 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/02/us-usa-ge-idUSTRE7B11HW20111202
General Electric Co and Rolls Royce dropped their drive to build an alternate engine for Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 joint strike fighter, giving up on what they had said could be a $100 billion market.
[…] The Defense Department earlier this year canceled funding for the GE-Rolls engine, capping repeated efforts to persuade Congress to kill it as a belt-tightening measure.
That led the partners to say they would foot the bill themselves for the rest of this year and fiscal 2012 in the hope that lawmakers would step back in with federal funding as they had done for years in rebuffing the Pentagon.
"The decision, reached jointly by GE and Rolls-Royce leadership, recognizes the continued uncertainty in the development and production schedules for the JSF program," the companies said.
The Joint Strike Fighter project is the Pentagon’s costliest purchase ever at a projected $382.5 billion for more than 2,400 aircraft in three models over the next two decades.
Navy Vice Admiral David Venlet, who runs the program for the Pentagon, called in an interview published Thursday for slowing the plane’s production because of what he described as a surprising number of potential airframe faults turned up in testing.
[…]
Pakistan
6) Pakistan Orders Troops to Return Fire if Attacked on Afghan Border
Saeed Shah, McClatchy Newspapers, Fri, Dec. 02, 2011
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/02/131959/pakistan-orders-troops-to-return.html
Islamabad – Pakistan’s top military commander has issued orders to the country’s troops to return fire should they come under attack again from U.S.-led coalition forces, a move that’s likely to increase tensions after an American-led air raid on two border outposts last week killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s army chief, issued the order in a letter to his troops that set out the rules of engagement against any "aggressor."
The new orders came as Pakistan and U.S. officials continued to trade conflicting accounts of what happened in the incident, which American officials say came after a joint U.S.-Afghan unit took fire from the Pakistani side of the border but which Pakistani officials say was unprovoked.
[…] Kayani’s order, distributed Thursday, could lead to a skirmish between Pakistani and coalition forces, supposedly allies, if there’s another incident of "friendly fire" at the border. It also turns the deployment of more than 100,000 Pakistani troops along the country’s western border from a force meant to stop the Taliban to one charged with protecting the border.
Kayani is under immense pressure due to anger within his ranks over the two-hour bombardment of the mountaintop outposts known as Volcano and Boulder. The Pakistani air force didn’t respond to the attack .
[…] "I want to emphasize and leave no ambiguity in the rules of engagement for everyone down the chain of command," Kayani said in the letter to his troops. "When under attack, you have full liberty of action to respond with all capabilities at your disposal. This will require no clearance at any level."
"I have very clearly directed that any act of aggression will be responded with full force, regardless of the cost and consequences," he said.
[…]
Iran
7) Panetta: Military strike would delay Iranian nuclear project by no more than two years
Ehud Barak denies Israel is waging ‘shadow war’ against Islamic Republic.
Shlomo Shamir, Natasha Mozgovaya and Barak Ravid, Ha’aretz, 01:11 04.12.11
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/panetta-military-strike-would-delay-iranian-nuclear-project-by-no-more-than-two-years-1.399371
The key to effective action against Iran’s nuclear ambitions can only be close cooperation between allies, United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Friday at Washington’s Saban Center for the Middle East. This was a clear message to Israel that it should not consider unilateral action against Iran.
Echoing a similar message he delivered during a recent visit to Israel, Panetta stressed that any military operation against Iran by Israel must be coordinated with the United States and have its backing. "There is always a military option," he said, "but it must be the last resort, not the first."
[…] Addressing the Saban Forum at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, he said that such an attack could disrupt the already fragile economies of Europe and the United States, trigger Iranian retaliation against U.S. forces, and ultimately spark a popular backlash in Iran that would bolster its rulers. Panetta also warned that the effect of an Israeli strike is likely to delay Iran’s nuclear program by only one to two years "at best."
[…] Regarding the use of military force as the best option, Panetta noted "a greater concern is the unintended consequences."
The United States would be blamed for such an attack, the secretary said, "and we could possibly be a target of retaliation from Iran," which may try to hit U.S. ships and bases.
[…]
Afghanistan
8) For A Long-Term Afghan-American Accord, Night Raids Are A Sticking Point
Rod Nordland, New York Times, December 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/world/asia/for-afghan-us-accord-night-raids-are-a-sticking-point.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – The Afghan government has been talking about ending the American military’s controversial campaign of night raids for years, but now they see an opportunity to actually do something about it.
In continuing negotiations for a long-term strategic agreement between the two countries, the Afghans have made a no-compromise stand on abolishing or greatly limiting night raids, in which commandos go after people suspected of being insurgents in private homes rather than in the field.
Both sides very much want the strategic agreement. It would give bases to the American military in Afghanistan and give the Afghans assurances of continued training and financing for their rapidly growing and ever more costly security forces.
Western diplomats say that all such big issues are already settled, but night raids remain the thorn in the talks.
"It is one of the central points – yes, we hope it will not be a deal breaker," Aimal Faizi, the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, said in an interview. "It is one of our primary conditions."
There are other sticking points as well, according to Western diplomats – how to handle detentions, and how legally binding the agreement will be – but those have not attracted the same level of public interest, or put the Americans on the defensive with their Afghan allies to such a degree.
The American military sees night raids as an essential and effective part of its counterinsurgency effort, with a very high reward-to-risk ratio. But Mr. Karzai and much of his government see the raids as politically disastrous, as they enrage the populace and often set entire communities against the American military presence.
Over the past year, American commanders have greatly increased the frequency of the raids, with as many as 40 around the country being carried out on some nights, and an average of 10 a night, the military says. Even that is estimated to be twice the rate of 2010. Thousands of Taliban insurgents, hundreds of them midlevel commanders, have been captured or killed in the raids, officials have said.
Delegates at the recent loya jirga meetings convened by Mr. Karzai overwhelmingly asked the president to make an end to night raids a condition of signing a strategic agreement. Mr. Karzai has repeatedly demanded in speeches that night raids by foreign forces should end.
[…] The American military is so enamored of the tactic that some generals have said that without night raids, the United States may as well go home.
[…] Afghans, however, complain that because night raids involve soldiers going into private homes and often seeing the women who live there, they deeply offend Afghan cultural sensitivities and have an alienating effect out of proportion to either their military value or their casualty rate.
[…] Hajji Faizullah, a money changer in Kandahar who lost his leg fighting the Soviets, said a nephew and son-in-law were seized six months ago in night raids in the city of Kandahar. They are still in detention. "In our customs, if a strange man enters your house, you are allowed to kill him, he has come either to rob or to dishonor you," Mr. Faizullah said. "So the Americans are violating our houses at night and dishonoring us but we are feeble and cannot resist them."
[…]
Israel/Palestine
9) In Gaza, lives shaped by drones
Scott Wilson, Washington Post, December 3
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-gaza-lives-shaped-by-drones/2011/11/30/gIQAjaP6OO_story.html
Gaza City – The buzz began near midnight on a cool evening last month, a dull distant purr that within moments swelled into the rattling sound of an outboard motor common on the fishing boats working just offshore.
At a busy downtown traffic circle not far from the dormant port, a pickup truck full of police pulled up abruptly. The half-dozen men spilled into the streets.
"Inside, inside," the officers, all of them bearded in the style favored by the Hamas movement that runs Gaza, urged passersby. Then, pointing to the sky, one muttered, "Zenana, zenana."
The word is the Arabic term that Gazans have given to Israel’s drone aircraft, a ubiquitous and frightening feature of daily life in this crowded strip of land along the sea. Roughly translated, zenana means buzz. But in neighboring Egypt, a source of Gaza custom and culture, the term is slang used to describe a relentlessly nagging wife.
The light-hearted description belies the drones’ jarring effect on life in Gaza, where 1.6 million Palestinians live in cramped refugee camps, breeze-block houses and high-rise apartments built among olive orchards, palm groves and rolling dunes.
The landscape provides cover for Palestinian militants, who in recent years have fired thousands of rockets – some improvised, some military-grade – into Israel’s besieged southern towns and cities. In the call-and-response conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the missile fire has repeatedly provoked Israel to invade, its tanks and troops ebbing and flowing from the strip’s broken streets.
But the most enduring reminder of Israel’s unblinking vigilance and its unfettered power to strike at a moment’s notice is the buzz of circling drones – a soundtrack also provided by American drones over Pakistan’s tribal areas and, increasingly, parts of East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
The U.S. drone war is largely invisible, carried out in remote regions sometimes beyond the boundaries of America’s battlefields. U.S. officials are reticent to discuss the program, which President Obama has relied on more than his predecessor to kill enemies. Israel’s close-quarters conflict with Palestinians in the relatively accessible Gaza Strip offers a vivid view of the remote-controlled combat, and of the lives of those affected by these tools of modern war.
Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in the summer of 2005, ending a nearly 40-year presence in a territory its forces occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. In 2006 Hamas gunmen captured the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit just outside Gaza’s fortified boundary, and since then, Israel has stepped up military operations and aerial surveillance in the strip.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says 825 people have been killed by drones in Gaza since the capture of Shalit, who was released in October. Most of those killed, according to the organization, have been civilians mistakenly targeted or caught in the deadly shrapnel shower of a drone strike. By comparison, the New America Foundation says U.S. drones have killed at least 1,807 militants and civilians in Pakistan since 2006.
[…] Gazans use a quick calculus to assess an attack: A destroyed building, such as the small police post, is the result of an F-16. A strike on a sedan, or a group of men clustered at an intersection, is the work of a drone.
Nabil al-Amassi, a mechanic, watched in the summer of 2006 as Israeli tanks rolled into Beit Lahiya in an operation designed to pressure the Hamas leadership to release Shalit in the days following his capture.
A half-dozen armed men stood at the bottom of his sandy street when, suddenly, the drone buzzing above fired. Three of them were killed, including one whose armless torso was carried by screaming survivors from the scene, observed also by a Washington Post correspondent.
That was the start of Amassi’s close relationship with drones. Nearly every day since then, at least one, and sometimes several, have circled above him.
"It’s continuous, watching us, especially at night," said Amassi, a father of eight children. "You can’t sleep. You can’t watch television. It frightens the kids. When they hear it, they say, ‘It is going to hit us.’ "
Among his children is Ahmed, a leery 3-year-old who patrols the street in a tiny track suit on fast-moving legs. When he hears the drone arrive, often in the early evening, Ahmed runs to his father and sits deep in his lap, frightened.
"We try to tell them it’s fireworks," Amassi said.
[…] The head of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Eyad Sarraj, said the drones’ noise is something "you can’t escape." Whether intentional or not, Sarraj said their constant presence induces a sense of helplessness among Gaza’s residents.
"In the back of the minds of everyone here is fear – from the psychiatrist to the student, a sense that something terrible is going to happen," Sarraj said. "The drones are part of that story. They are part of the conditioning – every time we hear them, we go back to those events of violence and death."
[…] For Shaqqura, though, the drones mean something else as well. In his view, they are proof that Israel still legally occupies the strip despite having pulled its soldiers and settlers out.
Israel has argued that it no longer occupies the area, meaning that it is not responsible for the health and welfare of its residents under international humanitarian law. But Israel controls the crossings between Gaza and Israel, the waters off its coast, and the airspace where the drones circle.
"This is the first meaning of the drones," he said. "Israel’s military may not be on the ground anymore. But they are in the air – looking, always, at every square inch of Gaza. They don’t have to be here in Gaza City to affect every aspect of the lives of Gazans."
[…]
Haiti
10) Haiti president says aid from Venezuela’s Chavez having big impact
Associated Press, December 4
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/ap-interview-haiti-president-says-aid-from-venezuelas-chavez-having-big-impact/2011/12/04/gIQAkQzwSO_story.html
Caracas, Venezuela – Haitian President Michel Martelly says aid and fuel shipments from Venezuela are having a big impact in the Caribbean country as it attempts to recover from the devastation of its 2010 earthquake.
President Hugo Chavez’s government is providing nearly all the fuel that Haiti consumes under preferential terms, including long-term loans and direct shipping that cuts costs. Martelly said power plants installed by Venezuela after the earthquake supply roughly one-fifth of Haiti’s electricity and that Venezuela is also providing key financial support for rice farming and other programs.
"The cooperation with Venezuela is the most important in Haiti right now in terms of impact, direct impact," Martelly told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday night after a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders.
"We are grateful to President Chavez for helping us from the bottom of his heart," Martelly said.
Chavez has made helping Haiti a priority since the magnitude-7 earthquake in January 2010 that reduced much of Port-au-Prince to rubble. His government sent thousands of tons of food aid in the aftermath of the quake, and also set up several camps to temporarily house thousands of displaced Haitians.
Well before the quake, Haiti had already been a major beneficiary of Venezuela’s Petrocaribe program, which supplies fuel to Caribbean and Central American countries and allows them to pay part of the bill in goods such as rice and beans rather than cash.
[…] In Haiti’s case, Petrocaribe also provides money to support social programs, including government projects that are building housing and providing food to poor families, Martelly said during a speech at the summit on Saturday.
Martelly told the AP that a 30-megawatt power plant and two other 15-megawatt plants installed by Venezuela now "represent a good 20 percent of our total consumption."
[…]
Syria
11) Iraq says ready to mediate with Syrian opposition
Rania El Gamal, Reuters, Sat, Dec 3, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-says-ready-mediate-syrian-opposition-205750191.html
Baghdad – Iraq is ready to mediate between the Syrian government and opponents of President Bashar al-Assad to help end months of violence in the neighbouring country, an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday.
Iraq’s Shi’ite leaders are concerned that turmoil in Syria could bring a hardline Sunni leader to power should protests lead to the downfall of Assad, who is facing increasing international condemnation over a crackdown on protesters.
Ali al-Moussawi, Maliki’s media adviser, said Iraq was ready to receive the Syrian opposition to try to reach a solution to achieve the demands of the Syrian people and avoid bloodshed.
"We as a government … seek a solution. If this clash continues forever it will be harmful for all, particularly to the Syrian people and the Syrian state," he said. "He (Maliki) is clear he is ready for a dialogue with all the parties."
Asked if the Iraqi government was already in talks with the Syrian opposition, Moussawi said: "I think it is early to say talks, but there is some kind of communication."
In October, Maliki, a Shi’ite, urged Syria to open up its political system to end one-party Baath rule.
[…]
Cuba
12) U.S., Cuban church leaders seek ‘normalized relations’
Josef Kuhn, Religion News Service, Monday, December 5, 3:41 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/us-cuban-church-leaders-seek-normalized-relations/2011/12/05/gIQAmgXHXO_story.html
Washington – Church leaders from ecumenical councils in the U.S. and Cuba wrapped up a five-day meeting in Havana on Friday (Dec. 2) with a call for "normalized relations" between the two countries.
"We declare the following shared conviction: that the half century of animosity between our countries must end," said a joint statement issued by the National Council of Churches and the Council of Churches of Cuba.
The U.S. delegation of Protestant, Episcopal and Orthodox leaders discussed humanitarian issues with leaders of the ecumenical movement in Cuba, strengthening ties that were formed when Cuban church representatives took part in the NCC’s 2010 General Assembly.
The delegates identified the half-century-old U.S. embargo against Cuba as "the major obstacle to the resolution of differences, to economic interaction, and to fuller engagement of our peoples and churches."
"For over five decades, our policy of trying to economically and diplomatically isolate Cuba has not achieved its goal of changing the regime to our liking. Instead, it has economically and diplomatically isolated the U.S.," said the Rev. Wes Granberg-Michaelson, the former general secretary of the Reformed Church in America.
The church leaders thanked the Obama administration for lifting some restrictions on travel to Cuba last January, but called for the "speedy and complete fulfillment" of the president’s public intention "to review and revise long-standing U.S. policy toward Cuba."
[…]
–
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans. The archive of the Just Foreign Policy News is here:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/blog/dailynews