HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND PRODUCE TERRORISTS
LaEscapee

Daily Kos
3/-How-to-Lose-Friends-and-Produce-Terrorists
May 24 2009

As we all have learned recently there is no way that the court ordered
release of certain documents or pictures can be allowed because the
release "further inflame anti-American opinion".

LaEscapee’s diary :: :: Intelligent people can disagree on this matter,
though it is a hard argument to make for many that stated at the time
that the Abu Ghraib photos enhanced recruitment. Yet another argument
can be made that this is in direct contrast with earlier statements
by this president.

"Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law
will be the touchstones of this presidency,"

Of course "Rule of Law" and transparency,as we all know, are in the
eye of the beholder. Maybe it doesn’t apply to court orders, who knew?

"Trust in government has been on the decline for some time in
the United States. The previous administration’s disclosure
policies certainly contributed to public skepticism," said Jerry
Miller, director of the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio
University. "People now appear more optimistic, but still guarded,
about President Obama and the current administration’s disclosure
practices under the Freedom of Information Act."

Now that is settled how about other factors that may help in the
recruitment of "terrorists".

Some have claimed there is

…"no evidence" that Guantánamo "has served as a recruiting tool
for terrorists." In fact, military and FBI interrogators have stated
that terrorists have successfully used the detention facility at
Guantánamo Bay as a recruiting device.

I guess that would be true unless you actually pay attention to those
who know the facts.

"I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there
to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our
policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for
al-Qaeda in Iraq."

I could go on with other examples of the points previously made
but obviously these are known facts to those who choose to face
reality. What also to be apparent to these same people is a fact
that all to often isn’t addressed but if truth be known probably
provides more motivation than pictures, ‘Extraordinary Rendition’
or even torture ever could.

Civilian deaths are providing more motivation and anti-American
sentiment today in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The old saw about
"winning hearts and minds" seems a little far fetched when we argue
over the correct number of civilians we kill. Somehow I find it
hard to believe that killing family members and friends helps "the
cause". Of course there are some that admit the myth that others try
and propulgate.

Reality’s delete key

Officers looked to operations in Malaya, Vietnam, Northern Ireland and,
occasionally, Algeria for positive and negative examples. Yet not one
of those political struggles is relevant to the situation in Iraq (or
Afghanistan). As for the pertinent examples of insurgencies rooted in
religious or ethnic fanaticism, such as the Moro Insurrection, Bloody
Kansas, the Sepoy Mutiny, the Mahdist Wars, the various European
Anabaptist risings, the Thirty Years’ War, the Armenian Genocide,
Nagorno-Karabagh, the destruction of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Kashmir, the
Pueblo Revolt, the Ghost-Dance Rebellion, 1,300 years of uninterrupted
warfare between the Islamic and Judeo-Christian civilizations, and
several thousand other examples dating back to the savagery chronicled
in the Old Testament; well, the lessons they suggest are, to say the
least, politically incorrect. So we hit the delete key on reality.

Our civilian and uniformed leaders have engaged in comforting fantasies
about the multilayered conflicts we’re in, while speaking in numbing
platitudes. Now we’re back to "winning hearts and minds."

As Sibel Edmonds writes.

Does it really matter – the difference between 147 and 117 or just
100 when it comes to children, grandmothers…innocent lives lost in
a war with no well-defined objectives or plans? If for some it indeed
does matter, then here is a more specific and detailed :

"A copy of the government’s list of the names, ages and father’s
names of each of the 140 dead was obtained by Reuters earlier this
week. It shows that 93 of those killed were children — the youngest
eight days old — and only 22 were adult males."

Maybe releasing the photographs of the nameless unrepresented
victims of these airstrikes should be as important as those of
torture. Because, from what I see, they and their loss of lives have
been reduced to some petty number to fight about.

We can always "hope" our use of drones will provide a better
outcome than this, of course better once again in the eye of the
beholder. Unfortunately the truth is more along these lines, "Aerial
Bombing Makes Terrorists", is the dirty truth that our all knowing
politicians don’t want to discuss.

And American bombings in Afghanistan are so ineffective and
counterproductive that even the puppet president Karzai is consistently
and publicly campaigning against the air strikes. He told CNN recently
that "We believe strongly that air strikes are not an effective
way of fighting terrorism," adding that "air strikes rather cause
civilian casualties and do not do good for the US, do not do good
for Afghanistan."

It is unfortunate that while the US has refused to listen to President
Karzai, it has now successfully persuaded President Zardari of
Pakistan to do the same. The Pakistani air force is using bombers and
helicopters to bomb the "Taliban positions" and declare that they have
already killed 200 of them. Zardari is asking for drones so they can
do exactly what the US is doing. Yet, even the US air strikes have
failed to accomplish their stated goals. There have been 65 to 85 US
drone attacks on Pakistan, killing about 780 civilians and about 50
alleged terrorists.

Maybe this is the reason Afghans life expectancy is 44 years of
age. Maybe our new objective is to bring Pakistan in line with these
numbers? Maybe I am naive and don’t understand how the human mind
functions but I can’t understand how killing friends and family of
those we profess to protect exactly brings them over to our side.

One more point I would like to make since you made it this far. The
argument over "preventive detention" seems to be back. Another way
to make friends? Just a few points on this as provided by Glenn
Greenwald who I know many here have disowned for having the audacity
of providing criticism of this administarion. Still he provides very
valid points on this issue. First, the …Heritage Foundation were
alone in urging a preventive detention law in 2004…. A few others
I will provide in blockquote.

In June of last year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown sought an expansion
of this preventive detention authority to 42 days — a mere two weeks
more. Reacting to that extremely modest increase, a major political
rebellion erupted, with large numbers of Brown’s own Labour Party
joining with Tories to vehemently oppose it as a major threat to
liberty. Ultimately, Brown’s 42-day scheme barely passed the House
of Commons. As former Prime Minister John Major put it in opposing
the expansion to 42 days:

It is hard to justify: pre-charge detention in Canada is 24 hours;
South Africa, Germany, New Zealand and America 48 hours; Russia 5 days;
and Turkey 7½ days.

By rather stark and extreme contrast, Obama is seeking preventive
detention powers that are indefinite — meaning without any end,
potentially permanent. There’s no time limit on the "preventive
detention."

Also this jewel.

As for duration, the U.S. government has repeatedly said that this
"war" is so different from standard wars because it will last for
decades, if not generations. Obama himself yesterday said that "unlike
the Civil War or World War II, we can’t count on a surrender ceremony
to bring this journey to an end" and that we’ll still be fighting this
"war" "a year from now, five years from now, and — in all probability
— 10 years from now." No rational person can compare POW detentions
of a finite and usually short (2-5 years) duration to decades or life
in a cage. That’s why, yesterday, Law Professor Diane Marie Amann,
in The New York Times, said this:

[Obama] signaled a plan by which [Guantanamo detainees] — and perhaps
other detainees yet to be arrested? — could remain in custody forever
without charge. There is no precedent in the American legal tradition
for this kind of preventive detention. That is not quite right:
precedents do exist, among them the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798
and the Japanese internment of the 1940s, but they are widely seen
as low points in America’s history under the Constitution.

So a quick list seems in order: I am

For Looking Beyond the Shiny Object For Transparency For "The Rule of
Law" Against War Against the Killing and Maiming of Innocent Civilians
Against Torture Against "Preventive Detention"

I often wonder what people could be thinking, if they could actually
believe some of the things they espouse to the greater public. Then
I consider the audience that these types of arguments to which
these are directed. I remember that the object of some of these
people are to state things as fact enough times until they become
conventional wisdom. It is what kept the right in power for so long
and unfortunately it seems the tack our (supposed) side has decided
to continue.

I find it unfortunate that more people don’t adhere to the fact
dissent is the ultimate form of patriotism.

"In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows
how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill…we do not ask
for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one." — Plato