How obama Turned Liberals into Zombies

October 26, 2012

The Neo-Con Democrat
The spectacle of the presidential foreign policy debate, with the republican and democratic candidates stumbling over each other to agree on the use of drones, staying for another decade in Afghanistan, Gitmo and such, was proof once again that barack obama is no liberal.

In fact, obama’s policies of endless war, nation-building, and disregard for international law mark him as a neo-con. With his predilection for assassinations and indiscriminate bombings with mounting ‘collateral damage,’ obama has turned the United States into one of those ‘rogue nations’ our rhetoric execrates.

On the home front, obama has also proven himself no liberal. He readily signed extensions of the Patriot Act and FISA, thus denying us our Fourth Amendment rights and strengthening the surveillance state established by his mentor predecessor, Bush.  obama next took away our right to free assembly by signing the Trespass Law, then negated the Constitutional right of habeas corpus by signing into law the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA.  obama routinely ignores the Constitutional separation of powers, issuing executive orders that contravene the will of Congress, while brazenly ignoring the War Powers Act by starting wars at his fancy.  The obama administration has been the worst in history for punishing whistle-blowers.
_

The Corporatist Lapdog
Many on the Right label obama a ‘socialist’, which is slanderous, considering obama’s domestic policy reveals him to be a corporatist lapdog. His greatest achievement, healthcare reform (sic), was in actuality a restructuring of the health insurance market, written by the insurance lobby to benefit the insurance lobby. Forty million Americans are still left without healthcare.

When the big banks were caught in a trillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme, obama railed loudly against the bankers, then slapped them across the wrist with a $12 million token fine. The much-heralded Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, established by obama crony Elizabeth Warren, has yet to indict a single malfeasor.

Candidate obama promised to ban lobbyists from working in his administration.  President obama has more lobbyists in his White House than any previous administration.

Large campaign bundlers found obama amenable to pulling strings to aid their businesses — for example: an FCC waiver allowing LightSquared to encroach on vital military GPS bandwidths; a billion dollar HHS contract to Siga for a useless vaccine.
_

The Sham Green Economy
Vaingloriously, obama predicted his inauguration would be remembered as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”  Yet under obama, the environment has suffered greatly.

Following the disastrous BP oil spill, obama promised to place his “boot on the throat” of that reckless conglomerate, then allowed BP to get away nearly scot free.  Later, obama gave BP the go-ahead to drill in Alaska.

Since 2008, obama has breathlessly told us how he wants to expand “solar, and wind, and bio-diesel”,  and now brags about having doubled the electricity produced by renewables.  That sounds impressive, until you learn that solar and wind still provide a mere 3% our total energy. Four years on, and the US is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

obama’s grand(iose) “Green Energy Economy” turned out to be a boondoggle, a false front to hide kickbacks to obama’s biggest campaign donors. Real renewable solutions do exist to meet a majority of our energy needs, yet obama wasted billions of taxpayer money on Solyndra, Beacon, A123, and a dozen other sham companies that went bankrupt.

At the international climate conferences in Copenhagen and Rio, obama personally intervened to side with China and other major greenhouse gas producers to thwart efforts to curtail global warming, thus ensuring that the oceans will indeed keep rising.

At home, obama refused to implement EPA regulations on air quality.  To his credit, obama was against the XL pipeline before he was for it. To keep up with fellow republican, Mitt Romney, obama is now calling for rapid expansion of offshore drilling, mining of coal, and frakking.
_

Letting Down the Common People
On the bread & butter economic positions that for a century defined liberalism in America, obama has let down working families time and time again.

His buyout of GM may have provided temporary relief, but it did nothing to address the endemic flaws in our auto industry. His continuation of TARP was nothing more than a cash bonus to bankers for losing risky bets.

As a candidate, obama promised to end the Bush tax cuts on the rich in his first hundred days. He stalled for two years, then promised to end them in 2011. He now promises to end them sometime in his second term. obama promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Instead, he added another $5 trillion.

Other than endlessly repeating the words “roads and bridges and schools”, obama has offered no real plan to jump-start a stagnant economy. He amused himself by joking that all those “shovel-ready” projects he was going to fund “weren’t all that shovel-ready, after all.”

Only by heavy manipulation of workforce statistics has obama been able to claim he is finally a “net job creator.”  Two-third of those new jobs are low-wage. Household wealth has sunk 39%. Sixty percent of mortgages are under water.  One in five Americans still can’t find a job they can live on.  While unemployment soared, obama fiddled and diddled. His insipid “jobs bill” was a pastiche of hiring incentives and retraining programs already long proven ineffective. At best, it would have created a million jobs; independent analysts calculated it would have created practically none.

While ordinary Americans suffer, obama has been content to blame his inability to do more on the intransigence of Congress. Yet obama had no trouble working with both Dems and Gops to sign a slew of so-called “free trade” treaties that in truth expedite the off-shoring of hundreds of thousands of American jobs. obama has spent 50% more time on the golf links than in economic briefings.

obama promises to protect Social Security and Medicare.  Yet his “payroll tax cut” robbed S.S. of 16% of its funding. Had his putrid “jobs bill” passed, it would have cut S.S. funding by half, and gut Medicare with half a billion dollars in reckless cuts. To underwrite obamacare, $700 million will be taken from Medicare.
_

The Zombie Left
Among the Left, all but the most severe kool-aid addicts admit that obama has been a major disappointment. Still, they plan on voting for him as the ‘lesser of two evils.’  ‘We must protect women’s rights’, they implore.  Are not the right to a speedy trial, to protection from illegal search and seizure, to due process, the rights of women as well?  So long as obama remains president, the Left condone unliberal affronts they would never tolerate from a republican president.

To assume that in a second term obama will suddenly ‘get it’, or miraculously change his nature, is folly. Things would get even worse. True, Romney’s plan to fix the economy will also fail. But obama’s bolloxes have ensured that the country will give the GOP a shot, if not now, then in 2016. Massachusetts survived one term of Romney; America can, too.

The Left, however, cannot survive four more years of obama. In service to obama, the Left now advocate jingoism in foreign policy, and a surveillance state at home. The Left now accept zero progress on jobs or economic fairness, and mutely watch as corporate criminals go unpunished. Thanks to obama, liberals and progressives have abandoned protecting the environment and the fight for universal healthcare. The Left are nothing but mindless zombies, so long as they remain under the sway of obama’s false promises and lies.
_

Vote Like a True Liberal
 Now is the time for all true liberals to do their duty. To stand up for liberal values by voting for a candidate that also stands up for liberal values. barack obama is not that candidate.

Jill Stein is a true liberal. Her New Green Deal is a comprehensive plan to revitalize the American economy and restore American liberties. Patterned on FDR’s successful programs, Stein’s New Green Deal is a bold yet eminently feasible solution to our pressing problems, a solution that relies on the best liberal principles.

On November 6th, vote as a true liberal. Say ‘enough!’ with the lesser-of-two-evils crap. Vote for Jill Stein.
_

(c) 2012 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.

5 Comments | barack obama the deceiver, BP Oil Spill, Constitutional Law, Corruption, Democratic ineptitude, Economy, Elections, Environment, Kool-Aid drinkers, Proglodytes | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Matt

Murder Drone

May 8, 2012

The obama administration finally responded to mounting outcry about its campaign of targeted killings with drones — by bragging about it.

Until this week, the White House had deflected criticism and blocked Freedom of Information requests by refusing to either confirm or deny the existence of the drone operations, which opponents say violates both federal and international law.  But with activist groups like Codepink holding anti-drone rallies over the weekend, and following a Sunday editorial in the New York Times by the ACLU, which urged the courts to intervene if the president did not direct the CIA to release relevant documents, the time had come to address their concerns. The response came not by the president himself, rather in a prepared statement recited before the Woodrow Wilson Center by a White House designated liar, John Brennan.  Long-winded and obtuse, it not only confirmed the existence of president Nixon’s obama’s secret bombing of Cambodia drone killings in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, it attempted to defend it under international law and on moral grounds.

Through Brennan, the obama administration made five main claims about it’s murder-by-drone spree is:

  1. Effective
  2.  “Transparent”
  3. Legal under Federal Law
  4. Legal under International Law
  5. Ethical

All five are brazen lies.

_

1. It’s Effective?

With obama having launched five times as many drones strikes as Bush (267 vs. 52), Brennan gave a glowing report on the “great progress” made and the pending demise of al-Qaeda:

  • ” a shadow of its former self”
  • “left with just a handful of capable leaders and operatives”
  • “ranks have dwindled and scattered”
  • “on the road to destruction”
  • “struggles to communicate with subordinates and affiliates”
  • “Morale is low”
  • “struggling to attract new recruits”
  • “In short, al-Qa’ida is losing, badly.”

But check that sigh of relief, children — the al-Qaeda bogeyman under your bed is still very, very scary:

  • “the dangerous threat from al-Qa’ida has not disappeared”
  • “continues to look to its affiliates and adherents to carry on its murderous cause”
  • “worrying to witness al-Qa’ida’s merger with al-Shabaab, whose ranks include foreign fighters, some with U.S. passports”
  • “still have the intent to attack the United States”
  • “a mistake to believe this threat has passed.” 

It would be foolish for us to trust two proven lairs, Bush and obama. Yet, since everything is secret, it’s impossible for the public to assess whether the drone attacks are doing much good. We really have no idea how strong al-Quaeda is, or ever was. Over the course of eleven years, al-Quaeda has launched a grand total of three terrorists attacks against the West. In comparison, from 1967 to 1977, the Baader-Meinhof Gang/RAF, a loose network of urban radicals, pulled off dozens of bombings, assassinations and kidnappings. Groups like RZ, ETA, and the IRA were even more prolific.

One thing we can be sure of — so long as it aids obama’s agenda, obama will always spot the bogeyman under our beds.

_

2. There’s Transparency?

The obama administration’s idea of “transparency” is to send John Brennan to the Wilson Center to issue platitudes. “I’m here today because President Obama has instructed us to be more open with the American people about these efforts.”

After reminding us that obama “had pledged to share as much information as possible with the American people ‘so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable’”, Brennan refused to “discuss the sensitive details of any specific operation today.   I will not, nor will I ever, publicly divulge sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”

In a fatherly tone, Brennan noted that counter-terrorism tools,

do not exist in a vacuum.  They are stronger and more sustainable when the American people understand and support them.  They are weaker and less sustainable when the American people do not.  As a result of my remarks today, I hope the American people have a better understanding of this critical tool, why we use it, what we do, how carefully we use it, and why it is absolutely essential to protecting our country and our citizens.”

So, children, trust Dear Leader.  And stop asking annoying questions.

_

3. Legal Under U.S. Law?

“[A]s a matter of domestic law,” Brennan assured us, “the Constitution empowers the President to protect the nation from any imminent threat of attack.”   Hmm. Art. II, Sec. 2 states: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the Unites States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” Art. IV Sec. 4 states “The United States shall … protect each [State] against Invasion….”

In Congress is vested power to:

  • Declare war
  • Make rules concerning capture
  • Raise and support Armies, maintain a Navy
  • Make rules for the regulation of the armed Forces
  • Call forth the militia
  • Etc.

The Framers were exceedingly cautious about granting the president war powers. “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates,” wrote Madison to Jefferson, “that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”

The claim of iron-clad constitutionality is actually thinly based on the standard interpretation of the president’s role as CiC & ‘first responder’ to invasions or imminent threats of attack on the US. Such a scenario envisions the United States at peace but about to be hit with an invasion or attack. Following his handling of this initial attack, the president is still required to get Congress’ approval to continue hostilities, as now codified by the War Powers Act.  If 9/11 counts as the first blow in a war, akin to Pearl Harbor, then we have been “at war” with Al Qaeda for over a decade. Any of the subsequent attacks the enemy is allegedly concocting — and the drone strikes allegedly thwarting — are no more “imminent threats” than was the Japanese fleet’s action at Leyte Gulf.

Our Republic has long struggled to check the propensity of presidents to recklessly engage in war without the consent of the people. On the eve of the Mexican-American War, a young congressman, Abraham Lincoln, wrote words that resonate today:

“Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and allow him to make war at pleasure…. how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of [an invasion]’ but he will say to you ‘be silent; I see it, if you don’t.’

“The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress,” Lincoln believed, was to prevent the oppression of kings, who “had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.” So the Framers “resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.” To do otherwise” places our President where kings have always stood.”

While our current flock of sheep Congress has acquiesced in obama’s usurpation of its war powers, that does not make it constitutional.

_

4. Legal Under International Law?

The obama administration’s justification for its drone campaign so twists & perverts what international law actually says, it’s worth debunking it in detail.

_
A State of Armed Conflict
“As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, and associated forces”

Under the Geneva Convention, only sovereign entities employing regular military forces are granted belligerent status.  The Taliban, as the deposed former government, could be considered a belligerent fighting a war of liberation in afghanistan.  But al-Qaeda is neither a sovereign entity, nor do its personnel operate as regulated soldiers under arms.  International law is explicit on this — al-Qaeda is a terrorist group, its members civilians subject to civilian criminal law. Using a drone to kill a suspected terrorist violates international humanitarian law — for one, the drone is incapable of offering the suspect the required chance to surrender.

Like Bush before him, obama chooses to treat al-Qaeda as a sovereign belligerent to justify using military force against it. While this may be convenient, it creates a conundrum.  International law treats everyone in a combat zone as either a lawful combatant or a civilian. Combatants receive what is known as privilege — they cannot be punished for any (militarily legitimate) violent acts they may commit. Combatants may, however, be proscetuted for war crimes: violent acts not militarily justified.

Civilians in a combat zone may not be the targets of combat actions. Civilians who directly participate in hostilities (“DPH”) lose that immunity (i.e., they may be targeted while engaged in combat) and are considered unlawful combatants subject to trial and punishment. Ironically, this makes the CIA employees piloting the drones war criminals.

If al-Qaeda is a belligerent at war with us, then its acts are legitimate acts of war, its members lawful combatants immune from criminal prosecution.  To circumvent this, obama has adopted the Bush administration’s expediency of fabricating a new class unrecognized by international law, “unlawful enemy combatant”, and denying this class either due process as civilians or fair treatment as PoWs.

_
Right of Self-Defense
“…We may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense…”

This assumedly refers to Chapter VII, Art. 51 of the UN Charter: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations….”  But again, this is irrelevant when dealing with a terrorist group. The UN has only ever approved non-military sanctions against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and in 2011 de-linked the sanctions to better distinguish between the Taliban’s “insurgency” vs. al-Qaeda’s “terrorism.”

_
No Ban on Drones
“… There is nothing in international law that bans the use of remotely piloted aircraft for this purpose …”

It comes as no surprise that drones are not mentioned by name as one of the weapons banned in either the 1925 or 1980 Geneva Protocols.  The 1977 Additional Protocol I, however, does declare that “the right … to chose methods or means of warfare is not unlimited”, prohibits the employment of “weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering”, and obliges signatories to determine whether the “adoption of a new weapon, means or method of warfare” is subject to these prohibitions.

Regardless, any conventional weapon can be misused in the commission of a war crime.

_
“Active” Battlefield

“.. There is nothing … that prohibits us from using lethal force against our enemies outside of an active battlefield…”

The treaties governing the conduct of war (Geneva Convention IV & 1977 Additional Protocols; Hague Convention V) stipulate distinct rules for conduct permissible inside a “combat zone” vs. outside. In brief, engaging in military actions outside of a combat zone is a grave violation of international law.  The obama administration has concocted the neologism “active-“ or “hot battlefield” to cloak in a fig leaf of propriety its illegal use of military force outside of combat zones.  In effect, obama has declared the entire world to be a battle zone. This reckless and unprecedented act has alarmed the international human rights community and badly tarnished the reputation of the United States.

_
Sovereignty
“…at least when the country involved consents or is unable or unwilling to take action against the threat…”

Outside of Afghanistan,  our co-belligerent whose territory is a combat zone, drone attacks are a clear violation of the sovereignty of neutral nations.  Simply having John Brennan utter the words “The United States of America respects national sovereignty and international law” does not make it so. The same day as Brennan’s speech, Pakistan’s foreign minister declared: “[w]e consider drones as illegal, non-productive and accordingly unacceptable.”

The US could claim that, by failing to meets its Hague IV obligations as a neutral, Pakistan has become a co-belligerent of al-Qaeda … and declare war. As it stands, Pakistan has the right to shoot down our drones, and appeal to the UN.  Under Hague IV, individual nationals of belligerent states enjoy extensive protections, their neutral host in fact is enjoined from interning or handing them over.

_
Targeting of Civilians

“…Targeted strikes conform to the principle of distinction—the idea that only military objectives may be intentionally targeted and that civilians are protected from being intentionally targeted…”

Who we target for murder-by-drone, and how we decide, may well constitute a war crime. The International Red Cross clarifies DPH as including:

  • Capturing, wounding or killing military personnel;
  • Damaging military objects;
  • Disturbing military logistics through sabotage or road blocks;
  • Interfering electronically with military computer networks;
  • Transmitting tactical targeting intelligence for a specific attack;
  • Laying mines or booby-traps.

Distinct is ‘indirect’ participation in hostilities “which contributes to the general war effort of a party, but does not directly cause harm and, therefore, does not lead to a loss of protection against direct attack.“ (my emphasis). It is hard to shoe-horn into the DPH definition the activities of Anwar Al’Alawki, his 16 year-old son, people administering first-aid and attending funerals, or couples driving down the road on their honeymoon, all who obama has sentenced to death.

Thanks to a leak by a former obama administration official, we now have confirmation of how targets are selected for murder by drone. A name is selected off a “hit list” by an administration official, and permission (sic) is given by one of ten attorneys to have the person killed. This clearly violates Geneva IV, Art. 3 prohibition of “the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

The obama drone doctrine is hopelessly muddled. It conflates one nation’s right to defend against an imminent attack by the armed forces of another nation, with the right of a law enforcement officer to use deadly force against an individual criminal suspect who poses an imminent danger.  It attempts to justify killing al-Qaeda members by pretending they are military commanders, or soldiers engaged in combat, then admits they are criminal suspects by insisting “[i]t is our preference to capture suspected terrorists whenever feasible” in order to “prosecute them in our federal courts.”

Boiled down, the obama drone doctrine states: ‘If a terrorist suspect is in a “hard-to-reach place” and thus a pain to capture and bring to trial, we reserve the right to call him a ‘soldier’ & assassinate him with a missile.’

_

5. It’s Ethical?

Brennan claims that obama’s drone killing conform to the ethical principles of “the law of war that govern the use of force”:

  • Necessity — “the requirement that the target have a definite military value”
  • Distinction — “the idea that only military objectives may be intentionally targeted and that civilians are protected from being intentionally targeted”
  • Proportionality—“the notion that the anticipated collateral damage of an action cannot be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage”
  • Humanity — “which requires us to use weapons that will not inflict unnecessary suffering.”

Accept, for the sake of argument, the Bush/obama fiction that we are at war with a sovereign entity, and one is still hard-pressed to match drone killings to Brennan’s lofty list of ideals:

  • Necessity — How the center of an entire village is a target of definite military value;
  • Distinction — how firing missiles at funerals, first-aid responders, or children gathering firewood protects civilians from being intentionally targeted;
  • Proportionality — how killing six civilians for every one suspected terrorist is not “excessive”;
  • Humanity — how a “signature attack” on a single suspect using two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, each of which carries a 20 lb. thermobaric warhead “that can suck the air out of a cave, collapse a building, or produce an astoundingly large blast radius out in the open”, or the 500 lb. GBU-12 fragmentation bomb, does not inflict unnecessary suffering.

Indeed, under international law, obama’s use of drones meets every definition of a war crime.

_

American Tyrant

barack obama has expanded the imperialism of the presidency to a level unprecedented even under Nixon and Bush. He has brazenly and repeatedly usurped war powers from a sheepish Congress while bullying the Judiciary.  One by one, he has stripped away the Constitutional civil liberties of the citizenry.

With a chilling aptness for orwellian double-speak, obama declares

secrecy = transparency

indiscriminate killings = effective & ethical

 disregard for international law = respect for that law

 war = peace

Like Orwell’s Big Brother, obama casts himself as the all-wise, benevolent yet also vindictive supreme leader. He smugly lectures us lowly prols, chides us for sloth, sneers when we doubt his infallibility. With FISA and the Patriot Act, obama also has BB’s universal powers of surveillance.

In short, barack obama personifies what our Founding Fathers feared most: an omnipotent tyrant. “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”, warned Madison. Under Bushama, we have spend eleven years, hundreds of billions of dollars, and caused tens of thousands of deaths, to defeat a chimerical terrorist group that’s struck the US (counting the 1993 WTC garage bomb and the 2000 USS Cole bombing) a grand total of three times in two decades. Were our efforts commensurate to the threat? Or was this just the ruse of all tyrants through the ages — to oppress the people at home with endless wars abroad. Madison again:

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended … and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people…. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

We’re told we’re waging war against a foe who by definition cannot wage war, on a battlefield that encompasses every point on the globe, where any civilian in any nation can be labeled a combatant and murdered. Under cover of continual, infinite, boundless warfare, obama has already negated much of our Constitutional liberties.  With the “flexibility” of a second term, is there any doubt that obama will complete the conversion of our Republic into a tyrannical police state?

Freedom-loving Americans have one last chance to avert tyranny by defeating obama this November.  Failing that, our options will be few:

The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood.  It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men. — Sam Adams

(c) 2012 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.

7 Comments | barack obama the deceiver, Constitutional Law, International Affairs | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Matt

Infidel, Go Home!

February 29, 2012

By now, everyone is familiar with how it was discovered that US military personnel at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan had been sending copies of the koran to the incinerator.  Afghanis continue to riot in protest; four US soldiers have been killed, and eight wounded, to date in retaliation.  In response to the rioting, obama issued a lengthy, written apology addressed to Hamid Karzai, mayor of Kabul president of Afghanistan.  Karzai nevertheless insists that those responsible for the burnt korans be handed over to stand trial.

Around the world, moslems are protesting in solidarity.  In America, the Right attacks obama for apologizing, while the Left defends him.  In Afghanistan, tempers continue to flare. A young Afghani who worked at Bagram Air base said of his American employers:  “The people who do this are our enemies.  How could I ever work for them again?”

The general consensus in Afghanistan is that us Americans should go home, leaving them in peace to practice their medieval religion.  We should take a hint and start packing our bags.


Apology Not Accepted

Immediately following the revelation of the koran burnings, obama sent a three-page, written apology to Karzai.  In it, he offered his “sincere apologies” and expressed “deep regret” for the torching of the sacred Muslim texts.  “The error was inadvertent,” obama insisted , “I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible.”

Similar prostrations were offered by the US military, NATO, and the State Department:

“We apologize to the Afghan people and disapprove of such conduct in the strongest possible terms. This deeply unfortunate incident does not reflect the great respect our military has for the Afghan people. It’s regrettable.”

“The desecration of religious articles is not in keeping with the standards of American tolerance, human rights practices and freedom of religion.”

The claim that the burnings were accidental seems genuine — to a point.   The korans had been removed  from a library the base ran for prisoners.  It seems the prisoners had scribbled marginalia next to sura, or passages, that justify the use of armed resistance against NATO forces.   (These must have been heavily annotated copies, as the koran contains over a hundred sura promoting violence against infidels.)

So, although knew they were burning korans, our soldiers may well have been unaware that burning korans was such an affront to moslems.  They certainly weren’t burning the korans as an intentional affront to moslems.  They were just following orders:

6.1.2  Utilization of the Bagram incinerator or a properly authorized burn barrel is mandatory for burning classified/sensitive information that cannot be properly disposed of in a shredder authorized to destroy classified information.  All other documents should be shredded before they are discarded.

(It’s doubtful that moslems would be any less irate had the korans been shredded.)

In fact, waste disposal at our many far-flung bases has become a problem that the military has tried to address over the past two years, primarily by building incinerators.  Coincidentally, Bagram was the subject of a 2009 Air Force study on improving waste handling.

NATO has agreed to investigate the burnings, and the US military will be conducting sensitivity training sessions for all personnel in Afghanistan.


When In Bagram…

None of this will appease moslems, however, who believe that any desecration of their magical book is an inexcusable affront to Allah, punishable by death.  Karzai continues to insist that those responsible be handed over to the Afghani government to stand trial.  Under Afghani law — which is essentially sharia — the punishment is death by hanging.

No US president would ever comply to such a request, certainly not one seeking re-election.  Nevertheless, under international law, we may be obligated to do just that.  It all depends on where the burnings took place.

The grounds of an overseas military base, like a consulate or embassy, are considered sovereign soil of the nation operating it.  Within these tiny enclaves, the laws of the operating nation, not those of the host, are in force.  Once they step off-base, however, or out the embassy door, our military and diplomatic personnel are subject to the laws of the host country.  So-called “diplomatic immunity” means embassy staff who violate local laws are simply shipped home.  Soldiers get handed over to the local authorities.  One news outlet described the location of the burnings as “an incinerator near the Bagram Air Base.”   True Liberal Nexus, however, has located documents (link and link) that indicate that the burn piles or incinerator used to burn the korans would have been situated within the base perimeter.  The nuances of international law, though, are unlikely to sooth the rage of the moslems.


Burn, Baby, Burn

It may surprise you to learn that this is not the first time religious texts were burned at Bagram Air Base.  In 2009, thousands of holy books were sent to the incinerator.  Christian bibles.

The Air Force had received an unsolicited shipment of bibles, translated into local languages, from a Christian group.  They’d first been put in the base library, but were recalled to avoid any appearance that part of our mission in Afghanistan was to convert.   At first, the Air Force was going to mark the bibles “Return to Sender.”  Then it reconsidered, fearing that, were the bibles to be later redistributed, it might be misconstrued by Afghanis that the US military was the source.  So they were burned.   No one protested; no one complained; no one was killed.

In 2011, religious freak Terry Jones held a koran burning, condemning a single copy of the words of the prophet/misogynist/rapist/pederast, Mohammed, to the flames.  Worldwide, moslems rioted for two days. In afghanistan, a mob attacked a UN office, killing 24 inside.  In the West, Jones was widely blamed for causing the violence, implying that the moslems who actually did the rioting and committed the murders are either 1) mindless beasts incapable of checking their emotions;  2) justified in their actions.

“It was intolerant and it was extremely disrespectful and again, we condemn it in the strongest manner possible.” — Gen. David Petraeus

“I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. During WWII, you had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy. Free speech is a great idea, but we are in a war. Any time in America we can push back against actions like this that put our troops at risk, we ought to do that.”  – Sen. Lindsay Graham

“I am disgusted and saddened at the outcome of Mr. Jones’ narrow vision of the world. While we respect freedom of speech, this is tantamount to crying fire in a crowded theater.”  — Rep. Maxine Waters

“Mr. Jones did this, even though he was warned of the consequences..  It is illegal to falsely yell fire in a crowded theater because doing so presents a clear and present danger, and it should be illegal to set fire to the Koran for the same reason. Authorities should immediately begin considering the prosecution of Mr. Jones for inciting a riot.”  — Letter to the editor of the Washington Post

“If the stakes were not so high, if his threatened action did not portend international riots, increase the danger to American troops, and jeopardize the nation’s global standing, the whole thing would be downright laughable”  — Seattle Times

“The planned burning of Korans this weekend would not just be a national disgrace or dangerous for our troops abroad. It could set fire to the very fabric that makes America strong and righteous.” —  Christian Science Monitor

Like Jones’ pyromania, all this threw much heat but little light. One of the few voices defending our tradition of Free Speech was Glenn Greenwald:

“The whole point of the First Amendment is that one is free to express the most marginalized, repellent, provocative and offensive ideas. Those are the views that are always targeted for suppression…. If you’re someone who wants to vest the state with the power to punish the expression of certain views on the grounds that the view is so wrong and/or hurtful that its expression should not be permitted … then you’re someone who does not believe in free speech, by definition; what you believe is that one is free to express only those viewpoints which the majority of citizens (and the State) allow to be expressed.”

What Greenwald understands, contra the State Department, is that the desecration of religious articles is in keeping with the standards of American tolerance, human rights practices and freedom of religion.


Apologizing for the Apology

Yet, for the proglydites of the Left, this double standard is perfectly acceptable.  If a pack of intolerant, illiterate goat-herders think a collection of pulp, ink, glue, and cardboard can be desecrated, then who are we to question that?

Mika Brzezinski, perhaps the dimmest of all the dimwits at Pravda MSNBC, vociferously defended obama’s mewling apology:  “What am I missing?  Let’s say the American flag was inadvertently burned, would that not require an apology from another leader?”

Um, they do burn the American flag all the time, Mika, and on purpose.  I guess you missed how they just did it again in Yemen.  Go ahead, Mika, demand an apology.  Now, people also burn the American flag (or step on it in an alleyway) in America.  The difference is, while some Americans do get all touchy about flag etiquette, burning a flag in America won’t get you executed.

Mika, perhaps you also missed how they burned your obama-messiah in effigy the other day.  Aren’t you offended, Mika?  Or is that sort of thing “understandable” when it’s done by foreigners?

Why, of course it is!  Mika, and the rest of the proglydites at MSNBC set an higher bar for Western civilization than the rest of the world.  Just last April, the Hardball gang twisted themselves into contortions to explain how burning a koran is far worse than burning a bible:

“The thing to keep in mind that`s very important here is that the Koran to Muslims … is not the same as the Bible to Christians…. [I]f you`re a Muslim, the Koran is directly the word of God, not written by man….  That makes it sacred in a way that it`s hard to understand if you`re not Muslim. So the act of burning a Koran is … much, much more inflammatory … than if you were to burn a Bible.”

The pathology that afflicts the Left, causing it to always belittle Western values while ever making excuses for the abominable behavior of other cultures, is a subject better left for another day.  But here’s the sort of apology a real president, who

  1. Treasured and respected our Constitution and our Western values;
  2. Had a pair;

might have issued:

Gosh, I am so terribly sorry this little peccadillo upset y’all so much!  It’s not like we went out of our way to upset you.  I’m sure our boys didn’t even realize that burning a little book was such a big deal to y’all.  See, in our country, we burn things all the time that are sacred to others — like posters of the Pope, rival versions of the bible, and Dixie Chicks CDs.  That’s because, in our country, we value free speech and the separation of church and state.  We came to your country ten years ago to rescue you from the oppressive clutches of the Taliban  — that and to build a pipeline.  But if you insist on remaining stuck in the Middle Ages, then we best be on our way.

In all seriousness, this was an opportunity for the American president to reaffirm the best of American values — not coca cola or consumerism, or drones, but rather freedom of speech, secularism, and tolerance.  Yes, tolerance, because unlike Western society, Islam (and I intentionally paint here with a broad brush; prove me wrong) is utterly intolerant of the beliefs of others.


What Mission?

We initially invaded Afghanistan to rout out the Taliban,  which allegedly had a hand in the 9/11 attacks.  We stayed to reform Afghan society, to bring it into a state of democratic grace, to eliminate corruption in its government, to kill the opium trade, to modernize its infrastructure.   Some say we are there to exploit the country’s natural resources, or to have a springboard for a future attack on Iran. According to General David Petraeus, the primary objective is to create an Afghanistan that is “never again a sanctuary to al-Qaida or other transnational extremists that it was prior to 9/11.”

In December, 2010, when his surge was in full swing, obama paid a surprise visit to the troops in Afghanistan, telling them:

“We said we were going to break the Taliban’s momentum, and that’s what you’re doing. You’re going on the offense, tired of playing defense. Today we can be proud that there are fewer areas under Taliban control and more Afghans have the chance to build a more hopeful future.  You will succeed in your mission.”

US policy, bent on preventing the return of the taliban at all costs, has coddled and propped up the perfidious Karzai, while placating the brutal local warlords.  The 2010 parliamentary elections saw a new generation of warlords “that has risen since 2001 and attained wealth and power through NATO security contracts and lucrative reconstruction deals,” gain office.

As a sop to a populace increasingly squeezed by Kabul and the warlords, half-hearted attempts were made to implement public works projects — which ended up rife with further graft.  Our statesmen are puzzled how this policy could fail in Afghanistan, when it was such a smashing success in Vietnam.

Whatever our motivations, noble or base, we have failed across the board.  The Taliban still controls much of the countryside, and we now are begging them to come to the table and accept a power-sharing agreement.  The heroin trade is like a weed — we hack at the head, but the roots remain, ready to spring up anew.  A decade after we installed him in power, Karzai’s regime is ranked as one of the top three most corrupt governments in the world.  The country is as impoverished and undeveloped as when we arrived.

As implemented by Bush and now by obama, our agenda in Afghanistan is the spawn of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which, among other things, assumes that forcibly grafting democracy onto a country leads to economic prosperity and an open society.  The fatal flaw of the Wolfowitz doctrine is that it got the causal relationship backwards:  only prosperous, open societies have the wherewithal to sustain a democracy.   In destitute, reactionary Afghanistan, democracy is a farce.

Malalai Joya, one of the few woman elected to the Jirga (parliament), has spoken out against both US policy and the corrupt Karzai regime.  Joya laments that “there are no human rights or democracy in Afghanistan because [the government] is infected with fundamentalism.”

As reward for her efforts to battle corruption and defend women’s rights, Jaya has been kicked out of the Jirga and threatened with rape.  “In our country, to express your point of view is to risk violence and death.”


Welcome to Beautiful Koranistan!

Not sure what we expected, because the Afghan constitution, written in 2004 with our blessing, establishes the country as an islamic republic.  While it includes lip service to equal rights for woman, free speech, and freedom of religion, the Afghan constitution also clearly states that “In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.”  In practice, the law of the land is sharia:  the 1976 penal code is still in effect, and the constitution gives jurisprudence to Hanafi law (a sharia variant) on matters religious.

Some human rights highlights since the Constitution was ratified:

  • 2005 — Journalist Ali Mohaqiq Nasab receives a two year blasphemy sentence for questioning harsh punishments imposed on women and the punishment of apostasy;
  • 2006 — Abdul Rahman is arrested for converting to christianity — “an attack on Islam”,  punishable by death– but is later released following international pressure;
  • 2007 — The Afghan Supreme Court rules that membership in the Bahai Faith is blasphemy and that Muslims who convert to the Bahai Faith are apostates;
  • 2008 — Following a four-minute trial, journalism student Parwiz Kambakhsh is convicted of blasphemy for allowing an article critical of Islam’s treatment of women to be published in the school paper.  His death sentence is later commuted to 20 years imprisonment;
  • 2009 —  Ghows Zalmai is sentenced to twenty years in prison for publishing an unauthorized translation of the koran;
  • 2009 — Karzai signs The Shiite Personal Status Law, which allows police to enforce a woman’s role as “obedience, readiness for intercourse, and not leaving the house without the permission of the husband,” and affirms that a shiite wife is “bound to preen for her husband, as and when he desires.”  Under the law, a husband may deny his wife food and shelter if she does not meet his sexual needs, including anal intercourse;
  • 2010 — Red Cross worker Said Musa is convicted of conversion to christianity and sentenced to death.  After suffering torture in prison, Musa is released following intervention by NGOs;
  • 2011 — Shoaib Assadullah is arrested for converting to christianity, but later released due to international pressure;
  • 2011 —  After reporting her rape by her husband’s cousin, a 19 year-old woman is sentenced to 12 years in prison for adultery;
  • 2011 —  A case involving an 8 year-old bride, (which technically violated the country’s legal marriage age of 16) is turned over by the government to local tribal leaders for adjudication.  The elders rule that, as the groom had violated the marriage agreement by already having sex with the girl, he must pay a larger dowry.  A human rights report notes that 57% of brides in Afghanistan are under the age of 16.

What do our Western leaders have to say to all this?

“We are not in Afghanistan … to see to it that we make everything right in Afghanistan.  We’re there to defeat al Qaeda.”  — Vice President Joe Biden

“We believe that if we help them secure themselves, by training the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police, then we enable that government structure to become much more experienced than it has been.  It’s a young structure and they’re still going through some growing pains.” — Captain Elizabeth Mathia, spokesperson for IFOR

“There is no point in imposing some external model that bears no relation to Afghan realities or traditions.” — Dominic Grieve, UK Attorney General


Infidel, Go Home!

We must face the fact that the people of Afghanistan are stuck in the 9th century, and they like it there.  They have no intention of abandoning the oppression of islamic law, and Western leaders turn a blind eye to all but the most notorious cases.

The Afghanis find our continued presence in their country incompatible with their religion and their culture.  They don’t want our promises of roads and schools and prosperity.  They just want us to leave.

We live in a world where the inadvertent burning of someone’s holy book may be inconsiderate, but can be smoothed over with an apology.  They live (not unlike certain christians in this country) in a pre-modern, shamanistic world, where inanimate objects like books — almost 3/4 of the population are illiterate — are imbued with spirits that can be offended and “defiled”, and where such defilement can only be atoned with blood.

These strict adherents of islam (like the strict jews they cribbed their religion off of) are obsessed with cleanliness, following edicts written long before the discovery of bacteria.  Hence is Allah, the god they fabricated, so enraged over unclean foods, unclean practices, unclean persons.

So we teach our troops not to touch the locals with their left (ass-wiping) hand. Still, our very presence, coming and going as we please, sullies their land and their daily lives.   The frequent contact with our infidel soldiers, especially the female ones, frustrates the good moslem in his obligation to pray several times a day:

“Muslims, draw not near unto prayer….  [If] ye have touched women…then go to high clean soil and rub your face and your hands.”  — sura 4:43

“…if ye have had contact with women, and ye find not water, then go to clean, high ground and rub your faces and your hands with some of it.” sura 5:6

“When one of you prays without a sutrah, a dog, an ass, a pig, a Jew, a Magian, and a woman cut off his prayer, but it will suffice if they pass in front of him at a distance of over a stone’s throw.” Abu Dawud 2:704

To comport with Mohammed’s description of women as domestic animals, we order our female soldiers to wear scarves on their heads.   Yet our very use of women– who islam considers inherently unclean, especially when menstruating — as soldiers is confrontational.  Since the US military does not take female personnel off active duty once a month, a good moslem man stands a high risk of being contaminated when encountering our troops:

“… women’s courses … are a hurt and a pollution: So keep away from women in their courses, and do not approach them until they are clean.” Sura 2:222

Our practice of placing women officers in command of male soldiers must seem barbaric to them:

“Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other…. Good women are obedient…. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them … and beat them.” sura 4:34

Any surprise, then, when a member of the Afghan parliament, in response to the koran burnings, announces at a rally that  “Americans are invaders, and jihad against Americans is an obligation”?  Or that a local worker feels the Americans “should leave Afghanistan rather than disrespecting our religion, our faith.  They have to leave and if next time they disrespect our religion, we will defend our holy Koran, religion and faith until the last drop of blood has left in our body.”


Religious War, Culture War

The Right in America are happy to treat this as a religious war.  Both Rick Santorum (in earnest) and Newt Gingrich (as demagoguery) have slammed obama’s apology.  The idea of asking Santorum or Gingrich whether the burning of a bible would merit a similar apology has yet to creep into the empty skull of any journalist.

If America is not a “Christian nation”, it is nonetheless a nation of Christians, and most Americans seem to share Santorum’s, et al. — and the Afghanis’ — view of this as a struggle between Christianity and Islam.  The soldier who shot a bullet through a koran a while back didn’t do so because he despised religious tracts in general; he did it because islam was heretical to his particular brand of faith.

The proglydites insist that in this case, we must chose between religious zealotry and touchy-feely, United-Colors-of-Benetton relativism, where every world culture, no matter how odious, must be “respected”, “valued” and “understood.”

That is a false dichotomy, and the Left are as wrong as the Right.  The koran burning, and the reactions to it, highlight a very real culture war, a clash of values.   And our modern, western culture, as exampled by the rights enshrined in the US Constitution, is better in absolute terms than the backwards, islamic culture of Afghanistan, as exemplified by their sharia.  The framers of our highest law were well-read children of the Enlightenment; theirs are superstitious relics of the Dark Ages.

Time to Pack Up and Go

It’s over. Our stated mission has failed, and conditions in Afghanistan have gotten steadily worse over time, not better.  The ways in which we want to improve society in Afghanistan are not ways in which Afghan society wants to improve.  obama’s standard foreign policy approach is to hope a problem just goes away, and he’ll let this problem fester.  Rioting will continue.  The call to bring the “burners” to justice will intensify.  More US personnel will be ambushed and killed. Tensions will rise. The risk that a beleaguered group of our soldiers shoot Afghanis — our Boston Massacre — will increase with each passing day.  The sooner we leave, the better.

A president with intelligence and integrity would realize that the game in Afghanistan is lost; that maligning our cherished Western values is a line that should never be crossed, no matter what’s at stake.  We don’t have that kind of president.

(c) 2012 by True Liberal Nexus.  All rights reserved.

11 Comments | International Affairs, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Matt