Foreign Policy In Focus

In his State of the Union address last night, President Barack Obama began with what is widely perceived to be his strong suit: foreign policy. The nation is safer under his watch, he reassured his audience, now that Osama bin Laden is gone, al-Qaeda is broken, and U.S. troops are out of Iraq. It’s too bad that the president couldn’t lead with diplomatic accomplishments to prove that the United States has reestablished a new relationship with the international community and gained a new level of global respect. Instead, President Obama felt the need to emphasize U.S. military power.

Imagine how breathtaking it would have been if the president had begun his speech differently by touting diplomatic breakthroughs with Iran and North Korea. Instead, the United States has edged closer to conflict with the former and has largely ignored the latter. Imagine if the president could point to the closure of the detention facility in Guantanamo, a campaign promise and a pledge from his first day in office, as a signal to the world that the United States had turned its back on the lawless behavior of the previous administration. Imagine if the president could take credit for a responsible drawdown of Pentagon spending and the application of a true peace dividend to job creation at home. Alas, the cuts in military spending the president has proposed have been extraordinarily modest and don’t address either Pentagon waste or pressing human needs at home and abroad.

After his ode to American military strength, the president turned to his central issue: the economy. He gestured in the direction of foreign policy – to praise free-trade agreements, to bash the Chinese for unfair trade practices – but all the messages were subordinate to fixing the U.S. economy. As a practical need and a political necessity, the president was certainly wise to focus on pocketbook issues. But his us-versus-them rhetoric is ultimately unhelpful. The United States has to work with other economic powers not only to get the global economy up and running again but to restructure it so that it no longer disproportionately benefits the wealthiest 1 percent of countries, corporations, and individuals.  

Obama returned to his perceived strong suit in the end to discuss how the United States must operate from a position of strength. Unfortunately, he was talking about the strength of the U.S. military. The United States should indeed set an example: of wise diplomacy, global economic equity, and sensible budget priorities at home. Perhaps the next State of the Union can begin on a note of international cooperation instead of unilateral triumphalism. 

I really have to hand it to the Washington Times. They've done a fine job illustrating how the entire war with Iran argument works these days with just a single image.

As you can see, it is of a glowing-eyed, long-bearded ayatollah holding a puppet of Osama bin Laden that has, on one hand, the "underwear bomber" and on the other, the "shoe bomber." As a political cartoon, it is very effective. It makes the enemy look sinister and cartoonish at the same time, and clearly tells the reader who is pulling the strings of terrorism.

The article this image appears in, written by Mitchell D. Silber (the director of the NYPD's "Intelligence Division’s Analytic and Cyber Units"), is titled "The Mutating al Qaeda Threat."

So what? There are lots of stories about Iran's alleged interactions with al Qaeda. What makes this one representative of the case for war with Iran?

The reason this story is representative is because of what Mr. Silber doesn't say, but the Washington Times implies.

Mr. Silbert is not using his editorial space to argue that Tehran was complicit in the 9/11 attacks, or is supporting al Qaeda, because he does not mention Iran in his article. Not once. His article is about "domestic extremists," i.e., citizens of the U.S., UK and Pakistan, who have been inspired by al Qaeda. 

Iran does not enter into it, and the image is not Mr. Silber's own. It is the Times's image choice. 

So, despite the absence of Iranians in the story, we have this illustration -- titled "Iran" -- suggesting that al Qaeda and those it's inspired are Tehran's puppets. 

The image choice doesn't go with the article, to say the least. And, it's misleading. I initially thought that this was going to be piece about Iran's interactions with al Qaeda.

Given the way alleged Iraqi interactions with al Qaeda were used to support the cause for regime change in Iraq, I hope that as individuals call for U.S. military intervention and regime change in Iran, people will bear in mind this example of how imagery can be so disconnected from actual intelligence. 

It seems to be the rule, rather than the exception, these days.

Paul Mutter is a Fellow at Truthout and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

On Wednesday, September 21, the state of Georgia murdered Troy Anthony Davis by poisoning him to death in front of a small audience. Despite overwhelming doubt about his guilt, his murderers, in the name of justice and the citizens of Georgia, held that he killed a white police officer in 1989. The world was horrified – everyone from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to former FBI chief William Sessions to the Pope called for Davis’s reprieve. But their cries fell on deaf ears, leaving thousands in grief over the injustice that took place at 11:08 PM that night.

No group took more interest in the case than American progressives, especially those from minority communities who saw Troy’s execution as a legalized lynching. As we enter the second decade of the 21^st century, the racial inequality and hatred with which this country was born – stained with the blood of slavery – has not disappeared no matter who happens to be in the White House.

And it just so happens that the man sitting in the White House, the first African American president of the United States, carried out a murder of another US citizen just one short week after the state of Georgia. He didn’t poison anyone to death, no; he was thousands of miles away from the crime scene. But he ordered a hit sometime before January 2010, and it was carried out last Friday, September 30.

The victim was Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. Citizen of Yemeni descent living in exile in Yemen. He was an imam of the Islamic faith who was once called into the Pentagon in the aftermath of 9/11 to advise U.S. officials on how to promote moderate over extremist Islam. But as has since become evident, whatever advice those clerics gave to U.S. war-planners was not followed. Two murderous invasions and occupations, replete with atrocities against innocent civilians, have recruited scores of Muslims to fight fanaticism with fanaticism. Among them Anwar al-Awlaki.

He became radicalized as the so-called War on Terror turned many Muslim countries into hellish war zones. Being a native-born U.S. citizen, he had the English-speaking skills and the background with which a wide audience of Muslims in the West could empathize. His English sermons were put online and he became something of an icon amidst a limited audience. Allegedly (there has been no evidence released to confirm official accusations), his audience included the “underwear bomber” Faruq Abdulmutallab, the Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan, and the man who loaded an SUV with gasoline tanks and car batteries near Times Square and was made out to be a terrorist mastermind.

If ideological motivation of criminal acts were itself an offense warranting execution, the Norwegian government would be justified in sending drones to New York to execute Jihad Watch co-creators Robert Spencer and Pam Gellar, and neoconservative ideologue Daniel Pipes – all cited numerous times in the manifesto of Anders Behring Brevik. Brevik’s 76 kills far outnumber the total body count attributed to al-Awlaki’s alleged followers (13 at Fort Hood), but that clearly doesn’t matter.

The number of innocent civilians killed by individual terrorists or state terrorism always takes second seat to global power politics. As the death toll of the Yemeni government’s crackdown on peaceful democratic protestors surpasses 500, the Obama administration continues cooperating with dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. Indeed, according to the New York Times, “the Obama administration’s top counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, said recent cooperation with Yemen was better than it has ever been.” (The Times pulled the paragraphs referencing U.S.-Saleh cooperation from their website, hence the link to Truthout.)

Nor does it matter that al-Awlaki was a U.S. citizen with full protection as such under the constitution. He was a dark-skinned Arab wearing a turban and a long beard living in Yemen, where he spoke out against the United States.

In a nation at war obsessed with appearance and ideological conformity, it wouldn’t be surprising if after denying citizenship to people born in the U.S. to undocumented parents, the right-wing forces that wield extraordinary power in this country were to go after those who criticize it.

The United States propaganda machine turned al-Awlaki into a real bogeyman, claiming – again without evidence – that he was a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and posed a direct threat to U.S. National Security. So the president ordered him killed. No trial, no official charges, just a quick death that could be broadcast to the media as a victory in the ongoing war against terror.

The large community that supported Troy Davis in his last hours, rightly decrying the injustice inherent in killing an innocent man, was an inspiration for all who seek a more equitable justice system. But will that movement be equally outraged by the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki?

The inclusion of African Americans into the nationalist myth of the United States, despite continued racism and some of the highest levels of inequality on record, serves the agenda of demonizing an outside threat in the form of Arab Muslims, which is used to give the government – indeed the president alone – the power to kill whomever he wishes, anywhere in the world. That is illegal, inhuman and downright frightening.

For characteristically spot-on analysis of the Awlaki case, please check out Glenn Greenwald on the matter.

Noah Gimbel is currently working on a book on Universities and Empire and can be reached at ngimbel@ips-dc.org.

Michael Scheuer, some of whose pronouncements about al Qaeda since 9/11 you may be familiar with, was head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit between 1996 and 2005. In a piece titled The Zawahiri Era, he addresses the succession of al Qaeda's leadership.

The question on everyone's lips is whether new al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri is up to the job. My own bet is that al-Qaeda will survive, as it did after near economic ruin in Sudan (1994–96); after the pounding it took from the U.S.-NATO-Pakistan coalition (2001–02); and after the U.S. military helpfully killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq (2006), whose indiscriminate targeting of Muslims almost pushed al-Qaeda to the brink of defeat.

As proof that al Qaeda will endure, Scheuer cites the approach that al Qaeda used in dealing with al-Zarqawi's excesses. He writes: "Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri agreed that the indiscriminate killing of Sunni and Shia Iraqis was wrong in Islamic terms, was not al-Qaeda policy and would not recur. … Forced by the al-Zarqawi-led brutality to clarify appropriate target sets" -- Muslims deemed permissible to kill -- "bin Laden and al-Zawahiri proffered their mea culpas … and delegitimized the Western narrative." By which he means the "West's incorrect, absolutist interpretation of Islamic law [which] forbids-the-killing-of-one-Muslim-by-another-in-all-cases-whatsoever." (Emphasis added.)

Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri correctly pointed out that there are Muslims on all continents and in all countries. … If al-Qaeda, its allies and those it inspires were going to wage their jihad effectively, they would have to kill Muslims. Thus, the remaining job was to define those Muslims who were religiously permissible targets.

Scheuer has never been one to shy away from bloodshed. Not long after bin Laden was killed, The New Statesman reported:

Scheuer has admirers on the left and the right. The former quote his views on the link between US foreign policy and the al-Qaeda threat; the latter point to his support for near-indiscriminate military action against terrorist groups, the use of "extraordinary rendition" and CIA special prisons, and his relaxed attitude towards "collateral damage".

Returning to the National Interest article, he writes that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri defined -- "splendidly" -- exactly which Muslims were expendable.

In the Salafist interpretation of Sunni Islamic law, Muslims who actively support an apostate regime or an infidel occupier sacrifice the protection afforded by their faith; their lives and wealth can be taken. Soldiers, bureaucrats, security and intelligence officers, and elected or appointed government officials serving apostate regimes or foreign occupiers are therefore legitimate targets.

Remember, he's not speaking about collateral damage, but of Muslims intentionally targeted by Muslims. Turns out, too, that, according to Scheuer, al Qaeda's rationalization is working (emphasis added).

It is individuals in these categories who have been al-Qaeda in Iraq's primary victims as it tries to recoup al-Zarqawi-caused losses, and there has been little to no negative reaction from Iraq's Sunni community or other Islamic regimes and scholars outside Iraq. Al-Qaeda's focus on these categories of Muslims as legitimate targets is likely to harden into an organization-wide policy … This leaves a reinvigorated al-Qaeda with an expanded and well-defined target set.

So many Muslims for Islamist extremists to kill, so little time.

"Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many senior U.S. government officials and national security experts argued that terrorists were undeterrable. After all, how do you deter people who are irrational or willing to give their life for a cause?" ask Barry Pavel and Matthew Kroenig at Foreign Policy.

It's become conventional wisdom: troubled suicide bombers look ahead to the afterlife for rewards denied them on earth as surely as European serfs did in the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, al Qaeda and the Taliban are unconcerned with casualties to civilians caused by their operations or by retaliation against them.

In fact, Pavel and Kroenig maintain that militant leaders of the likes of al Qaeda and the Taliban can be deterred. First, as is becoming common knowledge, terrorists

… value tactical success … the United States can deter terrorism by. … convincing the adversary that the action is unlikely to succeed or result in substantial benefits. … Any terrorist, even a suicide bomber, will be reluctant to jeopardize resources, reputation, or martyrdom on a failed attack. … Ideally, Washington should aim to persuade them that terrorism entails high costs and minimal benefits and that, on balance, it doesn't pay.

Also, the authors state, a seed can be planted in the terrorist's mind about whether a planned operation is truly in accord with Islamic teachings.

By working with mainstream Muslim clerics and employing other measures to … sow doubt about whether killing oneself and other innocent civilians is consistent with Muslim theology, the United States can convince would-be terrorists to choose a different career path.

In an aside, yes, the authors actually refer to terrorism, apparently with a straight face, as a career path. Okay, it does pay and if you can manage to avoid being sweet-talked into becoming a suicide bomber, it's likely that room for advancement exists. Meanwhile, Pavel and Kroenig also write

While it might be difficult to deter people willing to die for a cause, many of the most important members of a terrorist network are not suicide bombers. State sponsors, financiers, logisticians, radical clerics, and even some leaders highly value their lives and material possessions; they can, therefore, be deterred by simple threats of imprisonment or death.

Or, presumably, closely targeted sanctions. It isn't long, though, before the authors stumble into dangerous terrain.

… the U.S. government can seek to deny publicity to terrorist groups. When cable news stations broadcasted the images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center over and over again in the days and weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, they played into al Qaeda's hands by amplifying the terror of the event throughout American society. To avoid repeating this mistake, the United States should follow Israel's lead in developing a private-public partnership in which media outlets agree to limit the amount of coverage devoted to terrorism. These purely voluntary agreements should aim to strike an appropriate balance between the public's right to know and government efforts to combat terrorism. …

U.S. policymakers should do more to work with friends and allies to put laws on the books (where they do not already exist) to punish terrorist activity, develop capabilities and partnerships to increase the probability that those participating in terrorism are identified.

Put laws on the books? Sure, the Patriot Act has worked like a charm in conjunction with the embarrassment of national-security riches we enjoy with our legion of intelligence agencies. Not to mention the warrantless electronic surveillance blanketing our phones and computers.

If much of that were rolled back, maybe then we could start talking about "voluntary" (wouldn't consensus require a vote by the public?) censorship. As national security is presently constructed, asking news organizations to limit our exposure to terrorist acts only adds insult to our civil liberties injury. Also, aside from the impossibility of constraining the Internet, the terrorists will take credit for the disruption to the American way of life that censorship represents.

While Islamist violence is a fire that can never be stamped out, it can be deprived of fuel by admitting that there's some merit to their grievances, such as U.S. presence on their soil and our reluctance to address Israel's oppression of Palestinians.