Re-post from 4-13-12:
The nation’s first Black President has taken us on the final descent into international barbarity with his drone offensive. It is a joy stick to Hell. Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report
How can Obamacrats continue to ignore, minimize or even justify Obama’s ever escalating ILLEGITIMATE drone warfare?
Illegitimate war waging is the HIGHEST war crime.
Apparently in this election year, “Shhhhhhhhhhhh.” Don’t begin to call out a Democratic President for throwing out international law for what Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report sees as Obama’s drive for “full spectrum dominance” over the planet. Excuse me for uttering this question but wasn't that what Hitler was ultimately challenged for? When if ever will Obama be?
Not easily in Post-Morality America. Of course not, in the smoke and mirrors “lesser evilism” propaganda for one of the two heads of really one amoral corporate party. Propaganda by big media especially the so-called progressive Obama hucksters on MSNBC leading American lemmings horrifyingly to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the terrorism this United States is inflicting all over the globe for corporate agendas NOW. Instead of panicking people about what will happen internationally if a Republican gets at the helm, why not take a hard look at what Obama is doing internationally?
Glen Ford calls out Obama’s international war criminality well:
The U.S. would elevate to a strategic principle its self-arrogated entitlement to use whatever technical means at its disposal – mainly drones – to target and kill designated adversaries at will, anyplace on the globe, at any time, accountable only to itself. It was a declaration of war against international law, as it has evolved over the centuries.
This administration has expanded the Air Force inventory of active drones to at least 7,500. Drones have joined Special Operations forces as the “tip of the spear” of U.S. power projection in the developing world, the “front lines” of the current imperial offensive.
Virtually all of the drones’ lethal missions are, in legal terms, assassinations, with or without “collateral damage.” They are also acts of terror, certainly in the broad sense of the word, and intended to be so.
Ford refers to an article by David Model that explores the drone violations of international law:
The first step in examining the legality of assassinating known or suspected terrorists through the use of unmanned armed vehicles (UAVs) is to decide whether such killings could be classified as part of an armed conflict. If they are considered as part of an armed conflict, according to international law, the rules of armed conflict would apply; otherwise the laws of self-defence would be relevant.
According to the Geneva Conventions and customary humanitarian law, armed conflict only applies when two or more States are involved. When the United States defines its campaign against terrorists as a global conflict, this designation is not based on the correct definition of war as characterized by international law but on America’s own interpretation of its effort to eradicate terrorism. Only two or more States can legally, in the strictest terms, engage in war, not a State against individuals scattered around the globe.
Model suggests that drone warfare against specific terrorists or terrorist groups should not be waged by a US nation state, but instead said terrorists should be pursued via police action, enforcing criminal law. Criminal law provides due process for self-defense! The very nature of Obama's drone war-mongering is illegitimate.
Based on the existing literature, it is difficult to argue that the threat extended by a single or group of terrorists poses a threat to the security of the United States. It could be argued that terrorist poses a threat to individuals or to property belonging to the United States in which case criminal law applies and the response requires police action not an armed attack by a State.
A further point reinforcing the argument of a police action is that these targets of drone attacks are suspects until due process condemns them for criminal acts. Killing the suspect precludes the application of due process.
It is clearly evident that for a State to launch an attack by an UAV is a violation of international law and those responsible for such acts become suspects of war crimes. Arbitrary killing of individuals around the world notwithstanding the justification cannot be in accordance with the rule of law under which certain norms of behaviour have been established for the treatment of individuals suspected of illegal acts.
Glen Ford on Obama's willful destruction of the right of due process at home and abroad:
Therefore, in the quest to make the entire world a free-fire (and law-free) zone, drone warfare requires that due process be destroyed everywhere, including within the borders of the United States. The Obama-shaped preventive detention bill signed into law this past New Years Eve is the logical extension of the international lawlessness called forth by drone warfare, and by the larger aims of full spectrum American dominance. Barack Obama is not just another “war president” – he is a destroyer of world civilization, the terms by which humans deal with one another as states, social groupings and individuals. It is not an exaggeration to describe this leap into depravity as a war against humanity at-large, and against the human historical legacy.
Drone warfare utterly shreds the very concept of the rule of law. In killing those “suspected” of committing or planning actions against the U.S., Washington “precludes the application of due process,” writes Model.
Ford declares that this President has taken on the authority to execute targeted individuals and attack other nation states at will with NO ACCOUNTABILITY! As Ford emphasizes, the hypocritical and amoral use of “humanitarian” military intervention is a FRAUD.
Certainly, it is a war against peace, the highest international crime. If a state can kill individuals and designated (or alleged) organizations by fiat, without due process or any shred of accountability to any authority but the president of the superpower, that state can also “execute” other states at will. Under Obama, the U.S. has articulated an alternative notion of global legality that purports to replace the body of international law accrued over centuries and so elegantly codified after World War Two. “Humanitarian” military intervention is the fraudulent doctrine through which the U.S. seeks to justify its current, desperate offensive against all obstacles to its global dominance.
Where George Bush often spoke in unilateralist terms of a U.S. mission to “spread democracy” as justification for his regime-changing aggression in Iraq and elsewhere, Obama invokes the higher calling of “humanitarian intervention” as a universal, pseudo-legal principle of international conduct. It is a doctrine designed for a Final Conflict for American supremacy on the planet, a doomsday construct that conflates perceived U.S. (corporate) geopolitical interests with the destiny of humankind – unbounded imperial criminality posing as the highest bar of justice!
Ford reminds us of Dr. Martin Luther King’s declaration during the Vietnam era that the United States is the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Ford sees Obama as taking the United States even beyond that “to an existential threat to world order, the rule of law, and the security of the Earth’s inhabitants – to civilization itself.”
Again, Mr. Ford declares:
The nation’s first Black President has taken us on the final descent into international barbarity with his drone offensive. It is a joy stick to Hell.
[cross-posted on correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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Interesting that people bitch about Russia and China blocking efforts by the Security Council to try Assad at the International Criminal Court. Neither the US nor Syria have signed on to the ICC. Their political leaders can still be tried at the ICC but only if the Security Council approves it unanimously. Guess who's blocking the effort to take Obama and Israel to the ICC?
I am an avid reader of your posts, Libby and I believe you are doing an essential service of informing. I do learn from you. Yet, for the sake of fairness, I believe you should acknowledge the 'why' too. For example, are there hoards of evil racist Americans who wholeheartedly support this barbarism? Is Obama doing the bidding of some despicable big money? Excellent post. R
It's so sad that nobody is talking about this unbelievable crime? How long ago did we hear about drones killing people (sometimes innocent civilians) around the world? It's more often the media discusses the possibilities that drones will attack people in here, or will spy on our freedoms. As horrible as it would be, why don't we pay attention to politic that feels it's ok to murder people from the sky, people in other independent country we are not in war with? I agree, it's a horror. But when we have someone in the White House who has no experience in international politics, who believes that he can do whatever he wants, who is not ashamed to say that he decides who's going to be killed today and who tomorrow, and no one pays attention to that - this is a crime! The whole world community is guilty!
@Dr. Stuart... , would you please educate me on "who's blocking the effort to take Obama and Israel to the ICC?" Is this another conspiracy going on? And what Israel has to do with taking Assad to the ICC?
@Dr. Stuart... , would you please educate me on "who's blocking the effort to take Obama and Israel to the ICC?" Is this another conspiracy going on? And what Israel has to do with taking Assad to the ICC?
As much as I loved your last post, Libby, this one leaves me cold and astonished--and brings to mind a quote I saw earlier in another forum in which I participate. It was a quote (from Carrie Fisher, I think): “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
I cannot imagine the breadth of smiles on the faces of any terrorist sympathizers reading this essay when he or she read the words:
Model suggests that drone warfare against specific terrorists or terrorist groups should not be waged by a US nation state, but instead said terrorists should be pursued via police action, enforcing criminal law. Criminal law provides due process for self-defense! The very nature of Obama's drone war-mongering is illegitimate.
With all the respect in the world, that view takes naiveté past any thoughts of it being humorous or cute…into the realm of absurdity.
I cannot imagine the breadth of smiles on the faces of any terrorist sympathizers reading this essay when he or she read the words:
Model suggests that drone warfare against specific terrorists or terrorist groups should not be waged by a US nation state, but instead said terrorists should be pursued via police action, enforcing criminal law. Criminal law provides due process for self-defense! The very nature of Obama's drone war-mongering is illegitimate.
With all the respect in the world, that view takes naiveté past any thoughts of it being humorous or cute…into the realm of absurdity.
Yes, Stuart, and when you consider how many years the US vetoed and protected all things Israel from their outrages. I am guessing the UK but things are also cozy with France still in terms of imperialism. Would be nice to have the ICC really do the world's work! As well as the UN which has turned into one more accessory to mass murder on behalf of US/NATO/Israel and bullying MidEast petromonarchies.
best, libby
best, libby
Thoth, the cronied corporate interests, the international and US banksters are their own Mafia.
Did you ever see the Canadian documentary from years ago, the Corporation? It says that the personality profile of a corporation is the same as of a psychopath. Obsessive self interest and ruthlessness. No empathy. There is a collusion of cronyism among the one percenters as in the corporate overlords, the political prostitutes who serve them, and the media prostitutes who serve both of them.
The barbarism I have been referring to lately about the Syria crisis is more of the barbarism from the Libya crisis and still exists in Afghanistan and Iraq and also Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. And things are happening deep in Africa that is really top secret but I trust equally as brutal, violent and craven.
There is the military industrial security media complex, an evil and out of control international matrix that is trying to achieve a new world order and at the same time appease Israel's paranoid projections against countries it thinks will treat them like it treats other countries.
Obama is a front man for the murderous rulers of the matrix.
They don't need racists to enable the evil happening. They just need to win the infowar with nice, overtrusting citizens and that they have done by manipulating the media. MSNBC calls itself progressive but instead of addressing real evil and war criminality it cherry picks the probs with Republicans and Romney, etc. Yes that would be important if they were not giving a whitewash to the not really lesser evil of the second corporate-run sociopathic party, the Dem party.
If we had a fourth estate that delivered the statistics instead of spinning the "truthiness" of the story the US or other NATO countries or even MidEast journalists want to carry out. Lying to the citizenry is necessary and important. I can't believe the atrocities in Libya and now Syria that corporate media and even a lot of alternate media are ignoring or spinning. And the mass deaths, sometimes intentional ethnic cleansing on the part of the so-called "freedom fighters" who are really brutal mercenaries paid for by the CIA or the anti-human-rights countries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar.
The alarms of cognitive dissonance are blaring pretty loudly by now but people get used to anything. And they stay myopic and want to believe that their leadership is not as craven as they seem to be. When they say they care about human beings in other countries we want to believe that. They want to believe that they are not totally helpless and by voting for Obama they are doing something to help the country. So wrong. Tragically. I see Obama as the American Judas, but there are lots of betrayers and accessories to war crime and mass murder. Colossal lying.
What Obama is doing with the drones and the kill lists and detention or assassination of Americans without due process has jumped the shark so high that he should be impeached and stopped. Instead there is acceptance of this. WTF??? Jefferson said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We as a country dropped the ball of that. We have got to break out of the collective ego of exceptionalism bubble. All of us. We are being played one more time with the Iraq playbook, or the Kosovo one or the Nicaragua. Apparently according to Wikileaks the planning for regime change in Syria began even before Obama was elected.
We need a paradigm shift from a patriarchal power and control and competition and greed and violence one to a humanism one of partnership and cooperation and empathy. How deep do we have to bottom out as a country to get it and to rally to change it. To make the shift. I know we can!
Thoth, that is my best attempt at a very penetrating question that deserves more answers from others. keep asking it.
best, libby
Did you ever see the Canadian documentary from years ago, the Corporation? It says that the personality profile of a corporation is the same as of a psychopath. Obsessive self interest and ruthlessness. No empathy. There is a collusion of cronyism among the one percenters as in the corporate overlords, the political prostitutes who serve them, and the media prostitutes who serve both of them.
The barbarism I have been referring to lately about the Syria crisis is more of the barbarism from the Libya crisis and still exists in Afghanistan and Iraq and also Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. And things are happening deep in Africa that is really top secret but I trust equally as brutal, violent and craven.
There is the military industrial security media complex, an evil and out of control international matrix that is trying to achieve a new world order and at the same time appease Israel's paranoid projections against countries it thinks will treat them like it treats other countries.
Obama is a front man for the murderous rulers of the matrix.
They don't need racists to enable the evil happening. They just need to win the infowar with nice, overtrusting citizens and that they have done by manipulating the media. MSNBC calls itself progressive but instead of addressing real evil and war criminality it cherry picks the probs with Republicans and Romney, etc. Yes that would be important if they were not giving a whitewash to the not really lesser evil of the second corporate-run sociopathic party, the Dem party.
If we had a fourth estate that delivered the statistics instead of spinning the "truthiness" of the story the US or other NATO countries or even MidEast journalists want to carry out. Lying to the citizenry is necessary and important. I can't believe the atrocities in Libya and now Syria that corporate media and even a lot of alternate media are ignoring or spinning. And the mass deaths, sometimes intentional ethnic cleansing on the part of the so-called "freedom fighters" who are really brutal mercenaries paid for by the CIA or the anti-human-rights countries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar.
The alarms of cognitive dissonance are blaring pretty loudly by now but people get used to anything. And they stay myopic and want to believe that their leadership is not as craven as they seem to be. When they say they care about human beings in other countries we want to believe that. They want to believe that they are not totally helpless and by voting for Obama they are doing something to help the country. So wrong. Tragically. I see Obama as the American Judas, but there are lots of betrayers and accessories to war crime and mass murder. Colossal lying.
What Obama is doing with the drones and the kill lists and detention or assassination of Americans without due process has jumped the shark so high that he should be impeached and stopped. Instead there is acceptance of this. WTF??? Jefferson said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We as a country dropped the ball of that. We have got to break out of the collective ego of exceptionalism bubble. All of us. We are being played one more time with the Iraq playbook, or the Kosovo one or the Nicaragua. Apparently according to Wikileaks the planning for regime change in Syria began even before Obama was elected.
We need a paradigm shift from a patriarchal power and control and competition and greed and violence one to a humanism one of partnership and cooperation and empathy. How deep do we have to bottom out as a country to get it and to rally to change it. To make the shift. I know we can!
Thoth, that is my best attempt at a very penetrating question that deserves more answers from others. keep asking it.
best, libby
Hey Inga, thanks for the comment! I am thinking Stuart meant the UK but also possible is France. China, France, Russia, UK, US are the five members of the UN Security Council.
The horror of drones is so profound. The way they kill, their violation of sovereign national boundaries, their insane cost to produce, the detachment and safety and desensitization the killer gets to enjoy from the targeted, the vast collateral damage they generate, the arbitrariness of those determining the targets, the likelihood of faulty intelligence, etc., etc., etc.
Yes, the whole world community is guilty. The sociopathic corporations consider human life CHEAP and gratuitous violence and destruction is so worth the gamesmanship of power and control addiction. The foundational values of our democracy have been urinated upon by all three branches of our government who sold out to the oligarchical overlords economically and militarily terrorizing the globe at this point.
Learned helplessness, apathy, mass desensitization of our population is stunning. And a main reason is the betrayal of the media that has cronied up with the power bastards of the universe.
At this point, though, if people are not outraged they are really committed to playing ostriches is my thinking.
best, libby
The horror of drones is so profound. The way they kill, their violation of sovereign national boundaries, their insane cost to produce, the detachment and safety and desensitization the killer gets to enjoy from the targeted, the vast collateral damage they generate, the arbitrariness of those determining the targets, the likelihood of faulty intelligence, etc., etc., etc.
Yes, the whole world community is guilty. The sociopathic corporations consider human life CHEAP and gratuitous violence and destruction is so worth the gamesmanship of power and control addiction. The foundational values of our democracy have been urinated upon by all three branches of our government who sold out to the oligarchical overlords economically and militarily terrorizing the globe at this point.
Learned helplessness, apathy, mass desensitization of our population is stunning. And a main reason is the betrayal of the media that has cronied up with the power bastards of the universe.
At this point, though, if people are not outraged they are really committed to playing ostriches is my thinking.
best, libby
"Obama’s drive for “full spectrum dominance” over the planet. Excuse me for uttering this question but wasn't that what Hitler was ultimately challenged for?"
That's what I always thought, and I used to teach this stuff. For me, the difference between what Hitler wanted and what Obama has already got is becoming harder to see all the time.
Rated.
That's what I always thought, and I used to teach this stuff. For me, the difference between what Hitler wanted and what Obama has already got is becoming harder to see all the time.
Rated.
Frank, thanks for reading me nonetheless. best, libby
Alan, yes, thank you! Remember the domino theory? We are the purveyor NOW of actual enactment of dominos falling domination! Human misery is less and less significant to the bastards of the universe! how do we shift this to a humanist paradigm? Defending democracy is the biggest lie of the US. Dismantling democracy is happening in this country. But the US preys on using its own "myth" with people struggling with authoritarian regimes. Little do they know massive betrayal will soon follow. best, libby
Alan, yes, thank you! Remember the domino theory? We are the purveyor NOW of actual enactment of dominos falling domination! Human misery is less and less significant to the bastards of the universe! how do we shift this to a humanist paradigm? Defending democracy is the biggest lie of the US. Dismantling democracy is happening in this country. But the US preys on using its own "myth" with people struggling with authoritarian regimes. Little do they know massive betrayal will soon follow. best, libby
More to Frank. Iirc, the Taliban was it was willing to turn bin Laden over to be prosecuted in the states as a police action after 9/11. Afghanistan was willing to turn him over -- and that would have been the sane way to go. All Afghanistan asked the US for was some evidence that he was their guy. To work with them on that. Instead, Bush got high and mighty and decided to invade Afghanistan because that had been the plan all along. All the deaths and destruction and displacement of people, if they had handled it that way, as criminal action. Actually, there are far more tentacles of US black ops, a lot more, than the rag tag network of Al Qaeda but that works as a bogeyman for US imperialism so it will be kept being played. Again, police actions are saner but they don't allow for disaster capitalism and the shock and awe required! They don't allow for decimation of a country and regime change for US and gangster buddy profit. best, libby
Thank you, Libby, for answering my question. I read your answer/comment twice, and again, I learned more. God bless you.
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