Petraeus: Disaster wrapped as a gift
What Petraeus has put in motion is bad for this country. He approaches problems from a military point of view: What to wreck and whom to kill to make things work the way I want? That’s well and good unless the solution is not to be found in killing and wrecking—and it’s especially bad if the killing and wrecking exacerbate the problem, as it seems to be doing. Fred Branfman has an interesting article in today’s Salon:
Few issues are more important to America’s future than reducing the threat of future terrorist attacks, which not only risk killing Americans but also provoking a U.S. government response that could destroy our democracy. As Bob Woodward has warned: “Another 9-11 … could happen, and if it does, we will become a police state.” It could thus be a matter of the survival of American freedom that the media, instead of continuing to simply record official claims of militants killed by ground and drone assassinations, also report on the compelling evidence that these killings are weakening our overall national security.
Congress, the mass media and public are overlooking evidence that the current U.S. “counter-terror strategy” of global assassination by drones and special operations commandoes, isn’t working. No small part of the problem is the lack of critical thinking about former Gen. David Petraeus, perhaps the most important architect of this strategy, and now the director of the CIA.
This week’s assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and Muslim cleric, alleged to have orchestrated attacks on Americans, will no doubt be touted as another victory for Petraeus.
But such victories have a way of proving elusive. The killing of various “al-Qaida leaders” is not heroically “turning the tide” in the war on terror, as unnamed U.S. officials are no doubt explaining to credulous columnists right now. In fact, most of the data from the drone war theater indicates that the Petraeus assassination strategy is increasing the numbers, motivation and geographic scope of America’s foes. It is making our allies are weaker. We face more potential suicide-bombers. And we have managed to increase — not decrease — the danger of nuclear materials falling into terrorist hands.
Yemen, in fact, is a useful case-study of how the Petraeus assassination strategy is creating more new anti-American enemies for every Awlaki it illegally kills. Last May, the Washington Post reported that U.S. drone and air strikes in the country have depressed the local economy, increased support for anti-U.S. groups and demonstrated “the potential for U.S. policies to have harmful, if unintended, consequences in this politically brittle nation.” Despite the air strike campaign,” reported the New York Times, “the leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula survives, and there is little sign the group is much weaker.”
The Petraeus record is not pretty.
It is a strategic and military failure. The issue is critical. For if Gen. Petraeus’ policies are backfiring and, God forbid, there is another domestic terror attack committed by Muslims, like the Times Square bomber, angered by U.S. murder in the Muslim world since 9/11, the present U.S. “counter-terror” strategy will be largely responsible.
If Pakistani nuclear materials fall into the hands of anti-U.S. terrorists, or there is a coup by pro-Islamist Pakistani military officers, Petraeus’ misguided policy toward Pakistan will bear much of the blame. If Yemen becomes a new center of anti-U.S. terrorism, it will be at least partly because U.S. drone strikes and ground assassinations have increased, not decreased, anti-U.S. sentiment.
Assassination as policy
Petraeus began focusing on widespread assassination of suspected terrorist during his time in Iraq.
“Beginning in about May 2006,” Bob Woodward reported in his book “The War Within,” “the U.S. military and the U.S. intelligence agencies launched a series of top secret operations that enabled them to locate, target and kill key individuals in extremist groups. A number of authoritative sources say these covert activities had a far-reaching effect on the violence and were very possibly the biggest factor in reducing it.”
When Petraeus took over Central Command in 2008, he . . .
Continue reading. Simple solutions fail in a complex, interconnected world. Cutting one cord of a tensegrity structure can have severe (and often unpredictable) consequences that go far beyond the parting of a cord.
