February 14, 2013| News | John Glaser

During John Brennan’s Senate confirmation hearings last week, Senator Susan Collins asked him about whether the drone strikes in Pakistan are “creating a backlash” and “creating new terrorists when a neighbor or family member is killed in the course of the operations.” She cited statements to that effect from General Stanley McChrystal and former CIA Director Michael Hayden.

In response, Brennan demurred, insisting that “we, in fact, have found in many areas is that the people are being held hostage to al-Qa’ida in these areas and have welcomed the work that the U.S. Government has done with their governments to rid them of the al-Qa’ida cancer that exists.”

According to a new Gallup poll, more than nine out of ten Pakistanis (92%) disapprove of US leadership. Only 4% approve, “the lowest approval rating Pakistanis have ever given.”

Which of the 92% of Pakistanis that disapprove of US leadership does Brennan believe are “welcoming” of the drone war?

The reality is that this disapproval rating is largely a result of the fact that Washington has been bombing their country for about 10 years, with up to 364 strikes and 3,000 people killed.

A study last year by researchers at the Stanford and NYU schools of law found that the drone program is “terrorizing” the people of Pakistan and that it is having “counterproductive” effects in the population.

“Evidence suggests that US strikes have facilitated recruitment to violent non-state armed groups, and motivated further violent attacks,” the study said. “As the New York Times has reported, ‘drones have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants.’ Drone strikes have also soured many Pakistanis on cooperation with the US and undermined US-Pakistani rel­ations. One major study shows that 74% of Pakistanis now consider the US an enemy.”

This goes not just for Pakistan, but for Yemen too. According to The Washington Post, drone strikes are not “welcomed” by the population, as Brennan claims, but serve to radicalize the population against America.

“The evidence of radicalization emerged in more than 20 interviews with tribal leaders, victims’ relatives, human rights activists and officials from four provinces in southern Yemen where U.S. strikes have targeted suspected militants,” the Post reported. “They described a strong shift in sentiment toward militants affiliated with the transnational network’s most active wing, al-Qaeda in the ­Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.”

“We have gone a long way down the road of creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to Pakistan and Afghanistan,” said Robert Grenier, who headed the CIA’s counter-terrorism center and was previously a CIA station chief in Pakistan.

Brennan is living in a fantasy land.

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February 13, 2013| News | Grant Smith

A November Washington Post report by national security journalist Walter Pincus revealed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was building a mysterious underground facility for the Israel Defense Forces near Tel Aviv. Deeper in the report Pincus claimed, "Over the years, the Corps has built underground hangers for Israeli fighter-bombers, facilities for handling nuclear weapons (though Israel does not admit having such weapons), command centers, training bases, intelligence facilities and simulators, according to Corps publications."

Pincus did not respond to an immediate email request for citations of USACE publications detailing "facilities for handling nuclear weapons, " but a January 4, 2013 Freedom of Information Act request to USACE Humphreys Engineer Support Center in Alexandria requesting documents summarizing "its role in building nuclear weapons handling facilities in Israel" was swiftly answered.

USACE’s response was unusually comprehensive. (PDF) "This office is responsible for administering requests involving USACE Headquarters. The USACE Europe District is the office responsible for projects involving Israel. I have coordinated with the Europe District and have been informed that none of the facilities that USACE has been involved with were nuclear weapons handling facilities; therefore I will not be requesting that a document search be conducted."

Although an appeal demanding that USACE Europe actually conduct a bona fide document search was filed on January 22, no further replies have been forthcoming. Walter Pincus has written no more about the U.S. lending a helpful hand in Israel’s officially unacknowledged nuclear arsenal. If Pincus is wrong about USACE, it would not be the first time the veteran reporter has gotten basic facts about an important story completely wrong. Although then a fairly recent graduate of Georgetown Law School, Pincus misinterpreted basic facts about the 1917 Espionage Act in a 2006 story. Pincus then engaged in a long fight after the ombudsman’s attention was brought to the issue. Although the flawed Pincus story contributed to the Post’s overall editorial line that criminal charges against two AIPAC officials indicted for espionage should be dropped, to its credit the newspaper publicly corrected the Pincus helpful error a month later.

Hinting that the U.S. government has an ongoing official—though deeply secret—role in helping Israel develop and deploy nuclear weapons is a line periodically pushed by Israel lobby partisans when uncomfortable facts about questionable funding flows from the U.S. or illicit material and technology diversions arise. For Pincus, the "USACE nuke facilities" story may mark the final twist of his long transformation from the Israel lobby’s fiercest investigator under Senator J. W. Fulbright in the 1960s to just another lobby trumpet in the establishment media. In the short reference Pincus upholds the ever-less-credible policy of "strategic ambiguity" while insinuating an official U.S. role. While it is remotely possible the USACE is fibbing and Pincus is right, if that is true all future U.S. funding to Israel will have to be cut under foreign aid restrictions mandated by the Symington and Glenn Amendments. Or perhaps the Corps built nuclear facilities without understanding their purpose. Whatever the truth, Americans deserve far more clarity and fact-based reporting about how their tax dollars may be funding Israel’s nuclear weapons.

Grant Smith is Director of the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, Inc.

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February 13, 2013| News | John Glaser

According to a new book written by former Navy SEAL Jack Murphy and former Army Ranger Brandon Webb, Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan was directing secret raids on militias in Libya which ultimately led to a retaliation in the form of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Benghazi Consulate that killed four Americans, including US Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Fox News:

“Brennan waged his own unilateral operations in North Africa outside of the traditional command structure,” the book says, calling it an “off the books” operation not coordinated with Petraeus and the CIA.

The authors then claim that these raids were a “contributing factor” in the militant strike on the U.S. Consulate and CIA annex on Sept. 11.

The raids, they said, “kicked the hornets’ nest and pissed off the militia.”

There has been much controversy over the Benghazi incident, but not because anyone suspected what this new book, with apparent inside information, claims. Rather, Congressional Republicans have criticized the Obama administration for not having enough security at the Consulate and for not being up front about whether the attack was a protest gone awry or a premeditated assault.

If the claims in the book are true, it is even more damning than previous accusations. The Republican talking points on the Benghazi incident were never very compelling to me. But Antiwar.com has indeed focused on the fact that the Benghazi attack looked and smelled like blowback, resulting from US interventionism against the Gadhafi regime in 2011.

The allegations of these two Special Operations troops reinforces that thesis, although on the micro scale. Buy the book here.

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February 13, 2013| News | John Glaser

For those younger readers interested in attending, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is holding an important academic seminar on The True Costs of War, in economic terms as well as civil liberties. You’ll get to hear lectures from professors including Robert Higgs, Tom Duncan, and Gregory Randolph and mingle with other students interested in peace and liberty.

Here is their website’s description:

War is undoubtedly destructive to human lives and there are various moral and political arguments that revolve around justifications for and against war. Though wars are inherently destructive, there are many who claim there are economic benefits to war. “World War II ended the Depression,” we are told in high school and college history and economics courses. However, is it true that prosperity can come from destruction? And what else is destroyed in war in addition to lives and property? Is there a connection between war, growing government, and shrinking liberties?

The seminar will be held from July 8-11 in St. Louis, MO at St. Louis University. Apply here.

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February 12, 2013| News | John Glaser

Via Matthew Feeney at Reason, The Washington Post has some nice charts up about US “defense” spending.

The first illustrates the oft-quoted factoid that the US spends as much on defense as most major countries in the world combined.

It’s a powerful image that really undercuts those in Washington who perpetually inflate the threats we face abroad (and sometimes simply invent them). But note the measurement of US military spending is the more traditional amount acknowledged in federal budgets. Broader measurements which take into account all kinds of spending on the national security state put the number at about $1 trillion or above.

Putting this graphical dichotomy into context, most politicians from both parties have been screaming bloody murder (no pun intended) about the relatively minor cuts to defense included in the sequestration deal. The worst case scenario for the Pentagon budget is about $500 billion in cuts over the course of ten years. Which isn’t really a cut at all – it’s a reduction in the rate of growth in defense spending.

And that might even be putting it generously. As Feeney notes, the Mercatus Center’s Veronique de Rugy has crunched the numbers and concludes, “After sequestration, the FY 2013 defense budget will be comparable to its FY 2006 level (in real terms). Adjusted for inflation, over the next ten years, the spending is projected to remain relatively constant.”

The next graph specifies how Washington allocates its defense dollars and shows that, as Feeney writes, “engaging in war happens to be expensive. ”

The minuscule defense cuts being contemplated could easily target areas of waste. The major source of growth in annual defense budgets since 2001 has been mostly due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of the rest has been spent on wasteful superfluous weapons technology, bloated salaries and benefits plans, and expensive peacetime operating costs for the 900-plus military bases in 130-plus countries around the world.

“But what about jobs!?” ask those unwilling to cut. Well, defense spending is not a jobs program. At least, it’s not supposed to be. As far as the health of the economy is concerned, defense budgets are a net drain.

Via the Cato Institute’s Malou Innocent, this study from the Center for International Policy finds that “Pentagon spending is an especially poor job creator” compared to “virtually any other use of the same money, from a tax cut to investments in infrastructure to spending on education.”

Warnings of doom to the economy, or to national security, are groundless scare stories coming from the groups of people who benefit most from the government’s most lucrative and deadly welfare program.

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February 12, 2013| News | John Glaser

President Barack Obama views the DMZ from Camp Bonifas, Republic of Korea, March 25, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama views the DMZ from Camp Bonifas, Republic of Korea, March 25, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

“While the professional threat inflation complex will no doubt get in gear shortly,” writes Robert Farley at The Diplomat, “recent scholarship suggests caution in coming to the conclusion that North Korea’s nuclear capabilities pose a relevant threat.”

North Korea is at dire nuclear and conventional disadvantage relative to the United States and its allies; North Korea will remain at dire disadvantage effectively forever. Consequently, a new nuclear test does little-to-nothing to alter the real balance of power on the Korean Peninsula. It’s worth noting that the more-or-less successful tests of 2006 and 2009 have, thus far, allowed North Korea to accomplish none of its important foreign policy and security goals, apart from deterring a South Korean-U.S.-Japanese attack that likely would never have happened in the first place.

Last night, North Korea expended a significant fraction of its fissile material to achieve nearly nothing, beyond possibly the irritation of Beijing and the strengthening of right-wingers in Japan and the United States. The appropriate policy response to North Korea remains the same; containment until the regime collapses. Whether that requires five years, twenty-five years, or fifty years, the U.S. and its Northeast Asia allies have time on their side.

I think Farley is right to criticize the threat inflation that fumes out of Washington, D.C. every time North Korea launches something into the air. Some of the time, as we learned last April, the DPRK can’t even manage to conduct a successful launch, and sometimes they even use toy weapons in military parades, illustrating how little their belligerence conceals their essential weakness. There is, as Farley says, little to no threat and the DPRK has “achieve[d] nearly nothing.”

But further containment until the regime collapses is probably not the appropriate policy response. Sanctions and isolation have been tried for decades and have only locked in the regime’s power, encouraged their bellicosity, and worsened conditions for the North Korean people.

“A policy of not engaging Pyongyang,” writes former CIA officer Paul Pillar, “was tried for several years under the previous administration, without success in preventing North Korea’s first nuclear tests.”

“Wise statesmen learn to abandon obsolete or unworkable policies,” writes Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. “President Richard Nixon did so with his opening to China in 1972, and President Bill Clinton did so with his normalization of diplomatic and economic relations with Vietnam in the late 1990s.”

“The results have been clearly positive in both cases” and Obama “needs to show the same judgment and courage by making a sustained effort at the highest level to establish something at least resembling a normal relationship with Pyongyang.”

One possible impediment to dealing with North Korea more constructively is Washington’s soured relationship with Beijing. Our aggressive, militaristic efforts to contain a rising China obstruct any chance to engage with North Korea’s only great power ally on this issue.

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