Obama & Brennan, Leading Us Down to the 9th Circle of Hell

Dear Mr. President,

There you are on the front page of the New York Times this morning, beaming at Dr. Death, John Brennan, your nominee to head the CIA, praising him for “his role in killing suspected terrorist leaders, his devotion to American values.” Extrajudicial assassination is not an American value, Mr. President, but apparently it’s one of yours—and definitely one of his. A 25-year veteran of the CIA, Brennan defended torture under Bush (again, not an American value), and as your Counterterrorism Chief, oversaw the escalation of drone strikes in Pakistan, your secret counterterrorism operations in Yemen, and is currently busy beauracratizing and institutionalizing targeted assassinations and unending war. Every Tuesday he’s there with you in the Situation Room approving each of your picks for the Kill List that week. He gives speeches about the legality and morality of targeted killing, and believes his own propaganda that “not a single civilian was killed in a drone strike last year.” There is no morality, justice or justification for extrajudicial killing, Mr. President, they are repugnant and a crime against humanity and the toll on civilians from your drone wars is neither zero nor insignificant; the fallout will last for generations. John Brennan would fit right into Hitler’s Gestapo or Stalin’s NKVD, a man without soul, conscience or morality. He is the poster boy for the banality of evil (see Medea Benjamin’s account of her visit to his suburban home last November, https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/05-10). He was your first choice to head the CIA in 2008 but withdrew after objections to his defense of torture. So here we are 4 years later, people forget, people accept, people grow resigned, and this time smooth sailing for Dr. Death with Feinstein paving the way in the Senate and Mike Rogers in the House. Your 2^nd term is shaping up. Those who voted for you in 2012 thinking you would make a hard left turn were delusional. It’s more of the same only more: more wars of aggression, more crimes against humanity, more security statism, more erosion of constitutional protections, and more betrayal of American values. Those who still believe you are at heart a progressive/humanist antiwar savior live in a fantasy world. As a friend speculates, “they still think Obama’s progressive because they’re so progressive in voting for him.” But here you are this morning with Brennan, two peas in a pod, leading America down to the 9^th circle of Hell.

President Obama and his choice for Defense Secretary, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, left, listen as the president's choice for CIA Director, Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan, right, speaks Monday in the East Room of the White House.  Associated Press

Obama's 2nd Term: More of the Same

Dear Mr. President,

Today, Haider Khel and Hasookhel in North Waziristan: 8 killed, 4 wounded, suspected militants, identities unknown. Yesterday, 17 killed in South Waziristan, identities unknown. Saturday, 12 militant fighters killed in Babar Ghar in northwest Pakistan. Last Thursday an Al Qaeda leader and 2 associates killed in Yemen and the day before that 2 separate strikes in Waziristan killed at least 9. All were drone strikes by the CIA that you authorized. 49 people murdered, their blood on your hands. Announced tonight, your personal Rasputin, John Brennan’s nomination as the next CIA chief. Maybe the spike in drone strikes is Mr. Brennan flaunting his cojones so his nomination will sail through the warhawk Congress. Unlike Hagel who might have a problem getting the nod for Secretary of Defense. (Personally, I’d like Medea Benjamin as Defense Secretary.) It’s hard to get an accurate count but at least 35 missiles were fired in the above-named strikes. At $60,000 per missile, that’s at least $2.1 million which works out to $42,857 per kill. It seems to me, Mr. President, that we could make more friends and get more bang for the buck by just giving these people $42,857 each to stop shooting at us. Of course, that means we’d have to stop shooting at them too, which ain’t such a bad idea and saves even more. Drones seemed evil when I first heard about them and I haven’t changed my opinion. They’re the ultimate weapon of terrorists, circling overhead for days on end, unseen but heard—“like a lawnmower in the sky”— and suddenly without warning, boom! a Hellfire missile deals death and destruction. There’s no way to protect against drones, no way to fight back, an invisible enemy. Our victims are like bugs under a microscope, helpless. Even their death is referred to as Bug Splat. No matter if you’re a militant or an innocent, drones terrorize everyone equally—men, women and children—and anyone within range is a potential target. Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain details how the USSR used selective violence in eastern Europe right after WWII to quell resistance and it occurred to me that that’s exactly what we’re doing today in the Middle East. The terrorism and wars of aggression we denounced in the 1930s, 40s and 50s is not all that different from the wars of aggression, terrorism and violence America uses on “Islamist militants” in the Middle East. Many hoped in your second term you’d do the right thing, but it’s already clear, it’s just more of the same.

HI Ho, Hi Ho, Off to Afghanistan We Go

Dear Mr. President,

A friend sent me an email yesterday, distressed that one of the little boys she used to babysit a dozen or more years ago is off to Afghanistan to “serve his country” “protect America” and all the other jingoistic claptrap surrounding our wars of aggression. She is particularly upset at the cluelessness of the boy’s mother and family friends who are “so proud” of Zach, who are “keeping him in their prayers and in their hearts” and thanking him for his service. No mention of the real purpose—to murder—or the likelihood that Zack will come home maimed physically or psychologically. Zack will not return the same boy who left. In fact, Zack is no longer the boy they’re keeping in their prayers, for Zack is now a professional killer, trained to kill, follow orders and accept that killing another human being is his duty. Too bad Zack never read Kevin Powers’ novel, The Yellow Birds, or talked to a vet who’s come back from this war with a clear-eyed understanding of the horrors of war and of the betrayals and hypocrisy of the politicians who send them off to war. Too bad Zach didn’t see through the propaganda that leads young men to believe they’re doing the right thing, the honorable thing, the heroic thing, serving and protecting their country from evildoers who would do us harm. But propaganda has now been institutionalized; the latest NDAA you just signed the other day permits the Pentagon to fund pro-military films like Kathryn Bigelow’s, “Zero Dark Thirty” possibly the first major recipient, glorifying the CIA and torture, glorifying SEAL Team 6, the highly trained assassins who murdered Osama bin Laden. Some, like Naomi Wolfe, are calling Bigelow a propagandist and apologist for torture, on the order of Leni Riefenstahl who glorified Hitler. Even Senator Feinstein, more hawk than dove, is upset, demanding the CIA fess up to what they told Bigelow since the Senate Foreign Intelligence committee found zero evidence that information gained from torture led to bin Laden. Meanwhile you continue to send young men like Zack off to kill and be killed in a war that has no purpose, that is immoral, that is based on ignorance, hubris and revenge, and they will return damaged and disillusioned, having protected and served not the country but the interests of politicians, the war machine and the profiteers. This is evil, Mr. President, it corrupts us all individually and collectively. If Zack returns home in a coffin, his blood will be on your hands.

Cutting the Budget Deficit

Dear Mr. President,

Dave Lindorff’s article, “War Addiction Default: America’s Political Dysfunction at Root is an Unwillingness to Cut War Spending” (http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1502) goes to the heart of our unbalanced budgets and ballooning deficit. He points out that the annual deficit runs about $1.3 trillion, almost the exact amount we spend each year on military-defense-national security. Have any of your economic advisers pointed this out? The Pentagon budget is bloated, wasteful and out of control; we spend hundreds of billions on “intelligence” (which isn’t), on arming the rest of the world—$3 billion a year to Israel, nearly the same to Egypt, $100 million a month to Pakistan to guard their border with Afghanistan… on and on. Yet cuts to defense are never mentioned, only cuts to other discretionary spending like Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and Big Bird. If we stopped the wars and started using some of that money to rebuild the countries we destroyed (see yesterday’s letter) we could cut military spending by 50% and the world would be a better and safer place. If you were a real president, Mr. President, you’d do that, stop the wars and cut the military budget by 50 or 60% rather than throw seniors and children and the rest of us under the bus by offering to cut Medicare and Social Security, education, child healthcare programs and other social services. If you were a real president, during the fiscal cliff fiasco, you would not have locked in the Bush tax cuts for millionaires or kept corporate loopholes intact. Instead, you’d have let the Bush tax cuts expire and raised the top tax rate on millionaires by 20% or 30% instead of that puny 4.6%. You wouldn’t have signed the 2013 NDAA either, or FISA, and you’d drop all charges against Bradley Manning and pin a chest full of medals on him. A real leader, a real Nobel Peace Prize winner, would stop all wars and use the peace dividend (remember that phrase from the Bush I era?) to rebuild America, to repair our shredded social safety net, fund education and health care, rebuild our infrastructure, our cities, our country, our lives. And since most Americans aren’t even aware we’re at war let alone understand the economic impact of it, it would all appear a miracle and you’d be a genius and a hero. What a legacy, the man who ended war and rebuilt America. No more fiscal cliffs or debt ceilings, no more unbalanced budgets or deficits. And you’d finally be worthy of that Nobel Peace Prize.

My New Year’s Proposal for Peace

Dear Mr. President,

Al Jazeera reported a drone strike in south-central Yemen today that killed a senior Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader, Moqbel Ebad Al Zawbah, and his two companions. It was the 5^th attack in 10 days in this impoverished country where AQAP operates. The U.S. considers AQAP the most active and dangerous wing of Al Qaeda’s global network. In Radaa, where Al Zawbah and his companions were assassinated today, 10 civilians were killed last September, including a 10-year old girl, when the “precision” missile missed its intended target. Yesterday, 2 separate drone strikes in Waziristan, Pakistan, killed at least 9 people, including a senior tribal leader “known to have ties to the Afghan Taliban.” The identities of most of the other casualties were unknown. In the accounts of the 9 attacks I counted at least a dozen Hellfire missiles launched, all dealing death, destruction and mayhem, part of your terrorist drone war. With each missile costing the U.S. taxpayer between $60,000 and $68,000, that’s a total of between $720,000 and $816,000. In an article in the Winter 2013 issue of War Crimes Times, a Pakistani schoolteacher in Darpa Khel, Waziristan, Mohammed Iqbalt, is quoted as saying that the cost of a single Hellfire missile would build a new 8-classroom school with a fully equipped playground, buy 20 computers for each classroom and pay the salaries of all 8 teachers for 3 years. Just imagine the benefit of a U.S.-funded school that teaches kids instead of terrorizing them with drones and Hellfire missiles. Imagine the difference in world view of those kids in Waziristan and Yemen and Somalia and all the other places we wage wars of terror. No need for SEAL Teams. No need for drones, kill lists, targeted assassinations, secret memos justifying extrajudicial execution of American citizens. No need for Guantanamos, indefinite detentions and torture. No need for airport security lines and all the other paraphernalia of a security state. And the trickle-down effect would be huge. We could free up hundreds of billions from the bloated Defense budget to repair our own infrastructure, fund our own schools, rescue municipalities in distress, shift from fossil fuel to renewable energy… You get my drift, Mr. President? Let’s focus on real problems and solutions instead of phantom ones like the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling and austerity budgets. Let’s replace murder with nurture and terror with trust. My New Year’s proposal for peace.

Obama, The Best Republican President Ever

Dear Mr. President,
I don’t know how you do it, but it works every time. Under the guise of taxing the rich you managed to make the Bush tax cuts for millionaires permanent, a Republican’s wet dream. Magicians call it misdirection and you’ve perfected the art. You claim that under your tax proposal, the rich will pay their fair share, you slap a miniscule 4.6% tax increase on the super-rich (0.7% of taxpayers, not even the 1%), and lock in all the rest of the Bush tax cuts including the $5 million estate tax exemption and a 20% tax rate on dividends and investment income. “Necessary to get an extension of unemployment benefits,” you say, but that extension is temporary and the Bush tax cuts are permanent. Bush loyalists are celebrating, so are many Republicans, while many Democrats, like Sen. Tom Harkin and even Robert Reich, complain that you once again gave away the store. Yesterday, in a conversation with a friend, a so-called “progressive,” I said you were the best president the Republicans have ever had. She was shocked, horrified and protested vehemently. She thought your deal to not raise taxes on those voters with incomes between $250,000 and $450,000 took away their reason to vote Republican next time but reason has nothing to do with it and those who voted for Romney last time will vote for him (or his clone) next time. I’m afraid my friend has drunk the Obama Kool-Aid and suffers from delusional thinking. She also thought that once people realize how much the superrich have they’ll demand higher taxes on them, that this is only the first round of tax increases, but that’s definitely more delusional thinking from an Obama-apologist; hasn’t happened yet and won’t. What’s the difference, I say, if a Democrat or a Republican makes the Bush tax cuts permanent? In the end it’s all the same; unfair taxes become permanently enshrined in the tax code, unlikely to change for decades, and they will continue to skew income inequality and the maldistribution of wealth. It would have been better if Congress hadn’t passed anything, just let all the tax cuts expire and let the country go over the fiscal cliff. 2013 starts the way 2012 ended. More war, more violence, more injustice, and more maldistribution of wealth in America. As we descend further into our Police State, less freedom, less democracy, less hope. The planet grows warmer, the environment more precarious and no one does a thing about it. Between you and Congress, We the People don’t stand a chance.