How Our Shady Counter-Terrorism Policies Are More Dangerous Than Terrorism

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.alternet.org/story/151596/obama%27s_secret_wars%3A_how_our_shady_counter-terrorism_policies_are_more_dangerous_than_terrorism

Although President's Obama's partial Afghan troop withdrawal announcement has received more attention, his June 29 "National Strategy for Counterterrorism" is of far greater long-term significance. This remarkable document states that the U.S. government intends to "disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa'ida and its affiliates and adherents," in the following "areas of focus": "The Homeland, South Asia, Arabian Peninsula, East Africa,Europe, Iraq, Maghreb and Sahel, Southeast Asia (and) Central Asia."

This assassination strategy is already operational in six Muslim countries with a combined population of 280 million: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, which has become a laboratory experiment for urban drone assassinations. The London Sunday Times reported a year ago that "President Obama has secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US special forces ... with American troops now operating in 75 countries." There are presently 60,000 Special Operations forces worldwide, with 7,000 U.S. assassins unleashed upon Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq. Lt.-Col. John Nagle (ret.), an enthusiastic assassination supporter, has correctly called these operations "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine."

Obama vs. Petraeus in 2012

President Obama, a former constitutional law lecturer, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and rhetorical advocate of the Rule of Law cannot possibly reconcile his previously stated beliefs with his presently creation of an "industrial-size killing machine" that sees U.S. leaders unilaterally hunt, kidnap and murder any person anywhere on earth -- including "the Homeland" -- whenever they feel like it, without outside oversight or their victims enjoying any legal or human rights whatsoever. Whatever his personal beliefs at this point, the president likely hopes that this "counterrorism strategy" will help protect him from inevitable Republican attempts to blame him during the 2012 presidential campaign for the likely losses the U.S. will sustain in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the next 16 months. And normally principled liberal supporters like the Center for American Progress, which called the strategy "more efficent counterterrorism," may well have made the same calculation.

More at the link --