I want to quote from Jeremy Scahill’s interview yesterday with Amy Goodman. Scahill is doing the rounds in promotion of his new book: Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. Whatever else you want to say about the book, it took a lot of personal courage to do the research. Scahill actually went to many of the places where we are conducting covert military operations and talked to the warlords or the militants or the families of the deceased. He also talked to a lot of Special Ops soldiers who are carrying out these missions in the field. I hope that this book plays a positive role in getting more people involved in questioning the assumptions of U.S. foreign policy, even under President Obama. The excerpt is about the almost inevitable blowback from our covert operations.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean, I think that we have rolled back the clock, in some ways, to an era where you have multiple covert paramilitary forces that are operating in secret away from—largely away from journalists or congressional oversight, and they’re engaged in actions that are going to cause blowback. This is going to boomerang back around to us. You can’t launch these so-called signature strikes, killing people in pre-crime, you know, in countries around the world, and think that we’re not going to create a whole new generation of enemies that have an actual grievance against us—not that want to kill us for our McDonald’s or our freedom, but have an actual score to settle.
I mean, a lot of the al-Qaeda leadership—you know, Obama likes to talk about how he—you know, “Ask the top 20 leaders of al-Qaeda that I’ve taken down, you know, if I have resolve,” was something that he said during the campaign. And fair enough, they’ve—you know, they killed Osama bin Laden. They’ve killed heads of al-Qaeda in East Africa twice. They’ve killed the number three man in al-Qaeda, you know, probably a dozen times. All that’s very true. But, to me, they’re—out of the ashes of all of this could rise a force that is much more difficult to deal with, and that is disparate groups of people that have actual scores to settle with the United States. And I think we’re going to see more asymmetric war on our own—in our own country. And I think some of it is going to be inspired by what we’ve done over these past 10, 12 years.
And I’m—I mean, as a New Yorker, too, I mean, I think that you can’t be paralyzed by the fear of an explosion happening. I mean, we’ve all of course watched, you know, with great horror what happened at the Boston Marathon. And, you know, I haven’t said anything about it, because I don’t think—I think it’s not right to comment on motivations of people until you actually know. And I think that there was a lot of racism in the response that happened after Boston, and I think there was a real rush to judgment, and I think there’s still a rush to judgment that’s going on. We need to understand all of the facts. But separate from that, I think we’re living in a world where we are not going to be immune to the payback for some of the things that we’ve done. And unless—unless we, as a society, completely re-imagine what an actual national security policy would look like, one that recognizes the dignity of other people around the world or the rights of people to practice their religion or determine their form of government, unless we’re willing to re-imagine how we approach the world, we’re doomed to have a repeat of a 9/11-type attack or something that’s smaller-scale but constant.
I think it’s useful to try to think about distinctions between people who “hate us for our freedoms,” people who are violently opposed to our foreign policy, people who are just evil and want to harm us, people who are led on by nations or groups that are really just competing with us for influence and resources, and people who actually have a score to settle.
We can’t be a positive influence in the world without rubbing elbows with the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Europeans. Sometimes there are going to be conflicts between great powers. There will be jockeying for influence and access to resources and markets. Great powers will set radicalized proxies against each other from time to time. Some of this is unavoidable unless we want to retreat from the world stage and operate more in the mold of Canada or Australia (who are still not immune to terrorism). But we have much more control over whether or not we turn whole villages against us and create scores of people who now have a score to settle.
You don’t deter attacks by inciting them. You just create a very dangerous and expensive game of whack-a-mole.
I’m just not sure whether we, as a country, will ever come to this realization. Our national narcissism knows no bounds. We have developed such a collective sense of exceptionalism that we might just be incapable of the self-reflection required to fully comprehend this viewpoint. We have lost almost all sense of humility.
this is a poor argument. it relies on fear.
he lazily plays the winger/cheney card.
Cheney plays it by saying, if we don’t do something we’ll get hit.
Scahill plays it by saying, if we do do something we’ll get hit.
the durable, robust case against this action is based on ethics and morality.
Scahill’s argument is more nuanced than that. He is saying we are going to get hit in some way regardless because of what we have done over the past dozen or more years.
Knowing that, how do we take a smarter response so that the cycle can start winding down or even end?
Being open-eyed about the consequences of our recent policy is only playing the fear card if you are trying to stampede the public in risky action. I don’t think that Scahill is doing that.
Why is it that with all the wild imaginings that out “counterterrorism” folks had, they were surprised at the idea that someone could construct a bomb of a pressure cooker? Or that after all the money that has been put into “homeland security” and all the security theater at airports, they had to shut down a large city to capture a 19-year-old kid? Shutting down the city amped up the fear and the Islamophobia, which will make judgments worse and continue the cycle of violence.
War is “politics by other means” as Clausewitz wrote. We unwind this situation with smart politics not smart drones.
Being open-eyed about the consequences of our recent policy is only playing the fear card if you are trying to stampede the public in risky action. I don’t think that Scahill is doing that.
So it’s not the same tactic if it’s used to promote a policy you agree with?
this is a poor argument. it relies on fear.
Relying on fear can be a good argument, but it’s just so obvious that Scahill doesn’t mean it.
This is a guy who spends 99% of his time poo-pooing the threat of terrorism, so when he suddenly pulls a 180 and starts threatening us with terrorist attacks, why would anybody believe him?
It’s like the “Liberals are the real racists” arguments from conservative Republicans. They spend all of their time making these racist appeals and denouncing any and all claims that racism is a problem, until they suddenly want to accuse a Democrat of being on the wrong side of African-Americans. It’s like watching a monkey who’s gotten ahold of a field researcher’s cell phone and is trying to imitate her actions with it.
Jeremy Scahill has my undying respect. He has a way of expressing “radical” ideas in the MSM, and is constantly invited to share them. I wish other liberals spoke about these issues in the same way. So much more effective than, say, Medea Benjamin.
It boils down to we kill children, mothers and fathers. No matter the reason the remaining family members hate us. Their neighbors hate us. Their countrymen hate us. If someone killed my child I would feel the same way. We will pay for our extremely violent reaction to 9/11. Probably for the next 100 yrs. So lets stop killing now. If we continue to deal in death we are going to reap what we sow. A future filled with nightmare. Bin Laden is dead. We have appeased the gods with our massive bloodletting. Time to back off.
Great time to dedicate the Bush library. Honor the stooge who set us down the path of fascism. So where was his handler Dick Cheney?
If someone killed my child I would feel the same way.
If someone killed your child, you would want to kill random civilians sitting at cafes or in their offices who were of the same nationality as those who killed your child?
The question here isn’t whether military force generates military resistance against the US. All we need to do is look at the Sunni and Shiite insurgencies in Iraq, or the insurgency in Afghanistan, to see that. The question is whether military force inspires people to become terrorists, and there really isn’t very much in the record to suggest that.
Was bin Laden’s family killed by the US? KSM”s? Zawahiri? Zarquawi? Any of the al Qaeda #3? Any of the Cole bombers? Any of the 9/11 attackers?
We have killed many families in Iraq and Afghanistan. Drone strikes routinely take out families with the latest Al-Qaeda or Taliban number three guy. Its a moral issue and it angers muslims everywhere.
See, that’s what I thought; you aren’t actually making an argument about causation. You’re just venting about how terrible the United States is, and this pretext of encouraging terrorism is something you neither mean nor care about.
Firebagger!! Emo-prog!!
Straight to the identity politics.
Way to get to what’s really important, Calvin: your ongoing bitterness over what people in the internet say to you.
Jeepers!! You really need to reset your sarcasm detector. You’ve read enough of my comments, I’m sure, that you should have picked it up.
I understood the sarcasm.
You’re whining about people calling you an emo-prog, and instead of trying to say anything about the idea presented, you decided instead to whine about being called an emo-prog.
Congratulations. That’s so awesome.
Yes. Canada and Australia can also be the targets of terrorism, but somehow they haven’t allowed their societies to become so terrorised and militarised as the USA has. What constantly amazes Europeans is how scared the US is of its own shadow, seeking communist conspiracies around every corner. The real price the US pays for all this militarisation is not in terms of the occasional terrorist incident, it is in terms of the destruction of civil liberties and the creation of a political culture based on fear. It is paid in terms of the paranoia and gun culture that kills hundreds every day. A whole society suffering from a collective post traumatic stress disorder?
I’m glad you saw the interviews. I thought that it was devastating to our current policy.
What Salunga said.
Every time you kill one, you make two hundred more. Enemies. Some of whom will not forgive, will not forget, and will strike back. One way or another.
very time you kill one, you make two hundred more.
Then where are they?
Why are Iraqis and Afghans so much less – many, many times less – likely to carry out a terrorist attack against the US than Saudis and Egyptians?
“War creates terrorism” needs to be laid to rest next to “Poverty creates terrorism.” Both theories sound logical on their face, but they don’t stand up to any serious scrutiny.
Not terrorists necessarily. Enemies. That is a direct quote from someone who should know. I read it in a diary on KOS a couple of years ago. I don’t remember the details, but that quote stuck in my head. I’ve gone back looking for that diary but haven’t been able to find it again.
The diarist was a young woman, second generation immmigrant from the region, Afghanistan I think. She had gone back there with her parents to visit family. She heard versions of the same sentiment from nearly everyone she talked to. Even people who understood our motivations whether they agreed or not, voiced the same sentiment. Regardless of our purpose or our policies there, our methods were doing more harm than good.
I don’t remember if she mentioned drones specifically, but they are just a detail. Over and over again, American forces identify a quote unquote high value target by surveillance or other means, and launch a missile at the target. They take out the target and anyone who happens to be nearby. People who may or may not have any connection to the target. Maybe family or associates of the target, maybe just some unlucky soul who happens to be within blast range. Innocent civilians. Collateral damage.
And every time they do, they make enemies of that person’s family and friends. Mortal enemies who do not forgive or forget. Some of those will become combatants, some will become terrorists. Most will be at least sympathetic if not actively supportive of others who choose to take action. There is no way to win such a conflict. And the longer we stay the worse it gets. Every time you kill one (enemy) you make two hundred more.
“Enemies” would make sense. Military action certainly produces enemies: states who will be hostile to us in international affairs, and people who will pick up a gun to fight back. I don’t disagree at all.
But that wasn’t Scahill’s point, which was specifically about more 9/11s and more terrorism, and the rest of the commenters here are all endorsing that argument on their own.
If degrading the capabilities of al Qaeda was producing more terrorists, who will launch attacks against the US and against Americans around the world, then there would be a serious question about whether it is good counter-terrorism policy to launch those strikes. Having people in Afghanistan feeling angry, even feeling angry enough to pick up a rifle and fight us if we invade their country, is not ideal, but it’s not an argument that counter-terrorism strikes cause terrorism or multiply the problem of terrorism.
If military force turns people into terrorists who are going to come kill us in our beds, then where are all of the Iraqi and Afghan terrorist attacks?
In reality, the leadership of al Qaeda and the operatives who have carried out terror attacks against the US have overwhelmingly come from countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, and the UAE that have never been subject to signature strikes or other military action by the US, while the countries that we have engaged in warfare – Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia – are either almost or entirely absent from those ranks. Meanwhile, you’ve got countries like Yemen, whose nationals carried out the Cole bombing years before the drone strikes began, but have not carried out any attacks since they began.
The author of the book “Blowback” got it right when he wrote about out shady alliances as the terrorist-generating threat. All of the countries I listed above are undemocratic US allies. That is the change we need to make in our foreign policy to avoid blowback.
I agree absolutely with your comment about shady alliances and undemocratic Allies. And you may be right about the nationality of those who have carried out the most direct attacks against the US. But that’s not what I was getting at.
We invaded Afghanistan ostensibly because the Taliban were harboring al Qaeda. And in our efforts to punish them and drive al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, our methods have only made more enemies who will be more likely to harbor al Qaeda and others like them, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The terrorists carrying the next bomb in LA or New York may not be Afghan, but at least some of their support will be. And every time a drone strike kills another innocent we only strengthen that support.