Until stained by global murders, she was our beloved “Old Glory”

Before the Drones

By Carolyn Bennett

We loved our flag. We called her “Old Glory.” 

We were proud. Before she became advertiser for fast foods and automobiles, before conspicuously consuming fake “patriots” bought her to adorn their SUVs,  we were proud to see her wave. 

Proud to serve her and the good for which we believed she stood. We loved our flag. 

Honored until the zealots, liars and murderers took up residence, dug in, and laid claim to careless minds distractedly laying down dollars to consume the latest gadget: until sheep became chattel to an ethos of violence, we loved our flag.

We (at least some of us) are now shamed and ashamed, saddened and outraged by the endless, unconscionable flowing of blood at home and across the world in the name of our flag, in our name. We have been reduced to stunned ambiguity in relating to our once-beloved, now tainted “Old Glory.”

Wrapped in irony they burn her: burn in protest, burn to purify our “Old Glory.”  

Yet the violence does not end. It just digs in.

 

U.S. ethos of killing costs

Despite the world’s opposition to mass murder, despite the stain on U.S. reputation for using,  selling and setting the mold of mass murder, officials of the United States continue ─ flouting all laws and moral principles ─ to engage in and increase targeted killings in several countries of Africa and South Central Asia, without deference to any judicial process.

An extensive report published in September recalls that after the events in the United States on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration began a global “campaign of ‘targeted killing’ against suspected members of Al Qaeda and other armed groups”; then under the Obama government, murder rose to new heights: “‘targeted killing[s]’ of alleged enemies have [escalated dramatically].”

DRONES
Cold-blooded murder

Among the worst stains on Old Glory: U.S. remote-controlled killing

This month’s report on U.S. drones on Pakistan by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (Stanford Law School) and Global Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law) is titled:

Living under drones: death, injury, and trauma to civilians from U. S. drone practices in Pakistan

From the executive summary and recommendations

Excerpt, editing with brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

In the United States, the report said, “the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the U.S safer by enabling ‘targeted killing’ of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts.”

[Footnote: The U.S. publicly describes its drone program in terms of its unprecedented ability to “distinguish ... effectively between an al Qaeda terrorist and innocent civilians,” and touts its missile-armed drones as capable of conducting strikes with “astonishing” and “surgical” precision. See, e.g., John O. Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, The Efficacy and Ethics of U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy, Remarks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Apr. 30, 2012), available at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-efficacy-and-ethics-us-counterterrorismstrategy.]

T

his narrative is false, the writers affirm.

Following nine months of intensive research—including two investigations in Pakistan, more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and reviews of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting—the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic and Global Justice Clinic presents “evidence of the damaging and counterproductive effects of current U.S. drone strike policies.”

The report documents new and firsthand accounts of the negative consequences of U.S. policies on civilians living under drones.

R

eal threats to U.S. security and to Pakistani civilians exist in the Pakistani border areas now targeted by U.S. drones, the report finds.

While it is understandable that the United States protect itself from terrorist threats and that attention be paid to the harm "terrorists" inflict on Pakistani civilians, there is  compelling evidence of U.S. harm to Pakistani civilians together with  negative

consequences for U.S. interests ─ that warrant redress. The current U.S. policies “to address terrorism through targeted killings and drone strikes must be carefully re-evaluated,” the report writers advise.  

In my opinion, this recommendation is entirely too mild as it stops far short of saying what it should say: 

that the United States should alter its methods in foreign relations, cease provocation and mass murder.

In the language of academics, the writers conclude  mindlessly, at least timidly, as they must know that the public is preoccupied and mass media and federal Washington are owned and operated by the weapons industry: “It is essential," they write, "that public debate about U.S. policies take into account the negative effects of current policies.” What "debate"? Who are the debaters? Where is this debate? When is it?

This report tells some of us what we already know.

There is a stain on our flag caused by mass murder (not only) abroad: the execution of an entrenched, callous, deeply flawed U.S. foreign policy. 

Only with serious attention to substantive matters, only with a return of sanity will we begin establishing renewed pride in our “Old Glory,” and all that that means for a truly caring people among peoples of the world.

Sources and notes

“Living under drones: death, injury, and trauma to civilians from U.S. drone practices in Pakistan,” September 2012,  http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Stanford_NYU_LIVING_UNDER_DRONES.pdf

Further excerpt from “Living under drones”

EPIDEMIC PROLIFERATION

“The practices employed, and legal frameworks articulated, by the United States today … set dangerous precedents for future engagements, including for other countries and armed non-state actors.

“We are in the midst of a significant period of drone proliferation, pushed forward on the one hand by governments and militaries; and on the other, by manufacturers seeking to expand markets and profits.” [The Pentagon in September 2012 “had given approval for drone exports to 66 countries.”]

“Unchecked armed drone proliferation poses a threat to global stability, and, as more countries and non-state actors obtain access to the technology, the risks in the spread of U.S.-style practices of cross-border targeted killing are clear.”

Suggested Citation:

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION CLINIC (STANFORD LAW SCHOOL) AND GLOBAL JUSTICE CLINIC (NYU SCHOOL OF LAW), LIVING UNDER DRONES: DEATH, INJURY, AND TRAUMA TO CIVILIANS

FROM US DRONE PRACTICES IN PAKISTAN (September, 2012)

Old Glory

Old Glory is a common nickname for the flag of the United States, bestowed by William Driver, an early nineteenth century American sea captain.

Circa 1820s, Old Glory [measuring 10x17 feet, heavily constructed and designed to be flown from a ship’s mast, with 24 stars and, symbolic of its nautical purpose, a small anchor sewn in the corner of its blue canton] was made and presented to the young sea Captain William Driver by his mother and some young ladies of his native Salem, Massachusetts.

The captain always kept the flag with him; and he reportedly first hailed the flag ‘Old Glory’ when he left harbor for a trip around the world (1831-1832) as commander of the whaling vessel Charles Doggett. Old Glory served as the ship’s official flag throughout the voyage. (Wikipedia note, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Glory)

_______________________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

_______________________________________

U.S. adapt, deal honestly with empowered Muslim societies? ─ Leveretts

Egyptians'
Anti-American protest

People and politicians of the United States, their foreign relations leadership, attitude, credibility amid shifts, risings in Middle East, South Central Asia, Africa East and North — Appraisal and commentary by 
Middle East expert 
Hillary Mann Leverett

Excerpt, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett

Delusional insularity

In the heat of anti-American demonstrations sweeping lands west and east of the Red Sea, north and south of the Gulf of Aden ─ protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo [Egypt], protests at U.S. diplomatic facilities in Sana’a [Yemen], Khartoum [The Sudan], and across the region; myriad manifestations of resentment against the United States in much of the Arab and Muslim worlds — most Americans don’t want to understand.

“The critical issue is the deep-seated resentment that people have for U.S. policy throughout the region,” Hillary Mann Leverett said last week.

“Hatred and resentment for U.S. policy are the heart of the problem.  Communities throughout the Middle East are angry.”

Delusions of grandeur

Nevertheless,  the people and politicians in United States are reluctant to grapple with Middle Eastern reality and are clearly resistant to change. “There is a fundamental flaw in U.S. strategic policy,” Hillary Mann Leverett says,  “and it has to do with empire. 

“We look at each country, at each place, and we see the expatriates that we want to see in the cafés of Paris. They parrot our line about secular liberalism; and we arm, fund, and train them to go back and, in effect, impose a political order on societies that have very different histories, characters, cares, and concerns…

“We listen repeatedly to those expatriates — in Iraq, Iran, Libya, everywhere. We listen to them not because we are stupid but because we have a very determined focus for dominance.…”

And in a political season” ─ despite raging events sweeping the Middle East over the past few days ─ “American elites seem [disinclined] toward soul-searching about their country’s foreign policy.”

Yemenis'
Anti-American protest

 Loss of credibility

Promises 2009 made at Istanbul, Turkey, and Cairo and the campaign pledge “not just to end the Iraq war but also to end the ‘mindset’ that had gotten the United States into that strategically and morally failed project [went unfulfilled].” 

The new administration “‘walked back completely’ from those commitments.”

In this political season, the unasked question is why the dishonesty in policies; and, in light of this, how can people of the Middle East take seriously the word the United States of America “as a constructive force.” Until Americans and the politicians can address this question, they will never understand the reasons underlying “Middle Easterners’ anger.”

Iranians'
Anti-American protest

Middle East change changes relations

U.S. policies, practices must change

Americans “have not begun to grapple with the enormity of the challenge… as countries [in the Middle East] become more politically participatory, and people have a voice.”

Thinking that the United States has “cards” with which it can leverage key local actors is fantasy. The first trips of the new president of Egypt, for example, were not to the United States but to China and Iran.

“The train has left the station in these countries,” Hillary Mann Leverett concludes. “Unless [Washington] figures out how to adapt,” the strategic position of the United States ─ in the Middle East and hence throughout the world ─ “will continue to erode.”

Sources and notes

“Protests in the Muslim world: can the United States deal effectively—and honestly—with politically empowered Muslim societies? Posted on September 15, 2012,  Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, http://www.raceforiran.com/

Hillary Mann Leverett

Hillary Mann Leverett has more than 20 years’ academic, legal, business, diplomatic, and policy experience working on Middle Eastern issues. In the George W. Bush Administration, she worked as Director for Iran, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, Middle East expert on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, and Political Advisor for Middle East, Central Asian and African issues at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. From 2001-2003, she was one of a small number of U.S. diplomats authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qa’ida and Iraq. In the Clinton Administration, Leverett served as Political Advisor for Middle East, Central Asian and African issues for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Associate Director for Near Eastern Affairs at the National Security Council, and Special Assistant to the Ambassador at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and a Watson Fellowship, and in 1990-1991 worked in the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt and Israel, and was part of the team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.

She has provided expert testimony to the U.S. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee and has published extensively on Iran as well as on other Middle Eastern, Central and South Asian, and Russian issues. She has spoken about U.S.-Iranian relations at Harvard, MIT, the National Defense University, NYU, the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, and major research centers in China. She has appeared on various news and public affairs programs and was featured in the BBC documentary “Iran and the West.” Along with Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann Leverett appeared in the PBS Frontline documentary “Showdown with Iran.” Also with Flynt Leverett, she co-authored Going to Tehran:  Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic (published in 2012). Hillary Mann Leverett – Biography, http://www.raceforiran.com/authors/hillary-mann-leverett-biography

Flynt Leverett

A professor at Pennsylvania State University’s School of International Affairs, director of the Iran Project at the New America Foundation, a Visiting Scholar at Peking University’s School of International Studies, Flynt Leverett is a leading authority on the Middle East and Persian Gulf, U.S. foreign policy, and global energy affairs. From 1992 to 2003, he had a career with the U.S. government, serving as Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council, on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, and as a CIA Senior Analyst. He left the George W. Bush Administration and government service in 2003 “because of disagreements about Middle East policy and the conduct of the war on terror.” He has spoken about U.S.-Iranian relations at foreign ministries and strategic research centers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates; and has been a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University.

Flynt Leverett has written extensively on the politics, international relations, and political economy of the Middle East and Persian Gulf.  In a series of monographs, articles, and opinion pieces (many co-authored with Hillary Mann Leverett), he has challenged Western conventional wisdom on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy and internal politics, documented the historical record of previous Iranian cooperation with the United States, and presented the seminal argument in American foreign policy circles for a U.S.-Iranian “grand bargain.”

With Hillary Mann Leverett, he is coauthored Going to Tehran:  Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic (published in 2012).

Flynt Leverett biography, http://www.raceforiran.com/authors/flynt-leverett-biography

http://www.raceforiran.com/authors/hillary-mann-leverett-biography

Flynt Leverett participated in the September 15, 2012, Al Jazeera-English “Inside Story Americas” discussion “What is really behind these protests?” Also in this discussion with presenter Shihab Rattansi were Michelle Dunn, a former U.S. State Department official; and Tariq Ramadan, a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University and the author of Islam and the Arab Awakening, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/09/201291565916989823.html

______________________________________


Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

______________________________________

Aftereffect of Western aggression (denied) rises in the East

Consequences of U.S. "missions" in  Africa, Middle East, South Central Asia

By Carolyn Bennett

I believe a person or group’s right to freedom ends when that "freedom" breaches rights of others in society: when it becomes, when it is by definition, and or when it intends or effects threat or intimidation.

Rights end for culprits who use or abuse rights under law; breach human rights of others, rights to live free from tyranny, terror, fear, threat, intimidation.

There are and must be limits on “freedom,” the notion of freedom. 

Freedom is not whatever power or the powerful say it is. 

Freedom does not mean doing whatever ─ anything, any way, any time, for whatever motive, to anyone ─ a person or group, State or high official or corporate CEO wants to do. 

 Freedom must be conceived and construed with reflective, insightful consciousness of and concern and regard for social context and society.

Regardless to propaganda or what some of us choose to believe, we do not live barricaded, islanded in the sun or on a hilltop. 

We live in society ─ from local communities to the world.  No Land is an Island. No People are Apart.

I returned to these thoughts today when leaving a comment as I signed a petition (to ‘Selma City Council: No More Monuments to KKK Hate!’) posted at the Freedom Socialist Party website (http://www.socialism.com/drupal-6.8/?q=node/38)

Afghanistan's dead

Later in the day, while listening to a rebroadcast of clips from the latest ridiculous statement by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I again connected as part of a whole: cycles of violence in foreign relations and violence in domestic affairs together with an obliviousness and failure to care.

  

In the aftermath of foreign invasion and occupation of Libya, a U.S. “diplomat” reportedly has been killed, this incident occurring as the death toll of foreign soldiers continues to rise in the Middle East and South Central Asia. So the secretary goes on camera and feigns a childish “innocence” in her description of this “diplomat” (part of the occupying force) as a wonderful parent and husband.

U.S. dead

I wonder what the secretary thinks hundreds of thousands of women and men are to their children right across the Middle East, South Central Asia looking north and eastward, across East Africa looking north and westward: parents and their children terrorized with occupation and invasion (“diplomacy,” “humanitarian” aid?) and assassination; hunted, made homeless, displaced internally and externally by the United States of America. Countless numbers of them traumatized under the Hillary Rodham Clinton-Barack Obama reign.

The U.S. President reacts, sending in marines to join the occupiers in protecting U.S. “missions,” he calls them, a seemingly benign word except when one considers its roots in the righteous terrorizing religionists: the West’s (European, British, North American) Catholics, Protestants, etcetera’s ethnic cleansing, reeducation, slaveholding, massacring “missions” extending back centuries.

U.S. invaded
Iraq in flames

Criminal leadership, mendacious governance

The world outside the Washington beltway knows that corporate-cashed men who rule the world and rule it at the behest of their corporate paymasters are wrong ─ dead wrong. They know too that among the dangerously wrongheaded male heads of state, high government officials and their partners in crime over at least the past two decades (but longer) are “female-males”: the Hillary Clintons and Madeline Albrights, the Condoleezza and Susan Rices.

Theirs and their male conspirators’ willful, deliberate, insensible, criminal ignorance is beyond dangerous and should never be allowed decision-making roles or leadership positions in states or nations.

U.S. wars by remote

Inevitable aftereffect

Nonviolent protest
Drone killings in
Somalia
Pakistan
 Afghanistan
Yemen
Other countries in
Africa
Middle East,
South Central Asia

In the aftermath of (and ongoing) foreign aggression, what on earth did the Americans expect? That the peoples of Yemen and Bahrain, Somalia, Libya and Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq would genuflect and kiss cheeks?

Do you really think that slaughtering people is “meaning well,” as U.S. State Department staffer (now under fire from his bosses) Peter Van Buren puts it too generously in We meant well: How I helped lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people?  

Does any sane person believe that oppressed peoples will forever hold their heads down and bow to bombs and guns and “greatness” of abusively powerful States and their cohorts?

Do you believe that respect and rights, life itself is the due only of the “mightierest” armed with remote-controlled might?

I abhor violence of all kinds in all situations, except in clearly confirmed cases of self defense (My easy, unintimidating walk in life has never occasioned the carrying or use of arms). For all the religiosity of the righteous religionists of the West, they selectively forget ─ and fail to reveal in their propaganda ─ that their wars beget retaliatory wars. Violence cycles violence.

Moreover, the notion that freedom licenses the taking of life; or that, in the name of freedom, killing is justified is at worst the mark of the criminally insane and at best the delusion of the sociopath.

A way forward

I truly believe that, in the name of an evolutionary course of history ─ no matter what is needed or desired by nations or individuals  ─ deliberation, talking, verbal negotiation, staying at that roundtable for the long term, constitute constructive power, a power far greater than sanctions, belligerence, armaments, occupation, aggression, war and the threat of these.

 

I truly believe that negotiation and cooperation, respect for peoples, cultures and sovereignty, understanding and actively seeking to understand others and their ways ─ care that transcends selfish individualism, nepotism and caprice ─ are the way forward, a way forward in the best sense of “progress”: an evolutionary revolutionary, true progressiveness.

________________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

________________________________