American diplomatic personnel from our embassy in Sana, Yemen were hastily airlifted out of the country on a cargo plane. Private American citizens in Yemen were told to leave immediately. The British have done the same.
The action was taken after a drone strike believed to have killed four Al Qaeda terrorists.
In a letter to Congress today, Attorney General Eric Holder officially acknowledged for the first time that the U. S. killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen (Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and Samir Khan) and Pakistan (Jude Mohammed).
Of the four, only Anwar al-Awlaki was specifically targeted.
The acknowledgment comes a day before President Obama’s major address on national security related topics like drones and Gitmo.
Saudi Arabia claims that they warned our Department of Homeland Security about Tamerlan Tsarnaev last year. This was independent of the Russian warning, and was based on intelligence out of Yemen.
Tamerlan tried to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, but the Saudis refused to let him in their country.
The Senate voted to confirm John Brennan as CIA Director, 63-34.
Meanwhile, Eric Holder wrote to Sen. Rand Paul, telling him that the President has no authority to use a drone to kill an American “not engaged in combat” on American soil.
The rationale for killing someone like American Anwar al-Awlaki by drone in Yemen was that he was an enemy combatant. You can kill an enemy combatant anywhere, on U. S. soil or abroad.
Interesting story up at the National Journal* explaining why the President doesn’t want to show the House and Senate Intelligence Committees all of the Justice Department drone memos. The article says it’s because they “contain secret protocols with foreign governments, including Pakistan and Yemen, as well as ‘case-specific’ details of strikes.”
The Administration believes that even if released just to certain members of Congress, the sensitive information would become public and embarrass the governments we have protocols with, which may include additional countries like Mali and Algeria.
This would explain why the Administration is supposedly trying to get John Brennan’s nomination for CIA out of the Senate Intelligence Committee by giving up some Dem votes over the drone memos and going for GOP votes by giving them more info on Benghazi.
National security issues can create some strange bedfellows!
* “What’s in the Secret Drone Memos,” Michael Hirsh and Kristin Roberts
“Drone strikes are an innovation in anticipatory self-defense, requiring careful oversight and a high threshold for action. They are also a technology that allows the most discriminate application of force in the history of warfare. That the use of drones protects U.S. troops from risk is a virtue. And the targeting of American citizens who are fighting for the enemy is neither new nor forbidden by the laws of war. At least eight American volunteers for the Waffen SS were killed during World War II. Should their U.S. citizenship have earned them membership in a special, protected category of combatant?
“This, of course, is the essence of the matter. If America is in an ongoing war against al-Qaeda and associated groups, then the rules of war apply, Yemen and the Afghanistan/Pakistan border are battlefields, and al-Qaeda operatives are lawful targets. This is the position taken by both the Bush and Obama administrations, consistent with America’s inherent right of self-defense and the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
“Labeling Obama as ‘judge, jury and executioner’ is his critics’ prerogative. But defending the country is not their responsibility. It is easy for those without executive authority to dismiss risks that are prospective. After a terrorist attack on America, the critics would likely be silent, hoping that no one recalled their complacency.” Emphasis added.
Michael Gerson, “Obama’s drone policy, rooted in self-defense,” WaPo
Those who oppose Chuck Hagel for DoD, and either whisper or shout that he is anti-Israel/anti-Semitic are really saying that to be pro-Israel, you have to support absolutely everything that Benjamin Netanyahu wants and stands for.
It’s like saying that you’re anti-American unless you support the GOP or anti-British unless you support the Tories.
Suddenly support for Israel is limited to support for its far right.
By this bizarre standard there are a whole lot of folks in Israel and politicians in its Knesset who are anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.
Senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham and newbie Ted Cruz are afraid of Hagel. They want to stay in Afghanistan forever, and they know that Hagel will argue to get out sooner than the end of 2014, which is what this war-weary country wants.
Now sometimes being war-weary doesn’t mean you’re right, sometimes you have to suck it up and stick it out, but in this case, the mood of the country matches the strategic reality that we have nothing to gain by staying longer in Afghanistan.
The Hagel haters also fear that he will be an effective spokesman for making DoD more efficient. They can see him on the Sunday talk shows convincingly arguing that some weapons systems can be eliminated, that the defense budget can be cut without making us less safe. They can see him authoring cogent op-eds that will sway opinion leaders.
I am excited about the combo of Hagel at DoD and Brennan at CIA. Brennan is our Drone Guy, and he and Hagel will continue to fight the War on Terror the way it needs to be fought, with more drones and special forces, not tens of thousands of troops stuck manning mountain outposts while Al Qaeda finds other homes.
As Al Qaeda and its affiliates move and spread, we have to be as flexible as they are. We had as many drone strikes in Yemen in 2012 as we did in Pakistan because we are taking the fight to the enemy. There is talk of drone strikes in Mali (and maybe they are happening as I write this) because that’s where Al Qaeda is.
Obama, Hagel, and Brennan get it. They see the big picture of how everything fits together. They see the importance of our relationship with Pakistan, frustrating and infuriating as it is. They see how the war in Iraq destabilized the region and upset the balance of power by taking away Iran’s biggest rival and constraint. Now Iran and Iraq are friends, and Iran is freer to pursue its dreams of hegemony in the region. Hagel is a realist like Bush 41, who recognized that we should kick Iraq out of Kuwait, but not continue to Baghdad because we were better off with Saddam Hussein in power.
Thomas Friedman slams Mitt’s shallow and simplistic foreign policy speech. From “What Romney Didn’t Say,” NYT:
“Mitt Romney gave a foreign policy speech on Monday that could be boiled down to one argument: everything wrong with the Middle East today can be traced to a lack of leadership by President Obama. If this speech is any indication of the quality of Romney’s thinking on foreign policy, then we should worry. It was not sophisticated in describing the complex aspirations of the people of the Middle East. It was not accurate in describing what Obama has done or honest about the prior positions Romney has articulated. And it was not compelling or imaginative in terms of the strategic alternatives it offered. The worst message we can send right now to Middle Easterners is that their future is all bound up in what we do. It is not. The Arab-Muslim world has rarely been more complicated and more in need of radical new approaches by us — and them.
Look at the real trends in the region. In Iraq and Afghanistan, sadly, autocracy has not been replaced with democracy, but with “elective kleptocracy.” Elective kleptocracy is what you get when you replace an autocracy with an elected government before there are accountable institutions and transparency, while huge piles of money beckon — in Iraq thanks to oil exports, and in Afghanistan thanks to foreign aid.
Meanwhile, in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq and Libya, we have also seen the collapse of the “Mukhabarat states” — Mukhabarat is Arabic for internal security services — but not yet the rise of effective democracies, with their own security organs governed by the rule of law. As we saw in Libya, this gap is creating openings for jihadists.
At the same time, the civil war between Sunni Muslims, led by the Saudis, and Shiite Muslims, led by Iran, is blazing as hot as ever and lies at the heart of the civil war in Syria. In addition, we also have a struggle within Sunni Islam between puritanical Salafists and more traditional Muslim Brotherhood activists. And then there is the struggle between all of these Islamist parties — who argue that “Islam is the answer” for development — and the more secular mainstream forces, who may constitute the majority in most Mideast societies but are disorganized and divided.
How does the U.S. impact a region with so many cross-cutting conflicts and agendas? We start by making clear that the new Arab governments are free to choose any path they desire, but we will only support those who agree that the countries that thrive today: 1) educate their people up to the most modern standards; 2) empower their women; 3) embrace religious pluralism; 4) have multiple parties, regular elections and a free press; 5) maintain their treaty commitments; and 6) control their violent extremists with security forces governed by the rule of law.
But when we’re talking to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the new government in Libya, we cannot let them come to us and say: “We need money, but right now our politics is not right for us to do certain things. Give us a pass.” We bought that line for 50 years from their dictators. It didn’t end well. We need to stick to our principles. Emphasis added; italics in original.
Mitt’s foreign policy speech is one more reason why I’m voting for Obama no matter what, even if he spends the next two debates singing the theme song from “Sesame Street.” Mitt, like Bush 43, lacks not only a background in foreign policy, but also any interest in it. He’d just be led by the nose by the neo-cons on his team. He’s got Liz Cheney now! If she wants to shoot her ignorant mouth off on Fox, that’s fine, but I don’t want her anywhere near actual policy-making authority.
On the eve of the 11th anniversary of 9/11, the President isn’t just out there making patriotic speeches, he’s making us safer, protecting us from another day of horror.
The Defense Ministry in Yemen is reporting that Al Qaeda’s No. #2 leader there, Saeed al-Shihri, has been killed in a drone strike. This is a major blow to the terrorists because Yemen is now Al Qaeda’s most significant hub.
As Joe Biden would say, this is a BFD.
We have an excellent commander in chief — we need to keep him.
When President Obama met with French President Francois Hollande, and Hollande stuck to his guns about withdrawing from Afghanistan at the end of this year, I wonder if at some point, Obama said, “I wish we could too.” He had to at least been thinking it.
The Americans who give their lives or get wounded in Afghanistan between now and the end of 2014 are engaged in an exercise in futility. The President knows this, and it has to eat at him. The only worthwhile missions are drone strikes and special forces raids in places like Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, wherever Al Qaeda is still active.
After 9/11, the GOP faulted Bill Clinton for dealing with terrorism as a law enforcement issue. But we’ve gone too far in the other direction of treating it as a nation-building issue, requiring an enormous footprint. The proper approach is to treat it as an intelligence/special ops issue.
Embattled Farmers 