Blank check war

From a mass emailing I received this morning from Rep. Alan Grayson:

So we had a hearing a week ago on ISIS ("we" being the House Foreign Affairs Committee), and the witnesses were three experts on U.S. policy in the Middle East, all dues-paying members of the Military-Industrial Complex. They were James Jeffrey, who was Deputy Chief of Mission at our embassy in Iraq; Rick Brennan, a political scientist at the Rand Corp.; and Dafna Rand, who was on the National Security Council staff. The White House had just released the President's draft Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS, and I felt that I needed a good translator, so I asked them what the ISIS war authorization meant. Their answers were chilling: the ISIS war authorization means whatever the President wants it to mean. If you don't believe me, just listen to them: GRAYSON: Section 2(c) of the President's draft Authorization for the Use of Military Force reads as follows: "The authority granted in subsection A [to make war on ISIS and forces 'alongside' ISIS] does not authorize the use of US armed forces in enduring offensive ground combat operations." Ambassador Jeffrey, what does 'enduring' mean? JEFFREY: My answer would be a somewhat sarcastic one: "Whatever the Executive at the time defines 'enduring' as." And I have a real problem with that. GRAYSON: Dr. Brennan? BRENNAN: I have real problems with that also. I don't know what it means. I can just see the lawyers fighting over the meaning of this. But more importantly, if you're looking at committing forces for something that you are saying is either [a] vital or important interest of the United States, and you get in the middle of a battle, and all of a sudden, are you on offense, or are you on defense? What happens if neighbors cause problems? Wars never end the way that they were envisioned. And so I think that that's maybe a terrible mistake to put in the AUMF. GRAYSON: Dr. Rand? RAND: Enduring, in my mind, specifies an open-endedness, it specifies lack of clarity on the particular objective at hand. GRAYSON: Dr. Rand, is two weeks 'enduring'? RAND: I would leave that to the lawyers to determine exactly. GRAYSON: So your answer is [that] you don't know, right? How about two months? RAND: I don't know. Again, I think it would depend on the particular objective, 'enduring' in my mind is not having a particular military objective in mind. [More . . . ]

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Claim by Editor of Major German Newspaper: CIA planted pro-war stories

Here's an excerpt from this stunning but unsurprising admission: Becoming the first credentialed, well-known media insider to step forward and state publicly that he was secretly a "propagandist," an editor of a major German daily has said that he personally planted stories for the CIA. Saying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte . . . said . . . he accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name.

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What causes Middle East terrorism?

I'm often hear Americans state as undeniable fact that Middle East terrorism is caused by religion. Their claim is that Islam is an extraordinarily violent religion, much worse than Christianity. I'm highly suspicious of this claim, recently made by Sam Harris. Anyone who has read the Bible knows that it contains hundreds of episodes of violence, many of them seemingly gratuitous. It is difficult for me to see how the Koran is any more violent than the Bible. Yet there is much violence in the Middle East and numerous commentators will thus conclude, simplistically, that Islam is especially violent and that therefore, Islam is the cause. This analysis by C.J.Werleman provides some raw numbers and some history to work with.

The Suicide Terrorism Database at Flinders University in Australia, which documents all suicide bombings committed in the Middle East between 1981 and 2006, demonstrates that it is politics, not religious fanaticism that leads terrorists to blow themselves up. This is supported by research conducted at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism, which was partly funded by the Defense Department’s Threat Reduction Agency. The authors, Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman, examined more than 2,200 suicide attacks across the world from 1980 to present. Their research reveals that more than 90 percent of suicide attacks are directed at an occupying force. We’ve spent the last half century waging and funding wars in the Middle East, playing one side off against the other, stoking ethnic rivalries, and arming regimes that inflict economic oppression upon their people. We've encircled the entire region with nearly 50 U.S. military bases and parked an aircraft carrier group permanently at their shores. The 17 Saudi 9/11 hijackers made their intent clear; they wanted the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia. The belief that Islam is the root of terrorism doesn't explain how Western-targeted terrorism coincides with the period post oil being discovered in the Middle East during the 1930-'60s and the establishment of the Jewish state on Arab Palestinian land. Harris also ignores the fact that Palestinian Muslims welcomed Zionist Jews in the 19th century. It was only when Jewish settlers began taking their land, and when Jews made it clear they did not wish to share the remaining land, that violence ensued.

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