Stand Your Ground

Atlas regrets that you are on its 'must die' list
and hopes that you will continue to use our products
should you survive this encounter
--Borderlands
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A moral dilemma:

If George Zimmerman is to be tried for 2nd degree murder, then what would be the correct charge for a drone-wielding joystick jockey who remotely kills an innocent person with a sophisticated Hellfire missile?


Mitigating factors:

No imminent harm was posed by the person killed, and the joy stick killer has pre-planning and intent, which qualifies his action as 1st degree murder.

One crop which the Reapers are sure to sow is hatred (Hatred: What Drones Sow). Jefferson Morely reports today in Salon:

The metrics are dismal. The advent of the drone war in Yemen has coincided with the growth of al-Qaida there. When the Obama administration began the strikes in December 2009, al-Qaida had 200-300 members and controlled no territory. Now White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan tells a group of New York cops that it has “more than 1,000″ members.

We should consider how well this crop will feed our nation's future.

Thrill Seekers

My fantasy has turned to madness
All my goodness has turned to badness
My need to possess you has consumed my soul
My life is trembling, I have no control
--Obsession, Animotion

A part of me has just been ripped
The pages from my mind are stripped
--Centerfold, J. Geils Band

What's important at this time is to re-clarify
the difference between hero and villain
--J. Edgar (2011)
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There are as many serial killers as terrorists on popular crime shows -- both jobs must have growth potential in today's economy.

Just to re-hash the job descriptors:

Terrorists use symbolic violence to reach an audience beyond the immediate target. They are trying to impose a remote agenda through their actions. Serial killers, or thrill killers, are usually motivated by sexually deviant pathology, and killing serves their fantasy; for serial killers, the killing is the goal.

Pathology is not good in a person, and much less so in a government. The Central Intelligence Agency, at the U.S. government's behest, seems to be indulging in thrill kills, as the actions are within the parameters of deviant behavior.

Last Tuesday armed U.S. drones in Yemen killed some "suspected militants":

"U.S. airstrikes targeting leaders from Yemen's active Al Qaeda branch killed four suspected militants, including a man suspected of involvement in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, officials said Tuesday."

When individuals execute such deviant actions, we employ the full force of the police establishment to bring them to justice. However, when CIA operatives do the same thing, we call this the War on Terror; who is watching the watchers? Assassination is not a war fighting tactic. It is an act as nasty and abominable as any act of terrorism. The delineation between the two and their attempted justification rides on whose ox is being gored.

Let us look at the terms in the news release: If a militant is worthy of liquidation, what of militia members in the U.S.? Aren't members of militias, militants? Does being a militant deem one worthy of elimination as an existential threat to one's government?

Moreover, these were "suspected" militants. When did civilized nations start killing "suspects" as a matter of policy? How does killing a suspect differ fro a thrill kill? Nothing in U.S. case law justifies the killing of a non-adjudicated person. These killings are fulfilling someone's darkest fantasies ... but whose?

"Missiles struck a school and a car late Monday in the southern Abyan province, Yemeni security and military officials said. They identified one of the dead as Abdel-Monem al-Fathanim, who was believed to be involved in the USS Cole attack in October 2000, which killed 17 U.S. sailors and injured 39 others."

So the missiles struck a school to kill someone suspected of involvement in the 2000 USS Cole attack. The rules of war prohibit attacks on schools -- especially when the target is so murky. In addition to the legal and moral concerns, it is not cost-effective to run a worldwide Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) program raining costly sophisticated missiles from the sky on dubious targets.

Disappointingly --though not surprisingly -- not one candidate in the midst of a presidential campaign questions these murders. When did the U.S. President become an omnipotent dictator, and when did the American people lose faith with their justice system? What makes the U.S. different than a Nazi Stuka pilot over the cities of London or Warsaw? We differ in scale, but perhaps not in kind.

Whether terrorism is warfare or criminality, there is no justification for murder.

Yemen Police

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Ever-magnanimous with money (cause we've got the presses!), the U.S. will provide $150 Million to Yemen to fight al-Qaeda. Further, the U.S. Special Forces will continue to "low profile" train the Yemen police and military.

How is this possible, or even desirable? Why is the Department of State not training the police? When did the U.S. SF get in the business of training civilian police? What does SF know about protecting and serving foreign societies? The SF is not a police force, nor were they ever, nor should we want them to be.

Yemen is a good example of why COIN is such a screwed concept. We are militarily training police that in reality are not police, in a country that lacks even a functioning government, which obviously lacks any judicial functions beyond the range of an AK rifle.

We might think a little before opening a new front in a frontless war.

No Otto Skorzeny

Otto Skorzeny

I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me
--Superman, Five for Fighting
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Six former Guantanamo Bay detainees were recently found to be operating out of Yemen (Freed Guantanamo Inmates Headed for Yeman to join a-Qaeada Fight.) While factually true, it is fiction that they present high-order threats to our Homeland security. They are certainly not sufficient to justify another front of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©).

These people are a far shot from Otto Skorzeny.

Mr. Skorzeny was a World war II SS Obersturmbannfuhrer and part of the daring Werwolf guerrilla movement. But even Otto Skorzeny was not Otto Skorzeny. Though one of the world's premeir commandos, he was not an existential threat to the U.S. His actions were insignificant in the larger picture of WWII. Perspective is priceless.

The former Gitmo detainees are of no consequence when assessing the overall threat level offered by al-Qaeda and Yemen. They lack sophistication and possess no potential for manueverability or projection of hostile intentions. And al-Qaeda and Yemen pose questionable threats, other than locally.

Al-Qaeda and Yeman are not even al-Qaeda and Yemen, as writ large on the nightly news.

Effective Fire

Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war:
not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice,
nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas,
nor kinds of government, nor any other thing.
We are the killers. We breed wars.
We carry it like syphilis inside.
--Lion in Winter (1968)
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The key combat skill for an infantry officer is to be able to differentiate between effective and ineffective fire. Not all fire is the same, which may be a news flash to civilian readers. All rounds fired down range are not the same.

While all fire has the potential to kill you, not all fire can keep you from successfully completing an assigned mission. This skill of being able to differentiate fires is also applicable to life in general, for identifying and accomplishing the mission is the overriding imperative.

The civilian analog is the old saying, "Don't bark up the wrong tree." A coon dog can spend hours barking in alert to his master, but if the raccoon has skedadled up another tree, all of his effort is in vain. The mission cannot be accomplished if the correct target is not fixed.

Combat arms types will bypass ineffective fire in favor of applying their resources to completing the larger mission. Seeing the gestalt is more important than being distracted by discrete dissonant elements. This idea is especially applicable to the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) as it is being "fought" now.

There is symbolic fire being placed upon our unit by the al-Qaeda adversary, but the fires are ineffective and defined by largely by noise and nuisance rather than deadly volume or accuracy. To wit: The would-be Shoe Bomber and Underwear Bomber.

All other domestic threats have been equally ineffective, yet what do our handlers tell us? That the threat is effective and existential. Not! We are not in a beaten zone.

Our leaders fail to recognize, or apprise us, or the true nature of the fire. The al-Qaeda in theatre is a far threat, which does not affect our Homeland concerns. We should focus on the threat that is effective, and that threat is not originating in Yemen, Afghanistan or Iraq, but rather in places we least examine.

Our attention is now being shifted to Yemen in response to the crotch non-bomber, who is instead being packaged a source of effective terrorist fire from that sector. Again, not.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen is not a credible threat to the U.S. Maybe shoe bomber and crotch bomber were merely stooges, straw men allowed to compromise our security barriers to ramp up fear, thereby providing further justification for the endless cycle of fear and violence perpetuated on our side. A reason to carry on the "Security Theater" as Jeffery Goldberg called in "The Things he Carried."

Maybe Yemen fronted crotch bomber Abdulmutallab in a Mouse That Roared scenario. Everyone wants a piece of the American Pie, after all -- get it while it's hot. It is plausible that Yemeni intelligence might have sent Abdulmutallab in an effort to further deplete U.S. coffers via opening a new front on terror, a project Americans seem endlessly on board with.

The incompetent bombers getting through our security are not symbolic of al-Qaeda's prowess but rather the ineffectiveness of our security programs. If not this, then the threat is intentionally being allowed to bypass security.

What should we believe? Either we have total incompetence or a conspiracy, or a combination thereof, none of which is palatable.

Near fire is not far fire, a lost concept on our leaders. If not lost, certainly one which does not service the continuance of our military aggression in those regions.