For years, the United States has danced around the fact that it has repeatedly enter the sovereign territory of other countries with drone attacks and in some cases small unit attacks without the permission of countries like Pakistan. Such acts violate international law and would be viewed by the United States as an act of war if committed on U.S. territory. This week,Defense Secretary Leon Panetta finally responded directly to those objections and said that the attacks would continue unabated. Panetta essentially stated that we can invade other nations because we can and that countries will have to come to accept that — using the same concept as “floggings will continue on ship until morale improves.”
Panetta insisted this is really not them (other countries) but us. Speaking in India, he proclaimed “This is about our sovereignty as well.” As for Pakistan, which has repeatedly objected to attacks on its territory, Panetta said “It’s a complicated relationship, often times frustrating, often times difficult. They have provided some cooperation. There are other times when frankly that cooperation is not there.” Strangely, we would not view the relationship as complicated if Mexico sent drones into Texas to take out suspects or landed Mexican special forces in Arizona to kill enemies. We would treat it as a matter of war.
Panetta has finally made “American exceptionalism” official policy. We do these things simply because we can; because we are the United States. From torture to military tribunals to hit lists, the United States is above the legal standards that we impose on others. The greatest danger is that our hypocrisy abroad is turning into hypocrisy at home where we continue to claim to be the “land of the free” while stripping citizens of basic rights and expanding unchecked presidential and police powers.
Obama has expanded drone attacks to an unprecedented level while expanding his claimed authority to kill citizens without a charge or trial. Now the most common image of the United States abroad is not our Constitution but our drones. For many people around the world, Panetta’s speech will be viewed as adding unrestained arrogance to unrestrained power.
Source: ABC
mespo,
You take a state how you find them, this includes internally unstable and nuclear capable. Violating their sovereignty isn’t going to encourage any kind of stability and doing so where regional instability of a nuclear power with known terrorists within its borders is a known issue, it is counter-productive.
As I’ve mentioned before, I once had the privilege of taking some graduate classes in Buddhism from a former Sri Lankan ambassador to France and the United States. Once he told me of a phone call from the American trade representative complaining about Sri Lanka’s embargoing of petroleum based fertilizers. When he explained that his country had an ongoing insurrection by the Tamils and that Sri Lankan scientists had said that the fertilizer could be made into bombs, the American trade rep replied: “Well, if you had real scientists like we have in America, you wouldn’t believe such nonsense.” As bad luck would have it, a a few weeks later, Timothy McVeigh — not a Muslim or a Tamil — blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City with a bomb he had made out of a truckload of fertilizer. Not without a shade of schadenfreude, the Ambassador called up the American trade rep and solicitously inquired: “What do you think of our scientists now?”
The arrogance and short-sighted stupidity of American officials, both political and military, has become so uncontroversial throughout the world as to scarcely require mention. I only mention it here for the benefit of the few who still harbor fantasies about impending American “victories” (one of these decades) over what Gene H calls “a noun” — a notion I would expand to cover the traditional bogeyman noun phrases: Reactionary Panic, Mystic Dread, Abstract Angst, and just plain Fear Itself.
As CNN pundit Fareed Zacharia finally got around to noticing recently, Americans “look like a bunch of scared frightened losers.” That about covers it.
Gene H:
You’re right that is bad foreign policy. But the point is that Islamabad can’t even control it’s own territory in the tribal regions. If a state can’t control land within its own borders is it a state at all?
anonymously:
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin”
********************
Everyone agrees with that, No one I see here is arguing for more restrictions on the rights of US citizens. We’re arguing foreign policy and the effect of our sense of morality thereon. Drone strikes against our enemies across “sovereign” borders is the topic.
And undermining a cornerstone principle of international diplomacy like sovereignty isn’t inviting disasters of that scale as well?
I don’t think I buy that, mespo.
Consider the current situation in Pakistan. Officials have said in the press that they are “nearing the limits of their patience with Pakistan”. Can you think of a better way to get a nuclear weapon or materials to people willing to use them – either with or without official state sanction – than to threaten the sovereignty of a nuclear state? I sure can’t. I’d say it invites such outcomes.
Gene H:
“true level of threat global terrorism presents (which if you’d read the reason.com article is really quite low).”
***********************
Despite the low incidence of the attacks (likely so low because of the decade long assault on the most virulent terrorist strains) the effects of just one well-placed dirty nuke raises the consequence so high you simply can’t treat is as low risk. It’s the consequence of the event that matters not the rate of incidence or the perception of it’s likely occurrence. That lightning is not likely to strike you does not mean you should parade around in a storm carrying a metal flagpole.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin
Mespo: “Bob,Esq.:
Thank you for your daily ad hominem attack proving once again that they with the least to say say it the loudest and with the most conviction. Read any good Kant lately?”
Mark,
You really need to brush up on your informal fallacies. You see, I didn’t try to negate your arguments by pointing out an irrelevant negative characteristic or belief you may have. For instance, I didn’t say you can’t believe a word Mespo says because he’s a neocon.
I merely summarized the arguments you make, the type of rhetoric and exploitation you use while making those arguments and thence drew a fair conclusion from it. (see comment at June 7, 2012 at 11:48 am)
That you may resemble a neocon upon closer examination of your arguments and rhetorical techniques is not my concern.
Now had I simply called you intellectually dishonest and a liar without anything further like referencing the way you intentionally misrepresented my argument on the Blooberg Cola thread…
Witness for the prosecution:
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/06/03/the-freedom-to-harm-ourselves-mayor-bloomberg-and-the-case-against-cola/#comment-379455
(see also comment on same thread at , June 5, 2012 at 10:28 am)
that would be ad hominem. But I didn’t do that.
mespo,
Then given your response, I have to go with the Gambler’s fallacy. You are trying to rationalize violating national sovereignty based on an incorrect understanding of the true level of threat global terrorism presents (which if you’d read the reason.com article is really quite low). That seems like bad statesmanship based on scare tactics to me given that sovereignty and the recognition thereof is critical to international diplomacy.
interesting statement mespo,
“We live in the garden that is the US. We carved out that garden precisely by revolution, internal conflict, aiding our allies in military campaigns that threatened their survival, and repulsing attacks from those who would do us in.”
Pakistan is our ally. Hmmm…..
We were attacked after 9/11, by someone in this govt., the only place possible to weaponize anthrax to the extent it was. WOW, why isn’t Obama drone bombing every suspect right now? We might get hit again by these same govt. actors, right? Well, let’s get killing!
You are advocating genocide. I have no idea why you are concerned with other people’s rationality when you advocate genocide as a wise course of action against other people.
I am amazed at how ready you are to believe a govt. which has lied about its actions, time and time again. If the govt. tells you genocide is the way to protect your nation from this threat, (coincidentally along with extremely profitable endless war), normally that should arouse suspicion. Yet it only arouses your willingness to abandon human decency and the highest values of our society– that we follow the rule of law, not of men. These values we should hold, even when we face a crisis. It is our safety. It is the world’s safety. What you advocate is not safety or justice but cruelty and fascism. It is why we are being destroyed from within.
and if you really want to feed your inner beastie http://www.nucleardarkness.org/index2.php
…but there is no place to hide if some fool goes all nucular…..the radaiation will not stay in 1 hemisphere….our water patterns cover the entire planet and will outlast any of your grndchildren…..so if any of our iron assed generals think it is a viable option with a safe denouement they are quite mistaken…(though the generals, having seen the corpses up close and personal, are usually not so careless…)…and if the ever so padded corporate regime thinks it can escape its own mess….well haven’t people figured out yet that the world is just too small?
You may reject Machiavelli, but his observation that, “Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared” seems awfully viable to me today.
—————————————————
Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.~ Machiavelli
*
One day Alice came to a fork in the road
and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
“Which road do I take?” she asked.
His responses was a question: “Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
– Lewis Carroll
*
I did not wish to take a cabin passage,
but rather to go before the mast
and on the deck of the world,
for there I could best see
the moonlight amid the mountains.
I do not wish to go below now.
– Henry David Thoreau
Machiayucky was ruled by and in love with fear itself. You couldn’t have a better manual for monsters
Alice was much more courageous.
The enlightened give thanks
for what most people take for granted.
– Michael Beckwith
Concern for the infrastructure? What irony. Womens’s education went to hell in the ten years we were in Iraq.
Iraq had the best university system in the whole of the arab world before the war. That the post-war casualties exceeded one million dead is also something to consider. Who believes they were all or in greater part enemies fighting us? It was slaughter to keep us and our troops there and the profits rolling in. That’s all it was.
As for the infrastrucure in the NW tribal Pakistani area—
-they don’t have any.
U Tapao was designed for B-52’s and still probably functions for such function.
As for expansion which Madsen reports in the Souther Pacific area, it is logical from a world strategy point of view.
Mobility is our strength, and air power is our first weapon to be used. Denying air reconnaisance to the enemy has been key to many conflicts, where the enemy could have othewise have done so.
Now this is just the next step in total world dominance in achieving Pax America for the foreseeable future.
BettyKath,
Quoted:
“WMR has learned that the recent agreement between the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Thailand to establish an atmospheric testing facility at U-Tapao Airport in Rayong is part of the Pentagon’s evacuation plans. NASA is being used as a civilian “cover” by the Pentagon.”
That is the air base that I and the chief electrical engineer designed in 65-66. They won’t show it on Gmaps, pinked out.
Just doing my duty, ma’am. It was used for tourist evac when the reds and yellows were fighing at the Bangkok airport.
@Mespo- “Do we really have to experience another attack before we move from the theoretical to highly likely?”
Without cynicism, any probability is theoretical. In this situation, one could take your underlying premise to say it is reasonable that there be no limits or constraints that should be placed on efforts to thwart such probability. That’s ridiculous.
Also, I refuse to accept the notion of guilt and responsibility that underlies such a premise, which is basically a zero sum equation and unquestioning blank check to the “authorities”.
These threats and implied causal linkage with the fact that there has been no large followup attack are not very far from the phoney flag weaving and jingoism that discourage honest debate, and I can’t imagine you intend that.
Bob,Esq.:
Thank you for your daily ad hominem attack proving once again that they with the least to say say it the loudest and with the most conviction. Read any good Kant lately?
Gene H:
No intra-group organization was what I was referring to in my comment. Inter-group is another matter as you say.
This is more from Panetta and why. It’s a bit ot but I need to share
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20120607
June 7-8, 2012 — The real reason for America’s Southeast Asian projection
WMR’s Asian intelligence sources report another, morfe ominous, aspect to the decision of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to move 60 percent of U.S. naval forces to the Pacific region. Panetta announced in a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense conference in Singapore that most of the Navy’s littoral combat ships, submarines, cruisers, and destroyers will be deployed in the Pacific. In addition, new U.S. Marine bases are being established in Australia. Panetta, according to our sources, has also been negotiating with leaders of Singapore, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand the establishment of new U.S. military bases or the re-opening of former bases from the Cold War era. The latter include Subic Bay in the Philippines, U-Tapao airbase in Thailand, and Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.
The United States has plans to build new bases in Darwin, Perth, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and Sihanoukville in Cambodia. The United States’ “Compact of Free Association” with the Republic of Palau gives Washington the right to establish military bases in that southern Pacific nation, an option that the Pentagon appears to be close to invoking.
WMR has learned that with the continued high radiation affecting the northern hemisphere as a result of life-threatening radiation continuing to be dispersed into the atmosphere from the meltdown of reactor 4 at the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear plant in Japan, the Pentagon wants to preserve most of its military forces and to ensure the protection for American elites who have plans to move to the southern hemisphere, particularly the Southeast Asian region, to escape the effects of the radiation circulating around the northern climes.
Currently under wraps are plans to shift a bulk of the U.S. Air Force to the southern portion of the Asia-Pacific region.
Now that Myanmar is opening to the West, the United States is also eyeing new bases in that country, particularly in Naypyidaw, the new capital city that is said to be relatively safe from the northern hemisphere radiation.
On January 2, 2006, WMR reported: “Southeast Asian intelligence sources report that Burma’s (Myanmar’s) recent abrupt decision to move its capital from Rangoon (Yangon) to remote Pyinmana, 200 miles to the north, is a result of Chinese intelligence warnings to its Burmese allies about the effects of radiation resulting from a U.S. conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. There is concern that a series of attacks on Iranian nuclear installations will create a Chernobyl-like radioactive cloud that would be caught up in monsoon weather in the Indian Ocean.
Low-lying Rangoon lies in the path of monsoon rains that would continue to carry radioactive fallout from Iran over South and Southeast Asia between May and October. Coastal Indian Ocean cities like Rangoon, Dhaka, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai, and Colombo would be affected by the radioactive fallout more than higher elevation cities since humidity intensifies the effects of the fallout. Thousands of government workers were given only two days’ notice to pack up and leave Rangoon for the higher (and dryer) mountainous Pyinmana.
New housing planned for some of the new U.S. military bases, said to be for rotating military personnel, will be sufficient to accommodate America’s political, financial, and military leadership.
No less affected by the radiation from Fukushima, Canada has also announced plans to shift a large portion of its naval, air, and ground forces to the Southeast Asia region with Singapore being the “hub” for the Canadian military. Canadian Defense Minister Peter McKay toured a potential site for the Canadian military during his visit to Singapore to attend the Shangri-La meeting.
Although there is tension between the United States and China, our sources have indicated that confronting China’s growing military presence in the region is merely a cover story designed to mask the abandonment of the northern hemisphere by the Pentagon. In fact, Chinese defense officials participated in the Shangri-La Dialogue.
WMR has learned that the recent agreement between the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Thailand to establish an atmospheric testing facility at U-Tapao Airport in Rayong is part of the Pentagon’s evacuation plans. NASA is being used as a civilian “cover” by the Pentagon.
NASA’s SEAC4RS program or Southeast Asia Composition, Cloud, Climate Coupling Regional Study will use aircraft to sample air samples over Southeast Asia for radiation levels from weather patterns that could bring radioactive particles from the northern to southern hemisphere. Aircraft are due to be deployed from U-Tapao beginning in August. A senior Pentagon official met with Thai military Supreme Commander General Thanasak Patimapakorn on June 4 to hammer out final details on the atmospheric testing to be carried out from U-Tapao. Responding to concerns by some Thai members of Parliament that the U-Tapao base has a military aspect, Thai Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaiku may have revealed the actual reason for the base when he stated that it’s major purpose was to deal with “natural disasters.”
In what amounts to an “On the Beach” scenario — a reference to the 1960s movie that saw Australia as a temporary safe haven as a result of a nuclear war that killed off all life in the northerrn hemisphere — the United States, Canada, and other countries are making preparations to re-locate their political and military elites and ample military forces to protect them to the safest zone from the Fukushima radiation — Southeast Asia.
Israel is reportedly buying up property in India and Uganda to shelter millions of Jews from Israel, North America, and Europe to escape the effects of the life-threatening radiation in the northern hemisphere.
At the Atomic Age II Symposium at the University of Chicago, Professor Hiroake Koide of the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University, displayed a world map showing the “hot zones” for cesium-127 resulting from the Fukushima meltdown. Unsafe zones extend throughout the northern hemisphere from “ground zero” in Fukushima province to deep within the United States’ and Canada’s prairie state and province food-producing “bread baskets.” Koide showed one PowerPoint slide that pointed to a “collapse of life through evacuation.”