Drone War on Pakistan Parallels Nixon's Bombing of Cambodia

This article should give pause on the latest strategy in the so-called War on Terror, Pakistan Front, involving the use of drones as a military tactic - in a country, Pakistan, against which we have not declared war:

Like President Obama today, Nixon had come to power promising stability in an age of unrest and with a vague plan to bringing peace to a nation at war. On the day he was sworn in, he read from the Biblical book of Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks." He also spoke of transforming Washington’s bitter partisan politics into a new age of unity: "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

Sound familiar? The description of Nixon's bombing of Cambodia, ostensibly to "target" the "headquarters" of enemies bent on "harming Americans" sounds just like Obama's drone war in Pakistan - both, notably, targeted areas inhabited by civilians, both were against a nation against whom we were not at war in order to target a supposed leadership of a supposed group against whom we were at war...

In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a “neutralist” king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found “sanctuaries.”

But it gets worse, if the comparison is taking to its ultimate conclusion.

In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group, little-known communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.) They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk -- until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began. As these intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a U.S.-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.

Ahhh, the drone war, if this analogy works, could lead to a Taliban strengthening, perhaps a win, or a new killing field...

Just to get the idea, think about how the invasion of Iraq became a motivating tool for Al-Qaeda in Iraq (not to mention elsewhere). Think about how the American drone attacks on civilians in Afghanistan alienated those civilians. And think about how drone attacks on civilians in Pakistan could alienate Pakistani civilians, living under a weak ruler in an unstable political environment, where things are going not-so-good. Then look at history:

Like the Taliban of today, many of the Khmer Rouge were, in fact, teenaged villagers who had responded, under the pressure of war and disruption, to the distant call of an inspirational ideology and joined the resistance in the jungles.

If you ask me why I joined the Khmer Rouge, the main reason is because of the American invasion," Hun Sen, the current prime minister of Cambodia, has said. "If there was no invasion, by now, I would be a pilot or a professor."

What's worse was of course the Khmer Rouge's genocide of its own population, starting with enemy number one, those who are educated. It's a sort of war of resentment. And who do you think the Taliban would want to eliminate first? Then ask, does the war in Pakistan, conducted, like Nixon's "Operation Breakfast", at arm's length in the cold, dispassionate, calculating distance of the gamer (referred to commonly as strategist) where human lives don't bleed in your face...is that drone-safe war really a war on terror? Or a seed? Is it, in reality, the instigator, the generator of terror?

Are we really fighting a war on terror? Or are we just playing with guns, posturing for political - international and domestic - power, and in the process victimizing all the soldiers involved in one big, testesterone-fueled, destructive, destabilizing, demoralizing, planet-threatening, hope-and-change-eliminating, peace-blasting runaway train to hell?

Obama's Got Math: Media, Face It...

This post from Jack & Jill Politics is so good, I'll just redirect you to it from the title.

Is the Anti-Immigration Movement Really a New Racist Movement?? Looks like a Resounding "YES"

This incident says it all: A Minuteman on the front lines of the anti-immigration movement, a republican phenom, saying "Fuck You, Brown Boy!"...

As Kyle de Beausset said in his report on the crowd outside where Obama was giving a speech in San Diego at the annual National Council of La Raza (NCLR) conference where the incident took place (from one of the San Diego Minutemen, an anti-immigration group),

Just as I was about to turn away from filming a man holding a sign of a boy urinating on the phrase "La Raza", I heard him begin to chant, "Fuck You Brown Boy. Fuck You Brown Boy. Fuck You Brown Boy." The San Diego Minuteman supporter was walking up a ramp to the convention center and was speaking to another full-grown man that looked to be of latino descent to me.

They were supposedly "protesting" La Raza's "racism" using racist epithets...!?!

Some will see the above incident as the fault of a fringe lunatic, who supports a fringe organization, but as anyone who blogs about migration can attest, hateful rhetoric like this has poisoned almost every online forum that takes up the subject. Any newspaper article that dares even suggest that unauthorized migrants are human quickly fills up with hate like this in the comment section. Even the mainstream progressive blogosphere is filled with hate like this. Look no further than Alternet's special immigration section for evidence of that.

This hate is degrading the U.S.'s democracy, and preventing the U.S. from arriving at a meaningful solution to the issues associated with migration. I live and breathe the U.S. migration debate. And even for someone like myself, who is very familiar with the U.S.'s history oppression, I find myself living in disbelief over the suffering of that millions of authorized and unauthorized migrants have to live through every day in the United States.

And as we all know from even W.'s attempt at Immigration reform, the racism and fear provides a lot of right-wing steam attacking this amorphous non-WASP "threat" that is undermining their livelihood and that of Lou Dobbs, who has solved all the economic problems facing the nation with the simple, symbolic concept of building a huge, impenetrable Wall against the Other.

Problems begin when that very wall and all it symbolizes undermines what America has always symbolized: democracy, freedom, and compassion. So much for those dreams - hate is much more compelling for an apparently vocal, mostly Republican, "interest group".

Total Joy! Obama Clinches Nomination ... Finally

Many said it was impossible. He proved them wrong, bringing an incredible mix of networking, good organization, inspiration and charisma... plus message! Compare his speeches on the stump to Hillary's: his are all on the issues - especially toward the end - and hers are all about ... well, ... her. Oh, and "you". "I love West Virginia!" and "When I grew up in Scranton..." And what's gonna happen to all those bitter, resentful women? What's with that? Personally, I'd like to have a woman do it on her own, without her husband's "brand".
Obama did it amazingly well.

Do You Really Want a Democratic President? Obamasize!

He's picked up the endorsements of over 100 notable feminists, CA 1st Lady Maria Shriver, Ted Kennedy, and many more - people you'd have thought would have backed Hillary. He has managed to keep the race tight against a powerful Clinton campaign machine, including its wafting aroma of spousal incumbancy success, and that sense of "inevitability" as well as that sense of Hillary being a "victim" whose woes we should somehow share, and assuage with the Presidency.

But Barack Obama's biggest selling point is his electability in the general election. Hillary is just too divisive a character, victim or not, capable or not, regardless...

Trey Ellis said it best:

I gave money three years ago to his senatorial campaign and personally have
never really considered voting for anyone else. I haven't yet advocated for
others to vote with me because despite the rancor from zealots in both camps,
Obama and Hillary are both centrists Democrats reading from the exact same
hymnal. I don't know any married couples who disagree on less. All this talk of
an historic battle for the future direction of the Democratic party is just the
same kind of hogwash HBO uses to hype prizefights.

What has become
clear, however, from the religious-like fervor of Obama believers and the
venomous hatred from Hillary haters, is that she has been so wounded by this
campaign that she will be too weak to lead us to victory in November.
Hyper-capable as she is, she's a hard woman to love. At least on her own.
Obama's breathtaking rise has at least already won him the VP nod but the
strength of his current surge will, I believe, eventually win him the
nomination.

Fairly or unfairly Obama has been christened the new Kennedy while
Hillary has been tarred the old Nixon. I just don't see how she recovers from
that.

Obama has unquestionably tapped into something profound and lacking in
this country. Let us gather around him now and get ready for the real push, the
real hard work, of wrestling power away from a handful of ultra-conservative
plutocrats who, for going on eight years now, have turned this nation into one
that we hardly even recognize.
Let's take it back with Obama.