Exposing USA’s largest secret shady War– More Dangerous Than Terrorism itself
Posted on 17 July 2011.
Exposing USA's largest secret shady War-- More Dangerous Than Terrorism itself. Image via Wikipedia
Sy Hersch, Robert Fisk and Fred Branfman are part of that elite group of journalists that are very Washington, D.C. – infoZine – “Gen. David Petraeus, the outgoing U.S. commander in Afghanistan (and incoming CIA director), and his soon-to-be successor met with top military leaders in Pakistan on Thursday.” Meanwhile, the head of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, is in Washington, D.C. meeting with top U.S. officials.
Fred Branfman just wrote “Obama’s Secret Wars: How Our Shady Counter-Terrorism Policies Are More Dangerous Than Terrorism.” Just like Sy Hersh was known for exposing the Mail Lai massacres Fred Branfman is known for having exposed the U.S. and CIA secret war in Laos.
Criticizing the US policies in Pakistan, Fred has analogized the defeat spawning policies in Laos with the bad policies in Pakistan. Fred Branfman said today “Although packaged as involving only ‘surgical’ strikes, the U.S. ‘counter-terrorism strategy’ already involves tens of thousands of ‘special operations’ troops and thousands of drones in six Muslim countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. He aid that seven thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq alone are engaged in round-the-clock assassinations.
“The Los Angeles Times reported on President Obama’s new ‘National Strategy for Counterterrorism’ released on June 29, writing that ‘John Brennan, President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor, said in a speech about Afghanistan and Pakistan that “the U.S. has been delivering ‘precise and overwhelming force’ against those that the US considers militants. Mr. Obama’s delusion say that ‘there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.’
“In Pakistan, perhaps the major laboratory for U.S. ‘counter-terrorism’ strategy to date, any success in killing 56 named ‘al-Qaeda leaders’ out of a total of 1,900 victims of drone attacks, which includes many civilians unlike Mr. Brennan’s delusional claims, must be weighed against the fact that U.S. policy has contributed to a vast increase in overall militant strength. U.S. drone strikes and pressure on the Pakistani military to attack tribal areas have driven many militants east into Karachi and the Punjabi heartland, vastly increasing their numbers and creating countless new potential suicide bombers, unifying militant groups and seeing incidents of reported terrorism quadruple from an annual average in 2004-8 of 470 to 1723 in 2009-10.
Branfman says that “U.S. ‘counter-terrorism’ have contributed to 59 percent of Pakistanis — over 110 million people — now regarding the U.S. as their ‘enemy.’ This virulently anti-U.S. public opinion, according to former U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson, is the main reason the Pakistani government has refused to cooperate with the U.S. …although critics are correct in criticizing a corrupt and duplicitous Pakistani government and military, the incontrovertible fact is that the focus on U.S. ‘counter-terrorism’ is making the situation there far, far worse and increasing the likelihood of a coup that would be devastating to U.S. interests.” ( Fred can be contacted at fredbranfman@aol.com )
Sane voices like those of Branham and Hersch are in the minority and cannot live up the Murdoch organization’s machinations. As the Murdoch machine self-destructs these voices of sanity will then have to compete with the corporate obfuscation from Haliburton and the like. The Murdoch newspaper empire is crumbling, and if Murdoch dies, it will implode quickly. They will be joy around the planet.
As the US begins its withdrawal it will continue to camouflage its defeat with Bin Laden type of spectacular raids which hide the retreat under a cloak of targeted assassinations and throwing the Pakistan Army Chief under the bus. These tactics are counterproductive. Senator HIllary CLinton, and the entire US Army admitted that imposing sanctions on Pakistan was the worst blunder of US foreign policy. The sanctions forced Pakistan to go nuclear. Amazingly, those lessons learned by the US state department have been lost. This time the blowback will be worse. A Nuclear Pakistan has now reached out to Iran and forged closer ties with China. None of this can be in the greater interests of American foreign policy. Successive US presidents will have to live with President Obama’s brilliant blunders.
