Innocence Riots

I have been reading what this guy, Robert Grenier, has to say: Robert Grenier headed the CIA's counter-terrorism center from 2004 to 2006 and was previously a CIA station chief in Pakistan. Grenier was the CIA's station chief in Islamabad when terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York and attacked the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. He played a key role in co-ordinating covert operations that led up to the downfall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He later headed up the CIA's CTC where he led the CIA's global operations in the War on Terror as its top counter-terrorism official. He left the agency in 2006.He says:

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"It [the drone program] needs to be targeted much more finely. We have been seduced by them and the unintended consequences of our actions are going to outweigh the intended consequences,"

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"By launching those attacks, are we creating more militants than in fact we are killing?"

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"That brings you to a place where young men, who are typically armed, are in the same area and may hold these militants in a certain form of high regard. If you strike them indiscriminately you are running the risk of creating a terrific amount of popular anger. They have tribes and clans and large families. Now all of a sudden you have a big problem"

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"It's not just a matter of numbers of militants who are operating in that area, it also effects the motivations of those militants. They now see themselves as part of a global Jihad. They are not just focused on helping oppressed Muslims in Kashmir or trying to fight the NATO and the Americans in Afghanistan, they see themselves as part of a global struggle, and therefore are a much broader threat than they were previously. So in a sense, yes, we have helped to bring about the situation that we most fear."

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"We have gone a long way down the road of creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to Pakistan and Afghanistan,"

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Source and SourceAs for the rioting and anti-Americanism that is manifesting itself — Chalmers Johnson is his Blowback series of books has some interesting things to say:

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"In Blowback, I set out to explain why we are hated around the world. The concept "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to and in foreign countries.

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It refers to retaliation for the numerous illegal operations we have carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. This means that when the retaliation comes -- as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 -- the American public is unable to put the events in context. So they tend to support acts intended to lash out against the perpetrators, thereby most commonly preparing the ground for yet another cycle of blowback. In the first book in this trilogy, I tried to provide some of the historical background for understanding the dilemmas we as a nation confront today, although I focused more on Asia -- the area of my academic training -- than on the Middle East."

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"The Sorrows of Empire was written during the American preparations for and launching of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I began to study our continuous military buildup since World War II and the 737 military bases we currently maintain in other people's countries.

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This empire of bases is the concrete manifestation of our global hegemony, and many of the blowback-inducing wars we have conducted had as their true purpose the sustaining and expanding of this network. We do not think of these overseas deployments as a form of empire; in fact, most Americans do not give them any thought at all until something truly shocking, such as the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, brings them to our attention. But the people living next door to these bases and dealing with the swaggering soldiers who brawl and sometimes rape their women certainly think of them as imperial enclaves, just as the people of ancient Iberia or nineteenth-century India knew that they were victims of foreign colonization."

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I haven’t read these books (I think I’ll try and get hold of the first one — Blowback). But those rioting and exhibiting anti-US sentiments certainly seem to think of the West as colonising oppressors. what is the "win condition" for the US in your view? Hmmm. How's that strategy working out for you so far?

I thought the "war on terror" was using the word "war" in the same sense it is used when we say "the war on poverty" or "the war on drugs" or whatever.I didn't think we were actually at war in the sense of proper war war.Who are we at "war" with exactly......?

The WAR on terror was a catch all phrase used by the Neo-con
hawks in the Bush administration to justify waging war on any country they deemed a threat now or in the future.
See preemptive war.

So who are we at war with now?

I don't think so. We are using our actual armies in this war. Depends on what you want to consider it. Proper war war traditionally has been between sovereign states. But the times they are a changin'. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda.But they don't have their own sovereign states, so it doesn't look like a proper war war. Still, I think its worth considering a war.

Oh. So you think the US (along with it's allies) and Al Qaeda are at war with each other?If Al Qaeda is at war with the US then was 9/11 an act of terrorism or was it instead an act of war in the same way that British planes bombing German cities in WW2 (for example) was?I'm not sure what point I'm making here I'm just interested in where you see the line between terrorism and waging war on a nation in a way that includes all it's citizens.To be fair to your use of the term "war" I think Al Qaeda would certainly seek to justify their actions by claiming that they are at "war" with the United States as a nation, including it's civilian population....

I agree. We're using our military and we're invading countries, so it's war. Even if we were just using drones and military proxies it would still be war.And that's the problem. The solution to terrorists blowing up one's buildings is not inflicting death and hardship on foreign lands. It just breeds more terrorists.So what's the answer? I don't know, but I do believe we've definitely identified a wrong answer, so wrong that doing nothing would have been better. Yes, that's right, I believe that just trying to contain Saddam and Osama would have been far better than the course we've followed over the past decade.--Percy

I'm not really disagreeing (and I have no intention of starting a long dialogue on this with you) but I am interested to know who you think it is a war between? Who is at war with who in this war exactly?

There has been no official US congressional declaration of war since WWII. So technically we are AT WAR with no one. The US president has the power to wage war, but only congress has the power to declare war. But as I said since the Bush administration
the US has been engaged in a WAR on terror with everyone and anyone we deem a threat now or in the future.

So am I right in saying that, officially, the US isn't at war?

Officially and technically, sure, you're right. So wars with no official declaration of war are not really wars? There was no declaration of war when we invaded Iraq, what was that? Are you telling us we can't call it the Iraq War. Anyway, just tell us what Straggler-sanctioned word you want us to use when there are active hostilities but war hasn't been officially declared and we'll use it. Oh, and let Wikipedia know so they can change the title of their Iraq War article.--Percy

In asymmetric warfare, words like "between" and "with" don't have much meaning. In the "war on poverty", even if it's just a figure of speech, poverty isn't fighting back at all. That's why it isn't called a war "with" poverty.

I don't think its so cut-n-dried...Al-Qaeda isn't a sovereign state. We are. They don't have a proper army army. We do. They live among and use civilians. We don't.I think we're kinda forced into a double-standard here. We're at war with them but they're not really at war with us. They're just "terrorists". Well, the Bombing of Dresden isn't really a model act of war, is it? Or is that the point?I could see how you could call 9/11 an act of war, and I'd bet that they think it was, but I don't find it particularly useful. Targeting and killing innocent civilians is shitty either way.And I don't accept our actions as being the targeting of innocent civilians, so there's a difference there. What about the "citizens" who are participating in acts of "war"? Suicide bombers who aren't part of an army. The hijackers on 9/11. They're a part of the terrorist organizations but they're not sanctioned by any state.We can't just sit idly by, but we don't have a state to declare war on. So what do you do? And I'm still wondering where the attitude that if we were really at true war this would all somehow be better comes from. You mean, like how the Bombing of Dresden was "justified"? 'Cause I'm not so sure it was...

You've got the advantage of hindsight....I think if we would have eliminated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and established those countries then that would've been fine.Doing nothing wasn't an option.

Being seen as "not doing something" wasn't an option, even though that would have been the far wiser choice.But that is one of the great weaknesses of the US system of government.