Obama Is a Threat to National Security
This week, when whistleblower website Wikileaks released over 90,000 classified documents portraying a dismal war in Afghanistan, the White House called editor Julian Assange and his organization a threat to national security. But it is this White House that is a threat to national security. Wikileaks simply helped prove it.
The war in Afghanistan is a disaster, something President Obama refuses to acknowledge and insists on continuing for no discernible reason. Afghanistan’s top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal voiced his frustration with the mindlessness of our mission and lost his post. His replacement, Gen. David Petraeus isn’t any clearer about our prospects than his predecessor or the president. Who truly puts the nation’s security more at risk? A government that continues to put soldiers in harm’s way with no clear mission or strategy, as the bodies, dollars and questions continue to pile up, or a website that insists the general public should know what their government is up to?
What was it specifically that the Obama administration found among some 90,000 documents that compelled the White House to declare Wikileaks a security risk, mere hours after their release? Did Obama hire an army of speed readers? Or how about the most significant stories to come out of the Wiki-leak: That we pay Pakistan $1 billion a year to help the Taliban; that drone attacks are far less effective than portrayed; that significant civilian deaths are being covered up. Which of these is truly a massive security risk, domestically or abroad? Or do these stories simply “risk” damaging this president’s reputation, or perhaps simply the administration’s preferred war narrative?
Truth be told, the real “risk” is that Wikileaks dared to report the actual news, or what the New York Times calls, “an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.” Ironically, the pro-war, any war hawks in both parties who still refuse to believe that Islamic terrorists target the United States not for our “freedom,” but for what we do in their homelands, are now warning of potential blowback over what Wikileaks has done. You see, dropping bombs and occupying countries for years could never incite hatred—but actually reporting the truth about the war could spark a jihadist revolution, as if jihadists don’t already know what’s going on in their own backyard, something an organization like Wikileaks simply believes everyone else should know about too.
Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald has it right: “WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world… there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret. But that’s what our National Security State does reflexively: it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing.” The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson writes, “What does it mean to tell the truth about a war? Is it a lie, technically speaking, for the Administration to say that it has faith in Hamid Karzai’s government and regards him as a legitimate leader—or is it just absurd? Is it a lie to say that we have a plan for Afghanistan that makes any sense at all? If you put it that way, each of the WikiLeaks documents… is a pixel in a picture that does, indeed, contradict official accounts of the war, and rather drastically so.”
It is no secret that that telling lies to make sure the “citizenry remains largely ignorant” of what its government “is really doing” is standard operating procedure for Washington, DC. Many Americans rightly see disingenuousness in their government’s selling of programs like, oh, I don’t know, the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP)—something Obama originally told us would cost $700 billion but is now reaching $3.7 trillion due to housing rescue efforts—but it should also be stressed that such duplicity is just as regularly used in foreign policy. Granted, waging war is not identical to domestic politics, but the degree to which government uses supposed “national security” to deceive the public about what is truly happening overseas is something the mainstream media largely ignores. Wikileaks claims it went to great lengths to make sure nothing that might genuinely compromise national security was included in their release, and given that the White House can’t cite any specific risks and only issue blanket condemnations, it is reasonable to assume that Wikileaks has simply released information the administration would rather the public not know—not necessarily for safety reasons, but to save face.
Wikileaks or any other organization that knowingly releases classified information that might actually harm the soldier on the battlefield or compromise war strategy should be held accountable—but so should a government that continues to harm soldiers by putting them on the battlefield with no war strategy, clear mission or definable victory. Wikileaks has tried to hold the government accountable by more accurately informing the public about what’s really going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and hopefully the mainstream media will now follow suit. Our national security depends on it.
Great article. This pretty much sums it all up. I applaud wikileaks for exposing the lies of our so called “leaders”. They are nothing more than common murderers, liars, and thieves.
I somewhat agree with title of this piece because Obama is not as commited to the war on terror as I would like, but most of the content here is just way off base. These documents were classified for a reason, and that reason is to keep America safe from terrorists and future attacks. The leaking of this top secret intel is not patriotic, in fact it is downright treasonous and it will only help to further the enemy’s cause. Any real American Reaganite conservative knows that certain actions taken by our millitary should not be seen by the public eye and that if you want to make an omlette you have to break a few eggs.
“These documents were classified for a reason, and that reason is to keep America safe from terrorists and future attacks. The leaking of this top secret intel is not patriotic, in fact it is downright treasonous and it will only help to further the enemy’s cause.”
The only enemy to America in Afghanistan is al-Qaeda–and they are not even in Afghanistan. The Taliban, however Islamist they may be, are not our enemy and they should have been retained in power (since any non-Pashtun regime is unfeasible for governing that country), minus those elements amicable to al-Qaeda who would have continued to harbor and support Bin Laden’s cohort. There was never any need to nation build or install a puppet like Karzai. The threat was always al-Qaeda, not the Taliban who are localist in outlook compared to the internationalist jihadists that attacked on 9/11. We could successfully extricate ourselves from Afghanistan if the Taliban were allowed back in the government and the US made it crystal clear that their regime would be recognized–notwithstanding their brand of Islamism–only on the condition that they repudiate al-Qaeda and its agenda. We could make it easier on the Taliban and other Islamist groups that despise al-Qaeda’s ideology which threatens all the Muslim states–secular or Islamist–if America lessened its meddling in the Islamic world and adopted a foreign policy of non-interventionism.
Pons Seclorum, a foreign policy of non-interventionism? It was that very attitutde of isolationism and appeasement that allowed Hitler to come to power and caused World War II. We need to make a permanent millitary commitment over there in the country of Afghanistan. We must do this in order to support and provide stability for our allies as well as act as a deterent to toruble makers in the region. Terrorists like Osama Bin Laden want us to leave the region so that they can follow us home. Bin Laden wants to use Afghanistan as a base for Al Qaeda to launch attacks on the United States. Al Qaeda’s ultimate destination is not Afghanistan and Iraq, their ultimate destination is New York City, Washington D.C, Chicago, San Diego, Cleveland, and Kansas City. We must remain strong like Reagan and meet and defeat this threat by spreading freedom and democracy through a peace through preemptive war foreign policy.
OK, I think by this time we all get the Nate Weinstein joke. It was good for a few chuckles the first time, but it’s getting boring with repetition.
“It was that very attitutde of isolationism and appeasement that allowed Hitler to come to power and caused World War II…Terrorists like Osama Bin Laden want us to leave the region so that they can follow us home.”
Troll or not, here is my response to you, Nate. It was the Versailles Treaty that caused WWII, not American non-interventionism. Bin Laden wants us in the region because he knows that without our inflammatory presence the aims of his movement have no chance of ever being met. Had America refrained from nation building and instead focused solely on eliminating al-Qaeda, all of the other Muslim states, who find Bin Laden a truly dire threat as a harbinger of fitna, would have gladly acquiesced to assisting us against al-Qaeda. Better yet, the greater burden of defeating al-Qaeda and any subsequent imitators should fall to them since this is fundamentally an insurrection within Islam.
It bears repeating that virtually all the regimes of the Muslim world are parochial in their concerns and have no fanciful notions of setting up a caliphate or waging worldwide jihad. Most jihadists were active only in their native countries and hold no brief for Bin Laden’s delusional enterprise of international jihad. If we left, these groups would have no reason to attack America and would divert their energies to reform at home and quashing Bin Laden-types. As William Pfaff recently observed, the Taliban, our ‘enemies’ in Afghanistan are “clearly a domestic Afghan political and sociological phenomenon possessing no international dimension other than in neighboring Pakistan. They had neither the design nor the capability to attack the US or Europe—nor any interest in doing so. The Taliban had done nothing directly to harm the US…” We ought to have no quarrel with the Taliban resuming control of the Afghan government and there would be no trouble provided they oppose al-Qaeda. Aside from that, their affairs are their own and America must leave with all speed.
Pons Seclorum, a peace treaty that was achieved through a peace through war Reaganite foreign policy caused World War II? That is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard. We acheive peace through war, not the other way around.
I am so sick of this war. The waste of life the waste of resources and the waste of time. I was a cheerleader for many years. Not anymore. What is our mission? To kill the taliban or just bounce around from provine to province getting our kids killed. It’s all B.S.
I believe Nate Weinstein is a summer intern for AIPAC. Either that, or he thinks the name of the magazine is The American Neoconservative.
Pons Seclorum: I believe you must have missed Netanyahu’s claim Fox News Sunday a few weeks back when he declared that the Afghan Taliban basically goaded and directed Al Qaeda to attack the U.S. on 9/11. It was the first time I had heard anyone make such a preposterous claim, and I fully expected veteran “newsman” Chris Wallace, who was conducting the interview, to leap on that newsworthy statement and ask some tough follow-up questions. Needless to say, Wallace just let the bald assertion go unchallenged. Just like Nate Weinstein, the Israelis like to engage in mindless propaganda.
Nate says, “We acheive peace through war..” What a silly, paradoxical comment. Nate shows here first hand the crazy “logic” of the War Party. Endless wars to achieve peace. Brilliant Nate…
Tbraton, Chris Wallace could have swiftly dismissed Netanyahu’s claim of the Taliban inciting al-Qaeda and their implicit intimate relationship with this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/17/afghanistan.terrorism11
“A senior Taliban minister has offered a last-minute deal to hand over Osama bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, senior sources in Pakistan told the Guardian last night. For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan’s military leadership said…Some in Pakistan have suggested Saudi Arabia as a location for any trial for Bin Laden. “The Pakistan army would be supportive of anything with a Saudi link,” said the source.”
See the great lengths to which the Taliban were prepared to go to shelter and shield their bosom buddies?
Pons Seclorum:
Here is the relevant exerpt from the transcript of the Netanyahu-Chris Wallace interview on Fox News Sunday on July 11, 2010 in which Netanyahu states that “the Taliban dispatched Al Qaeda to bomb New York and Washington”:
“PM NETANYAHU: You can’t rely on the fact that they’ll obey the calculations of cost and benefit that have governed all nuclear powers since the rise of the nuclear age after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’ve had effective nuclear peace for more than half a century because everybody understood the rules. I don’t think you can rely on Iran, I don’t think you can rely on other radicals like the Taliban – they dispatched al Qaeda to bomb New York and Washington.
What were they thinking? Were they that stupid? They weren’t stupid. There is an irrationality here. And there’s madness in this method. And we should not allow irrational regimes like Iran to have nuclear weapons. It’s the ultimate terrorist threat today…”
http://www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com/israelinews/israel/israeli-news/787-fox-news-sunday-interview-with-pm-netanyahu.html
WikiLeaks’ Spoiler and Sponger…
The Moral Liberal Lookin’ at ya…
Neo-Con types like Nate are very frightening in the level of war mongering delusions they spew. I wonder if they actually believe that drivel or just sprout the neo-Con propoganda for effect having no real rational arguments.
Nate read the article on US foreign policy in this issue as a start back toward sanity and reality.
Bring all the troops home from everywhere and end the US Empire, restore a constitutional republic, save the republic from Neo-Cons. Guys like Nate and his buddies policies cause terrorism.
“I don’t think you can rely on Iran, I don’t think you can rely on other radicals like the Taliban–they dispatched al Qaeda to bomb New York and Washington. What were they thinking? Were they that stupid? They weren’t stupid. There is an irrationality here. And there’s madness in this method. And we should not allow irrational regimes like Iran to have nuclear weapons. It’s the ultimate terrorist threat today…”
Yes, from the Taliban’s standpoint inciting al-Qaeda to strike America would be the height of folly and a most irrational move to make; that’s why they did not dispatch al-Qaeda to perpetrate the 9/11 attacks, which was done of the group’s own accord. Professor Fawaz Gerges could set Netanyahu and his unfounded assertions straight: “The Pashtun harbour no love for al-Qaeda, whose leaders after all “bit the hand” (the Taliban) that hosted and sheltered them in the 1990s. By plotting the 9/11 attacks on the US from Afghanistan, bin Laden violated the terms of his stay and the assurances he gave to Mullah Omar and his Taliban followers. This brought ruin to the Taliban…The current marriage of convenience between Pashtun tribesmen and al-Qaeda operatives will hold until the tribes that host bin Laden and his men view them as a liability, as they did immediately after 9/11 when they sold foreign fighters to the US.” The Taliban, if allowed a place in the governance of Afghanistan, would certainly disassociate themselves from al-Qaeda, whose belligerence was responsible for the Taliban’s downfall and imprudently brought the wrath of the West on the Ummah.
Let’s see. An Army PFC sends over ninety-two thousand top secret documents to WikiLeaks, getting around MI and CIA safeguards preventing secure docs from being sent to any non-secure site. Somebody with the highest security clearances, the physical key, and the security codes required stupidly left it lying around the lunchroom one day, you see. Happens all the time at MI. What a bunch of bull from start to finish. The purpose was to demonize Pakistan as a prelude to overt war.
It is people like Nate Weinstein who are enabling a policy which is doing just the opposite of what its supporters think it is doing. Instead of making us safer it is undermining the security of the country in numerous ways especially economically. It is also weakening the military by exhausting it.
Pons Seclorum:
What makes Netanyahu’s remarks even more disturbing is not just the reversal of the commonly held view of the Taliban-al Qaeda relationship but the tying together of Iran and the Taliban and tagging them both with the “irrational” label: “I don’t think you can rely on Iran, I don’t think you can rely on other radicals like the Taliban – they dispatched al Qaeda to bomb New York and Washington.What were they thinking? Were they that stupid? They weren’t stupid. There is an irrationality here. And there’s madness in this method. And we should not allow irrational regimes like Iran to have nuclear weapons. It’s the ultimate terrorist threat today”
The idea that the Taliban was the mastermind behind Al Qaeda’s attacks on the U.S.on 9/11 simply flies in the face of everything we know about the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which does raise the question of why Israel is pushing that line of argument. Since people generally lie for a reason, I have a hard time understanding what stake Israel has in our continued occupation of Afghanistan, unless it lies in the next door neighbor, Pakistan, which just happens to be a Muslim country that possesses nuclear weapons. Is Israel planning our next war? That would be yet another war that our “closest friend and ally” Israel played absolutely no role in and paid no price in lives lost.
It is much easier to figure out Netanahu’s attempt to tie Iran with the Taliban (the “architect” of 9/11) and, thus,with Al Qaeda. He is just using a page out of Dick Cheney’s playbook, when he insinuated that Saddam Hussein had some ties with Al Qaeda, despite the fact that the secular Hussein was a political target of Al Qaeda. Trying to tie Iran to the Taliban and its messenger boy Al Qaeda is even more far-fetched. That would require everyone to forget that Iran was opposed to the Taliban throughout its reign in Afghanistan and that Iran played a role in helping the U.S. dislodge the Taliban from its rule over Afghanistan. The connection between Shite Persian Iran and the Arab Sunni Al Qaeda is even more laughable.
The bottom line of Netanyahu’s ahistorical and inventive recitation of political ties among Iran, the Taiban and Al Qaeda is that they all belong to a category of political actors who can only be characterized as “irrational.” This obviously is part of the propaganda effort being laid prepatory to a preemptive attack on Iran. What makes those charges even more disturbing is that it simply echoes what state legislator Barack Obama said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune back in 2004 when he was running for the U.S. Senate when he stated that missile attacks against Iran might be necessary should economic sanctions prove unsuccessful in persuading Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment program:
“Obama said that violent Islamic extremists are a vastly different brand of foe than was the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and they must be treated differently.
“With the Soviet Union, you did get the sense that they were operating on a model that we could comprehend in terms of, they don’t want to be blown up, we don’t want to be blown up, so you do game theory and calculate ways to contain,” Obama said. “I think there are certain elements within the Islamic world right now that don’t make those same calculations.
“… I think there are elements within Pakistan right now–if Musharraf is overthrown and they took over, I think we would have to consider going in and taking those bombs out, because I don’t think we can make the same assumptions about how they calculate risks.”
http://politicalinquirer.com/2007/11/01/obama-said-us-should-not-rule-out-strikes-on-iran-during-2004-campaign/
What DOES induce irrationality into the Muslim world is injustice, grief and anger.
Suicide bombers are created when you drop drones on innocent people. If my family was killed in such an attack I may very well be so overcome with anger, grief and despair “having no reason to live any more ” that sacrificing my life in revenge against those that murdered my family makes emotional sense especially when that is the only road open to me.
Hey Nate what would you do? I surmise you particularly would want violent revenge. How is it you do not understand the motivation and causes of terrorism is terrorism itself.
Thanks Nate, you’ve enlightened me.
I find it ironic that the party that declares the government can’t be trusted to do anything right, are the ones most supportive of government secrecy.
tbraton:
You may have hit the nail on the head by questioning what purpose was served by Netanyahu’s diverting attention back to the Taliban as the mastermind or at least instigator of the 9/11 attack.
The goal of most misdirection is usually to divert attention and suspicion away from the actual perpetrators. The cacophony or respected voices in the past few months (actually much earlier, but the din just got a lot louder) has pretty much laid to rest the notion that the twin towers were felled by a band of cave dwellers who couldn’t even fly a simple Cessna – leave alone perform maneuvers that would stump most air force pilots with heavy commercial airliners. Certainly, the reports of the dancing Israelis filming the towers with their equipment already in place before the impact, would tend to lend credence to this line of reasoning.
So, indeed, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, who once more eggs our sons and daughters to yet another war to eliminate its enemies, with a complicit congress that has been bought and paid for, that vows fealty to a foreign regime to the detriment of our own people.
How long before we can awaken from this slumber?
We keep hearing lately that there is no reason to still be over in Afghanistan or Iraq, yet Obama keeps it all going (while he had campaigned an entirely different tune).
So, what can the real reasons be?
For one thing the U.S. has been a warring and violent nation throughout the world for the last 60 years. To change suddenly, withdraw all troops, would be like a drug addict going cold turkey. They have invested so much money into the military industrial complex, that it has become BIG BUSINESS, with a small segment of the country making millions and billions of dollars off of State Sponsored Violence.
Don’t expect our country to change. It is going to crash and burn the hard way, I am afraid. The Average American here is a moron at best. Many, when asked, will still tell you that Saddam Hussein had WMD. They investigate nothing on their own and rely on FOX, CNN, ABC and the likes to find out how they should think.
The U.S. is finished and does not know it. It does not know when to quit. This country will go down in history with very bad marks.
So disgusted on what George Bush started. The guy should be indicted and if found guilty (he would in a just society) he should hang like Saddam did.
I would have to agree with the article, we have a “president” who has not defined himself and seems to have a lot to hide, he has no leadership qualifications. he seems preoccupied with the muslim issuerather than doing what needs to be done for america, he continues on the path with afghanistan and no direction or resolution.
he will fall into history along side of jimmy carter.
billr, this “president” is no different from our last “president” with regard to Afghanistan.
On the other hand, maybe this will help end America’s ridiculous love affair with General Petraeus.
The ‘lessons’ that we should have learned from our own American Revolutionary War from the ‘mistakes’ that the British made in LOSING that war – we refused to learn and we repeated their mistakes in the Vietnam War – and – refusing to learn any lessons from our mistakes in the Vietnam War – we are repeating the same mistakes in the Afghan War.
Obama is extremely arrogant and very stupidly incompetent – he hasn’t got a clue about anything. As we have found out – ALL of his campaign rhetoric has turned out to be LIES. That ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ – wow – how many cereal boxtops did he send in for that?
The generals also do NOT have a clue. The UNNECESSARY Afghan war was LOST the moment the first American solider stepped onto the land that is “the graveyard of soldiers and of empires”.
The U.S. – as Krueschev accurately predicted – is falling like a rotten plum form the tree.
I love this site and just wish I was as smart as you guys but maybe I can at least give you a smile?
Never mess up an apology with an excuse.