[Peace-discuss] Obama's Undeclared War Against Pakistan

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Obama's Undeclared War Against Pakistan Continues,
	Despite His Attempt to Downplay It

In a new interview, Obama said he has “no intention” of sending US troops into 
Pakistan. But US troops are already in the country and US drones attack Pakistan 
regularly.

By Jeremy Scahill

Three days after his inauguration, on January 23, 2009, President Barack Obama 
ordered US predator drones to attack sites inside of Pakistan, reportedly 
killing 15 people. It was the first documented attack ordered by the new US 
Commander in Chief inside of Pakistan. Since that first Obama-authorized attack, 
the US has regularly bombed Pakistan, killing scores of civilians. The New York 
Times reported that the attacks were clear evidence Obama “is continuing, and in 
some cases extending, Bush administration policy.” In the first 99 days of 2009, 
more than 150 people were reportedly killed in these drone attacks. The most 
recent documented attack was reportedly last Thursday in Waziristan. Since 2006, 
the US drone strikes have killed 687 people (as of April). That amounts to about 
38 deaths a month just from drone attacks.

The use of these attack drones by Obama should not come as a surprise to anyone 
who followed his presidential campaign closely. As a candidate, Obama made clear 
that Pakistan’s sovereignty was subservient to US interests, saying he would 
attack with or without the approval of the Pakistani government. Obama said if 
the US had “actionable intelligence” that “high value” targets were in Pakistan, 
the US would attack. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, echoed those sentiments 
on the campaign trail and “did not rule out U.S. attacks inside Pakistan, citing 
the missile attacks her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, ordered against 
Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. ‘If we had actionable intelligence that 
Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that 
they were targeted and killed or captured,’ she said.”

Last weekend, Obama granted his first extended interview with a Pakistani media 
outlet, the newspaper Dawn:

    Responding to a question about drone attacks inside Pakistan’s tribal zone, 
Mr Obama said he did not comment on specific operations.

    ‘But I will tell you that we have no intention of sending US troops into 
Pakistan. Pakistan and its military are dealing with their security issues.’

There are a number of issues raised by this brief response offered by Obama. 
First, the only difference between using these attack drones and using actual US 
soldiers on the ground is that the soldiers are living beings. These drones 
sanitize war and reduce the US death toll while still unleashing military hell 
disproportionately on civilians. The bottom line is that the use of drones 
inside the borders of Pakistan amounts to the same violation of sovereignty that 
would result from sending US soldiers inside the country. Obama defended the 
attacks in the Dawn interview, saying:

    “Our primary goal is to be a partner and a friend to Pakistan and to allow 
Pakistan to thrive on its own terms, respecting its own traditions, respecting 
its own culture. We simply want to make sure that our common enemies, which are 
extremists who would kill innocent civilians, that that kind of activity is 
stopped, and we believe that it has to be stopped whether it’s in the United 
States or in Pakistan or anywhere in the world.”

Despite Obama’s comments about respecting Pakistan “on its own terms,” this is 
how Reuters recently described the arrangement between Pakistan and the US 
regarding drone attacks:

    U.S. ally Pakistan objects to the U.S. missile strikes, saying they violate 
its sovereignty and undermine efforts to deal with militancy because they 
inflame public anger and bolster support for the militants.

    Washington says the missile strikes are carried out under an agreement with 
Islamabad that allows Pakistani leaders to publicly criticise the attacks. 
Pakistan denies any such agreement.

Pakistan is now the biggest recipient of US aid with the House of 
Representatives recently approving a tripling of money to Pakistan to about $1.5 
billion a year for five years. Moreover, US special forces are already operating 
inside of Pakistan, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Baluchistan.

According to the Wall Street Journal, US Special Forces are:

    training Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force responsible for 
battling the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, who cross freely between Afghanistan 
and Pakistan, the officials said. The U.S. trainers aren’t meant to fight 
alongside the Pakistanis or accompany them into battle, in part because there 
will be so few Special Forces personnel in the two training camps.

    A senior American military officer said he hoped Islamabad would gradually 
allow the U.S. to expand its training footprint inside Pakistan’s borders.

In February, The New York Times reported that US forces are also engaged in 
other activities inside of Pakistan:

    American Special Operations troops based in Afghanistan have also carried 
out a number of operations into Pakistan’s tribal areas since early September, 
when a commando raid that killed a number of militants was publicly condemned by 
Pakistani officials. According to a senior American military official, the 
commando missions since September have been primarily to gather intelligence.

It is clear—and has been for a long time—that the Obama administration is 
radically expanding the US war in Afghanistan deeply into Pakistan. Whether it 
is through US military trainers (that’s what they were called in Vietnam too), 
drone attacks or commando raids inside the country, the US is militarily 
entrenched in Pakistan. It makes Obama’s comment that “[W]e have no intention of 
sending US troops into Pakistan” simply unbelievable.

For a sense of how significant US operations are and will continue to be for 
years and years to come, just look at the US plan to build an almost $1 billion 
massive US “embassy” in Islamabad, which is reportedly modeled after the 
imperial city they call a US embassy in Baghdad. As we know very clearly from 
Iraq, such a complex will result in an immediate surge in the deployment of US 
soldiers, mercenaries and other contractors.

http://rebelreports.com/post/128133453/obamas-undeclared-war-against-pakistan-continues