[Peace-discuss] Stopping Pakistan Drone Strikes Suddenly Plausible

[C. G. Estabrook]

Obviously the USG should be pressed to stop the criminal "drone strikes." But it 
should also be clear what Kilcullen -- a flack for Petraeus and the 
administration -- is doing.

John W. posted a clear explanation, from Pepe Escobar in Asia Times Online:

    During a first stage - let's call it the branding of evil - Washington 
think-tanks and corporate media hammered non-stop on the "threat of al-Qaeda" to 
Pakistan and the US. FATA was branded as terrorist central - the most dangerous 
place in the world where "the terrorists" and an army of suicide bombers were 
trained and unleashed into Afghanistan to kill the "liberators" of US/NATO.

    In the second stage, the new Obama administration accelerated the Predator 
"hell from above" drone war over Pashtun peasants. Now comes the stage where the 
soon over 100,000-strong US/NATO troops are depicted as the true liberators of 
the poor in Af-Pak (and not the "evil" Taliban) - an essential ploy in the new 
narrative to legitimize Obama's Af-Pak surge.

Kilcullen is a "defense intellectual" who promotes Petraeus "counterinsurgency" 
doctrine.  That's the administration's strategy for the winning the Long War -- 
establishing US control over Mideast energy resources -- and it includes killing 
a lot of people.

Of course the US has no right to do so -- and has to lie about what it is doing. 
Invaders have no rights. We should be demanding the removal of US troops from 
the Middle East -- particularly from AfPak, where the administration thinks the 
most serious resistance to US control is coming from.


Robert Naiman wrote:
> Until this week, it seemed like the conventional wisdom in Washington
> was that stopping U.S drone strikes in Pakistan was outside the bounds
> of respectable discussion.
> 
> That just changed. Or it should have.
> 
> Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Doyle McManus notes that
> counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen has told Congress that U.S.
> drone strikes in Pakistan are backfiring and should be stopped. Until
> now Congress has been reluctant to challenge the drone strikes, as
> they are reluctant in general to challenge "military strategy," even
> when it appears to be causing terrible harm. But as McManus notes,
> Kilcullen has unimpeachable Pentagon credentials. He served as a top
> advisor in Iraq to General Petraeus on counterinsurgency, and is
> credited as having helped design the Iraq "surge." Now, anyone in
> Washington who wants to challenge the drone strikes has all the
> political cover they could reasonably expect.
> 
> And what Kilcullen said leaves very little room for creative misinterpretation.
> 
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/stopping-pakistan-drone-s_b_196204.html
> 
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/05
> 
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/5/1394/27752
> 
> http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/42309
> 
> --
> Robert Naiman
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
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