[Peace-discuss] letter in the Washington Post: Sept. 11 authorization not applicable to Mali

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Of course you're right, Bob, but I doubt the situation will lead our newly inaugurated chief magistrate to exclaim, "Damn! I'd really like to help kill people in Mali, but I just can't do it because I lack legal authorization!"

In the real world, the French descent on Mali - like the French descent on Libya - was clearly coordinated (not to put too fine a point on it) by the Pentagon. The US (particularly Democratic presidents) continues to employ NATO (including the UK and France, under two different governments) as its dogsbody for its Eurasian (and African) imperial advances. The Malian advance is part of the long-term US strategy to encourage war in resource-rich areas in order to establish US control: force by its own military or that of clients is the US comparative advantage. (If peace broke out, the US would lose its excuse for imperial control of these regions.) The extension of the policy to Africa (in opposition to the Chinese) concerns both logistics (approaches to the Mideast, the reason the US has been destroying domestic governments in Somalia for a generation) and African resources (e.g., Niger uranium, basis of the French nuclear industry - and of course the "yellow-cake" propaganda). 

Terrorism/Al Qaeda is the US propaganda name for domestic resistance to US imperialism. The name used to be Communism, until the Communists went away, and the US was left with a serious PR problem, which 9/11 largely solved for them, although most people now see that the excuse is getting a bit threadbare. The US planners are again facing Colin Powell's enemies-gap (JCS Chairman Colin Powell to Army Times in April 1991: “Think hard about it, I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of villains ... I’m down to Castro and Kim Il Sung"), which they mean to fill with "terrorists" throughout the world. 

Perhaps the filthiest secret is that the mass killing Obama's doing to fight terrorism is in the interest of only his 1% patrons - especially arms ("defense") and energy interests - and the geopolitical tactic of control of (not just access to) energy resources.  The rest of the world - Americans as well as others - simply suffer in varying degrees in this international class struggle. 

--CGE     

On Jan 20, 2013, at 12:29 PM, Robert Naiman <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote:

> [Unfortunately, it seems clear from press reports that Panetta still hasn't gotten the memo, e.g.  <Still, he said the U.S. would have sufficient legal authority to help out because the enemy in Mali is al-Qaida "They are a threat to our country, they are a threat to the world," Panetta said.>
> http://news.yahoo.com/us-helping-hesitant-mali-intervention-075210491.html]
> 
> ---
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sept-11-authorization-not-applicable-to-mali/2013/01/18/0611d8be-60c1-11e2-bc4f-1f06fffb7acf_story.html
> 
> Sept. 11 authorization not applicable to Mali
> Published: January 18
> 
> The choices that U.S. officials are reportedly considering for a military intervention in Mali have grave implications [“U.S. weighs military aid for France in Mali,” news story, Jan. 16]. The Post reported that a senior U.S. official said, “Contingency plans for the use of armed drones were already in place and are being reevaluated.” Congress has not authorized U.S. military action in Mali. Without such authorization, the Obama administration cannot send armed drones to Mali under the War Powers Resolution.
> 
> The administration might be tempted to try to invoke Congress’s 2001 authorization for the use of force after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But as a Post editorial noted in November, “The further — in geography, time and organizational connection — that the drone war advances from the original al-Qaeda target in Afghanistan, the less validity it has under the 2001 congressional authorization. . . . [M]ost of the world is unlikely to accept an argument that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks justify drone strikes more than a decade later in Northern Africa.”
> 
> 
> As The Post reported, some of the fighters likely to be targeted by France have nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the Sept. 11 attacks and are not a threat to the United States, so U.S. military action against them cannot be justified under the 2001 authorization.
> 
> Robert Naiman, Urbana, Ill.
> 
> The writer is policy director for Just Foreign Policy.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> 
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