Tag Archives: Yemen

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War Crimes: Key Decision Point for a New President

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Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki
Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki, age 8, killed in a US military raid in Yemen

In 2011, American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki  and Samir Khan were murdered — killed without charge or trial — on the orders of then-president Barack Obama.

Two weeks later, al-Awlaki’s teenage son, Abdulrahman, also an American citizen, was murdered — again, killed without charge or trial — also on Obama’s orders. When questioned on the propriety of murdering American teenagers, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs asserted that if Abdulrahman al-Awlaki had wanted to live, perhaps he should have had “a more responsible father.”

On January 29, Anwar al-Awlaki’s eight-year-old daughter, American citizen Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki, was murdered, along with about 30 other civilian non-combatants, in the course of a raid by the US Navy’s SEAL Team Six in Yemen.

I have now thrice mentioned that particular murder victims were American citizens. The fact that they were American citizens isn’t really that important in the scheme of things. Murdering people is wrong regardless of the victims’ nationalities. But it does explain why we KNOW about these particular murders.

New US president Donald Trump has a decision to make. Is he going to prosecute American war criminals who murder eight-year-old girls, or is he going to be a war criminal himself?

Because he is new to the job, I’m trying to give Trump the benefit of doubt. It’s quite possible that the mission resulting in young Nawar’s death was planned and on rails before he was ever inaugurated, and that his approval was pro forma and not in full cognizance of what it implied. After all, he’s been a pretty busy guy these last couple of weeks.

If that’s the case, then Trump’s clear duty as commander in chief of the US armed forces is to initiate an investigation aimed at identifying and prosecuting the criminal conspirators whose actions culminated in the murder of dozens of civilians, including Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki.

Otherwise, he himself becomes one of those conspirators.

Of course, it’s possible that he was informed  in detail of the mission and signed off on it in full knowledge of its nature. In that case he joins all of his living predecessors (and quite a few long-dead ones) in the rogues’ gallery of war crimes kingpins.

Trump campaigned as a candidate of real change, including in the area of US foreign policy. That would be a good thing for many reasons, not the least of which is that with a quarter century of continuous war comes the near certainty of atrocities and the absolute certainty that when those atrocities go unpunished they will multiply in number and worsen in effect.

The murder of an innocent eight-year-old is a pretty clear decision point: Was Trump serious or was just blowing  smoke? How he handles this situation will tell us which.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Hubris Unlimited: Tom Cotton versus Reality

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A Tomahawk cruise missile (TLAM) is fired from...
A Tomahawk cruise missile (TLAM) is fired from an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer during the fourth wave of attacks on Iraq in support of Operation Desert Fox (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Freshman Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) wants the United States to pick a fight with Iran. Not an all-out brawl, he says; just an itty-bitty bout along the lines of 1998’s Operation Desert Fox, in which US aircraft carried out four days of airstrikes on Iraq.

Setting aside the fact that there’s just no reason for such an exercise  — P5+1 negotiation theater aside, Iran doesn’t seem to have an active nuclear weapons development program for airstrikes to target — the whole concept of “limited war” is bogus and dangerous.

One big problem with “limited war” is that it seldom produces the results its architects envision and instead becomes a gateway to UN-limited war.

Desert Fox was just one link in a chain of “limited” measures connecting 1991’s Desert Storm to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, followed by seven years of occupation, civil war, and the rise of the Islamic State.

Vietnam started out with US advisors training and accompanying South Vietnamese troops — “limited,” see? It ended with nearly half a million US troops engaged in all-out combat and 60,000 of those troops dead.

A second problem with “limited war” is the naive notion that the United States alone gets to define its wars’ scope, setting, tempo and duration.  The enemy usually has different ideas as to those variables. September 11, 2001, the culmination of a decade of “limited war” against al Qaeda, didn’t feel too terribly “limited,” did it?

US military interventionism in the 21st century sports a sorry record. The twin unwinnable quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, sprinkled with smaller fiascoes like Libya, Syria and Yemen, make it clear that neither “limited” nor “unlimited” war in the Middle East and Central Asia will ever produce good results.

Bringing the same failed doctrine to bear on Iran, a country with three times the population and a far more modern military apparatus than Iraq circa 2003 or Afghanistan circa 2001, is pure folly. It would be a bloody and unprofitable investment in an enterprise doomed to failure.

So, what’s the alternative? Peace, of course.

The United States has incessantly intervened in Iran, covertly and overtly, politically and militarily, for lo on 70 years now, with uniformly negative results.

The first step in getting out of a deep hole is to stop digging. Contra Tom Cotton, it’s time to take war — “limited” or not — off the table.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter addresses this same topic in more depth and from some other perspectives in “A Really Bad Idea: A ‘Limited’ War with Iran.” While this piece doesn’t cite or quote Carpenter’s commentary, it was certainly informed by that commentary, so credit/linkage is very much in order.

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