All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our first guest on the show today is Robert Naiman from Just Foreign Policy.
He's the policy director there.
And he has also worked as a policy analyst and researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Public Citizens Global Trade Watch.
Welcome back to the show.
Robert, how are you doing?
Good.
Good to be with you.
Well, good, I'm happy to have you here.
This one is at Common Dreams.
It's called, yes, Virginia, we can do something about the drone strikes.
Come on, something about the drone strikes.
I should also mention real quick that Robert has an extensive archive at the Huffington Post that you guys ought to take a look at as well.
Something about the drone strikes.
All right, first of all, which drone strikes and what about them is the big news lately?
Fill us in, just to catch everybody up in case they took the last week off or something.
And then we'll talk about who can do what.
Well, the big news of the last week was that there was a major expose in the New York Times of the drone strike policy.
And to me, the most damning thing that was revealed in this expose was that the administration is counting anybody killed in a drone strike, in a U.S. drone strike, who's a military age male.
The administration is counting that person as a combatant.
And this explains the, or at least goes some ways to explaining the major discrepancy between what the administration has been saying about civilian deaths and civilian casualties from drone strikes and what outside groups like the New America Foundation and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism have been saying about deaths and civilian casualties in drone strikes, particularly in Pakistan and Yemen.
So this is the definition of combatant, which is the complete innovation in world history.
It's something that the CIA has put forward and the administration has adopted.
And to me, this is the scandal that should attract the center of scrutiny.
Because regardless of what you think about the administration having a list of people to kill in Pakistan and Yemen, and there's a lot to be said about that.
The international law, U.S. domestic law, how is this legal, how is this constitution?
But whatever one thinks about that, to me it's a much bigger scandal is that they're killing people who aren't on any list.
And this is a direct contradiction to what the administration has put out publicly.
They've spoken very little bit about this publicly, but when they have spoken about it, President Obama in January and John Brennan, the president's counterterrorism advisor, more recently they've said, you know, this is a very narrow thing that we're doing.
We're just killing people on a list.
Again, regardless of what you think about that, it's not true.
They aren't just killing people on a list.
They're killing people who are on no list.
And then after that saying, oh, well, they must be bad guys because what were bad guys doing there?
And they're military age men, therefore they're combatants.
So, I mean, this is terrible news, but the silver lining or the positive aspect of this is at least now there's something in the open to talk about.
I mean, a big reason, a huge reason why there hasn't been more controversy around this policy in the United States is that there hasn't been any reporting or hasn't much reporting.
And a key reason there hasn't been much reporting is because the administration has been so secretive.
You can't be mad about something if you don't know that there's something to be mad about.
Finally, the key information about this program is getting out into the press.
Right.
And now, you know what's interesting though?
Marcy Wheeler pointed out that in essence, really this was a PR stunt that they were getting to the point where the people knew that there was a secret kill committee up there, but we didn't know anything else about it, really.
We knew that they'd targeted American citizens already.
And they decided that, you know what?
We need a PR thing here.
So this is, they put this piece out.
I mean, the Times said they had 12 administration sources for it, right?
It was an NSC project from the beginning.
And then she said, you know, describing as a limited hangout basically said, see, this is all about reinforcing the myth that don't worry, someone's driving this thing.
That rather than just a bunch of JSOC and CIA guys mass murdering people, hithering yawn, that, oh, don't worry, your dear leader, the philosopher king is signing off on each one and taking responsibility and all this kind of thing.
So as bad as it was, this was the limited hangout to try to restore confidence in the process of what they're doing here.
Robert, it looks like.
Well, I think that's part of the story, but it's not the whole story.
There's multiple things going on.
First of all, if you read the whole New York Times article, and if you're a person that cares about innocent human life, it is not a vindication of the policy for the reasons that I just said, that you find out if you read the article that there are people being killed and classified as combatants that most people would be like, what?
Military age males, that's combatant, that's your evidence that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And it's important to recognize that there is division about this policy inside the administration.
Some of the administration officials, quote in the New York Times article, are deeply opposed to the policy.
And so they're being cited in this article as no vindication, they're saying no vindication.
They're saying, we oppose this policy, we're complaining to the White House that this policy is wrong.
And so again, it's not the whole story of the New York Times article.
Now, clearly part of the story, there's multiple things going on.
So one part of the story is that the President Obama is running for re-election.
He's being attacked by Republicans for being a weakling, as they always do, regardless of what the reality is.
And so clearly, a lot of people are gonna see this and say, oh, yeah, President Obama, he's a tough guy.
He's killing these people.
So that's one part of the story.
Another part of the story is that the administration is under pressure from the ACLU, from the Center for Constitutional Rights, from, you know, there are court cases going on.
There are, they have been under pressure for some time to share more information about this.
And another part of the story, as I said, is there is opposition to this policy in the administration and there is concern about this policy in Congress.
Until now, unfortunately, members of Congress have not been willing to speak up about this on the record.
You see in news articles, you know, some members of Congress are concerned, but you never see, you know, Mr. Shellington, a member of Congress, was willing to say publicly, I'm concerned about this.
This has started to change.
In the last week, Representative Finnish, Representative Conyers are circulating a letter to the administration saying, you need to share more information with Congress about what this policy is.
That letter currently has 17 signers, 16 Democrats, and Representative Ron Paul.
And I think that letter will pick up more support as people are looking for something to do, especially in the wake of this New York Times exposé.
And that was the point of the piece I wrote saying, you know, look, there is something that we can do.
There's been a conventional wisdom that there's nothing we can do about this policy because it's overwhelmingly popular.
The overwhelming majority of Americans want the president to kill dangerous terrorists that are trying to attack the United States.
But this shows that there is another approach to this.
Okay, you know, regardless of what you think about that, you know, what about killing innocent civilians that have nothing to do with attacking the United States?
And how do we know?
Is this just, like, trust us?
Or can we have some information about what you're actually doing?
So this is what the 17 members of Congress are doing, hopefully seem to be joined by many more, pressing the administration to share more information about what it is exactly that they're doing.
All right, we'll have to hold it right there and go out to this break.
It's Robert Naaman, policy director at Just Foreign Policy.
He's got this great piece.
Yes, Virginia, we can do something about the drone strikes at commondreams.org today.
Check him out also at justforeignpolicy.org and huffingtonpost.com.
We'll be right back after this.
It's anti-war radio.
There's nothing that can stop us but stopping itself.
More or less, writes Robert Naaman here at Common Dreams.
Yes, Virginia, we can do something about the drone strikes.
Here's what he says.
If 10,000 Americans would write to their members of Congress urging them to sign the Kucinich-Conyers letter, we could get 40 members of Congress to sign it.
If we could get 40 members of Congress to sign it, the Beltway media would report that members of Congress are complaining about civilian deaths from drone strikes.
If we could get the Beltway media to report that members of Congress are complaining about civilian deaths from drone strikes, the conventional wisdom that there's nothing we can do about it would be dead.
Blammo, there it is.
So according to Robert Naaman, people, you have the power, and that's not just some myth, but it's something very real.
Convince us, please.
I like the way you write, but are you really right that some letters can make some congressmen do some things that'll get it on TV, that'll change the political conversation in America, change the way people understand this drone war, Robert?
Yes, absolutely.
You know, I think a lot of people don't have a hard time seeing how we get from A to B, because they don't see the path.
You know, right now, the majority of Democrats in the House and half of the Democrats in the Senate wanna end the Afghanistan war pretty much today, certainly this year.
Well, you know, you go back a couple years, and you look what happened in the Senate, there was like one guy, Russ Feingold, saying, hey, you know, we need to draw this to a close.
So there's a way that you get from A to B.
It starts with a handful of members of Congress being willing to stand up and say, hey, you know, this is the wrong policy, we need to turn around.
Until now, there has been no members of Congress willing to stand up and say, hey, this drone strike policy is the wrong policy, we need to turn around.
So now, there are.
Now there are 17 members of Congress, and there's a bunch of other offices looking at this letter.
So this is how it starts to turn.
Starts to turn by people contacting their members of Congress and saying, yeah, I'm concerned about this.
Okay, you know, yes, it's true, you know, some months ago, the Washington Post did a poll and asked people, hey, how do you feel about the administration's policy of targeting terrorists with drone strikes?
Well, that was wildly popular.
Of course, it's a pig and a pope.
You know, oh, you mean like killing Osama bin Laden?
That's popular.
Well, now, you know, we're in a new situation because information is coming out indicating that something else is going on.
And I'm sure if that poll went back and said, hey, how do you feel about the U.S. government killing innocent civilians with drone strikes?
I think you'd get a different result.
So the opening is, you know, a bunch of members of Congress saying, hey, we're talking about something else here.
We're talking about the U.S. government killing innocent civilians with drone strikes, and there's no accountability, there's no scrutiny of this, and we need to get, the administration needs to come clean with Congress and the American people about who's being killed in these drone strikes.
And if you got, you know, 40 members of Congress willing to stand up, sign their names, now you've got a different political reality that the press will start to report on, and you change this dynamic where people think, oh, there's nothing that we can do about this.
Well, you know, back when I was a minarchist, before I ran out of excuses, I used to think along the lines of political reality a bit more, maybe, you know, like what could be done, and that's what I always figured then was, if there is a saving grace here at all, it's the House of Representatives.
435 little house districts across the country.
If people really wanna get organized and really wanna tell Congress people that we demand this of you or you're fired and we will make it so that it can be a credible threat.
If people just get their act together, they can make congressmen do things.
Problem is, people just usually don't have their act together.
It takes, well, something like this, where you go, you know what, here's this one issue where all these people from across the country can inundate Congress on this thing and let them know that actually, they'd be better off.
They'd have more support if they turned against the policy.
Because as Ron Paul was saying in the context of some of these internet regulation bills, these congressmen, they don't believe anything.
They don't know anything either.
But what they do know is if their staff comes up to them and says, whoa, boy, are we being communicated with and boy are the people against this, that or the other thing that they hear that loud and clear because it's the only thing that matters to them is their own fortunes.
Well, I would say, that's part of the story.
I mean, the other part of the story is, you know, members of Congress are political people.
That's how you get to a member of Congress.
So you're talking to a congressional office.
You know, I'm calling these offices, I'm writing these offices.
And, you know, they wanna know like what's in this letter.
They also wanna know who signed it.
Because they wanna know like where, you know, like, okay, A, tell me what the truth is.
Convince me of the truth.
And B, convince me that this is a golden concern that people care about.
So even offices where the people are relatively sympathetic, they wanna know who else has signed the letter.
It's like anything else.
So the same thing is true about public opinion.
You know, if the member, the staffer, you know, is hearing from people in their district, hey, this is something that we're concerned about, that's gonna move up the list of priorities of things to be concerned about.
So absolutely, it makes a difference, particularly when, you know, somebody has figured out, okay, here's the place to stand.
You got, you know, we're got the, you know, very reasonable demand.
Dear administration, you need to talk to Congress about what you're doing and give us information.
You know, we see this stuff in the press about civilian casualties.
We see stuff in the press about so-called signature strikes that attack people, you don't even know who they are.
You need to talk to Congress about this.
That is the first step to getting control over this policy.
All right, and now, so what exactly would you suggest that people focus on in their article?
I was thinking that one thing they could mention maybe might be helpful would be to invoke Dennis Blair, who was the former, just now, what, a year ago, he was the Director of National Intelligence and came out saying he thought this policy was just getting us nowhere fast.
Yes, I think that is very important.
I think that, you know, anything that references insiders is something that turns people's heads.
So absolutely, Dennis Blair and the fact that it's being, it's been reported now in the New York Times and in the Washington Post on the reporting on the expansion of drone strikes in Yemen, that senior administration officials are opposed to this policy.
I think that is absolutely key.
Senior government officials that are in the Obama administration that share the same, you know, overall goals, you know, defending the national interest in the United States, they don't believe this policy is, in the end, first of all, believe it's immoral and wrong, but secondly, they don't believe it's in the national interest in the United States because it's making more enemies in Pakistan and Yemen for the United States to kill innocent people that don't have any dispute with the United States.
Their relatives, you know, are, particularly in tribal society, I mean, there's no place in the world where anybody likes having their relatives being killed, but particularly in traditional tribal societies, you know, you've got people like, wow, it's my obligation now to get revenge for my relative's death.
So that is not, you know, this policy is producing more militants by killing innocent people that previously had no dispute with the United States.
So absolutely, Dennis Blair and the fact that the New York Times and the Washington Post have reported that senior administration officials have opposed this policy, I think that's absolutely crucial.
Yeah, you know, you're right, and it really goes to show that when they compare it, and geez, I guess you compare anything, any policy to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, you might, you know, make the mistake of thinking that this is a scalpel compared to that bludgeon, but it's not a scalpel when you're shooting hellfire missiles at people and killing innocent people.
And Panetta, the defense secretary, almost admitted as much Sunday before last when he refused to answer the question that Jake Tapper asked him, are you making more enemies?
He just said, well, look, there are bad guys, and these are the tools we have, we have to use them.
In other words, regardless of whether we're making more or not, he didn't want to address the question more directly than that, but he basically conceded what you just said, this isn't working, you're just digging yourself a hole anyway, nevermind the morality of it, you're just making more enemies for yourself, if yourself is the only thing that matters, it's a dumb policy, it's wrong in every way.
That's right, and in fact, it's been reported in the press that, you know, administration officials are acknowledging that drone strikes have replaced the Guantanamo as, you know, the top militant recruiting tool.
And as you said, you know, this thing, this is the tool we have, this is a dodge, because it's one thing to say we have this tool, but you still have to decide how you're gonna use the tool.
Are you gonna use it willy-nilly?
Are you gonna use it regardless of who gets killed?
Or are you gonna be more careful and say, you know, we're only gonna use this tool in a very extreme case where we have no other alternative?
And that is where the current policy has no scrutiny.
All right, well, listen, I sure hope a lot of people will follow your advice here.
CommonDreams.org, yes, Virginia, we can do something about the drone strikes.
What if everybody took a little bit of time to put a little bit of pressure on the Congress to insist on the right thing here?
Thanks very much, Robert, appreciate it.
Thank you.
