{"id":2151,"date":"2020-12-14T17:08:13","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T17:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=139155"},"modified":"2020-12-14T17:08:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T17:08:13","slug":"will-bidens-america-stop-creating-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/14\/will-bidens-america-stop-creating-terrorists\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Biden\u2019s America Stop Creating Terrorists?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>(Photo Credit:\u00a0 CODEPINK)<\/p>\n

Joe Biden will take command of the White House at a time when the American public is more concerned about battling coronavirus than fighting overseas wars. But America\u2019s wars rage on regardless, and the militarized counterterrorism policy Biden has supported in the past\u2014based on airstrikes, special operations and the use of proxy forces\u2014is precisely what keeps these conflicts raging.<\/p>\n

In Afghanistan, Biden opposed Obama\u2019s 2009 troop surge, and after the surge failed, Obama reverted to the policy that Biden favored<\/a> to begin with, which became the hallmark of their war policy in other countries as well. In insider circles, this was referred to as \u201ccounterterrorism,\u201d as opposed to \u201ccounterinsurgency.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Afghanistan, that meant abandoning the large-scale deployment of U.S. forces, and relying instead on air strikes<\/a>, drone strikes and special operations \u201ckill or capture<\/a>\u201d raids, while recruiting and training Afghan forces<\/a> to do nearly all the ground fighting and holding of territory.<\/p>\n

In the 2011 Libya intervention, the NATO-Arab monarchist coalition embedded hundreds of Qatari<\/a> special operations forces and Western mercenaries<\/a> with the Libyan rebels to call in NATO airstrikes and train local militias, including Islamist groups<\/a> with links to Al Qaeda. The forces they unleashed are still fighting over the spoils nine years later.<\/p>\n

While Joe Biden now takes credit for opposing<\/a> the disastrous intervention in Libya, at the time he was quick to hail its deceptive short-term success and Colonel Gaddafi’s gruesome assassination. \u201cNATO got it right,\u201d Biden said in a speech<\/a> at Plymouth State College in October 2011 on the very day President Obama announced Gaddafi\u2019s death. \u201cIn this case, America spent $2 billion and didn\u2019t lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Biden has since washed his hands of the debacle in Libya, that operation was, in fact, emblematic of the doctrine of covert and proxy war backed by airstrikes that he supported, and which he has yet to disavow. Biden still says he supports \u201ccounterterrorism\u201d operations, but he was elected president without ever publicly answering a direct question about his support for the massive use of airstrikes and drone strikes<\/a> that are an integral part of that doctrine.<\/p>\n

In the campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, U.S.-led forces dropped over 118,000<\/a> bombs and missiles, reducing major cities like Mosul and Raqqa to rubble and killing tens of thousands<\/a> of civilians. When Biden said America \u201cdidn\u2019t lose a single life\u201d in Libya, he clearly meant \u201cAmerican life.\u201d If \u201clife\u201d simply means life, the war in Libya obviously cost countless lives, and made a mockery of a UN Security Council resolution that approved the use of military force only to protect civilians<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Rob Hewson, the editor of the arms trade journal Jane\u2019s Air-Launched Weapons<\/em>, told the AP<\/a> as the U.S. unleashed its \u201cShock and Awe\u201d bombardment on Iraq in 2003, \u201cIn a war that\u2019s being fought for the benefit of the Iraqi people, you can\u2019t afford to kill any of them. But you can\u2019t drop bombs and not kill people. There\u2019s a real dichotomy in all of this.\u201d The same obviously applies to people in Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Palestine and wherever American bombs have been falling for 20 years.<\/p>\n

As Obama and Trump both tried to pivot from the failed \u201cglobal war on terrorism\u201d to what the Trump administration has branded \u201cgreat power competition<\/a>,\u201d or a reversion to the Cold War, the war on terror has stubbornly refused to exit on cue. Al Qaeda and Islamic State have been driven from places the U.S. has bombed or invaded, but keep reappearing in new countries and regions. Islamic State now occupies a swath of northern Mozambique<\/a>, and has also taken root in Afghanistan<\/a>. Other Al Qaeda affiliates are active across Africa, from Somalia and Kenya<\/a> in East Africa to eleven countries<\/a> in West Africa.<\/p>\n

After nearly 20 years of \u201cwar on terror,\u201d there is now a large body of research into what drives people to join Islamist armed groups fighting local government forces or Western invaders. While American politicians still wring their hands over what twisted motives can possibly account for such incomprehensible behavior, it turns out that it\u2019s really not that complicated. Most fighters are not motivated by Islamist ideology as much as by the desire to protect themselves, their families or their communities from militarized \u201ccounterterrorism\u201d forces, as documented in this report<\/a> by the Center for Civilians in Conflict.<\/p>\n

Another study<\/a>, titled The Journey to Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment<\/em>, found that the tipping point or \u201cfinal straw\u201d that drives over 70% of fighters to join armed groups is the killing or detention of a family member by \u201ccounterterrorism\u201d or \u201csecurity\u201d forces. The study exposes the U.S. brand of militarized counterterrorism as a self-fulfilling policy that fuels an intractable cycle of violence by generating and replenishing an ever-expanding pool of \u201cterrorists\u201d as it destroys families, communities and countries.<\/p>\n

For example, the U.S. formed the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership with 11 West African countries in 2005 and has so far sunk a billion dollars into it. In a recent report<\/a> from Burkina Faso, Nick Turse cited U.S. government reports that confirm how 15 years of U.S.-led \u201ccounterterrorism\u201d have only fueled an explosion of terrorism across West Africa.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon\u2019s Africa Center for Strategic Studies reports that the 1,000 violent incidents involving militant Islamist groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in the past year amount to a seven-fold increase<\/a> since 2017, while the confirmed minimum number of people killed has increased from 1,538 in 2017 to 4,404 in 2020<\/p>\n

Heni Nsaibia, a senior researcher at ACLED (Armed Conflict Location Event Data), told Turse that, \u201cFocusing on Western concepts of counterterrorism and embracing a strictly military model has been a major mistake. Ignoring drivers of militancy, such as poverty and lack of social mobility, and failing to alleviate the conditions that foster insurgencies, like widespread human rights abuses by security forces, have caused irreparable harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, even the New York Times<\/em> has confirmed that \u201ccounterterrorism\u201d forces in Burkina Faso are killing as many civilians<\/a> as the “terrorists” they are supposed to be fighting. A 2019 U.S. State Department Country Report on Burkina Faso documented allegations of \u201chundreds of extrajudicial killings of civilians as part of its counterterrorism strategy,\u201d mainly killing members of the Fulani ethnic group.<\/p>\n

Souaibou Diallo, the president of a regional association of Muslim scholars, told Turse<\/a> that these abuses are the main factor driving the Fulani to join militant groups. \u201cEighty percent of those who join terrorist groups told us that it isn\u2019t because they support jihadism, it is because their father or mother or brother was killed by the armed forces,\u201d said Diallo. \u201cSo many people have been killed\u2014assassinated\u2014but there has been no justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the inception of the Global War on Terror, both sides have used the violence of their enemies to justify their own violence, fueling a seemingly endless spiral of chaos spreading from country to country and region to region across the world.<\/p>\n

But the U.S. roots of all this violence and chaos run even deeper than this. Both Al Qaeda and Islamic State evolved from groups originally recruited, trained, armed and supported by the CIA<\/a> to overthrow foreign governments: Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the Nusra Front and Islamic State in Syria since 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If the Biden administration really wants to stop fueling chaos and terrorism in the world, it must radically transform the CIA, whose role in destabilizing countries, supporting terrorism, spreading chaos<\/a> and creating false pretexts for war<\/a> and hostility has been well documented since the 1970s by Colonel Fletcher Prouty, William Blum, Gareth Porter and others.<\/p>\n

The United States will never have an objective, depoliticized national intelligence system, or therefore a reality-based, coherent foreign policy, until it exorcises this ghost in the machine. Biden has chosen Avril Haines, who crafted<\/a> the secret quasi-legal basis for Obama\u2019s drone program and protected CIA torturers, to be his Director of National Intelligence. Is Haines up to the job of transforming these agencies of violence and chaos into a legitimate, working intelligence system? That seems unlikely, and yet it is vital.<\/p>\n

The new Biden administration needs to take a truly fresh look at the whole range of destructive policies the United States has pursued around the world for decades, and the insidious role the CIA has played in so many of them.<\/p>\n

We hope Biden will finally renounce hare-brained, militarized policies that destroy societies and ruin people\u2019s lives for the sake of unattainable geopolitical ambitions, and that he will instead invest in humanitarian and economic aid that really helps people to live more peaceful and prosperous lives.<\/p>\n

We also hope that Biden will reverse Trump\u2019s pivot back to the Cold War and prevent the diversion of more of our country\u2019s resources to a futile and dangerous arms race with China and Russia.<\/p>\n

We have real problems to deal with in this century – existential problems that can only be solved by genuine international cooperation. We can no longer afford to sacrifice our future on the altar of the Global War on Terror, a New Cold War, Pax Americana or other imperialist fantasies.<\/p>\n

The post Will Biden\u2019s America Stop Creating Terrorists?<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photo Credit:\u00a0 CODEPINK) Joe Biden will take command of the White House at a time when the American public is more concerned about battling coronavirus than fighting overseas\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":171,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,708,188,709,130,49,710,192,51,711,194,165,527,712,4,713,196,224,57,202,714],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2152,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151\/revisions\/2152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}