The Enemy at Home

Last Christmas Eve, a Nigerian terrorist national from Yemen named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to kill himself and 300 other passengers on a commercial airliner traveling from the Netherlands to Detroit. Abdulmutallab's bungled suicide bombing was likely motivated in part by a desire for revenge over the many Yemeni militants and civilians killed in the U.S. air attacks a week before ("U.S. Kill 63 Civilians, 28 Children in Yemen Air Strikes," Press TV, December 18, 2009).

In response to the Christmas bomber near-attack, Obama recycled George W. Bush's nationalistic rhetoric about the U.S. being under supposedly mysterious attack from evil outsiders who just hate and assault "us" because...that's what anti-American terrorists do. Failing to note the role that U.S. policies and actions, and its deadly presence in the Middle East and South Asia, play in provoking such attacks, Obama focused his ire on U.S. intelligence failures that almost allowed the Nigerian to ignite a catastrophe and ordered a significant escalation of the Pentagon's terror war in Yemen.

Five days later, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a "double agent" member of the Pakistani Taliban, successfully eliminated seven U.S. mercenaries (Blackwater/Xe operatives) and CIA agents in the Afghanistan border town of Khost, including the chief of the CIA's base (Camp Chapman) there. The U.S. personnel killed were carrying out Predator drone attacks that killed innocent Pakistani civilians, including children.

The Khost attack received a brief reference in Obama's New Year's address to the nation which concluded as follows: "Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred and we will do whatever it takes to defeat them and defend our country, even as we uphold the values that have always distinguished America among nations….

"As the Christmas Day attack illustrates and as we were reminded this week by the sacrifices of more brave Americans in Afghanistan, including the seven dead men and women of the CIA, the hard work of protecting our nation is never done…. But as we go forward, let us remember this: our adversaries are those who would attack our country, not our fellow Americans. Not each other. Let us never forget what has always carried us through times of trial, including those attacks eight Septembers ago. Instead of giving into fear and cynicism, let's renew that timeless American spirit of resolve and confidence and optimism. Instead of succumbing to partisanship and division, let's summon the unity that this moment demands. Let's work together with a seriousness of purpose to do what must be done to keep this country safe.

"As we began this New Year, I can't imagine a more fitting resolution to guide us as a people and as a nation. Happy New Year" (Obama, "The Fight Against Al Qaeda," January 2, 2010).

This puddle of presidential speechifying and propaganda contained oceans of military-nationalist nonsense.

"OUR NATION IS AT WAR": Where is the war? In the oil-rich Muslim world where the only military superpower (the U.S.) is engaged in imperial occupations and attacks that have cost hundreds of thousands of Arab, Persian, and Pashtun lives—all primarily civilian. True, U.S. colonial and imperial practices in the Middle East and Southwest Asia have provoked occasional real and attempted attacks on what Obama now also calls "the homeland" (an explicitly imperialist term). Still, Americans have not been dodging IEDs, artillery shells, cluster bombs, or suicide bombers on the way to and from their workplaces, schools, shopping malls, and homes. They have no idea what it would be to experience a crushing foreign occupation like the one the U.S. continues in Iraq (including more thana million dead). Historian Juan Cole notes that the U.S. invasion of that country has "displaced four million (over a million abroad), destroyed entire cities such as Fallujah, set off a Sunni-Shiite civil war, allowed Baghdad to be ethnically cleansed of its Sunnis, practiced systematic and widespread torture before the eyes of the Muslim Middle East and the world." It's a very one-sided "war" in which "our nation" is engaged.

Who's fighting and dying on the American side? The broad mass of Americans are not "serving" in Washington's supposedly noble terror war(s). The domestic U.S rebellion against the Vietnam War convinced the military establishment of the need to avoid placing middle-class soldiers in bloody colonial campaigns. The Pentagon relies on a de facto mercenary force of professional soldiers (along with a giant and underestimated mass of mercenaries hired by such corporate "security" firms as Blackwater—now Xe Services—Dyncorps, and Triple Canopy), who are not drawn from the general citizenry.

Obama's "nation at war" phrase conflates the U.S. civilian majority with the national military caste and the growing corporate mercenary legions under the rule of our supposed shared "commander-in-chief." Constitutionally speaking, the president is the "commander-in-chief" only of the nation's armed forces. He bears no such title or authority vis-à-vis the civilian populace.

"NETWORKS OF VIOLENCE AND HATRED": Hello? The Pentagon accounts for nearly half the world's military spending and maintains more than 800 military bases spread across 130 "sovereign" nations. Many of the U.S. empire's troops in the Middle East and South Asia have been indoctrinated to believe that Muslims and Arabs are less-than-human and to think that they are "avenging 9/11" by undertaking egregious violations of human rights across the region. That's pretty hateful.

The "seven brave Americans" who died in Khost conducted aerial assaults that butchered defenseless children and other innocents in Pakistan. They were enlisted in Obama's major "Drone War," which goes far beyond anything Bush attempted. By numerous accounts, the Pentagon's chilling "drone surge"—currently "hunting humans in the Af-Pak war zone at a record pace" (Nick Turse, "The Drone Surge," ZNet, January 26, 2010)—kills more civilian bystanders than "militants." That's also pretty hateful and is understood as such by the other side. There's nothing particularly "brave" about liquidating human beings at such a cold and depersonalized remove, often with mercenary technicians (the CIA's Pakistan drone campaign is contracted-out to Xe Services) pressing buttons of high-tech murder as if they were playing video games in sheltered, climate-controlled command centers.

"DEFEND OUR COUNTRY" and "THE HARD WORK OF PROTECTING OUR NATION": Presidents Bush and Obama have put Americans in the "homeland" at greater risk by undertaking and sustaining provocative, criminal, and bloody occupations in the Muslim world. As in Iraq, the U.S. has no legitimate legal or moral business invading Afghanistan, threatening Iran, and attacking Pakistanis and Yemenis. It never has. The people on the other ends of our guns know this and can be expected to exact revenge.