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Intercept_
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Photo: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
Nobody Knows the Identity of the 150 People Killed by U.S. in Somalia, but Most
Are Certain They Deserved It
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald
Mar. 8 2016, 2:39 p.m.
Photo: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
The U.S. used drones and manned aircraft yesterday to drop bombs and missiles
on Somalia, ending the lives of at least 150 people. As it virtually always
does, the Obama administration instantly claimed that the people killed were
“terrorists” and militants — members of the Somali group al Shabaab — but
provided no evidence to support that assertion.
Nonetheless, most U.S. media reports contained nothing more than quotes from
U.S. officials about what happened, conveyed uncritically and with no
skepticism of their accuracy: The dead “fighters … were assembled for what
American officials believe was a graduation ceremony and prelude to an imminent
attack against American troops,” pronounced the New York Times. So, the
official story goes, The Terrorists were that very moment “graduating” —
receiving their Terrorist degrees — and about to attack U.S. troops when the
U.S. killed them.
With that boilerplate set of claims in place, huge numbers of people today who
have absolutely no idea who was killed are certain that they all deserved it.
As my colleague Murtaza Hussain said of the 150 dead people: “We don’t know who
they are, but luckily they were all bad.” For mindless authoritarians, the
words “terrorist” and “militant” have no meaning other than: anyone who dies
when my government drops bombs, or, at best, a “terrorist” is anyone my
government tells me is a terrorist. Watch how many people today are defending
this strike by claiming “terrorists” and “militants” were killed using those
definitions even though they have literally no idea who was killed.
Other than the higher-than-normal death toll, this mass killing is an
incredibly common event under the presidency of the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate,
who has so far bombed seven predominantly Muslim countries. As Nick Turse has
reported in The Intercept, Obama has aggressively expanded the stealth drone
program and secret war in Africa.
This particular mass killing is unlikely to get much attention in the U.S. due
to (1) the election-season obsession with horse-race analysis and pressing
matters such as the size of Donald Trump’s hands; (2) widespread Democratic
indifference to the killing of foreigners where there’s no partisan advantage
to be had against the GOP from pretending to care; (3) the invisibility of
places like Somalia and the implicit devaluing of lives there; and (4) the
complete normalization of the model whereby the U.S. president kills whomever
he wants, wherever he wants, without regard for any semblance of law, process,
accountability, or evidence.
The lack of attention notwithstanding, there are several important points
highlighted by yesterday’s bombing and the reaction to it:
1) The U.S. is not at war in Somalia. Congress has never declared war on
Somalia, nor has it authorized the use of military force there. Morality and
ethics to the side for the moment: What legal authority does Obama even possess
to bomb this country? I assume we can all agree that presidents shouldn’t be
permitted to just go around killing people they suspect are “bad”: they need
some type of legal authority to do the killing.
Since 2001, the U.S. government has legally justified its
we-bomb-wherever-we-want approach by pointing to the 2001 Authorization for Use
of Military Force (AUMF), enacted by Congress in the wake of 9/11 to authorize
the targeting of al Qaeda and “affiliated” forces. But al Shabaab did not exist
in 2001 and had nothing to do with 9/11. Indeed, the group has not tried to
attack the U.S. but instead, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage noted in
2011, “is focused on a parochial insurgency in Somalia.” As a result, reported
Savage, even “the [Obama] administration does not consider the United States to
be at war with every member of the Shabaab.”
Instead, in the Obama administration’s view, specific senior members of al
Shabaab can be treated as enemy combatants under the AUMF only if they adhere
to al Qaeda’s ideology, are “integrated” into its command structure, and could
conduct operations outside of Somalia. That’s why the U.S. government yesterday
claimed that all the people it killed were about to launch attacks on U.S.
soldiers: because, even under its own incredibly expansive view of the AUMF, it
would be illegal to kill them merely on the ground that they were all members
of al Shabaab, and the government thus needs a claim of “self-defense” to
legally justify this.
But even under the “self-defense” theory that the U.S. government invoked, it
is allowed — under its own policies promulgated in 2013 — to use lethal force
away from an active war zone (e.g., Afghanistan) “only against a target that
poses a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” Perhaps these Terrorists
were about to imminently attack U.S. troops stationed in the region —
immediately after the tassel on their graduation cap was turned at the
“graduation ceremony,” they were going on the attack — but again, there is
literally no evidence that any of that is true.
Given what’s at stake — namely, the conclusion that Obama’s killing of 150
people yesterday was illegal — shouldn’t we be demanding to see evidence that
the assertions of his government are actually true? Were these really all al
Shabaab fighters and terrorists who were killed? Were they really about to
carry out some sort of imminent, dangerous attack on U.S. personnel? Why would
anyone be content to blindly believe the self-serving assertions of the U.S.
government on these questions without seeing evidence? If you are willing to
make excuses for why you don’t want to see any evidence, why would you possibly
think you know what happened here — who was killed and under what circumstances
— if all you have are conclusory, evidence-free assertions from those who
carried out the killings?
2) There are numerous compelling reasons demanding skepticism of U.S.
government claims about who it kills in airstrikes. To begin with, the Obama
administration has formally re-defined the term “militant” to mean: “all
military-age males in a strike zone” unless “there is explicit intelligence
posthumously proving them innocent.” In other words, the U.S. government
presumptively regards all adult males it kills as “militants” unless evidence
emerges that they were not. It’s an empty, manipulative term of propaganda and
nothing else.
Beyond that, the U.S. government’s own documents prove that in the vast
majority of cases — 9 out of 10 in fact — it is killing people other than its
intended targets. Last April, the New York Times published an article under the
headline “Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: U.S. Is Often Unsure About
Who Will Die.” It quoted the scholar Micah Zenko saying, “Most individuals
killed are not on a kill list, and the government does not know their names.”
Moreover, the U.S. government has repeatedly been caught lying about the
identity of its bombings victims. As that April NYT article put it, “Every
independent investigation of the strikes has found far more civilian casualties
than administration officials admit.”
Given that clear record of deliberate deceit, why would any rational person
blindly swallow evidence-free assertions from the U.S. government about who it
is killing? To put it mildly, extreme skepticism is warranted (after being
criticized for its stenography, the final New York Times story yesterday at
least included this phrase about the Pentagon’s claims about who it killed:
“There was no independent way to verify the claim”).
3) Why does the U.S. have troops stationed in this part of Africa? Remember,
even the Obama administration says it is not at war with al Shabaab.
Consider how circular this entire rationale is: The U.S., like all countries,
obviously has a legitimate interest in protecting its troops from attack. But
why does it have troops there at all in need of protection? The answer: The
troops are there to operate drone bases and attack people they regard as a
threat to them. But if they weren’t there in the first place, these groups
could not pose a threat to them.
In sum: We need U.S. troops in Africa to launch drone strikes at groups that
are trying to attack U.S. troops in Africa. It’s the ultimate self-perpetuating
circle of imperialism: We need to deploy troops to other countries in order to
attack those who are trying to kill U.S. troops who are deployed there.
4) If you’re an American who has lived under the war on terror, it’s easy to
forget how extreme this behavior is. Most countries on the planet don’t
routinely run around dropping bombs and killing dozens of people in multiple
other countries at once, let alone do so in countries where they’re not at war.
But for Americans, this is now all perfectly normalized. We just view our
president as vested with the intrinsic, divine right, grounded in American
exceptionalism, to deem whomever he wants “Bad Guys” and then — with no trial,
no process, no accountability — order them killed. He’s the roving, Global
Judge, Jury, and Executioner. And we see nothing disturbing or dangerous or
even odd about that. We’ve been inculcated to view the world the way a
6-year-old watches cartoons: Bad Guys should be killed, and that’s the end of
the story.
So yesterday the president killed roughly 150 people in a country where the
U.S. is not at war. The Pentagon issued a five-sentence boilerplate statement
declaring them all “terrorists.” And that’s pretty much the end of that. Within
literally hours, virtually everyone was ready to forget about the whole thing
and move on, content in the knowledge — even without a shred of evidence or
information about the people killed — that their government and president did
the right thing. Now that is a pacified public and malleable media.
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t
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116
Nobody Knows the Identity of the 150 People Killed by U.S. in Somalia, but Most
Are Certain They Deserved It
/staff/glenn-greenwald//staff/glenn-greenwald/
/staff/glenn-greenwald//staff/glenn-greenwald/
Glenn Greenwald
Mar. 8 2016, 2:39 p.m.
Photo: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
The U.S. used drones and manned aircraft yesterday to drop bombs and missiles
on Somalia, ending the lives of at least 150 people. As it virtually always
does, the Obama administration instantly claimed that the people killed were
“terrorists” and militants — members of the Somali group al Shabaab — but
provided no evidence to support that assertion.
Nonetheless, most U.S. media reports contained nothing more than quotes from
U.S. officials about what happened, conveyed uncritically and with no
skepticism of their accuracy: The dead “fighters … were assembled for what
American officials believe was a graduation ceremony and prelude to an imminent
attack against American troops,” pronounced the New York Times. So, the
official story goes, The Terrorists were that very moment “graduating” —
receiving their Terrorist degrees — and about to attack U.S. troops when the
U.S. killed them.
With that boilerplate set of claims in place, huge numbers of people today who
have absolutely no idea who was killed are certain that they all deserved it.
As my colleague Murtaza Hussain said of the 150 dead people: “We don’t know who
they are, but luckily they were all bad.” For mindless authoritarians, the
words “terrorist” and “militant” have no meaning other than: anyone who dies
when my government drops bombs, or, at best, a “terrorist” is anyone my
government tells me is a terrorist. Watch how many people today are defending
this strike by claiming “terrorists” and “militants” were killed using those
definitions even though they have literally no idea who was killed.
Other than the higher-than-normal death toll, this mass killing is an
incredibly common event under the presidency of the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate,
who has so far bombed seven predominantly Muslim countries. As Nick Turse has
reported in The Intercept, Obama has aggressively expanded the stealth drone
program and secret war in Africa.
This particular mass killing is unlikely to get much attention in the U.S. due
to (1) the election-season obsession with horse-race analysis and pressing
matters such as the size of Donald Trump’s hands; (2) widespread Democratic
indifference to the killing of foreigners where there’s no partisan advantage
to be had against the GOP from pretending to care; (3) the invisibility of
places like Somalia and the implicit devaluing of lives there; and (4) the
complete normalization of the model whereby the U.S. president kills whomever
he wants, wherever he wants, without regard for any semblance of law, process,
accountability, or evidence.
The lack of attention notwithstanding, there are several important points
highlighted by yesterday’s bombing and the reaction to it:
1) The U.S. is not at war in Somalia. Congress has never declared war on
Somalia, nor has it authorized the use of military force there. Morality and
ethics to the side for the moment: What legal authority does Obama even possess
to bomb this country? I assume we can all agree that presidents shouldn’t be
permitted to just go around killing people they suspect are “bad”: they need
some type of legal authority to do the killing.
Since 2001, the U.S. government has legally justified its
we-bomb-wherever-we-want approach by pointing to the 2001 Authorization for Use
of Military Force (AUMF), enacted by Congress in the wake of 9/11 to authorize
the targeting of al Qaeda and “affiliated” forces. But al Shabaab did not exist
in 2001 and had nothing to do with 9/11. Indeed, the group has not tried to
attack the U.S. but instead, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage noted in
2011, “is focused on a parochial insurgency in Somalia.” As a result, reported
Savage, even “the [Obama] administration does not consider the United States to
be at war with every member of the Shabaab.”
Instead, in the Obama administration’s view, specific senior members of al
Shabaab can be treated as enemy combatants under the AUMF only if they adhere
to al Qaeda’s ideology, are “integrated” into its command structure, and could
conduct operations outside of Somalia. That’s why the U.S. government yesterday
claimed that all the people it killed were about to launch attacks on U.S.
soldiers: because, even under its own incredibly expansive view of the AUMF, it
would be illegal to kill them merely on the ground that they were all members
of al Shabaab, and the government thus needs a claim of “self-defense” to
legally justify this.
But even under the “self-defense” theory that the U.S. government invoked, it
is allowed — under its own policies promulgated in 2013 — to use lethal force
away from an active war zone (e.g., Afghanistan) “only against a target that
poses a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” Perhaps these Terrorists
were about to imminently attack U.S. troops stationed in the region —
immediately after the tassel on their graduation cap was turned at the
“graduation ceremony,” they were going on the attack — but again, there is
literally no evidence that any of that is true.
Given what’s at stake — namely, the conclusion that Obama’s killing of 150
people yesterday was illegal — shouldn’t we be demanding to see evidence that
the assertions of his government are actually true? Were these really all al
Shabaab fighters and terrorists who were killed? Were they really about to
carry out some sort of imminent, dangerous attack on U.S. personnel? Why would
anyone be content to blindly believe the self-serving assertions of the U.S.
government on these questions without seeing evidence? If you are willing to
make excuses for why you don’t want to see any evidence, why would you possibly
think you know what happened here — who was killed and under what circumstances
— if all you have are conclusory, evidence-free assertions from those who
carried out the killings?
2) There are numerous compelling reasons demanding skepticism of U.S.
government claims about who it kills in airstrikes. To begin with, the Obama
administration has formally re-defined the term “militant” to mean: “all
military-age males in a strike zone” unless “there is explicit intelligence
posthumously proving them innocent.” In other words, the U.S. government
presumptively regards all adult males it kills as “militants” unless evidence
emerges that they were not. It’s an empty, manipulative term of propaganda and
nothing else.
Beyond that, the U.S. government’s own documents prove that in the vast
majority of cases — 9 out of 10 in fact — it is killing people other than its
intended targets. Last April, the New York Times published an article under the
headline “Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: U.S. Is Often Unsure About
Who Will Die.” It quoted the scholar Micah Zenko saying, “Most individuals
killed are not on a kill list, and the government does not know their names.”
https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/03/nytdrones.pnghttps://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/03/nytdrones.png
Moreover, the U.S. government has repeatedly been caught lying about the
identity of its bombings victims. As that April NYT article put it, “Every
independent investigation of the strikes has found far more civilian casualties
than administration officials admit.”
Given that clear record of deliberate deceit, why would any rational person
blindly swallow evidence-free assertions from the U.S. government about who it
is killing? To put it mildly, extreme skepticism is warranted (after being
criticized for its stenography, the final New York Times story yesterday at
least included this phrase about the Pentagon’s claims about who it killed:
“There was no independent way to verify the claim”).
3) Why does the U.S. have troops stationed in this part of Africa? Remember,
even the Obama administration says it is not at war with al Shabaab.
Consider how circular this entire rationale is: The U.S., like all countries,
obviously has a legitimate interest in protecting its troops from attack. But
why does it have troops there at all in need of protection? The answer: The
troops are there to operate drone bases and attack people they regard as a
threat to them. But if they weren’t there in the first place, these groups
could not pose a threat to them.
In sum: We need U.S. troops in Africa to launch drone strikes at groups that
are trying to attack U.S. troops in Africa. It’s the ultimate self-perpetuating
circle of imperialism: We need to deploy troops to other countries in order to
attack those who are trying to kill U.S. troops who are deployed there.
4) If you’re an American who has lived under the war on terror, it’s easy to
forget how extreme this behavior is. Most countries on the planet don’t
routinely run around dropping bombs and killing dozens of people in multiple
other countries at once, let alone do so in countries where they’re not at war.
But for Americans, this is now all perfectly normalized. We just view our
president as vested with the intrinsic, divine right, grounded in American
exceptionalism, to deem whomever he wants “Bad Guys” and then — with no trial,
no process, no accountability — order them killed. He’s the roving, Global
Judge, Jury, and Executioner. And we see nothing disturbing or dangerous or
even odd about that. We’ve been inculcated to view the world the way a
6-year-old watches cartoons: Bad Guys should be killed, and that’s the end of
the story.
So yesterday the president killed roughly 150 people in a country where the
U.S. is not at war. The Pentagon issued a five-sentence boilerplate statement
declaring them all “terrorists.” And that’s pretty much the end of that. Within
literally hours, virtually everyone was ready to forget about the whole thing
and move on, content in the knowledge — even without a shred of evidence or
information about the people killed — that their government and president did
the right thing. Now that is a pacified public and malleable media.
