HAGEL CONFIRMED AS SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

Former Senator Chuck Hagel was finally confirmed as Secretary of Defense, after his confirmation was stalled in the Senate by members of the GOP.  Senate Republicans view Hagel as a traitor to the party ever since he turned against the Iraq war and Bush's conduct of the war when he was in the Senate, which gave them reason enough to oppose his nomination.  Only four Republicans voted to confirm.

Back in late 2011, Senator Lindsey Graham, one of  the most vehement opponents of Hagel's confirmation, suggested the US might have to go to war with Pakistan.

From the AP:

A Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that the U.S. should consider military action against Pakistan if it continues to support terrorist attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.

"The sovereign nation of Pakistan is engaging in hostile acts against the United States and our ally Afghanistan that must cease, Sen. Lindsey Graham told "Fox News Sunday."

He said if experts decided that the U.S. needs to "elevate its response," he was confident there would be strong bipartisan support in Congress for such action.

From Juan Cole:

The GOP Orcs have a further list of countries they’d like to invade and occupy. Senator Lindsey Graham added Pakistan to the list. Does anybody else in the known universe think it is a good idea for the US abruptly to go to war with the world’s sixth-largest country, which is a nuclear power, and which is backed by China? I mean, shouldn’t this man just be declared clinically insane and mercifully put in an institution instead of being allowed to strut the halls of power?

I burst out laughing at Juan Cole's comments about Lindsey Graham's suggestion that we may have to go to war against Pakistan. Then I caught myself and realized that it's not funny at all that people like Graham and others in the Senate, who must always have a war going, operate in the highest halls of power in our country.  We can only hope that the "strong bipartisan support" in Congress for a war with Pakistan has evaporated, if it was ever present.

UN LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION ON DRONE ATTACKS

The United Nations has launched an investigation into the use of unmanned drone strikes and targeted killings in counterterrorism operations.

The probe will investigate 25 strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian territories. It also will focus on civilian killings and injuries caused by the strikes.

British lawyer Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special envoy on counterterrorism and human rights, will carry out the probe.

Emmerson says the use of drone technology is "here to it stay," adding it is imperative that "appropriate legal and operational structures are urgently put in place to regulate its use."

Most attacks by unmanned drones have been carried out by the United States.  Israel has used them and other nations have access to the technology. 

It's about time.  Although President Obama did not mention the drone war in his inaugural address, the drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia may well kill terrorists, but the attacks also kill innocents, including women, children, and people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The attacks are not as precise as the administration claims.  In addition, fear of drone attacks traumatizes people who live in the areas where the attacks occur.  It's accountability time, and I hope the investigation by the UN sheds more light than the Obama administration has been willing to do.

THE DRONES...THEY HAUNT ME

An MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft takes off from Joint Base Balad, Iraq. Photo: USAF

A new analysis from a global citizen advocacy group on the secretive U.S. drone campaign claims there is very little knowledge of the actual number of civilian casualties connected with each strike, despite official information to the contrary, according to a report on Wired.com.

The Obama administration has previously stated that civilian casualties from the Pakistan drone war were in the single digits, while the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates the minimum death toll is closer to 450, according to the story.

Single digits?  The claim is laughable.  No one...no one knows the body count of innocents killed by covert drone attacks in the Middle East, not even the White House, not Congress.  The drones haunt me not only because of innocents killed, not only because of grieving families left behind, but also because of the toll on the living, the people of Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, who go about their daily lives in fear of the sound of drones, who can't sleep nights because they're frightened of a drone attack.

I've thought I should not write about the drones three weeks before a crucial election, because the reckless use of our military might would be much worse under the living nightmare of a Romney administration, but the haunting remains, and so I write.  The drone attacks are done in our name, in the name of each one of us who claims citizenship in the US, without discussion or accountability, and that's not right.  Attention must be paid.

H/T to Wired for the photo.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

From Nicholas D. Kristof at the New York Times:

When he was alive, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke was effectively gagged, unable to comment on what he saw as missteps of the Obama administration that he served. But as we face a crisis in Pakistan after the killing of Osama bin Laden, it’s worth listening to Holbrooke’s counsel — from beyond the grave.

As one of America’s finest strategic thinkers and special envoy to the Af-Pak region, Holbrooke represented the administration — but also chafed at aspects of the White House approach. In particular, he winced at the overreliance on military force, for it reminded him of Vietnam.

“There are structural similarities between Afghanistan and Vietnam,” he noted, in scattered reflections now in the hands of his widow, Kati Marton.

“He thought that this could become Obama’s Vietnam,” Marton recalled. “Some of the conversations in the Situation Room reminded him of conversations in the Johnson White House. When he raised that, Obama didn’t want to hear it.”

That Obama didn't want to hear Richard Holbrooke's counsel is unfortunate, indeed.

From the Army Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Four American soldiers serving with NATO forces in Afghanistan died Monday in an explosion in the country's south, NATO and a defense department official said, bringing home the human cost of the U.S.-led push into Taliban strongholds.

The official said they were hit by an improvised explosive device. He spoke on condition of anonymity because relatives of those killed were still being notified. The latest deaths make a total of 16 NATO service members killed so far this month, and 167 so far this year.

What is it about being in the Oval Office that blinds presidents to the reality that prolonging a war that goes nowhere, even as members of the military and civilians continue to be maimed and killed, will accomplish nothing worthwhile? The war in Afghanistan has now become Obama's war. What is the president's view of the endgame?

Vali Nasr, a member of Holbrooke’s team at the State Department, puts it this way: “He understood from his experience that every conflict has to end at the negotiating table.”

Why not sooner, rather than later?

Read Kristof's column in its entirely for its valuable analysis of Holbrooke's views on our relations with Pakistan.

As for Pakistan, Holbrooke told me and others that because of its size and nuclear weaponry, it was center stage; Afghanistan was a sideshow.

“A stable Afghanistan is not essential; a stable Pakistan is essential,” he noted, in the musings he left behind.

That Obama will reconsider Holbrooke's wise counsel now that he has passed on is surely too much to hope for, but I hope anyway.