Today, the NYTimes reported that a 2004 secret order had been issued authorizing U.S. attacks on suspected "terrorists" in 20 sovereign nation-states.
The New York Times published my comment on this report:
NYTimes blog
The U.S. has a right to defend its own territory against attacks.
But wait. What gives the U.S. the right to carry out attacks (which frequently end in the death of innocent civilians), into sovereign states that are themselves trying to curb extremist elements within their own borders?
Is this "secret order" an act consistent with ethical democracy or are these actions illegal, arrogant, futile, counter-productive and likely to unleash a backlash?
The perilous Cheney-Bush Ideology of Exceptionalism (" we are so special, there's nobody in the entire world quite like us so we can do whatever we want, invade, occupy, kill, threaten, impose sanctions, etc. etc."), has led the U.S. headlong into a dangerous and futile engagement OUTSIDE its own territory and WITHIN the territory of sovereign states.
This covert aggression has clearly inflamed civilian sentiment especially when local residents lose a family member who is not involved in any extremist activity.
Don't we by now know about the failures of U.S. "intelligence"? This lose-lose strategy will hopefully be halted, beginning in January 2009. Otherwise it will signal a continuation of the same failed policy of the Cheney-Bush regime.
Regime change, Bush-Cheney to Obama-Biden, cannot afford to be merely symbolic.
Chithra KarunaKaran
— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
