How U.S. Military Is Wrecking Africa

US Military seeks its role in troubled North Africa

By Nick Turse

The Gulf of Guinea. He said it without a hint of irony or embarrassment. This was one of U.S. Africa Command's big success stories. The Gulf... of Guinea.

Never mind that most Americans couldn't find it on a map and haven't heard of the nations on its shores like Gabon, Benin, and Togo. Never mind that just five days before I talked with AFRICOM's chief spokesman, the Economist had asked if the Gulf of Guinea was on the verge of becoming "another Somalia," because piracy there had jumped 41% from 2011 to 2012 and was on track to be even worse in 2013.

The Gulf of Guinea was one of the primary areas in Africa where "stability," the command spokesman assured me, had "improved significantly," and the U.S. military had played a major role in bringing it about. But what did that say about so many other areas of the continent that, since AFRICOM was set up, had been wracked by coups, insurgencies, violence, and volatility?

A careful examination of the security situation in Africa suggests that it is in the process of becoming Ground Zero for a veritable terror diaspora set in motion in the wake of 9/11 that has only accelerated in the Obama years. Recent history indicates that as U.S. "stability" operations in Africa have increased, militancy has spread, insurgent groups have proliferated, allies have faltered or committed abuses, terrorism has increased, the number of failed states has risen, and the continent has become more unsettled.

The signal event in this tsunami of blowback was the U.S. participation in a war to fell Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi that helped send neighboring Mali, a U.S.-supported bulwark against regional terrorism, into a downward spiral, prompting the intervention of the French military with U.S. backing. The situation could still worsen as the U.S. armed forces grow ever more involved. They are already expanding air operations across the continent, engaging in spy missions for the French military, and utilizing other previously undisclosed sites in Africa.

The Terror Diaspora

In 2000, a report prepared under the auspices of the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute examined the "African security environment." While it touched on "internal separatist or rebel movements" in "weak states," as well as non-state actors like militias and "warlord armies," it made no mention of Islamic extremism or major transnational terrorist threats. In fact, prior to 2001, the United States did not recognize any terrorist organizations in sub-Saharan Africa.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, a senior Pentagon official claimed that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan might drive "terrorists" out of that country and into African nations. "Terrorists associated with al Qaeda and indigenous terrorist groups have been and continue to be a presence in this region," he said. "These terrorists will, of course, threaten U.S. personnel and facilities."

When pressed about actual transnational dangers, the official pointed to Somali militants but eventually admitted that even the most extreme Islamists there "really have not engaged in acts of terrorism outside Somalia." Similarly, when questioned about connections between Osama bin Laden's core al-Qaeda group and African extremists, he offered only the most tenuous links, like bin Laden's "salute" to Somali militants who killed U.S. troops during the infamous 1993 "Black Hawk Down" incident.

Despite this, the U.S. dispatched personnel to Africa as part of Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) in 2002. The next year, CJTF-HOA took up residence at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, where it resides to this day on the only officially avowed U.S. base in Africa.

As CJTF-HOA was starting up, the State Department launched a multi-million-dollar counterterrorism program, known as the Pan-Sahel Initiative, to bolster the militaries of Mali, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania. In 2004, for example, Special Forces training teams were sent to Mali as part of the effort. In 2005, the program expanded to include Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia and was renamed the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership.

Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Nicholas Schmidle noted that the program saw year-round deployments of Special Forces personnel "to train local armies at battling insurgencies and rebellions and to prevent bin Laden and his allies from expanding into the region." The Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership and its Defense Department companion program, then known as Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans-Sahara, were, in turn, folded into U.S. Africa Command when it took over military responsibility for the continent in 2008.

As Schmidle noted, the effects of U.S. efforts in the region seemed at odds with AFRICOM's stated goals. "Al Qaeda established sanctuaries in the Sahel, and in 2006 it acquired a North African franchise [Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb]," he wrote. "Terrorist attacks in the region increased in both number and lethality."

In fact, a look at the official State Department list of terrorist organizations indicates a steady increase in Islamic radical groups in Africa alongside the growth of U.S. counterterrorism efforts there -- with the addition of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in 2004, Somalia's al-Shabaab in 2008, and Mali's Ansar al-Dine in 2013. In 2012, General Carter Ham, then AFRICOM's chief, added the Islamist militants of Boko Haram in Nigeria to his own list of extremist threats.

The overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya by an interventionist coalition including the U.S., France, and Britain similarly empowered a host of new militant Islamist groups such as the Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades, which have since carried out multiple attacks on Western interests, and the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia, whose fighters assaulted U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. In fact, just prior to that attack, according to the New York Times, the CIA was tracking "an array of armed militant groups in and around" that one city alone.

According to Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Libya, that country is now "fertile ground" for militants arriving from the Arabian Peninsula and other places in the Middle East as well as elsewhere in Africa to recruit fighters, receive training, and recuperate. "It's really become a new hub," he told me.

Obama's Scramble for Africa

The U.S.-backed war in Libya and the CIA's efforts in its aftermath are just two of the many operations that have proliferated across the continent under President Obama. These include a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, consisting of intelligence operations, a secret prison, helicopter attacks, drone strikes, and U.S. commando raids; a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony and his top commanders in the jungles of the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo; a massive influx of funding for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; and, in just the last four years, hundreds of millions of dollars spent arming and training West African troops to serve as American proxies on the continent. From 2010-2012, AFRICOM itself burned through $836 million as it expanded its reach across the region, primarily via programs to mentor, advise, and tutor African militaries.

In recent years, the U.S. has trained and outfitted soldiers from Uganda, Burundi, and Kenya, among other nations, for missions like the hunt for Kony. They have also served as a proxy force for the U.S. in Somalia, part of the African Union Mission (AMISOM) protecting the U.S.-supported government in that country's capital, Mogadishu. Since 2007, the State Department has anted up about $650 million in logistics support, equipment, and training for AMISOM troops. The Pentagon has kicked in an extra $100 million since 2011.

The U.S. also continues funding African armies through the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership and its Pentagon analog, now known as Operation Juniper Shield, with increased support flowing to Mauritania and Niger in the wake of Mali's collapse. In 2012, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development poured approximately $52 million into the programs, while the Pentagon chipped in another $46 million.

In the Obama years, U.S. Africa Command has also built a sophisticated logistics system officially known as the AFRICOM Surface Distribution Network, but colloquially referred to as the "new spice route." Its central nodes are in Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda; Bangui and Djema in Central African Republic; Nzara in South Sudan; Dire Dawa in Ethiopia; and the Pentagon's showpiece African base, Camp Lemonnier.

In addition, the Pentagon has run a regional air campaign using drones and manned aircraft out of airports and bases across the continent including Camp Lemonnier, Arba Minch airport in Ethiopia, Niamey in Niger, and the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, while private contractor-operated surveillance aircraft have flown missions out of Entebbe, Uganda. Recently, Foreign Policy reported on the existence of a possible drone base in Lamu, Kenya.

Another critical location is Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, home to a Joint Special Operations Air Detachment and the Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing Airlift Support initiative that, according to military documents, supports "high risk activities" carried out by elite forces from Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara. Lieutenant Colonel Scott Rawlinson, a spokesman for Special Operations Command Africa, told me that the initiative provides "emergency casualty evacuation support to small team engagements with partner nations throughout the Sahel," although official documents note that such actions have historically accounted for just 10% of monthly flight hours.

While Rawlinson demurred from discussing the scope of the program, citing operational security concerns, military documents indicate that it is expanding rapidly. Between March and December of last year, for example, the Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing Airlift Support initiative flew 233 sorties. In just the first three months of this year, it carried out 193.

AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin Benson has confirmed to TomDispatch that U.S. air operations conducted from Base Aerienne 101 in Niamey, the capital of Niger, were providing "support for intelligence collection with French forces conducting operations in Mali and with other partners in the region." Refusing to go into detail about mission specifics for reasons of "operational security," he added that, "in partnership with Niger and other countries in the region, we are committed to supporting our allies... this decision allows for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations within the region."

Benson also confirmed that the U.S. military has used Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in Senegal for refueling stops as well as the "transportation of teams participating in security cooperation activities" like training missions. He confirmed a similar deal for the use of Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia. All told, the U.S. military now has agreements to use 29 international airports in Africa as refueling centers.

Benson was more tight-lipped about air operations from Nzara Landing Zone in the Republic of South Sudan, the site of one of several shadowy forward operating posts (including another in Djema in the Central Africa Republic and a third in Dungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo) that have been used by U.S. Special Operations forces. "We don't want Kony and his folks to know... what kind of planes to look out for," he said. It's no secret, however, that U.S. air assets over Africa and its coastal waters include Predator, Global Hawk and Scan Eagle drones, MQ-8 unmanned helicopters, EP-3 Orion aircraft, Pilatus planes, and E-8 Joint Stars aircraft.

Last year, in its ever-expanding operations, AFRICOM planned 14 major joint-training exercises on the continent, including in Morocco, Uganda, Botswana, Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria. One of them, an annual event known as Atlas Accord, saw members of the U.S. Special Forces travel to Mali to conduct training with local forces. "The participants were very attentive, and we were able to show them our tactics and see theirs as well," said Captain Bob Luther, a team leader with the 19th Special Forces Group.

The Collapse of Mali

As the U.S.-backed war in Libya was taking down Qaddafi, nomadic Tuareg fighters in his service looted the regime's extensive weapons caches, crossed the border into their native Mali, and began to take over the northern part of that country. Anger within the country's armed forces over the democratically elected government's ineffective response to the rebellion resulted in a military coup. It was led by Amadou Sanogo, an officer who had received extensive training in the U.S. between 2004 and 2010 as part of the Pan-Sahel Initiative. Having overthrown Malian democracy, he and his fellow officers proved even less effective in dealing with events in the north.

With the country in turmoil, the Tuareg fighters declared an independent state. Soon, however, heavily-armed Islamist rebels from homegrown Ansar al-Dine as well as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Libya's Ansar al-Sharia, and Nigeria's Boko Haram, among others, pushed out the Tuaregs, took over much of the north, instituted a harsh brand of Shariah law, and created a humanitarian crisis that caused widespread suffering, sending refugees streaming from their homes.

These developments raised serious questions about the efficacy of U.S. counterterrorism efforts. "This spectacular failure reveals that the U.S. probably underestimated the complex socio-cultural peculiarities of the region, and misread the realities of the terrain," Berny Sèbe, an expert on North and West Africa at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, told me. "This led them to being grossly manipulated by local interests over which they had, in the end, very limited control."

Following a further series of Islamist victories and widespread atrocities, the French military intervened at the head of a coalition of Chadian, Nigerian, and other African troops, with support from the U.S. and the British. The foreign-led forces beat back the Islamists, who then shifted from conventional to guerrilla tactics, including suicide bombings.

In April, after such an attack killed three Chadian soldiers, that country's president announced that his forces, long supported by the U.S. through the Pan-Sahel Initiative, would withdraw from Mali. "Chad's army has no ability to face the kind of guerrilla fighting that is emerging," he said. In the meantime, the remnants of the U.S.-backed Malian military fighting alongside the French were cited for gross human rights violations in their bid to retake control of their country.

After the French intervention in January, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said, "There is no consideration of putting any American boots on the ground at this time." Not long after, 10 U.S. military personnel were deployed to assist French and African forces, while 12 others were assigned to the embassy in the Malian capital, Bamako.

While he's quick to point out that Mali's downward spiral had much to do with its corrupt government, weak military, and rising levels of ethnic discontent, the Carnegie Endowment's Wehrey notes that the war in Libya was "a seismic event for the Sahel and the Sahara." Just back from a fact-finding trip to Libya, he added that the effects of the revolution are already rippling far beyond the porous borders of Mali.

Wehrey cited recent findings by the United Nations Security Council's Group of Experts, which monitors an arms embargo imposed on Libya in 2011. "In the past 12 months," the panel reported, "the proliferation of weapons from Libya has continued at a worrying rate and has spread into new territory: West Africa, the Levant [the Eastern Mediterranean region], and potentially even the Horn of Africa. Illicit flows [of arms] from the country are fueling existing conflicts in Africa and the Levant and enriching the arsenals of a range of non-state actors, including terrorist groups."

Growing Instability

The collapse of Mali after a coup by an American-trained officer and Chad's flight from the fight in that country are just two indicators of how post-9/11 U.S. military efforts in Africa have fared. "In two of the three other Sahelian states involved in the Pentagon's pan-Sahelian initiative, Mauritania and Niger, armies trained by the U.S., have also taken power in the past eight years," observed journalist William Wallis in the Financial Times. "In the third, Chad, they came close in a 2006 attempt." Still another coup plot involving members of the Chadian military was reportedly uncovered earlier this spring.

In March, Major General Patrick Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Africa, told interviewer Gail McCabe that northwestern Africa was now becoming increasingly "problematic." Al-Qaeda, he said, was at work destabilizing Algeria and Tunisia. Last September, in fact, hundreds of Islamist protesters attacked the U.S. embassy compound in Tunisia, setting it on fire. More recently, Camille Tawil in the CTC Sentinel, the official publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, wrote that in Tunisia "jihadis are openly recruiting young militants and sending them to training camps in the mountains, especially along Algeria's borders."

The U.S.-backed French intervention in Mali also led to a January revenge terror attack on the Amenas gas plant in Algeria. Carried out by the al-Mulathameen brigade, one of various new al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb-linked militant groups emerging in the region, it led to the deaths of close to 40 hostages, including three Americans. Planned by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of the U.S.-backed war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it was only the first in a series of blowback responses to U.S. and Western interventions in Northern Africa that may have far-reaching implications.

Last month, Belmokhtar's forces also teamed up with fighters from the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa -- yet another Islamist militant group of recent vintage -- to carry out coordinated attacks on a French-run uranium mine and a nearby military base in Agadez, Niger, that killed at least 25 people. A recent attack on the French embassy in Libya by local militants is also seen as a reprisal for the French war in Mali.

According to the Carnegie Endowment's Wehrey, the French military's push there has had the additional effect of reversing the flow of militants, sending many back into Libya to recuperate and seek additional training. Nigerian Islamist fighters driven from Mali have returned to their native land with fresh training and innovative tactics as well as heavy weapons from Libya. Increasingly battle-hardened, extremist Islamist insurgents from two Nigerian groups, Boko Haram and the newer, even more radical Ansaru, have escalated a long simmering conflict in that West African oil giant.

For years, Nigerian forces have been trained and supported by the U.S. through the Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program. The country has also been a beneficiary of U.S. Foreign Military Financing, which provides grants and loans to purchase U.S.-produced weaponry and equipment and funds military training. In recent years, however, brutal responses by Nigerian forces to what had been a fringe Islamist sect have transformed Boko Haram into a regional terrorist force.

The situation has grown so serious that President Goodluck Jonathan recently declared a state of emergency in northern Nigeria. Last month, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke out about "credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism." After a Boko Haram militant killed a soldier in the town of Baga, for example, Nigerian troops attacked the town, destroying more than 2,000 homes and killing an estimated 183 people.

Similarly, according to a recent United Nations report, the Congolese army's 391st Commando Battalion, formed with U.S. support and trained for eight months by U.S. Special Operations forces, later took part in mass rapes and other atrocities. Fleeing the advance of a recently formed, brutal (non-Islamic) rebel group known as M23, its troops joined with other Congolese soldiers in raping close to 100 women and more than 30 girls in November 2012.

"This magnificent battalion will set a new mark in this nation's continuing transformation of an army dedicated and committed to professionalism, accountability, sustainability, and meaningful security," said Brigadier General Christopher Haas, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command Africa at the time of the battalion's graduation from training in 2010.

Earlier this year, incoming AFRICOM commander General David Rodriguez told the Senate Armed Services Committee that a review of the unit found its "officers and enlisted soldiers appear motivated, organized, and trained in small unit maneuver and tactics" even if there were "limited metrics to measure the battalion's combat effectiveness and performance in protecting civilians." The U.N. report tells a different story. For example, it describes "a 14 year old boy... shot dead on 25 November 2012 in the village of Kalungu, Kalehe territory, by a soldier of the 391 Battalion. The boy was returning from the fields when two soldiers tried to steal his goat. As he tried to resist and flee, one of the soldiers shot him."

Despite years of U.S. military aid to the Democratic Republic of Congo, M23 has dealt its army heavy blows and, according to AFRICOM's Rodriguez, is now destabilizing the region. But they haven't done it alone. According to Rodriguez, M23 "would not be the threat it is today without external support including evidence of support from the Rwandan government."

For years, the U.S. aided Rwanda through various programs, including the International Military Education and Training initiative and Foreign Military Financing. Last year, the U.S. cut $200,000 in military assistance to Rwanda -- a signal of its disapproval of that government's support for M23. Still, as AFRICOM's Rodriguez admitted to the Senate earlier this year, the U.S. continues to "support Rwanda's participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions in Africa."

After years of U.S. assistance, including support from Special Operations forces advisors, the Central African Republic's military was recently defeated and the country's president ousted by another newly formed (non-Islamist) rebel group known as Seleka. In short order, that country's army chiefs pledged their allegiance to the leader of the coup, while hostility on the part of the rebels forced the U.S. and its allies to suspend their hunt for Joseph Kony.

A strategic partner and bulwark of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, Kenya receives around $1 billion in U.S. aid annually and elements of its military have been trained by U.S. Special Operations forces. But last September, Foreign Policy's Jonathan Horowitz reported on allegations of "Kenyan counterterrorism death squads... killing and disappearing people." Later, Human Rights Watch drew attention to the Kenyan military's response to a November attack by an unknown gunman that killed three soldiers in the northern town of Garissa. The "Kenyan army surrounded the town, preventing anyone from leaving or entering, and started attacking residents and traders," the group reported. "The witnesses said that the military shot at people, raped women, and assaulted anyone in sight."

Another longtime recipient of U.S. support, the Ethiopian military, was also involved in abuses last year, following an attack by gunmen on a commercial farm. In response, according to Human Rights Watch, members of Ethiopia's army raped, arbitrarily arrested, and assaulted local villagers.

The Ugandan military has been the primary U.S. proxy when it comes to policing Somalia. Its members were, however, implicated in the beating and even killing of citizens during domestic unrest in 2011. Burundi has also received significant U.S. military support and high-ranking officers in its army have recently been linked to the illegal mineral trade, according to a report by the environmental watchdog group Global Witness. Despite years of cooperation with the U.S. military, Senegal now appears more vulnerable to extremism and increasingly unstable, according to a report by the Institute of Security Studies.

And so it goes across the continent.

Success Stories

In addition to the Gulf of Guinea, AFRICOM's chief spokesman pointed to Somalia as another major U.S. success story on the continent. And it's true that Somalia is more stable now than it has been in years, even if a weakened al-Shabaab continues to carry out attacks. The spokesman even pointed to a recent CNN report about a trickle of tourists entering the war-torn country and the construction of a luxury beach resort in the capital, Mogadishu.

I asked for other AFRICOM success stories, but only those two came to his mind -- and no one should be surprised by that.

After all, in 2006, before AFRICOM came into existence, 11 African nations were among the top 20 in the Fund for Peace's annual Failed States Index. Last year, that number had risen to 15 (or 16 if you count the new nation of South Sudan).

In 2001, according to the Global Terrorism Database from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, there were 119 terrorist incidents in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2011, the last year for which numbers are available, there were close to 500. A recent report from the International Center for Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies counted 21 terrorist attacks in the Maghreb and Sahel regions of northern Africa in 2001. During the Obama years, the figures have fluctuated between 144 and 204 annually.

Similarly, an analysis of 65,000 individual incidents of political violence in Africa from 1997 to 2012, assembled by researchers affiliated with the International Peace Research Institute, found that "violent Islamist activity has increased significantly in the past 15 years, with a particular[ly] sharp increase witnessed from 2010 onwards." Additionally, according to researcher Caitriona Dowd, "there is also evidence for the geographic spread of violent Islamist activity both south- and east-ward on the continent."

In fact, the trends appear stark and eerily mirror statements from AFRICOM's leaders.

In March 2009, after years of training indigenous forces and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on counterterrorism activities, General William Ward, the first leader of U.S. Africa Command, gave its inaugural status report to the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was bleak. "Al-Qaeda," he said, "increased its influence dramatically across north and east Africa over the past three years with the growth of East Africa Al-Qaeda, al Shabaab, and al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)."

This February, after four more years of military engagement, security assistance, training of indigenous armies, and hundreds of millions of dollars more in funding, AFRICOM's incoming commander General David Rodriguez explained the current situation to the Senate in more ominous terms. "The command's number one priority is East Africa with particular focus on al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda networks. This is followed by violent extremist [movements] and al-Qaeda in North and West Africa and the Islamic Maghreb. AFRICOM's third priority is Counter-LRA [Lord's Resistance Army] operations."

Rodriguez warned that, "with the increasing threat of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, I see a greater risk of regional instability if we do not engage aggressively." In addition to that group, he declared al-Shabaab and Boko Haram major menaces. He also mentioned the problems posed by the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa and Ansar al-Dine. Libya, he told them, was threatened by "hundreds of disparate militias," while M23 was "destabilizing the entire Great Lakes region [of Central Africa]."

In West Africa, he admitted, there was also a major narcotics trafficking problem. Similarly, East Africa was "experiencing an increase in heroin trafficking across the Indian Ocean from Afghanistan and Pakistan." In addition, "in the Sahel region of North Africa, cocaine and hashish trafficking is being facilitated by, and directly benefitting, organizations like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb leading to increased regional instability."

In other words, 10 years after Washington began pouring taxpayer dollars into counterterrorism and stability efforts across Africa and its forces first began operating from Camp Lemonnier, the continent has experienced profound changes, just not those the U.S. sought. The University of Birmingham's Berny Sèbe ticks off post-revolutionary Libya, the collapse of Mali, the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria, the coup in the Central African Republic, and violence in Africa's Great Lakes region as evidence of increasing volatility. "The continent is certainly more unstable today than it was in the early 2000s, when the U.S. started to intervene more directly," he told me.

As the war in Afghanistan -- a conflict born of blowback -- winds down, there will be greater incentive and opportunity to project U.S. military power in Africa. However, even a cursory reading of recent history suggests that this impulse is unlikely to achieve U.S. goals. While correlation doesn't equal causation, there is ample evidence to suggest the United States has facilitated a terror diaspora, imperiling nations and endangering peoples across Africa. In the wake of 9/11, Pentagon officials were hard-pressed to show evidence of a major African terror threat. Today, the continent is thick with militant groups that are increasingly crossing borders, sowing insecurity, and throwing the limits of U.S. power into broad relief. After 10 years of U.S. operations to promote stability by military means, the results have been the opposite. Africa has become blowback central.

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author most recently of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books).

This article was originally published on TomDispatch.com. Republished with permission.

Editorial

STOP THE WARS

The fact is that the United States of America is the only country in the world which has used nuclear weapons in the pursuit of its hegemony.

It is also true that it has the largest stock of nuclear weapons and has instigated or fought more wars than any country in the world.

Trigger happy USA has instigated or fought wars in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and many other countries.

The wastage of vital resources on needless wars is taking place at a time when large parts of the world suffer hunger, illiteracy, disease and lack of access to social services.

The Insight believes that the time has come for the people of the world to call the ruling elite in the USA to order and to insist that the resources  wasted on war can best be applied in the process of finding solutions to the hydra-headed problems confronting the world.

If the peoples of the world can end the needless wars, it would be possible to free vital resources for development.

Please end the senseless wars.

Syria crisis and America’s funeral

Syrian President Bashir Al Assad

By Gordon Duff

America, at least publicly, seems destined to put its military might against Syria, notwithstanding the fact that America will have to arm and train terrorists it has been fighting for a decade, notwithstanding America will be risking a world war and notwithstanding the simple fact that every authority advises against this policy and the American people want no part of it.

American Policy Heads to the “Other Side of the Mirror”

When American CIA and Special Forces personnel received the orders to arm and train Syrian rebels, a week ago, they were flabbergasted. Many had been “on the ground” for months or longer, had seen the ‘Free Syrian Army’ purged and overrun with Jihadists, that and supplanted in its combat role by al-Qaeda in Iraq partner, al-Nusra.

Not all Jihadists come to Jordan and Turkey and, eventually enter Syria (and Iraq) as terrorists. Most come for the $3,000 cash payment to their families, for the $200 per month, for the food and, frankly, for the free cigarettes.

Most don’t arrive as hardcore Jihadists or terrorists, in fact few do. Most, if not all, however, those who survive, will leave, US trained and supplied but al-Qaeda led, “blooded,” radicalized and ready to move against Iraq, against Jordan or to set up terror cells across Europe and North America.

Insanity or Beyond Insanity?

What is America thinking, has it, as Paul Craig Roberts and so many others, even Zbigniew Brzezinski have observed, “lost their minds?”

To all but the mentally challenged, the Global War on Terror is an artificial construct, 90% false flag terror, 90% bank robbery, 90% “Hollywoodism.”

You say the total is more than 100%? Welcome to the “new math.”

The terror “game” was supposed to replace the Cold War but better, helpless enemies, the chance to use new hi-tech weapons on defenseless civilians, a change to use a controlled press to manage the narrative and the lesson of World War II, a “slam bang” take-off, propelled by 9/11, long admitted, long proven to be the “New Pearl Harbor.”

The basis of America’s program of encirclement of Russia and China that began with the Truman Doctrine in 1947 was the “domino theory.”

If one nation fell to communism, such as Cuba or Nicaragua or Greece, we could name dozens, perhaps even mention Vietnam; the entire world would fall, “like dominos.”

Domino Theory in Reverse

It is now clear that the “Arab Spring” revolutions, purported to be an “instantaneous uprising” of “freedom loving” Muslims, a “grass roots” movement based on social media, whistleblowing and democratic reform has taken on a sinister side.

Tunisia’s could be believed, initially at least. In Libya, Gaddafi’s flamboyance and alienated many but when the turn came for the UN to authorize use of force to bring about regime change, a move both Russia and China backed, more should have seen something very wrong.

When Gaddafi was brutally murdered, the outline of what would continue was now unquestionable. Freedom was the last thing these revolutions would bring; this was clearly as “softening up” in preparation for what many now see a reestablishment of the Ottoman Empire.

Syria and Iraq, both beleaguered by terrorist groups, Western backed, air support from the international psychopaths, Turkey and Israel, are going to be the dominos that bring the United States to its knees.

A Warning Anyone Could See

Egypt’s revolution has been the greatest disaster so far. A nation long under the thumb of Mubarak’s corrupt dictatorship, his long partnership with Israel and their Arab cohorts, the general uprising of the Egyptian people held great promise.

It would and well should have immediately opened Gaza, removed walls, fences, ended the naval blockade and put a friendly air force in Gaza skies.

Nothing of the kind happened, nothing of the kind is even spoken of.

While Mubarak awaits trial and execution for his secret complicity with Israel, Morsi calls on Egyptians to march on Syria in a jihad on behalf of Israel, something even Mubarak would never have contemplated.

You see, the Muslim Brotherhood is but another CIA “construct” from the Cold War days, one of several such as the Mujahedeen, ideological powerhouses to feed the wars on the periphery of the Soviet Union, Bosnia and Kosovo, Chechnya and Afghanistan.

All that was needed was to reach out and “draw water from the well.” Revolution for freedom was derailed and reactionary totalitarianism again reared its head.

Bahrain

This was proof, undeniable. A Shiite majority, long oppressed, long denied political expression, rose against a police state.

Rows of tanks from Saudi and the Persian Gulf States flowed in, painting a clear picture: Revolution is OK, so long as the new regime is weak, corrupt, compliant and servile.

Bahrain’s government, on each above count, had already gone as far as possible. There was no hope for improvement.

It had also become abundantly clear that a third force was managing the entire movement and that things were not as they seemed.

Nexus Control, “Strange Bedfellows”

Simply put, if America “wins” and Syria falls, America loses, in fact loses more than even the most imagine and America’s greatest critics are aware of.

Vis-à-vis Israel, the nomination of Hagel, the appointment of Dempsey and Rice were strong indications that the United States, at least the White House, was willing to steer a genuinely pro-American course, finally after years of unmistakable Zionist control and the ensuing disasters, incident after incident of false flag terrorism, espionage and economic warfare on America waged from Tel Aviv on an unprecedented scale and gross interference in US elections, bribery of public officials on a massive scale and orchestration of a “ham handed” and almost infantile program of psychological warfare using press and entertainment industry assets.

Then, in an inexplicable and puzzling way, particularly after President Obama’s May 23, 2013 speech calling for an end to new US military involvement, the president backed a report citing WMD use by the Assad government and authorized military aid to groups he knows are terrorists bent on killing Americans.

Al-Nusra is, in fact, made of up Saddam’s former Baathist security personnel credit for the killing of 5,000 American soldiers in Iraq.

Not only is this group, an al-Qaeda affiliate, still killing more and more every day in Iraq, they have already begun ethnically cleansing Christians in rebel occupied Syria and are militarily operating with air and artillery support from both Israel and Turkey.

In fact, there is no more determined enemy on earth set on destroying the United States than al-Nusra, a terrorist organization the US is now planning on handing, not only Syria to but Iraq as well.

Jordan would soon follow and, based on the flow of billions in oil revenue to al-Qaeda, now partnered with Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel, the nuclear threat continually parroted by the blitherings of DEBKA and the Times of Israel would become a reality.

The Syrian conflict that the US has agreed to bolster despite clear evidence that the Syrian people choose their own imperfect government over what is now obvious, a decade of sectarian violence followed by broad corruption and Western dominance, makes America’s bankrupt policies clear.

In fact, calling them “American policies” is, in itself, an absurdity. What nation would spend a decade creating an enemy where there was none, the purpose of the “war on terror,” quell that same conflict with military brutality and billions in bribes and then try to unleash another, guaranteed to be worse, perhaps endlessly so?

What has been set in motion is a plan, one tied to re-establishment of feudal rule, one likely to be built on the ashes of sectarian wars, ethnic cleansing and brutal suppression of human aspirations.

A similar plan is being put in motion for the Middle East as well.

CIA Manipulation: The Painful Truths Told by Phil Agee

By William Blum

Truly objective journalism would value facts and accuracy above all else, but the mainstream U.S. press – while pretending to be “objective” – treasures faux patriotism much more, as is evident with recent whistleblowers as it was with the hostility toward the late Phil Agee who exposed CIA crimes.

Before there was Edward Snowden, William Binney and Thomas Drake … before there was Bradley Manning, Sibel Edmonds and Jesselyn Radack … there was Philip Agee. What Agee revealed is still the most startling and important information about U.S. foreign policy that any American government whistleblower has ever revealed.

Philip Agee spent 12 years (1957-69) as a CIA case officer, most of it in Latin America. His first book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published in 1974 – a pioneering work on the Agency’s methods and their devastating consequences – appeared in about 30 languages around the world and was a best seller in many countries; it included a 23-page appendix with the names of hundreds of undercover Agency operatives and organizations.

Ex CIA Agent Philip Agee

Photo (L): Philip Agee, the CIA officer who blew the whistle on U.S. intelligence abuses in Latin America and elsewhere.

Under CIA manipulation, direction and, usually, their payroll, were past and present presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay and Costa Rica, “our minister of labor”, “our vice-president”, “my police”, journalists, labor leaders, student leaders, diplomats, and many others. If the Agency wished to disseminate anti-communist propaganda, cause dissension in leftist ranks, or have Communist embassy personnel expelled, it need only prepare some phony documents, present them to the appropriate government ministers and journalists, and – presto! – instant scandal.

Agee’s goal in naming all these individuals, quite simply, was to make it as difficult as he could for the CIA to continue doing its dirty work.

A common Agency tactic was writing editorials and phony news stories to be knowingly published by Latin American media with no indication of the CIA authorship or CIA payment to the media. The propaganda value of such a “news” item might be multiplied by being picked up by other CIA stations in Latin America who would disseminate it through a CIA-owned news agency or a CIA-owned radio station. Some of these stories made their way back to the United States to be read or heard by unknowing North Americans.

Wooing the working class came in for special treatment. Labor organizations by the dozen, sometimes hardly more than names on stationery, were created, altered, combined, liquidated, and new ones created again, in an almost frenzied attempt to find the right combination to compete with existing left-oriented unions and take national leadership away from them.

In 1975 these revelations were new and shocking; for many readers it was the first hint that American foreign policy was not quite what their high-school textbooks had told them nor what the New York Times had reported.

“As complete an account of spy work as is likely to be published anywhere, an authentic account of how an ordinary American or British ‘case officer’ operates … All of it … presented with deadly accuracy,” wrote Miles Copeland, a former CIA station chief and ardent foe of Agee. (There’s no former CIA officer more hated by members of the intelligence establishment than Agee; no one’s even close; due in part to his traveling to Cuba and having long-term contact with Cuban intelligence.)

In contrast to Agee, WikiLeaks withheld the names of hundreds of informants from the nearly 400,000 Iraq war documents it released.

In 1969, Agee resigned from the CIA (and colleagues who “long ago ceased to believe in what they are doing”).

While on the run from the CIA as he was writing Inside the Company – at times literally running for his life – Agee was expelled from, or refused admittance to, Italy, Britain, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway. (West Germany eventually gave him asylum because his wife was a leading ballerina in the country.)

Agee’s account of his period on the run can be found detailed in his book On the Run (1987). It’s an exciting read.

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2; Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower; West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir; Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire. Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org. This article was originally published in Blum’s Anti-Empire Report.

Department of Dirty Tricks

Why the United States needs to sabotage, undermine, and expose its enemies in the Middle East.

By Max Boot, Michael Doran | 

Bush and Saudi King

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." So said Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III. He was complaining about the impossibility of leaving the mafia behind, but the quote undoubtedly expresses the feelings of President Barack Obama as he contemplates the difficulty of extricating the United States from the Middle East. He is eager to pivot to Asia and sees bringing soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan as one of his most important legacies. Like the mafia, however, the Middle East has a way of pulling the United States back in. 

First in Afghanistan, then in Libya, and now in Syria, events on the ground and pressure from allies convinced a reluctant president to make new military commitments.

But if the United States wants to exert influence over events in this turbulent region, it will have to do more than provide military assistance. Even if the arms the United States will supply to the Syrian rebels were to topple President Bashar al-Assad -- which at the moment seems an unlikely outcome, barring the employment of American air power -- the bloodletting will almost certainly continue. Rival factions will compete for power, and American-backed forces under Gen. Salim Idriss and allied figures could easily lose out to the al-Nusrah Front and other Islamist extremists. Look at what's happened in Libya, where in the aftermath of Qaddafi's ouster, militias and militants exercise more authority than the central government. Or consider Egypt, where the downfall of a dictator has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist organization hostile to the United States and Israel, to consolidate authority in an increasingly authoritarian manner.

Clearly, the president needs options between military intervention and complete nonintervention -- ways to influence developments in the Middle East without deploying Reaper drones or sending U.S. ground forces. To give Obama the tools he needs, the U.S. government should reinvigorate its capacity to wage "political warfare," defined in 1948 by George Kennan, then the State Department's director of policy planning, as "the employment of all the means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives." Such measures, Kennan noted, were "both overt and covert" and ranged from "political alliances, economic measures (as ERP -- the Marshall Plan), and 'white' propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of 'friendly' foreign elements, 'black' psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states."

During the Cold War, the United States waged political warfare through a variety of mechanisms. It covertly funded noncommunist political parties in Europe and Japan; backed intellectual magazines like Encounter, an Anglo-American journal of opinion that flourished in the 1950s, as well as groups such as the Congress of Cultural Freedom, which organized artists and intellectuals against communism; and provided financial and logistical support to anti-Soviet dissidents like Lech Walesa and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. At their worst, such policies propped up strongmen with scant legitimacy -- think Cuban president Fulgencio Batista and the shah of Iran -- and invited anti-American "blowback." But at their best, they enabled the United States to aid freedom fighters behind the Iron Curtain and beyond. They were policies that helped to outflank communism in Europe and Asia, where free societies stood up to help the United States win the Cold War.

What distinguished political warfare from the amorphous and open-ended development and assistance programs that the United States currently runs was its emphasis on winning a global competition against the Soviet Union. In the era of the Marshall plan, for example, the United States did not simply develop, in a general sense, the economy of Europe. It did so with an eye to strengthening specific groups that were dedicated to weakening the enemy of the United States. More often than not, political warfare involves the application of "soft power." But it requires organizing ourselves so as to apply it against specific targets in order to achieve clearly defined goals. Influencing the flow of information was, therefore, a key component of Cold War political warfare.

Thus, during the 1980s, the U.S. government did not limit its involvement in Afghanistan to having the CIA arm the mujahideen. The now-defunct U.S. Information Agency also spread news globally about Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan (most notoriously, the rumored use of exploding toys to maim children). Tales of human-rights violations did much to undermine the Soviet Union's legitimacy and helped speed its collapse. Today, the president has very few tools at his disposal, other than statements from the podium, that allow him to direct the flow of information in a competitive manner. Consider, for example, the intervention by Hezbollah in Syria today. The number of fighters lost in that conflict, the brutality of their activities, and the cost to the treasury of Iran are all pieces of information -- if delivered to the right audiences in the Middle East -- which could help the United States to undermine the morale of rivals. But whose job is it in the United States government to collect such information and place it on a defined target?

With the end of the Cold War, America's tradition of political warfare all but died. Covert action was revived after the 9/11 attacks, but it has been primarily kinetic -- consisting of drone strikes, renditions, and commando raids. In fact, the lack of a complementary political strategy makes it impossible to undermine persistent foes, and forces us to rely more than we should on direct military action, which often does not achieve any lasting effect. A more indirect, politically focused approach is needed to exert American influence in countries like Egypt, where we have no intention of sending Reaper drones to kill Muslim Brotherhood leaders, but nevertheless need to counter the organization's hardline policies.

Reinvigorating America's capability to wage political warfare will not cost much -- and can be paid for by redirecting parts of the foreign aid, public diplomacy, and military budgets -- but it will require mobilizing autonomous bureaucracies to act in concert. The normal Balkanization of government will have to be replaced by a cooperative system in which operatives are encouraged to develop crosscutting skill sets; no longer will al Qaeda specialists be able to focus only on al Qaeda, or Iran specialists only on Iran.

Fortunately, a model already exists for this kind of organizational innovation. The counterterrorism apparatus created in the wake of 9/11 provides a good example of what must be built -- or, rather, expanded. This involved creating the National Counterterrorism Center, an intelligence community organization which brings together experts from the military, the CIA, NSA, FBI, and other agencies, and which works closely with other agencies such as the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security under the general supervision of a coordinator of homeland security and counterterrorism on the White House staff. As a first step, Obama should appoint a highly respected coordinator for political warfare to the National Security Staff, where most foreign policy decisions are made. Without the personal support of the president, this initiative will fail.

Second, the president should create a strategic operational hub -- an interagency coordinating body like the National Counterterrorism Center that pulls all of the government's efforts together -- housed within the State Department. Under an executive order signed by Obama in 2011, the State Department has already created a Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communicationsthat is designed to "coordinate, orient, and inform government-wide foreign communications activities targeted against terrorism and violent extremism." This is a step in the right direction, but it does not go nearly far enough.

The effort should aim, in the first instance, to counter not only terrorist groups like al Qaeda, but also malevolent organizations such as Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah, even in their nonviolent manifestations. Tactically, this should involve much more than simple overt messaging directly from the U.S. government. It should comprise efforts to build up rival groups in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere and to destroying the reputation of those organizations by using the profound information-gathering capabilities of the United States in ways that have become unfamiliar to today's generation of intelligence professionals and diplomats. Consider, for example, the effect on Hezbollah, an organization that thrives on secrecy, if the United States were to collect the names, photos, and home addresses of its unit commanders in Syria and to publish them in Lebanon, along with detailed descriptions of their activities on the battlefield. The goal should be to blend various forms of American power -- some of them clandestine, some of them not -- to shape the Middle East so as to make it less permissive to the rivals of the United States.

Third, the president should direct top-level government officials -- especially the secretary of state, secretary of defense, CIA director, and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development to create political warfare career tracks, which would result in the training and promotion of specialists in this area. Without separate career tracks, the bureaucracies will stigmatize and ostracize individuals who find political warfare rewarding and attractive.

Political warfare is an alien -- even sinister-sounding -- concept in 2013. But the United States will never be able to extricate itself from the Middle East until a more stable order arises -- and the current pendulum swing between military involvement and military withdrawal is unlikely to prove sustainable. In places like Libya and Syria, we must build up, through steady, painstaking engagement, political forces that share the strategic interests of the United States. There is admittedly a danger of American machinations blowing up in our faces, but current trends, if left unchanged, carry even greater dangers. If we do nothing and cede the Middle East to malign actors such as Iran, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood, groups which have no qualms about doing whatever it takes to seize power, we risk creating a situation that will require, at some point in the future another massive military intervention by the United States.

Covert tyranny of NSA spying

Edward Snowden

By Dr. Kevin Barrett

It’s official: The US National Security Agency is spying on you.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden made headlines around the world this week by revealing that the American spy services are blatantly violating the US Constitution by spying on everyone.

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America states that the government may not search or seize anything without “due process of law” - meaning a court order specifically describing what they are looking for and why. Under the Constitution, if the US government wants to read your email or Facebook postings, listen to your phone calls, bug your house, or otherwise intercept your private communications in any way, it must request a search warrant from a judge. That request must present evidence of criminal wrongdoing; the judge then decides whether or not to issue the warrant.

The NSA officials and their superiors in the executive branch who have chosen to violate the Constitution are committing a terrible crime. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Violating the Constitution is treason. And the penalty for treason is death.

Why are the US intelligence services illegally and unconstitutionally spying on 300 million Americans, and exposing themselves to eventual prosecution, conviction, and execution?

They claim they are “protecting us from terrorism.” But that claim is absurd. Even if 9/11 had been an actual terrorist attack rather than an inside job, terrorism still would be less of a threat to Americans than bathtub drownings and lightning strikes.

So what is their actual motivation?

In a word: Power.

Instant access to the private communications of everyone in the world offers the intelligence chiefs enormous power.

Today, that power is being used to maintain a “covert tyranny.” But some day in the not-so-distant future, as Edward Snowden recently told civil liberties expert Glenn Greenwald, the tyranny might become overt. The surveillance apparatus will be a “turn-key tyranny” system allowing a future leader or group to turn the key, achieve total control of all communications and openly install an absolute dictatorship beyond the worst nightmares of George Orwell.

But why would they even need to turn the key? The current system of “covert tyranny” offers surveillance chieftains something approaching absolute power - a power that is even more effective because it is invisible.

How does “covert tyranny” operate today?

The intelligence czars have access to everyone’s private communications. They use that access to neutralize potential threats to their power.

Here is how it worked in 1963: President John F. Kennedy’s phone was being tapped - unbeknownst to him - by the CIA. Kennedy believed he was keeping his peace initiatives secret from the CIA and the military. Unfortunately for him, the military and intelligence hard-liners were listening as Kennedy set up private back channels to Castro and Khrushchev, with the aim of ending the Cold War (and slashing the military and intelligence budgets).

Additionally, the CIA’s counterintelligence chief - a paranoid lunatic and alcoholic named James Jesus Angleton - was a hard-line Zionist and Mossad asset. Angleton and his Zionist friends, including Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion, were not happy that JFK was making an all-out effort to shut down Israel’s incipient nuclear program.

Based on the CIA’s secret surveillance of every move he made, JFK was deemed an “actionable threat to the national security.” The problem was resolved on November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza.

JFK was only one of thousands of victims of US “national security assassinations.” Another instructive case is that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The FBI and CIA collaborated as they spied on every move Dr. King made. They surveilled and made tape recordings of his extra-marital affairs, and mailed the recordings to Dr. King and his wife, along with repeated suggestions that he kill himself. They harassed Dr. King in every imaginable way, with the aim of driving him to suicide, or at least destroying his effectiveness as an activist.

But Dr. King stood up to the pressure. The more they spied on him and harassed him, the more strenuously he demanded an end to the Vietnam War. When Dr. King launched a plan to bring 500,000 people to Washington, DC and not leave until the war was ended and the poverty problem solved, US military intelligence, the CIA, and the FBI made the decision to end his life.

The assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, Dr. King, and Senator Paul Wellstone are extreme examples of covert tyranny. Unlike Stalin, who openly shot his enemies, US intelligence chiefs use a thin veneer of “plausible deniability” to disguise their political executions.

But for every threat to the intelligence chiefs’ power that is “neutralized” by execution, many thousands are neutralized in less extreme ways. With access to all private communications of all citizens, the covert tyrants can easily find ways to silence their opponents - or to “disable the purveyors of conspiracy theories” as Obama’s former information czar, Cass Sunstein, puts it.

One obvious method is blackmail. Somewhere, in the many years’ worth of private communications you have made using email or the telephone, you probably said or wrote something that you are not very proud of.

The National Security Agency is storing those emails and phone recordings.

All they have to do to shut you up is have someone tap you on the shoulder and remind you what you wrote or said, and how sad it would be if your phone calls or emails were made public.

Or maybe you have some vulnerability - some area in which you are especially sensitive, weak, open to persuasion, or vulnerable to being driven crazy. Guess what? The NSA knows all about that. They can profile you, and easily figure out how to neutralize you (or at least limit the threat you pose to them) simply by working with all of that information they’ve collected on you. After studying you carefully, they’ll know exactly which buttons to push, and how you’re likely to react when they push them.

How do they know which people to target, out of 300 million Americans? They don’t have to do all that much data-sifting to figure it out. It’s actually fairly obvious which people are potentially effective organizers of, say, the Occupy movement. Those are the people they profile. Then they do a threat assessment. “Is this individual such a potentially effective organizer, or charismatic speaker, that he or she should be regarded as an ‘actionable threat’?”

There are probably relatively few individuals who are deemed actionable threats. Why? Because only a few people possess the charisma, organizational skills, strategic intelligence, or other talents that pose a potential threat to the covert tyrants.

And among the few actionable threats, only a tiny handful are so savvy, charismatic, well-placed, or in a position to command resources that they need to be dealt with violently.

So when you say “Why should I care if they’re reading my email and listening to my phone calls, I have nothing to hide, and besides I’m not that important, anyway” you are probably correct. You probably aren’t smart enough, rich enough, connected enough, or committed enough to be worth bothering with.

They’ve got all your mails. They’ve got all your phone calls. But they probably aren’t even taking the trouble to profile you - much less deem you an “actionable threat.” They reserve that for key people in the Occupy, 9/11 truth, anti-war, and black nationalist movements.

The problem is not so much that you, personally, are in grave danger of having men in jackboots kick down your door and drag you off to a concentration camp.

The problem is that you are living under tyranny.

In some ways, the covert tyranny you are living under is worse than the overt, Stalinist variety. Under Stalin, at least everyone understood and privately acknowledged the truth.

The covert tyrants are worse, because they get inside your head, make you censor yourself, make you live a lie. After all, you never know when they’re watching… though actually, since Edward Snowden went public, you do know: They are ALWAYS watching… just like Orwell’s Big Brother, only from behind a veil of plausible deniability.

Since they own every communication you’ve ever made, resistance is futile.

They could always dig up some of your old emails, spin them, alter them a little, make you look really bad, maybe even hit you with trumped-up charges and drag you through the courts and ruin your life.

They could destroy your marriage.

They could turn your kids, or your parents, against you.

They could destroy your career - as they destroyed my academic career when they profiled me, decided they would use me as an example to scare other college professors into staying away from 9/11 truth, and launched a political witch-hunt.

If absolutely necessary, they could figure out your routine, and send a pro to assassinate you, as easily as you would swat a fly.

Resistance is futile.

That’s the message the covert tyrants are sending you every moment of every day.

Are you okay with that?

Or are you going to stand with Edward Snowden - and say that life under tyranny is pointless, and that risking everything, including our lives, is the only sane response to the insanity of the covert tyrants?