'Cruel and unusual' US human rights record

Philippine STAR’s front-page story last Monday cites a Washington Post report that in 2014 the US will start deploying P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance and anti-submarine aircraft and high-altitude surveillance drones in Asia-Pacific. This move follows a US strategy to “rebalance” its military forces towards the area vis-à-vis China’s rise as a regional economic-military power.

The drones are to be based in Guam (a US territory), says the report, but American officials are searching for Asian allies willing to host the unmanned spy aircraft.

The Post mentions other US plans: (1) base four littoral combat ships in Singapore, periodically “rotating” them to Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries; (2) conduct joint airborne surveillance missions from Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia; and (3) gain more regular access to Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay and greater accommodations in the Philippines, including the Subic naval base and the former Clark Air Base.

In sum, the US wants to exercise military “rotational presence” (the term used by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff chair) in sea-and-air port facilities of its allies — without having to pay the costly maintenance of permanent bases.

Since February the Aquino government has committed to cooperate with the US, in exchange for bigger military aid to the AFP. However, the nature and extent of such commitment(s) have not been divulged.

Fellow STAR columnists Dick Pascual and Billy Esposo have weighed in with this issue.

Dick asks whether P-Noy will level off with the Filipino people and tell them “the stiff price we have to pay” for the presumed US protection which is really just “moral support” under the 1971 Mutual Defense Treaty. `

On his part, Billy warns that the US strategy has “far-reaching consequences” while noting wryly, “Many of our countrymen think it’ll be for our protection without realizing that we could become the frontline of the US-China War.” 

In this space last June 16, I urged that before P-Noy can formalize his commitments to the US we examine these five factors:

(1) The US has been in a state of war against “terrorism” since 2001; (2) in attacking “targeted enemies” in any country, the US will rely mainly on remotely-operated drones to drop lethal bombs, and on airlifted special-forces commandos; (3) the US has dragged the Philippines into its interventionist wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq; (4) in these wars the US has shown the propensity to commit grievous human rights violations; and (5) the Philippines has figured in developing US counter-insurgency programs.

Note that the deployment of surveillance drones in Asia-Pacific is due to start in 2014 (when the US invasion forces withdraw from Afghanistan), and that America is seeking Asian allies willing to host them. 

What is P-Noy’s response to this, and to the US plan to conduct “joint airborne surveillance missions” from the Philippines?

Most certainly one objective of such surveillance missions will be to provide information to guide the CIA or Pentagon in sending bombing drones, or special-forces commandos, to attack US “targeted enemies” in any country. That can implicate us, if the Philippines agrees to host the drones or the commandos.

Just in time, former US President Jimmy Carter, 2002 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, has raised his voice against the US government’s increasing human rights violations, including drone attacks “in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone.”

“Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable,” Carter distressfully writes in an International Herald Tribune op-ed piece, titled “A cruel and unusual record.”

“We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each   one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times,” he laments.

“These policies clearly affect American foreign policy,” Carter emphasizes, elaborating: “Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us, and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.”

In short, here’s another US war policy — begun in Afghanistan by George W. Bush and continued on a wider scale by Barack Obama, who dubs it his “light-footprint” doctrine — that achieves the opposite of what it seeks to solve.

Carter’s essay is a veritable indictment of the government he once headed. His opening paragraph bluntly states: “The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.” 

Enjoining concerned citizens to “persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership,” Carter concludes:

“While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights in the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past… It is disturbing that instead of strengthening the (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) principles, our government’s counter-terrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the Declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’”

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