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Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at Camp Lemonnier in Dec. 2011 (Photo by US Department of Defense)
The Washington Post has published a third story in its series on the Obama administration’s institutionalization of its targeted killing program. This story highlights Camp Lemmonier, the United States military base in Djibouti where drones land or take off around sixteen times a day, and is reportedly the first time the US military has confirmed publicly drones are present at this base.
Written by Craig Whitlock, the story reports this base has become the main combat hub for “the Obama administration’s counterterrorism wars in the Horn of Africa and Middle East.” Drones either head for “the collapsed state” of Somalia, which is just 10 miles southeast, or “north across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, another unstable country where they are being used in an increasingly deadly war with an al Qaeda franchise.”
The Predator drones being flown are prone to accidents. In a few cases, they have even become sentient.
In March 2011, a Predator parked at the camp started its engine without any human direction, even though the ignition had been turned off and the fuel lines closed. Technicians concluded that a software bug had infected the “brains” of the drone, but never pinpointed the problem.
“After that whole starting-itself incident, we were fairly wary of the aircraft and watched it pretty closely,” an unnamed Air Force squadron commander testified to an investigative board, according to a transcript. “Right now, I still think the software is not good.”
“All told, about 3,200 U.S. troops, civilians and contractors are assigned to the camp,” according to The Post. Foreign militaries are trained, intelligence is gathered and humanitarian aid to East Africa to hopefully combat extremism is handed out. And, this information is not known because, suddenly, the Obama administration has chosen to be transparent in its operations.
As has been typical of the Obama administration’s national security operations, Whitlock writes, “The Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the legal and operational details of its targeted-killing program.”
A Post reporter had to show up uninvited to talk to officers and receive answers to general queries about the camp. According to Whitlock, “The U.S. military rejected requests from The Washington Post to tour Lemonnier last month. Officials cited “operational security concerns,” although they have permitted journalists to visit in the past.” But, The Post obtained “thousands of pages” of “construction blueprints, drone accident reports and internal planning memos.” The news organization was able to dig through and pull out some details that paint a fuller picture of operations at the base.
The 500-acre camp is the location where “orders to find, track or kill” people in the targeting database the Obama administration has termed the “disposition matrix.” It is a launch pad for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) forces and where the drone that executed Anwar al-Awlaki took off.
The military recognizes the value of the outpost in Djibouti:
…[A]s far as the U.S. military is concerned, the country’s strategic value is unparalleled. Sandwiched between East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, Camp
Lemonnier enables U.S. aircraft to reach hot spots such as Yemen or Somalia in minutes. Djibouti’s port also offers easy access to the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.
“This is not an outpost in the middle of nowhere that is of marginal interest,” said Amanda J. Dory, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for Africa. “This is a very important location in terms of US interests, in terms of freedom of navigation, when it comes to power projection.”…
What Dory’s comment clearly indicates is the United States is engaged in contemporary colonialism.
Sasha Davis of the University of Hawaii wrote in 2011 that US military bases are a part of a global network of bases “designed to be a permanent infrastructure that allows military power to be shifted with post-Fordist efficiency from some sites in the network to other places ‘just-in-time’ and according to perceived crisis that challenge US hegemony.”
…For instance in 2004 both former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Deputy Undersecretary Ryan Henry discussed the new base network side-by-side with a refusal to pinpoint geographically where they thought threats to the United States might be located. Henry only commented that the US “strove to base forces in locations that supported flexibility and speed of response to anywhere in an unpredictable environment”…
These hundreds of bases are not for the national defense of America. They are for offensive operations that are often covert. The people of the country hosting operations do not get to know how land in their country is being used (i.e. to assassinate people on a kill list). They are also in places where resistance to a US military presence is not likely to pose a threat to continued operations (to avoid problems that have arisen in places like Okinawa, Japan).
The US State Department acknowledges policies that are generally repressive exist in Djibouti: “harsh but improving prison conditions, corruption, prolonged pretrial detention, and restrictions on freedom of the press and assembly.”
A “Security Questionnaire” on Djibouti from the State Department released by WikiLeaks, as part of the US State Embassy cables release, details anti-government demonstrations in 2008.
The country suffers from poverty and hunger. Demonstrations were held to protest “inadequate social services and poor economic conditions, particularly the lack of food, electricity and water, coupled with increasing prices and high unemployment.” Demonstrations in July and August 2008 were over “food and the host government’s relocation of poor residents.”
On July 31, 2008, an estimated 200 poor immigrants from the Ariba district of the capital city of Djibouti engaged in a violent clash with police as they protested the government’s removal and displacement of residents in the capital’s Balballa area. Tear gas was dispersed on the excitable crowd, and calm and order was restored within two hours.
On August 11, 2008, over 500 people, mainly nomads from rural communities and Ethiopian immigrants, protested at the offices of the host government’s refugee agency, in the neighborhood near the Presidential residence (within 2 miles from Embassy residences) over the lack of food in the country and the improper distribution of food aid.
As Reporters Without Borders describes the country, “There is no media freedom in Djibouti. This is one of the few African countries without any privately-owned or independent media. At the same time, the international media show little interest in this small Horn of Africa country although it is strategically located at the entrance to the Red Sea and has French, US and Japanese military bases.”
Djibouti is a dream paradise for a hub, where covert military operations are launched to assassinate individuals in areas away from any current theaters of declared war. It is a perfect sanctuary for America’s perpetual war to further normalize the idea that the world is a battlefield, where the US can launch attacks anywhere it deems appropriate.
The increasingly entrenched policy of state-sanctioned murder is intentionally shielded. A counterterrorism adviser that the Senate does not confirm oversees the program. Congress is kept from providing oversight. A president can share aspects of the program that make it look tough and righteous, while concealing the aspects that invite scrutiny of operations. There is no requirement of transparency because all can be cloaked in secrecy in the name of national security. It is completely dictatorial and paves the way for a robotic death squad to be unleashed and operate in whatever manner it chooses without any constraints whatsoever.
17 Comments
The benevolent dictator or monarch seems to be Obama’s argument for allowing these breaches of our Constitutional rights and our moral authority in the rest of the world. If the question is Where do you draw the line? Obama has already crossed the last line you could cross and still consider yourself morally superior to your terrorist enemy. That’s notwithstanding the immorality of the Bush Administration that in many ways never ended.
Hurray for Skynet!
But seriously…
Yet the assassinations continue. It’s just so scary. And is it far-fetched to envision the day where the software gets a virus embedded that allows the drone to be hijacked?
Or as you pointed out turn on their human master;) What F&^%*#% sad place Amerika has become.
One should be more concerned about wrong targeting, false positives, and trigger happy operators, all of which are concealed behind the shroud of secrecy.
Erratic, clandestine robotic killing machines raining death from the sky. What could go wrong?
Maybe Mr. Bogg would like to let us know how cool he thinks this is?
uh-oh, you’re asking for it! We are only killing really bad guys. Obamba knows. My guess is president Willard suddenly won’t be as accurate with it.
While I’m no fan of some frontpagers… I seem to recall Kevin explicitly asking us to refrain from going “there.”
I see your point. Just saying…
The story about the drone mysteriously starting indicates that there is remote startup capability, which makes the drone vulnerable to hacking.
Cue again my spiel on how drones are fundamentally destabilizing technology that increases the likelihood of conflict and retaliation without delivering major benefits. And also implicitly alters the balance of powers between the three branches of the US government, significantly adding to Presidential power.
Thank you, Kevin, for this post.
When discussing the “control of Djibouti, it is wise to also include the reality of America’s long and heavy-handed “influence” in Ethiopia and the “interest” America has increasingly been “showing” in Eritrea, a nation which wants no part of that “interest”, btw …
Beyond these countries, is the Gulf of Aden, to the East, and that raises the question of which very large exporting nation relies on safe passage through that Gulf, up the Red Sea, and then through the Suez canal … to reach European markets?
The longer-range “purpose” of the colonialism which Kevin describes, goes beyond interests in the Horn of Africa and even the Middle East … especially if Okinawa is no longer “available” …
World-wide “hegemony” requires no less than truly endless “war”.
Buckle up, strap down, and hang on, as “looking forward”, the future awaits.
“The one indispensable nation”, as Barack Obama now describes the “Homeland” … has big plans, VERY big plans.
DW
That “balance” has been “shifting” since before the end of WWII, TD, we are merely witnessing it fulfilled success. Congress, the legislative “branch”, wants no part of their Constitutional responsibilities, of oversight and “declaration” … and the judicial “branch” has willfully chosen to blind itself to its obligations and responsibilities, thus the executive may do as it wishes, beyond the law and beyond reason … the “power” it claims to kill anyone, anywhere, and any time, without due process, on the mere assertion that it “can” … puts paid to ANY thought this this is a temporary “aberration” … this IS the New World Order.
Drones are, as you say, fundamentally destabilizing … yet that is precisely what the executive, for decades has sought, deliberately and intentionally, to do to that “balance” … “conflict” between the “branches” is done, will not and cannot occur … and the major beneficiary is whoever hold the reigns of power … which, at some point, will NOT be willingly “transferred” … even for the “good of the country” … indeed, between the legacy parties, there is no longer any “transference”, merely a changing of the “guard”.
DW
Oil and Natural Gas. The drones are being misused? The land is well located for energy development. Now get off our natgas/oil???
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/dj.html
The technological basis of a shift in the balance of the branches occurred with the creation of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II. But it was the era of the 20-minute warning of attack that put operational power, and Congress rushed to grant it, into the hands of the President. But that was the power to declare war.
And the War Powers Act passed after Watergate made a half-hearted attempt to force Congress to declare war. Which, like the resolutions that authorized Korea and Vietnam and the Authorizations to Use Military Force of the George W. Bush administration became a means of ducking responsibility for consideration of the consequences.
What drones do has to do with the power to assassinate, which is a more pervasive power than just the unilateral power to order a war.
When I say drones are destabilizing, I mean not only do they increase executive power, they increase if for every organization (state or non-state) that can put together a drone fleet.
So the domestic political decision-making processes tend to freeze even as drones in the international environment work to undercut hegemonies.
IMO, drones are to the American empire what the exclusive reliance on foreign mercenaries were to the later period of the Roman empire. Sources of serious blowback.
Aintcha heard. The US is the new Saudi Arabia without having to exploit those furriners.
Don’t believe a word they say. The perpetual war is nothing more than a front to advance energy interests. A continuation of policy in place for decades. Feed the beast…….
Excellent history, TD.
I agree with your assessment, and analysis.
The “power” to assassinate is a sea-change of tyrannical proportion, uncharted, and very dangerous territory … completely beyond the “limits” of “balanced” restraint or ANY meaningful oversight and “control”.
Your description of “destabilization” is spot-on.
The decision-making “process” likens the use of drone to mowing a lawn … once begun it must continue … even as you very accurately describe the increasing effort to resist such desire for hegemony.
“Blowback” is inevitable, however that fact is denied by all “believers” and will continue to be denied …
DW
Did he really? That fascist sack of shit.
Yes, all the rest of you are dispensable, but we are not. The next time some O-bot tells me how the Drone King, Serial Killer Obama, has “restored respect for America internationally”, I will laugh in their face before I spit in it.
Did Bush ever say that? Just wondering…
Hail, the Obama! Hail, Victory!