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A recent report by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation provides a detailed examination of the “secret” U.S. drone war in Pakistan. The report, Year of the Drone: Analysis of US Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004-2010, looks in particular at the civilian cost of the drone strikes.

Estimates of the number of civilians killed in the drone strikes vary widely. Some reports claim that civilians make up 98 percent of fatalities, while others claim that they make up only 10 percent. Bergen and Kiedemann attempted to compile their own number by looking at “reliable” Western and Pakistani news sources. According to their research, between 830 and 1210 individuals, of whom 550 to 850 can be said to have been militants, were killed in the 114 reported drone attacks in Pakistan from 2004 to 2010. This puts the level of civilian deaths at about 32 percent, or one third of the total number of fatalities.

Bergen and Tiedemann argue that the use of drones is problematic based on three key issues. Firstly, there is the issue of proportionality. Causing the deaths of a significant number of civilians in order to take out military targets goes against just war principles. Secondly, drone strikes have failed to have a major effect on the outcome in other theatres of operation, such as Iraq. Finally, the civilian casualties caused by the drone strikes have served as a recruiting tool for the insurgency in Pakistan.  Causing such casualties runs counter to the fundamental principles of the counter-insurgency strategy espoused by Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal.

Despite these concerns, the authors expect that drones will remain the primary U.S. tool for fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan.

Photo: U.S. Air Force

A report released last Monday by Amnesty International Canada (Canada and Human Rights in 2010: Time to Return to Leadership, February 2010) calls on the Canadian government to adopt a new vision on human rights promotion and protection and to once again make Canada a leader in advancing the international human rights agenda. With the world’s attention centred on Canada as the host of the just-completed Winter Olympics and the G8 and G20 Summits coming in June, this year offers the government an extraordinary opportunity to reclaim Canada’s historic role as a champion of human rights.

The Amnesty International Canada report embraces the Harper government’s pledge to tackle appallingly high maternal mortality rates around the world, but it asserts that the issue must be looked at through a human rights paradigm that understands maternal mortality as part of a larger problem of gender inequality, discrimination, and violence against women and girls.

The report identifies the G8 Summit in Huntsville and the G20 Summit in Toronto as crucial to developing international standards for business and human rights at a time when the world faces the twin challenges of recovering from the economic downturn and elevating a billion people out of extreme poverty. Amnesty International Canada, in coalition with a number of other organizations, is calling on the Canadian government to keep international human rights standards in mind during the Summit talks.

In addition to taking the lead in promoting human rights, Canada needs to address the problems that have cast doubt upon its commitment to protecting the human rights of its own citizens. The report calls on the government to reverse its failure to support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, end the discriminatory levels of funding for First Nations child protection agencies, and develop a comprehensive action plan to address violence against Indigenous women.

Internationally, the report calls on Canada to return to its “honest broker” role with respect to Israeli and Palestinian human rights issues, to arrange a public inquiry into the Afghan detainee scandal, and to repatriate Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay. It also recommends that the government make independent human rights assessments obligatory in its negotiation of free trade agreements, improve the protection it offers to refugees, and ratify the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The new federal budget commits the Harper government to going ahead with its planned increases in military spending in both the coming year (fiscal year 2010-11) and the next, after which, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says, the size of planned increases in military spending will be reduced for two years. The military budget is then projected to resume the upward track promised in the Harper government’s so-called Canada First Defence Strategy.

As Flaherty explains it, “Budget 2010 reduces growth in National Defence’s budget by $525 million in 2012–13 and $1 billion annually beginning in 2013–14. Defence spending will continue to grow but more slowly than previously planned.” The chart at right illustrates the Finance Minister’s explanation.

But for the time being at least, the government’s spending plans are about as clear as mud. For starters, Flaherty’s chart excludes incremental spending on Afghanistan and other operations, such as Olympics security. The actual level of military spending is thus higher than shown in the chart, although that extra amount is likely to decline as the Afghanistan mission winds down (assuming nothing comparable takes its place).

And that’s not all. While the chart shows a 2009-10 spending level of slightly more than $18 billion, the budgetary Main Estimates give a figure of $19.2 billion for that fiscal year–still not including the costs of Afghanistan and other operations. You have to go to the 2009-10 Report on Plans and Priorities to find the actual level of 2009-10 spending, which, once Afghanistan, other missions, and sundry supplementary top-ups are added, is expected to total more than $21 billion.

The military spending figure for the coming fiscal year, according to the Flaherty chart, will be about $19 billion, or nearly one billion more than in 2009-10. Meanwhile, the Main Estimates put the 2010-11 figure at $21.1 billion, or nearly $2 billion more than reported in the 2009-10 Main Estimates.

So are we looking at a 5% increase in military spending this year or a 10% increase? It’s likely that the 2010-11 Main Estimates figure includes most or all of expected incremental operations spending, whereas the 2009-10 figure did not, so the increase is probably closer to 5%, but we don’t yet know that for sure. The 2010-11 Report on Plans and Priorities will give us the most complete and reliable figure, but that document hasn’t been released yet. It may be out later this month.

In the meantime, count on the usual suspects to call the government’s promise to reduce the rate of increase in the military budget a couple of years from now a cut in the budget. The rest of us can wonder how the 2.7% annual increases promised in the Canada First Defence Strategy turned into something that looks more like a 5% (or greater) increase in this year of supposed restraint.

Frank Gaffney, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration and President of the Center for Security Policy, comments on the “new” logo of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency:

The Obama administration’s determined effort to reduce America’s missile defense capabilities initially seemed to be just standard Leftist fare — of a piece with the Democratic base’s visceral hostility to the idea of protecting us against ballistic missile threats. A just-unveiled symbolic action suggests, however, that something even more nefarious is afoot….

Now, thanks to an astute observation by Christopher Logan of the Logans Warning blog, we have another possible explanation for behavior that — in the face of rapidly growing threats posed by North Korean, Iranian, Russian, Chinese and others’ ballistic missiles — can only be described as treacherous and malfeasant:  Team Obama’s anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte.  They seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah.

What could be code-breaking evidence of the latter explanation is to be found in the newly-disclosed redesign of the Missile Defense Agency logo (above).  As Logan helpfully shows, the new MDA shield appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo….

Watch this space as we identify and consider various, ominous and far more clear-cut acts of submission to Shariah by President Obama and his team. (Frank Gaffney, “Can This Possibly Be True? New Obama Missile Defense Logo Includes A Crescent,” Big Government, 24 February 2010, emphasis added.)

Can he possibly be serious? Mr. Gaffney is always serious. He resigned from his position at the Pentagon when the Reagan administration went soft on arms control and agreed to sign the INF Treaty.  He was among the 25 original signatories associated with the Project for the New American Century. Last October, he awarded the Center for Security Policy’s “Keeper of the Flame” award to former U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney.  He will undoubtedly be among the prominent critics of any nuclear arms control initiative undertaken by the Obama administration.

And the logo? The Missile Defense Agency reports that, apart from having nothing whatsoever to do with either Islam or Obama, its supposedly “new” logo was designed for the agency’s website about three years ago–during the George W. Bush administration. (For more on Gaffney and other right-wing reaction to the logo, see Max Bergmann, “Frank Gaffney Posits That Missile Defense Logo Is Evidence of Obama’s ‘Submission to Shariah’,” Think Progress, 25 February 2010.)

In February, Ceasefire.ca launched its campaign to make Canada a UN
peacekeeper again. To kick off the campaign, we co-hosted Prof. Walter Dorn
in conversation with the Globe and Mail’s Gloria Galloway in Ottawa. 

CPAC - PUBLIC RECORD
On February 11th, in Ottawa, Walter Dorn (Canadian Forces College) and The
Globe and Mail’s Gloria Galloway had a conversation entitled “Will Canada
Be a UN Peacekeeper Again?”

Presented by the Ottawa Out Front Speaker Series
Rideau Institute | Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Media Partner: The Hill Times/Embassy

Watch it online: CPAC Video on Demand

Dismantle them.

The Obama administration continues to struggle to complete its review of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. The Nuclear Policy Review was originally scheduled for completion in December 2009, but disagreements within the administration between hardliners in the Pentagon and National Security Council and supporters of greater nuclear reductions, thought to include the President, have delayed completion of the document.

The Guardian reported on Sunday that Obama has ordered a draft of the policy document rewritten to more closely match his disarmament objectives (Peter Beaumont, “Barack Obama orders new nuclear review amid growing feud,” Guardian, 28 February 2010).

The New York Times has a somewhat different take on the story, however, reporting on Monday that a nearly complete version of the review, with options for resolving the remaining issues, would be presented to the President by Defense Secretary Robert Gates later that day (David E. Sanger & Thom Shanker, “White House is Rethinking Nuclear Policy,” New York Times, 1 March 2010).

The administration hopes to complete the review process this month or next.

Among the questions to be resolved in the review are the scale of reductions that the Obama administration will seek to implement and whether or not to make changes in the role ascribed to nuclear weapons, their level of alert, and the geographic deployment of the weapons. Quiet discussions are already underway with the NATO allies about possible changes to NATO nuclear policy, which could include an end to the NATO “nuclear-sharing” program and/or the withdrawal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from Europe.

The Langevin Block (on right), home of the Prime Minister's Office, looms over the Parliament buildings. Parliament remains prorogued until March 3rd.

According to a recent poll conducted by Nanos Research, 42% of Canadians think the Prime Minister’s Office has too much power  (Campbell Clark, “PMO too powerful, Canadians say,” Globe and Mail, 24 February 2010). Nine percent of Canadians think that the PMO has too little power, while 40% responded that it has the right amount.

By comparison, only 33% of Canadians feel that the Senate has too much power and only 13% think the House of Commons has too much power.

The Prime Minister and other members of his party have repeatedly called for an elected rather than appointed Senate. But that position hasn’t stopped him from appointing 33 Senators (32 of whom are still sitting)–all Conservatives–since he took office four years ago. As a result, the Conservative Party, which received 37.6% of the vote in the last election and currently sits at about 33% in the polls, now occupies approximately half of the seats in the Senate. This will bring the upper house of Parliament under the Prime Minister’s control once the new session of Parliament begins.

Liberal Prime Ministers also made a practice of stacking the Senate with their supporters, but they occasionally appointed members of other parties as well. Among the 17 Senate appointments made by Paul Martin during his two years in office, for example, were three Conservatives, one Progressive Conservative, and one New Democrat.

Photo by Mikey G Ottawa