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Drone strike kills militant linked to Charlie Hebdo attack: U.S.
Gunmen gesture as they return to their car after the attack outside the offices of French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo (seen at rear) in this still image taken from amateur video shot in Paris January 7, 2015. REUTERS/Reuters TV
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. drone strike in Syria has killed an Islamic State militant linked to the Jan. 7 2015 attack on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, defense officials said on Friday.
Boubaker el Hakim was killed late last month in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s defacto capital in Syria, the officials said, adding he was believed to be involved with planning the attack.
Charlie Hebdo, known for its satirical covers gleefully ridiculing political and religious leaders, lost many of its top editorial staff when brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, armed with assault rifles and other weapons, broke into an editorial meeting and killed 12 people and wounded 11 others.
The attacks prompted a worldwide solidarity movement, with the “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) slogan going viral on social media.
Islamic State, which has controlled parts of Iraq and Syria in recent years, has lost some territory this year to Iraqis and Syrians supported by a U.S.-led coalition of air strikes and advisers. Apart from the killings at Charlie Hebdo, Islamic State sympathizers around the world have carried out other shootings and bombings of civilians.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Grant McCool) Reuters December 9, 2016
In Trump’s Cabinet, how many generals is too many generals?
President-elect Donald Trump with retired U.S. Marine Corps General John Kelly, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn and retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis. (Photo illustration by Yahoo News, photos: Carolyn Kaster/AP, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, Carolyn Kaster/AP [2] )
Back in 1964, at the height of the Cold War, Hollywood heartthrob Burt Lancaster starred as Gen. James Mattoon Scott in the movie “Seven Days in May.” The film was a fictional account of a Scott-led military plot to unseat a liberal president, played by Lyndon Johnson lookalike Fredric March. The plot was eventually revealed, the coup stymied, Scott was fired and one of our nation’s central democratic values redeemed — that civilians give the orders, and military officers follow them.
“Seven Days in May” was enormously popular, in part because it played to public fears that the military had gained “unwarranted influence” in what Dwight Eisenhower had (just four years before) dubbed the military-industrial complex. Poll numbers at the time, though obviously skewed by the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, reflected this wariness, with a little over 50 percent of the public saying they had great confidence in their men and women in uniform. Americans admired their military — but only to a point.
How times have changed. The U.S. military is now the most respected of our government’s institutions, with a recent poll showing that fully 73 percent of the American people have “great confidence” in its capabilities. The same poll shows that of the military’s separate branches, the U.S. Marines are the most prestigious, while the Army is viewed as the most important. That’s good news for Donald Trump, who has appointed two retired Marine officers (Gen. James Mattis and Gen. John Kelly) and an Army officer (Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn) to key positions in his administration — but is it good for the country?
Not everyone thinks so.
While Trump’s appointment of retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to be his new administration’s secretary of defense was greeted with relief by critics who argued that the president-elect had a deficit in foreign policy experience, new questions have been raised by Trump’s announcement that Mattis would be joined by Kelly (nominated for secretary of Homeland Security) and Flynn (as national security adviser), and by reports that former Gen. David Petraeus might be joining the Trump team as secretary of state. The appointments would place the new administration’s most important foreign policy positions in the hands of former military officers, for the first time that has happened in American history.
Former CIA Director David Petraeus arrives to meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower New York, U.S., Nov. 28, 2016. (Photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
“I think the appointments are very problematic,” says James Joyner, an Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm and an associate professor of security studies at the Marine Corps University, “though not because I’m worried about civilian control of the military. This isn’t about civilian control, it’s about military influence.”
Joyner, who recently wrote about his doubts in a New York Times op-ed, adds that Trump has not only appointed military officers to high positions, he’s selected officers who openly clashed with President Obama. Mattis was forcibly retired for openly disagreeing with the president on Iran, Kelly publicly criticized Obama’s immigration views as commander of the U.S. Southern Command, and Flynn was forced out of his job as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for being “disruptive.”
“The president-elect can choose whoever he wants as his top aides, so it’s natural that he would appoint people he trusts,” Joyner says. “But this looks like more than that. It’s almost as if Mr. Trump has decided that being anti-Obama is a requirement for getting a high-level position in the new administration. And that’s worrisome.” Joyner is quick to add that his reservations are not based on personal dislikes (“James Mattis is competent and careful,” he says), but based on his worries that, while Trump has assured himself he will get military advice, its imperative that he also receive a political perspective — that is, one that is not shared by the military.
Diane Mazur, author of the highly regarded “A More Perfect Military: How the Constitution Can Make Our Military Stronger” and an emeritus professor of law at the University of Florida, agrees. She argues that while “we could certainly do worse” than having Mattis as secretary of defense, Trump’s appointment of him is “careless and lazy” — a way for the new administration to inoculate itself from criticism. “When public adoration of the military is at its highest, real accountability for military judgment is necessarily at its lowest,” she points out. “This is exactly the wrong time to have a secretary of defense who can never be fully accountable because of our unwillingness to challenge what generals say.”
More simply, Mazur repeats Dwight Eisenhower’s famous warning about “unwarranted influence.” But the problem now, she says, is “undue deference” — a public willingness to exempt military officers from criticism because they have put their lives on the line in defense of their country. Indeed, a spate of recent articles have cast critics of Trump’s Mattis appointment as showing “disrespect” for “the servicemen who lost their lives” in combat.
Critics of the Mattis appointment are not the only ones feeling the pressure. Mazur’s concern over “undue deference” has been heightened by the widespread assumption that Mattis will unquestionably win a Congressional waiver from a law that requires that no commissioned officer in the armed services can serve as secretary of defense without spending seven years out of uniform. The law has only been applied in one case: when the Senate was asked to confirm George C. Marshall as defense secretary back in 1950. One of the reasons Congress appears willing to grant the waiver is that the vote is increasingly being cast not as a question of politics, but one of patriotism, with a vote for the waiver as reflecting support for America’s men and women in uniform — while a vote against it would be unpatriotic.
Another of Mazur’s concerns is what she calls the “militarization of civilian control.” Or, as Mazur, a former Air Force officer, puts it, “We already have a full complement of generals and admirals on active duty. We don’t need another general to supervise all the other generals. Selecting a secretary of defense from the military bubble cuts out valuable perspectives on policy that are broader than the military’s own interests.”
Indeed, it’s an open question whether a lifelong Marine, like Mattis, has the political skills that come with the job of running the Pentagon. It’s not simply that, as defense secretary, he will be in the chain of command, with enormous influence over questions of war and peace, but that he will now be running the largest and most complex bureaucracy in the world: mediating inter-service disputes, wrestling with the Congress over the defense budget, canceling or promoting new weapons acquisitions, riding herd on often recalcitrant civilian policy makers, identifying and funding new technologies — or firing incompetent senior military officers.
“In many ways, the appointment of General Mattis as defense secretary provides us with an important opportunity,” Joyner says, “because it requires us to refocus on what we mean by civilian control of the military.” For Joyner, Mazur and others, it is not simply that one official is in uniform while another is not. Rather, the appointment of influential generals to the nation’s most important national security positions means that, in the new Trump administration, the military’s views will be reinforced instead of questioned.
Indeed, for public policy makers of Mr. Trump’s generation, the Mattis appointment turns the “Seven Days in May” scenario on its head. In an important moment in the movie, a U.S. senator questions whether Lancaster, in his role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is right to publicly disagree with the president. Lancaster, as General Scott, angrily responds: “We’re talking about the survival of the United States, is my uniform a disqualification in that area?” The answer is obvious: Policy makers are required to listen to those who serve — but, as Joyner and Mazur make clear, agreeing with their views should not be automatic.
_____
Mark Perry writes regularly on military issues. His most recent book, The Most Dangerous Man In America, the Making of Douglas MacArthur, was released in 2014. His next book, The Pentagon’s Wars, will be released next year. Source: Mark Perry of
Yahoo News December 9, 2016
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Clinton Supporters Sob During An Appearance
Photo Source : Twitter
It’s easy to imagine that for most Hillary Clinton supporters, meeting the Democratic nominee in person would be a very emotional experience – especially after such a long and difficult campaign. And as one video from NBC’s Monica Alba proves, it will be a while yet before that changes.
During an event in honor of retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday, Clinton gave a brief speech addressing the dangers of fake news before joking about how she’d assumed the election would go in a very different direction. The speech earned her a standing ovation, but it was what happened after that’s guaranteed to hit you right in the feels.
According to Alba, Clinton reportedly went to greet some of her running-mate Tim Kaine’s staffers and “young supporters” after her speech, which made all of them very emotional – so much so that they began to sob. It’s an intimate moment that proves just how much Clinton’s campaign mattered to many young voters, and she handles it with grace.
You can watch the clip for yourself below:
After the Reid event, Hillary Clinton greeted several Kaine staffers and young supporters, some of whom can be heard sobbing in this video pic.twitter.com/DRq0BApck1
– Monica Alba (@albamonica) December 8, 2016
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Cosmopolitan December 9, 2016
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SMC, gov’t to build new drug rehab center
Delivering on an earlier commitment to support the government’s campaign against drugs, San Miguel Corp. (SMC), through its social development arm San Miguel Foundation, has signed an agreement to construct a drug rehabilitation facility in the province of Bataan.
The facility is the first of several that SMC is looking to build under a P1-billion donation it pledged to the government last August.
Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr., Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno, Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial, Bataan Gov. Albert Garcia, SMC president Ramon Ang and Rowena Kristina Amara Velasco of non-profit Pilipinong May Puso Foundation Inc. (PMPF) signed the agreement.
Under the agreement, SMC will provide funding and undertake construction of the rehabilitation facility. It will be built on land identified and provided by the Bataan provincial government.
The Department of Health will run and maintain the facility and will provide specifications for the facility in consultation with the Department of the Interior and Local Government and the Office of the President.
For its part, the PMPF will develop and provide sustainable livelihood programs and capability-building activities for recovering drug dependents.
It will also provide skills training at the facility. These will include modules on entrepreneurship, handicrafts, basic computer and information technology skills, horticulture and animal raising, among others.
“We’re fully supportive of our government’s anti-drug dependency efforts. We want to be able to do our part in helping drug dependents reform – especially the youth. With the right guidance, we’re hopeful they can re-enter society with positivity and become productive individuals,” Ang said.
“This is why we are putting a lot of energy and thought into this program. More than just a physical structure, we want this facility to have significant meaning to many families who have been affected by illegal drugs. We hope it will provide former drug users the means to truly change their lives for the better, for good,” he added. Source : The Philippine Star
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