Four re-posts dealing with American drone warfare and hegemony. Since all four posts were written over a year ago, the statistics, of course, have seriously (exponentially) increased.
"What Do You Call a Country Willing to Exterminate People? America."
Submitted by libbyliberal on Thu, 05/27/2010 - 2:57am
According to the website Pakistan Body Count, over 1000 civilians have been killed by American drone attacks on Pakistan.
The number of so-called al Qaeda who have been killed is said to be 30 or so. But even if the number of al Qaeda killed by drone missiles was the same as the number of civilians - at a thousand - it doesn't make the video games any less illegal and immoral.
Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier, reporting eye witness testimony of a Pakistan social worker of the scene after a drone attack:
The social worker recalled arriving at a home that was hit, in Miranshah, at about 9:00 p.m., close to one year ago. The house was beside a matchbox factory, near the degree college. The drone strike had killed three people. Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn't pick up the charred parts in one piece. Finding scraps of plastic they transported the body parts away from the site. Three to four others joined in to help cover the bodies in plastic and carry them to the morgue.
But these volunteers and nearby onlookers were attacked by another drone strike, 15 minutes after the initial one. 6 more people died. One of them was the brother of the man killed in the initial strike.
The social worker says that people are now afraid to help when a drone strike occurs because they fear a similar fate from a second attack. People will wait several hours after an attack just to be sure. Meanwhile, some lives will be lost that possibly could have been saved.
The social worker also told us that pressure from the explosion, when a drone-fired missile or bomb hits, can send bystanders flying through the air. Some are injured when their bodies hit walls or stone, causing fractures and brain injuries.
Kelly and Brollier also quote from Jane Mayer’s 2009 New Yorker article “The Predator War.”
"People who have seen an air strike live on a monitor described it as both awe-inspiring and horrifying. 'You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff,' a former C.I.A. officer who was based in Afghanistan after September 11th says of one attack."
"Human beings running for cover are such a common sight that they have inspired a slang term: 'squirters.'"
Kelly and Brollier, again:
In U.S. newspapers, reports on drone attacks often amount to about a dozen words, naming the place and an estimated number of militants killed. The journalist and social worker from North Waziristan asked us why people in the U.S. don't ask to know more.
Brian Cloughley, again:
And the CIA's soundless and terrifying drones were menacing people who cowered in their houses waiting in terror for another flashing crashing strike from the sky. Nobody knew who next might die at the whim of the robots.
God Bless America.
[snip]
US drone strikes, although undoubtedly technically amazing, are not only illegal but asinine and entirely counterproductive. They cause, in CIA terms, 'blowback.' They are what the Brits would call an "own goal."
There has been much scholarly debate about the legality or otherwise of US drone strikes within Pakistan. But it is difficult to see how extra-judicial killing of citizens of a friendly country, within their own country or anywhere else, is in some fashion permissible.
American citizens, the new “good Germans”?
2nd Re-post: "Tom Engelhardt: Demon Drones ..."
Submitted by libbyliberal on Fri, 07/02/2010 - 6:10am
They don't get hungry. They are not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.
(They also don’t commit suicide, desert, suffer PTSD, become conscientious objectors, protest, talk to Rolling Stone or send embarrassing videos to Wikileaks!)
The above non-parenthetical remarks were made by Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon Joint Forces Command bragging about America’s efficient, stealthy and deadly “wonder weapon”, the drone. I came across a troubling and enlightening article about drones by Tom Engelhardt. Engelhardt observes:
After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights unending, unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this. If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens’ army proved disastrous for Washington’s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making.
Engelhardt shares an image from Christopher Drew of the New York Times of a "video warrior" before a console, as if accessing his or her PlayStation (remember Matthew Broderick's inadvertent unleashing of imminent global disaster in War Games?), casually armed with coffee or Red Bull to help him or her endure a 12-hour shift, sitting 7,000 miles away from the soon-to-be targets of horrifying, burn-to-ash annihilation.
Engelhardt explains that an entire drone “crew” is comprised of the young pilot (this is his or her generation’s forte, after all), the cameraperson and the intelligence analyst. He goes on:
The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t.
Engelhardt asserts that the drone warfare enabling such profound detachment of human beings from the battle (on only one side, he adds) is a “basic redefinition of what war is about.”
Engelhardt discloses a disturbing history related to the drones. Interestingly, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Tenet visited the Congress in Sept. 2002 to make the case for War with Iraq, they ramped up the fantasy of Saddam’s attacking US cities with chemical weaponry. Included in their provocative scenario was the specter of unmanned aerial vehicles transporting and spraying the devastating chemicals. As Senator Ben Nelson of Florida later revealed, he had become convinced ships off the eastern seaboard would be arriving with such UAVs and their deadly cargo.
The Bushco story of WMDs was a big fat lie. The story about the UAVs armed with WMDs attacking our coast was also a big fat lie. How typical of the neocon playbook. What they claim to want to defend the U.S. against – like terrorism or drone warfare – is soon enough what they themselves perpetrate.
Engelhardt reveals that drone surveillance planes were used over Kosovo in the late 1990s. By late November 2001, they were armed with missiles flying over Afghanistan.
In November 2002, a Predator drone unleashed a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen. We were not at war with this country! Six suspected al Qaeda members were pulverized. Engelhardt calls this “the first targeted killings of the American robotic era.”
The drones would also strike again and again in Afghanistan, especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan where an escalating, not–so-secret covert war was happening. There were multiple drone attacks each week. Iraq urban areas would also be hit hard by drones.
Engelhardt points out that by now Americans have become so acclimated to cryptic references to drone strikes, the reports of them are often relegated to secondary headlines and summaries. Considering that the Times Square bomber cited revenge for drone killings in Pakistan as his motivation, one would think drones deserved more respectful and exploratory attention from both the U.S. citizenry and media.
Apparently the drone successes, destroying some of the top members of al Qaeda leadership, have garnered break out enthusiasm in Washington. Leon Panetta declared, “It’s the only game in town.” The “assassination campaign” targeting only top al Qaeda leaders has widened to take in lower-level militants in the tribal borderlands. (Funny how that escalation works.) Engelhardt claims that the operation has now morphed from a “drone assassination campaign” to a “full scale drone war”!
If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons, this time it’s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones (which the Air Force has plotted out to the year 2047), of a time when single pilots should be able to handle multiple drones in operations in the skies over some embattled land, and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to handle themselves, flying, fighting, and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene.
When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight.
Now it's the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized. It's the U.S. which is developing a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and (theoretically) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. It's the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700% over the next decade.
[snip]
If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well. The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.
[snip]
Seven thousand of them, the vast majority surveillance varieties, are reportedly already being operated by the military, and that’s before swarms of “mini-drones” come on line. Our American world is being redefined accordingly.
There is what Engelhardt calls a “modest counter-narrative” to the enthusiasm for this celebrated robotic technological “prowess". Philip Alston, UN Special Representative on Extrajudicial Execution, has issued a 29-page report criticizing the US government’s “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” Alston warns that limits should be put on such actions, as the CIA’s drone war over Pakistan, before other nation states follow in America’s “footsteps”, labeling terrorists and tracking them down, also defying national sovereignty. Engelhardt cites Alston:
“Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,” he wrote, “and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.”
Engelhardt goes on:
Similarly, the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the U.S. government, demanding that it “disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.”
Engelhardt declares that despite earnest protest from people and organizations of conscience Washington is not listening:
… The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted claim of legitimate “self-defense,” but senses that it’s already well past the point where legalities matter. The die is cast, the money committed. The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.
It’s a done deal. Drone war is, and will be, us.
[snip]
Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the U.S. is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight. In the process, we’re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances. In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike.
“Obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty.” I guess they have become “quaint”, too, along with the Geneva Convention and the U.S. Constitution. America and its “might makes right,” “ends justifies the means,” terrorizing amorality. No respect for international law and justice. Short-sighted to those hard-hitting, karmic-answering, unintended consequences. Like us training and equipping the ferocious Taliban years ago to fight off the Russians. Or, in the present, us creating more terrorists with each victim killed. Or in the future, what happens when and if a drone malfunctions? Finally, this "drones warfare" precedent sets us up for not only revenge terrorist bombings, but drone borderless "one-way slaughters" against ourselves ultimately. Engelhardt:
... There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilot-less planes. Earlier this year, the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones. Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians.
We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won’t long be flying solo. And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of "terrorists," we won’t like it one bit. When the first “suicide drones” appear, we’ll like it even less. And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we’ll be truly unnerved.
In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of “globalization” which was widely hailed as good news. Now, the U.S. and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones. It’s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.
The “globalization of death.” How well and chillingly put, Mr. Engelhardt!
Is that what it finally will take to induce “empathy” and “moral consciousness” in Americans to drone warfare? Deadly American karmic payback for the war criminality of its psychopathic, patriarchal military leadership cheered on by an equally amoral, corporate-lobbied legislature and administration? Is there at present a more powerful and lawless government? A more morally obtuse and unconscious citizenry?
3rd Re-post: "Basement of Corporate Evil: The Drone Makers ..."
Submitted by libbyliberal on Sat, 06/12/2010 - 3:08am
This story made me stop and take notice.
According to Mike Ludwig at truthout, Texas and Arizona lawmakers are getting serious campaign contributions from the "drone-makers".
Funny thing, now those same lawmakers want the FAA to approve drone flights over the entire Texas border despite the fact that that border is considered safe.
But that is so not the point, is it?
Let's make it more unsafe, then, just to keep the campaign money pouring in and to keep the killing machine makers fat and happy.
Those in the American corporate media and political elite are in love with the sleek, smooth, efficient, mechanical birds of prey. As jawbone of correntebrought up recently, God knows how many of our Earth's living birds are struggling and dying thanks to the BP catastrophe. The grim irony is that Obama-drones, those high-tech Frankenstein-birds of execution, are replacing them thanks to the war- and death-mongering Congress and administration, a humanity-hating corporate media, along with their collectively-joined-at-the-hip, psychopathic, "corporate person", profits-forever-over-people pals. And when I say in this case, "profits over people" -- I mean "OVER THEIR DEAD BODIES."
So some drone operator sipping his vanilla latte in a comfy chair in Nevada, with one hand on his joy stick, can less messily -- from his end, that is -- kill a Mexican kid with a rock.
How soon will mass-produced U.S. drones be helping Israel with stuff like its flotilla problems?
Ludwig discloses that since 2005 The US Customs and Border Patrol has operated four drones out of Arizona. That alone was a stunner. This apparently is not new.
But now it is time to make even more campaign money for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson and friends. She is declaring that a scared citizenry needs these drones! Way to go Kay! Can't go wrong with that chestnut, can you? Can't be soft on terror, America! And Kay, you've got all that juicy immigrant racism now to exploit. Ludwig:
In late May, she introduced an amendment to the emergency supplemental war funding bill that would give the CBP $144 million to monitor all 2,000 miles of the border with drones seven days a week.
A spokeswoman for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the company that manufactures the Predator B drone, told Truthout that the price of a Predator varies per customer, but usually runs between $10 and $12 million.
Isn't that special? $10-$12 million. Why, we need to keep the assembly line of kills going to feed this need of our government representatives for campaign contributions, dontchaknow, and for those drone-makers to justify their production.
Ludwig discloses the down and dirty:
The political watchdog web site www.opensecret.org reports that, in 2010, Hutchinson has received $15,000 in campaign contributions from a Political Action Committee (PAC) affiliated with Vaught Aircraft, a company that manufactures wings for the Global Hawk, a drone flown by the Air Force and Navy. Amendment co-sponsor Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) received $25,350 this year from a PAC and individuals in the Raytheon Co., a large military contractor that makes detection and ranging equipment for the Predator B drone.
Mr. Ludwig really did his homework. But in this ethical freak show of a universe (Rachel's line) hysteria trumps reality every time. This one is such an EASY sell. In spite of Ludwig's revelations that there is not a need for intense border security particularly with the dreaded and potent drones:
A recent Associated Press report suggests that the intensifying militarization of the border is more about politics than addressing any legitimate security concerns.
"The border is safer now than it's ever been," CBP spokesman Lloyd Easterling told The Associated Press.
The top four big cities with the lowest violent crime rates in the US are located in border states, according to the report. The cities are Phoenix, San Diego, El Paso and Austin. Violent crime along the border declined in 2009 for the first time in seven years, and only 3 percent of border patrol officers were assaulted last year, compared to 11 percent of police officers and sheriff's deputies.
Violent crime rates in the state of Arizona, home to the controversial immigration law that has angered civil rights and immigrant supporters, dropped 19 percent between 2002 and 2008, according to the US Department of Justice.
Amazing how objections about the use of drones from citizens, foreign citizens, and humanitarian organizations don't seem to give our shameless administration and the many shameless members of Congress much pause.
Apparently the miracle of the drone has captured the imagination of jingoistic, racist, testosterone-trigger happy, neocon Americans along with the wallets and pocketbooks of the less testosteroned ones, especially those who happen to have voting power in Congress. As for President Obama, his obvious obsession with the "drone" we can maybe attribute to being one of those passed along dreams of his bottom-feeding, scum-sucking, murder-peddling, surrogate, corporate fathers.
As for Kay Bailey Hutchinson, I find it not exactly refreshing to see a woman senator shed the "feminine" stereotype in this context. Violent AND avaricious. I mean, she is that to anyone who possesses a molecule of conscience.
Ludwig speaks of a UN Human Rights Council report issued on Thursday:
while targeted killings of combatants may be permitted in armed conflict situations, the tactic is increasingly being used far from any formal battlefield. The report states, "this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other States can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial killings."
And of the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit concerning drone warfare:
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the government on March 16 over a Freedom of Information Act request on the legal justification for the use of drones in the war on terror. The original request, filed in January, specifically seeks information on when, where and against whom the drone strikes can be authorized, and any information on the rate of civilian casualties caused by unmanned drones.
Clearly our power elites are getting bored with the likes of the UN, ACLU and let's throw in Amnesty International, the International Red Cross and many other humanitarian organizations that seriously had better begin to watch their backs! Barack Obama, once again, that guy with the fresh peace prize, just wants to play war! Bush had his fun. Why won't they just leave him alone?
After all, Obama's got two words for us. Predator drones!
4th re-post: "Obama -- Killing Us Softly With His Words ..."
Submitted by libbyliberal on Fri, 05/14/2010 - 8:13pm
Martin Luther King never in a million years would have made a joke such as the one Obama did at the recent WH Correspondents' Dinner. It was about drones. Martin Luther King had respect for humanity. As I see it, President Obama not only hasn't redirected America from the slippery slope of amorality, he apparently has brought his sled.
I want to talk about Obama in reference to personality vs. character, but I know many of my fellow progressives will bristle. My protest of the offensive joke may seem to them a petty over-reaction. I am one of those people who often discerns character or its lack thereof within the smaller life gestures, you know, those proverbial ones like how a person treats a waiter, shares (or not) an umbrella in the rain, untangles Christmas tree lights, etc.
Obama's drone joke I saw as his doing a little verbal two-step "on other people's graves" so to speak -- graves that his own decisions brought about. Heartless and shameless are the words that come to my mind.
I didn't watch Obama at the dinner. I read about the drones remark in an article entitled: "Did you Hear the Joke about the Predator Drone That Bombed" by Medea Benjamin and Nancy Moncias. An angry nausea invaded my stomach as I read. I speculated that the President’s joke probably did NOT bomb. Not enough, though it is good to see it has gotten a bit of indignant internet buzz. Part of the account:
"Jonas Brothers are here, they're out there somewhere," President Obama quipped as he looked out at the packed room. Then he furrowed his brow, pretending to send a stern message to the pop band. "Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys, don't get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You'll never see it coming."
I suspect the urbane Obama deftly shot it out and the black humor was rewarded with a respectable amount of laughter. The audience-paralyzing-moment like the Springtime-for-Hitler number of the Producers movie that deserved to happen, didn’t. I suspect the “good” people that Edmund Burke once powerfully alluded to did nothing. Enabled and indulged the President’s horrifying minimization of the ongoing horror of war, the horrifying violence of this latest robotic weaponry, the drone.
I once read a description while internet surfing about what a drone does to the human body. It was a while ago but if I recall correctly it involved a fierce heat sucking the air out of the lungs.
I tried googling to retrieve this or another physical description last night but was not readily successful. There were many sites involving discussions of drones, but mostly about their usage legally, politically, strategically. This struck me as sad and ironic. Drones are controversial due to the high level of "collateral damage" they inflict (you know, that vile euphemism that means "the killing of innocent victims"). The moral and biological dimensions of drones seems under explored and communicated about.
During my googling I did come across a heart-wrenching article by Robert Fiske involving nightmarish conditions in Pakistan, including drone terror. Fiske's empathy is a profound counterpoint to the glib "normalization" and "minimization" of the drone by Obama.
But the drones dominate the tribal lands. They killed 14 men in just one night last month, at Datta Khel in north Waziristan. The drones come in flocks, and five of them settled over the village, firing a missile each at a pick-up truck, splitting it in two and dismembering six men aboard. When local residents as well as Taliban arrived to help the wounded, the drones attacked again, killing all eight of them. The drones usually return to shoot at the rescuers. It's a policy started by the Israeli air force over Beirut during the 1982 siege: bomb now, come back 12 minutes later for a second shot. Now Waziristan villagers wait up to half an hour – listening to the shrieks and howls of the dying – before they try to help the wounded.
Fiske alludes to dark, irrational superstitions gripping the hapless Pakistani citizens terrorized by the surreal and deadly U.S. drones.
The drones – Predators and Reapers, or "Shadows", as the Americans call them when they follow US troops into battle – have acquired mythical proportions in the minds of Pakistanis, a form of spaceship colonialism, imperialism from the sky, caught with literary brilliance by A H Khayal in the daily newspaper The Nation, when he asked where the drones come from: "The masses are piteously ignorant. They just don't know that the drones are not material creatures. Actually, they are spiritual beings. They don't need earthly runways for taking off... They live in outer space, beyond the international boundaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan...
"When they feel hungry, they swoop down and kill innocent Afghani women and children. They eat the corpses and fly back to their spacial residences for a siesta. When they again feel hungry, they again swoop down and kill another lot of innocent women and children. Having devoured the dead bodies, they fly back to their bedrooms in space. It has been going on and on like this for years."
From a 2009 report of The New America Foundation entitled "Revenge of the Drones" Benjamin and Moncias reveal some very unfunny statistics brought to light over the dramatically ever-increasing US drone strikes.
The report says that roughly 252 to 315 Pakistani civilians were killed by Predator and Reaper drone strikes between 2006 and 2009. Other reports place the figure much higher. Pakistani authorities released statistics indicating that over 700 civilians were killed by drones in 2009 alone, the year Obama took office. The running tally on the website PakistanBodyCount.Org is even more shocking: 1,226 civilians killed and 427 injured as of March 2010!
Equally shocking is the ratio of civilians to militants killed, which Middle East scholar Daniel Byman estimates at ten to one. It is a cruel joke indeed for the people of Pakistan that the U.S. military finds it acceptable to murder 10 innocent people for every Al Qaeda or Taliban operative killed.
The use of the drones has also expanded in Afghanistan. Every day, the Air Force now flies at least 20 Predator drones — twice as many as a year ago. They are mostly used for surveillance, but have also carried out more than 200 strikes over the last year. "Since the start of 2009, the Predators and their larger cousins, the Reapers, have fired at least 184 missiles and 66 laser-guided bombs at militant suspects in Afghanistan," reported Christopher Drew of the New York Times.
Perhaps the President's callous joke particularly rubbed me the wrong way, given that I had attended a powerful anti-war event Wednesday night, April 21, organized by Debra Sweet of The World Can’t Wait. Obama's inappropriate gallows-type humor resonated for me the recently publicized callous banter during the slaughtering of innocent civilians by some of our military. The Wednesday event was a discussion of the significance of that recent Wikileaks' video of a US air crew in Baghdad in 2007 falsely claiming it has encountered a firefight, but actually launching an air strike against innocent people on the ground, killing a dozen. The victims included two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency.
In an article called “Collateral Murder” Chris McGreal does a good job describing the events depicted on the video, that belie the soldiers’ simultaneous verbal radio account.
The newly-released video of the Baghdad attacks was recorded on one of two Apache helicopters hunting for insurgents on 12 July 2007. Among the dead were a 22-year-old Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40. ....
[snip]
In the recording, the helicopter crews can be heard discussing the scene on the street below. One American claims to have spotted six people with AK-47s and one with a rocket-propelled grenade. It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera. Chmagh is talking on his mobile phone.
One of the helicopter crew is then heard saying that one of the group is shooting. But the video shows there is no shooting or even pointing of weapons. The men are standing around, apparently unperturbed.
The lead helicopter, using the moniker Crazyhorse, opens fire. "Hahaha. I hit 'em," shouts one of the American crew. Another responds a little later: "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards."
One of the men on the ground, believed to be Chmagh, is seen wounded and trying to crawl to safety. One of the helicopter crew is heard wishing for the man to reach for a gun, even though there is none visible nearby, so he has the pretext for opening fire: "All you gotta do is pick up a weapon." A van draws up next to the wounded man and Iraqis climb out. They are unarmed and start to carry the victim to the vehicle in what would appear to be an attempt to get him to hospital. One of the helicopters opens fire with armour-piercing shells. "Look at that. Right through the windshield," says one of the crew. Another responds with a laugh.
Sitting behind the windscreen were two children who were wounded.
After ground forces arrive and the children are discovered, the American air crew blame the Iraqis. "Well it's their fault for bringing kids in to a battle," says one. "That's right," says another.
It’s hard to read. It was harder to watch. In the video the body language of the pedestrians on the street is relaxed and casual. Then the shooting begins. One feels listening to the macho chatter and watching the devastating shots on the human beings on the screen that one is looking over the shoulder of a couple of hopped up video gamers. It was hard to sustain a sense of reality, that those were real flesh and blood, vulnerable and non-threatening human beings being murdered so ruthlessly. And what the men were reporting on the radio, soliciting permission to "engage", did not match up with the reality of the scene. Their "excitement high" – thrill of the kill -- was stunning.
David Froomkin of The Huffington Post contends that U.S. and NATO forces are rarely held to account for atrocities they commit. He declares:
Let's dig behind the video. Let's fully understand the rules the military were operating under. Let's have a complete picture of what was going through the fliers' minds. Let's hear the Pentagon explain its interpretation of the rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention and how the actions either did or did not accord with them in its view. And importantly, let's keep in mind that while we focus on this particular tragedy, it is the rare circumstance that when a journalist is injured or killed in a conflict area, there is a video of the death, and even more rare as this case demonstrates, for the public to see such a video.
[snip]
And here's something else I want.
I want someone on Capitol Hill to give a shit.
Thank you, Mr. Froomkin. I want that, too. I want my fellow Americans to give a shit. I want Congress to give a shit. I want Obama to give a shit. Abu Ghraib inspired outrage. This situation, apparently and horrifyingly -- not so much.
The best we get from Obama right now in reference to these tragic wars and the violence which Chris Hedges describes as America's primary way of communicating is a lame and disgusting drones joke? Or his assurance that nuclear weapons will not be off the table re Iran? Or his assuring young military cadets that America will provide them with medical care upon any of them returning with, say, traumatic brain injuries. Good God! Why not stop the wars and prevent those gratuitous and horrifying brain injuries, Mr. President? That is primarily why 80 million of us voted for you!
The discussion panel at the NYC webcast event included Dahr Jamail, one of a few independent US journalists who has covered both Iraq and Afghanistan, Matthis Chiroux, an honorably discharged vet who won his moral and legal battle not to be deployed to Iraq in 2008, and Elaine Brower, anti-war activist and mother of an Iraq/Afghanistan veteran.
Dahr Jamail declared that Article 48 of the Geneva Convention guarantees protection of the civilian population as well as their property during the execution of a war. This international law has been and continues to be ruthlessly violated in both Iraq and Afghanistan and now Pakistan. According to Jamail, 1.5 million Iraqis are reported dead. 4.8 million Iraqis have been displaced. 2 out of 3 Iraqis do not have safe drinking water. Since the March 7th vote, there has been a dramatic spike in violence in Iraq.
Jamail stressed that the Wikileaks depiction was not an anomaly. It was not a matter of the "few bad apples. " He said a soldier once told him, “We change the rules of engagement as often as we change our underwear.”
Jamail was calling in to the panel discussion from a cell phone, dangerously un-embedded, somewhere presumably in the Middle East. He testified passionately that the United States, building colossal embassy infrastructures over there, had no intention of ever leaving. The promise of drawing down troops and exiting these countries was an outright lie on the part of our administration and military. The Baghdad embassy, for example, is the size of Vatican City, reportedly 80 football fields long. Avaricious corporate imperialism was the driving force of these wars.
He discussed the stress levels of the troops, many on their fourth and fifth deployments. How could they not be suffering from severe psychological damage? Some become trigger happy. Some become suicidal. Some desert. None will escape this war without severe physical and/or psychic damage. Many will even join the ranks of the homeless.
Jamail also addressed the present war-mongering going on about Iran. Incredibly the leadership and media are ripening up the U.S. population for the possibility of yet another war. Iran does not have nuclear capacity. The drumbeat of "defensiveness" about Iran from Congresspeople and the media is covertly our and Israel's offensive agenda for power and control in Iran. He stressed the importance of Americans staying morally awake and not being led down the same garden path of jingoism, fear and lack of critical judgment that brought us the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Jamail has written a book entitled The Will To Resist.
Elaine Brower is the mother of a soldier who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. She spoke of her heartbreaking recognition that her son had been so indoctrinated with demonization of the enemy that he returned to the United States having lost the sense of moral grounding he had been raised with. I recently read The 1870 Mother's Day Proclamation of Julia Ward Howe and immediately thought of Ms. Brower's passionate demonstration of maternal tough love and commitment to morality. She spoke out against the glorification of war, the dangerous sentimentalizing of war memorials and ceremonies.
Howe's words from 1870:
Arise then...women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
In "Why Soldiers Get a Kick Out of Killing" John Horgan also explores the Wikileaks revelations:
The reluctance of ordinary men to kill can be overcome by intensified training, direct commands from officers, long-range weapons and propaganda that glorifies the soldier's cause and dehumanizes the enemy. "With the proper conditioning and the proper circumstances, it appears that almost anyone can and will kill," Grossman writes. Many soldiers who kill enemies in battle are initially exhilarated, Grossman says, but later they often feel profound revulsion and remorse, which may transmute into post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments. Indeed, Grossman believes that the troubles experienced by many combat veterans are evidence of a "powerful, innate human resistance toward killing one's own species."
When Matthis Chiroux finally spoke, the young soldier who had refused to be deployed to Iraq as a conscientious objector, I was awed by his courage and his clear commitment to ending the violence of war in the world. He gave a personal account of his boot camp desensitization training. How young men and women used bayonets and knives even before learning about guns to cultivate their aggression. They would attack dummy victims shouting "Blood" and "Kill!" They were also trained to shoot using ambushing pop-up specters of the "enemy" and would automatically shoot out at EVERY appearance of a faux-menacing, surrogate target. Matthis also revealed that one recruiting station he had visited had a military computer game accessible outside so young people would be softened up for recruitment.
In the small basement room of Manhattan's famous Judson Memorial Church, I had been at first dismayed and disappointed that there were not more of us. But by the time the discussion had ended, it didn't matter to me. I was so full of gratitude over how my own sense of moral purpose had been expanded to commit to peace. The tragic reality that our present President does not have the same moral sensibility offers a formidable challenge. But I have no choice but to assert my values. This is a fight for both America's and my own soul.
As young-in-age-but-mature-in-wisdom-and-life-experience Matthis spoke, his courage, dignity, and sense of honor filled the room. My heart expanded as I watched him pantomime ceremonially putting a rifle down upon the ground, then using that umpire gesture of crossing his hands, palms down, over each other and declaring simply, "I'm done!" This is what the tipping point had been like for him into morality and justice. Matthis had challenged and survived America's military matrix. His victory inspired me. I was especially moved by his final statement to continue to work for peace. "I came out of the shadows. I don't want to go back there."
It seems our President and Congress have chosen to govern from the amoral shadows with so many citizens choosing to join them there.
If more and more of us exit the shadows, stop enabling the perpetrators of war, the ripples of truth to power will gather and strengthen. The ripples of those brave and eloquent activists strengthened me that Wednesday night.
I began this commentary about Obama's troubling drone joke by referring to the contrasting capacity for empathy of Martin Luther King. I would like to end this piece by quoting from a part of his Viet Nam speech of 1967. How it relates still to our dysfunctional collective mentality and moral plight as a country.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
continuation from King: "America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."
[re-posted from correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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newsflash, pakistan just rejected drones & cut off supply lines based on the accidental slaughter of 25 soldiers.
much more on drones in my blog
much more on drones in my blog
You're going to get kicked out of the cult of personality for this! Don't you know O-man is bringing stability to the region one drone attack at a time. We're lucky to live in a country where we know which people to summarily execute (basically, any foreigner) and which people to hold above all else (basically, any banker).
America is on a suicide mission, no doubt.
America is on a suicide mission, no doubt.
What I found absolutely fascinating is how we talk openly on national TV about finding and killing foreign nationals that "we" doom guilty. No other nation does this. R
Even this type of warfare can't last forever; in fact it may be designed to guarantee permanent war that will eventually lead to the self destruction of the empire since it can’t sustain itself indefinitely using this tactic. The problem is that this type of tactic keeps the atrocities out of mind out of sight and they can keep it up without realizing how much damage their doing if the listen to their own rhetoric to much.
shows how important education is. some chimps have been taught to count and write to a certain extent. if they'd just agree to to wear bib overalls and a tee-shirt with a beer ad on it, they could apply for american citizenship with every chance of being accepted.
vzn, thanks, will check out. that is why I posted these upon hearing about the latest "accident". this droning especially of the Pakistanis is deplorable as well as an international war crime.
Harry, I am dumbfounded that Obama and Dem cronyism inspires citizens to give this anti-humane violence a pass. Obama was elected as a peace candidate and is now the total opposite. Where is the critical thinking as well as humanitarianism of the majority of the populace in both parties????
Thoth, thanks. It is a moral autism! The media pats us on the head and says, "We only kill the deservingly bad guys" and despite evidence of sociopathology with the economic terrorism against us as citizens so many accept that collective murder, genocide, is perfectly fine and justified because we wear the white hats in these corporate NOT defending democracy wars.
Zachd, well said. We are always establishing precedents of war and using a technology that will spread to more and more countries and victimize us right back. Yes, permanent war for profit of the munitions and networked corporate contractors and for the power addicts in Washington and their puppets across the globe. The nature of droning aligns with the ugliest dimension of American exceptionalism and capacity for denial and minimization enhanced by a craven media. Game boy convenient elimination of any peoples who interfere with imperialistic greed for profit and power. This is a sub sub sub basement of human evil. Why dear God is there not more protest among the citizenry?
al loomis, I agree. living in America is like having a bit part in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the Kevin McCarthy version). I don't get it. I just don't get it. Where is the capacity for empathy? David Brooks on pbs Friday night talked about Post-Morality America.
thanks for ratings and comments, all! best, libby
Harry, I am dumbfounded that Obama and Dem cronyism inspires citizens to give this anti-humane violence a pass. Obama was elected as a peace candidate and is now the total opposite. Where is the critical thinking as well as humanitarianism of the majority of the populace in both parties????
Thoth, thanks. It is a moral autism! The media pats us on the head and says, "We only kill the deservingly bad guys" and despite evidence of sociopathology with the economic terrorism against us as citizens so many accept that collective murder, genocide, is perfectly fine and justified because we wear the white hats in these corporate NOT defending democracy wars.
Zachd, well said. We are always establishing precedents of war and using a technology that will spread to more and more countries and victimize us right back. Yes, permanent war for profit of the munitions and networked corporate contractors and for the power addicts in Washington and their puppets across the globe. The nature of droning aligns with the ugliest dimension of American exceptionalism and capacity for denial and minimization enhanced by a craven media. Game boy convenient elimination of any peoples who interfere with imperialistic greed for profit and power. This is a sub sub sub basement of human evil. Why dear God is there not more protest among the citizenry?
al loomis, I agree. living in America is like having a bit part in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the Kevin McCarthy version). I don't get it. I just don't get it. Where is the capacity for empathy? David Brooks on pbs Friday night talked about Post-Morality America.
thanks for ratings and comments, all! best, libby
This article is worth a read by Peter Hart:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29847.htm
"Dead Afghan Kids Still Not Newsworthy
"By Peter Hart
"November 29, 2011 "Fair" -- Back in March, we wondered when U.S. corporate news outlets would find U.S./NATO killing of Afghan kids newsworthy. Back then, it was nine children killed in a March 1 airstrike. This resulted in two network news stories on the evening or morning newscasts, and two brief references on the PBS NewsHour.
On November 25, the New York Times reported--on page 12--that six children were killed in one attack in southern Afghanistan on November 23. This news was, as best I can tell, not reported on ABC, CBS, NBC or the PBS NewsHour.
"There were, on the other hand, several pieces about U.S. soldiers eating Thanksgiving dinners.
"Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald was one of the few commentators to write about the latest killings. As he observed:
"We're trained simply to accept these incidents as though they carry no meaning: We're just supposed to chalk them up to regrettable accidents (oops), agree that they don’t compel a cessation to the war, and then get back to the glorious fighting. Every time that happens, this just becomes more normalized, less worthy of notice. It's just like background noise: Two families of children wiped out by an American missile (yawn: at least we don't target them on purpose like those evil Terrorists: we just keep killing them year after year after year without meaning to). It's acceptable to make arguments that American wars should end because they're costing too much money or American lives or otherwise harming American strategic interests, but piles of corpses of innocent children are something only the shrill, shallow and unSerious--pacifists!--point to as though they have any meaning in terms of what should be done."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29847.htm
"Dead Afghan Kids Still Not Newsworthy
"By Peter Hart
"November 29, 2011 "Fair" -- Back in March, we wondered when U.S. corporate news outlets would find U.S./NATO killing of Afghan kids newsworthy. Back then, it was nine children killed in a March 1 airstrike. This resulted in two network news stories on the evening or morning newscasts, and two brief references on the PBS NewsHour.
On November 25, the New York Times reported--on page 12--that six children were killed in one attack in southern Afghanistan on November 23. This news was, as best I can tell, not reported on ABC, CBS, NBC or the PBS NewsHour.
"There were, on the other hand, several pieces about U.S. soldiers eating Thanksgiving dinners.
"Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald was one of the few commentators to write about the latest killings. As he observed:
"We're trained simply to accept these incidents as though they carry no meaning: We're just supposed to chalk them up to regrettable accidents (oops), agree that they don’t compel a cessation to the war, and then get back to the glorious fighting. Every time that happens, this just becomes more normalized, less worthy of notice. It's just like background noise: Two families of children wiped out by an American missile (yawn: at least we don't target them on purpose like those evil Terrorists: we just keep killing them year after year after year without meaning to). It's acceptable to make arguments that American wars should end because they're costing too much money or American lives or otherwise harming American strategic interests, but piles of corpses of innocent children are something only the shrill, shallow and unSerious--pacifists!--point to as though they have any meaning in terms of what should be done."
"Bugsplat is the official term used by US authorities when humans are killed by drone missiles. "
'Bugsplat': The Ugly US Drone War in Pakistan
It's time for the US to re-examine the consequences of its dehumanizing, deadly attacks in Pakistan.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/29-0
by Jennifer Robinson
"This weekend, Pakistan ordered the closure of the US drone base after a US attack killed 26 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border."
This news will be welcomed by the people of Waziristan, where communities have borne the brunt of the "collateral damage" of the US covert drone war. But for many, this decision comes too little too late. For too long, authorities ignored the deaths of innocent civilians being "bugsplat" by drones. After a recent trip to Pakistan to investigate the human consequences of the US drone attacks, I had no idea how close I was to come to understanding the horror of it.
"In Islamabad I took part in a jirga - the traditional Pashtun forum for public discussion and dispute settlement - where tribal elders and villagers from the Pakistan tribal areas (FATA) came to meet with us to explain their personal experiences of US drone attacks. Sitting just two rows behind me was a 16-year-old boy named Tariq Aziz.
" Listening to story upon story of the extrajudicial murder of innocent civilians and children, the heartache for loved ones lost and the constant terror instilled by the now familiar roar of drones overhead, I could not have imagined that Tariq and his family would soon suffer the same fate.
"Three days later Tariq was killed along with his 12-year-old cousin Waheed when their car was targeted by a Hellfire missile as they headed home to Norak, a village in Waziristan near the Afghan border.
"Drones are described not only as the future of warfare, but as risk-free war. But Tariq's death - and the hundreds of other civilian deaths recorded in a recent Bureau of Investigative Journalism study - demonstrate that this PlayStation warfare is only risk-free for operators of these remote-controlled killers. From the safety of an office building in Langley, Virginia, CIA operatives play games with Pakistanis' lives.
"As I landed at Heathrow, thousands of miles away from the dirt road where Tariq and Waheed now lay dead, a CIA operative in northern Virginia will have reported "bugsplat". Bugsplat is the official term used by US authorities when humans are killed by drone missiles. The existence of children's computer games of the same name may lead one to think that the PlayStation analogy with drone warfare is taken too far. But it is deliberately employed as a psychological tactic to dehumanize targets so operatives overcome their inhibition to kill; and so the public remains apathetic and unmoved to act. Indeed, the phrase has far more sinister origins and historical use: In dehumanizing their Pakistani targets, the US resorts to Nazi semantics. Their targets are not just computer game-like targets, but pesky or harmful bugs that must be killed.
"It was Hitler who coined this phraseology in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. In Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Jews as vermin (volksungeziefer) or parasites (volksschädling). In the infamous Nazi film, Der ewige Jude, Jews were portrayed as harmful pests that deserve to die. Similarly, in the Rwandan genocide, the Tutsis were described as "cockroaches". This is not to infer genocidal intent in US drone warfare, but rather to emphasize the dehumanizing effect of this terminology in Nazi Germany and that the very same terms are used by the US in respect of their Pakistani targets. The US asserts that targeted killings are justified as a necessary counter-terrorism measure: Terrorists and militants are the pesky bugs that must be swatted.
"The term "bugsplat" dehumanizes their targets - often innocent civilians - with families, friends, hopes and aspirations. I will never forget the pensive, yet curious look Tariq gave us as we joined the jirga, a look so reminiscent of my brothers at that same age. He had his whole life ahead of him. But two days later, "bugsplat", and Tariq and Waheed brought the known total of children killed by drones in Pakistan to 175.
"Obama has launched more drone attacks in Pakistan than Bush - one every four days - but allegedly insists that strikes "do not put … innocent men, women and children in danger". John O Brennan, Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, said in June that "there hasn't been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision or the capabilities we've been able to develop". Yet, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, at least 225 of those killed in drone attacks during the Obama administration "may have been civilians". Add Tariq to the fast-growing list.
"How do we know how many civilians are being killed? From what I heard from village elders at the jirga, the majority were civilians, not militants. Was Tariq a militant? By all accounts, no. Yet "official" reports of the attack told us that four militants had been killed. In truth, the only victims were Tariq and his young cousin.
"Access to information and reliable statistics is vital. Neither the US nor Pakistan provide accurate reports of civilians killed, in breach of the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings. Reprieve, a British charity, is working together with lawyers and villages to better document the attacks. Tariq had volunteered for this task. He did so in the hope that his efforts would assist us - foreign lawyers - to raise awareness and to take legal action to stop the collateral murder he witnessed in his homeland and to compensate its victims."
'Bugsplat': The Ugly US Drone War in Pakistan
It's time for the US to re-examine the consequences of its dehumanizing, deadly attacks in Pakistan.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/29-0
by Jennifer Robinson
"This weekend, Pakistan ordered the closure of the US drone base after a US attack killed 26 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border."
This news will be welcomed by the people of Waziristan, where communities have borne the brunt of the "collateral damage" of the US covert drone war. But for many, this decision comes too little too late. For too long, authorities ignored the deaths of innocent civilians being "bugsplat" by drones. After a recent trip to Pakistan to investigate the human consequences of the US drone attacks, I had no idea how close I was to come to understanding the horror of it.
"In Islamabad I took part in a jirga - the traditional Pashtun forum for public discussion and dispute settlement - where tribal elders and villagers from the Pakistan tribal areas (FATA) came to meet with us to explain their personal experiences of US drone attacks. Sitting just two rows behind me was a 16-year-old boy named Tariq Aziz.
" Listening to story upon story of the extrajudicial murder of innocent civilians and children, the heartache for loved ones lost and the constant terror instilled by the now familiar roar of drones overhead, I could not have imagined that Tariq and his family would soon suffer the same fate.
"Three days later Tariq was killed along with his 12-year-old cousin Waheed when their car was targeted by a Hellfire missile as they headed home to Norak, a village in Waziristan near the Afghan border.
"Drones are described not only as the future of warfare, but as risk-free war. But Tariq's death - and the hundreds of other civilian deaths recorded in a recent Bureau of Investigative Journalism study - demonstrate that this PlayStation warfare is only risk-free for operators of these remote-controlled killers. From the safety of an office building in Langley, Virginia, CIA operatives play games with Pakistanis' lives.
"As I landed at Heathrow, thousands of miles away from the dirt road where Tariq and Waheed now lay dead, a CIA operative in northern Virginia will have reported "bugsplat". Bugsplat is the official term used by US authorities when humans are killed by drone missiles. The existence of children's computer games of the same name may lead one to think that the PlayStation analogy with drone warfare is taken too far. But it is deliberately employed as a psychological tactic to dehumanize targets so operatives overcome their inhibition to kill; and so the public remains apathetic and unmoved to act. Indeed, the phrase has far more sinister origins and historical use: In dehumanizing their Pakistani targets, the US resorts to Nazi semantics. Their targets are not just computer game-like targets, but pesky or harmful bugs that must be killed.
"It was Hitler who coined this phraseology in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. In Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Jews as vermin (volksungeziefer) or parasites (volksschädling). In the infamous Nazi film, Der ewige Jude, Jews were portrayed as harmful pests that deserve to die. Similarly, in the Rwandan genocide, the Tutsis were described as "cockroaches". This is not to infer genocidal intent in US drone warfare, but rather to emphasize the dehumanizing effect of this terminology in Nazi Germany and that the very same terms are used by the US in respect of their Pakistani targets. The US asserts that targeted killings are justified as a necessary counter-terrorism measure: Terrorists and militants are the pesky bugs that must be swatted.
"The term "bugsplat" dehumanizes their targets - often innocent civilians - with families, friends, hopes and aspirations. I will never forget the pensive, yet curious look Tariq gave us as we joined the jirga, a look so reminiscent of my brothers at that same age. He had his whole life ahead of him. But two days later, "bugsplat", and Tariq and Waheed brought the known total of children killed by drones in Pakistan to 175.
"Obama has launched more drone attacks in Pakistan than Bush - one every four days - but allegedly insists that strikes "do not put … innocent men, women and children in danger". John O Brennan, Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, said in June that "there hasn't been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision or the capabilities we've been able to develop". Yet, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, at least 225 of those killed in drone attacks during the Obama administration "may have been civilians". Add Tariq to the fast-growing list.
"How do we know how many civilians are being killed? From what I heard from village elders at the jirga, the majority were civilians, not militants. Was Tariq a militant? By all accounts, no. Yet "official" reports of the attack told us that four militants had been killed. In truth, the only victims were Tariq and his young cousin.
"Access to information and reliable statistics is vital. Neither the US nor Pakistan provide accurate reports of civilians killed, in breach of the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings. Reprieve, a British charity, is working together with lawyers and villages to better document the attacks. Tariq had volunteered for this task. He did so in the hope that his efforts would assist us - foreign lawyers - to raise awareness and to take legal action to stop the collateral murder he witnessed in his homeland and to compensate its victims."
infantile insanity
collective societal madness
arrival and departure point for the
human race on this our one and only planet.
collective societal madness
arrival and departure point for the
human race on this our one and only planet.
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