In today’s New York Times article (6/6/12) about the apparent drone killing of Al-Qaeda “deputy leader” Abu Yahya al-Libi, Declan Walsh and Eric Schmitt write:
If his death is borne out this time, it would be a milestone in a covert eight-year airstrike campaign that has infuriated Pakistani officials but that has remained one of the United States’ most effective tools in combating militancy.
That’s revealing. It’s inarguable that the drones kill people the U.S. government wants to kill, and some it doesn’t intend to kill. But does this really qualify as “combating militancy”? In Yemen, the increase in drone attacks has resulted in a doubling of the ranks of the local branch on Al-Qaeda. Some would-be attackers reportedly cite the drone attacks on civilians as motivation to attack the United States. And former CIA Pakistan station chief Richard Grenier tells the Guardian (6/5/12):
We have gone a long way down the road of creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
And for another view—that of the Pakistani living with the threat of drones—consider these accounts in the new issue of Harpers, from families of victims of a single attack in North Waziristan:
The first time I saw a drone in the sky was about eight years ago, when I was 13. I have counted six or seven drone strikes in my village since the beginning of 2012. There were 60 or 70 primary schools in and around my village, but only a few remain today. Few children attend school because they fear for their lives walking to and from their homes. I am mostly illiterate. I stopped going to school because we were all very afraid that we would be killed. I am 21 years old. My time has passed. I cannot learn how to read or write so that I can better my life. But I very much wish my children to grow up without these killer drones hovering above, so that they may get the education and life I was denied.
The men who died in this strike were our leaders; the ones we turned to for all forms of support. We always knew that drone strikes were wrong, that they encroached on Pakistan’s sovereign territory. We knew that innocent civilians had been killed. However, we did not realize how callous and cruel it could be. The community is now plagued with fear. The tribal elders are afraid to gather together in jirgas, as had been our custom for more than a century. The mothers and wives plead with the men not to congregate together. They do not want to lose any more of their husbands, sons, brothers and nephews. People in the same family now sleep apart because they do not want their togetherness to be viewed suspiciously through the eye of the drone. They do not want to become the next target.
It’s a pretty simple equation.
You kill someone’s family members, friends and neighbors, you make an enemy.
But I’m always leery of arguments about “blowback”. The implication seems to be that the problem resides in any possible danger for us, rather than in the immorality of our government’s actions. There also can be a conflation of attacks on hostile actors, aka NATO troops, and terrorism directed at the US mainland.
Defending your country against invaders is not an act of terrorism.
And there was nothing “illiterate” about what the Pakistani quoted said, was there?
I’ve never heard anyone talk about some foreign country doing drone strikes against some town in this country, and how we would react. We would have almost every male and a lot of females signing up for the military and wanting us to “go get the bastards.” Having the power we have, we would most likely wipe such a nation of the face of the planet.
So I think it’s important to put ourselves in the shoes of those “on the other side”, to understand how they would react, and why drone strikes could potentially make so many more enemies than we would get in the strikes.
How can this president be a practicing Christian and not obey some fundamental tenets like the Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill” (no footnotes for exceptions)? Or “Do unto others…” or “Turn the other cheek” or “Vengeance is mine (the Lord’s)”? The “Prince of Peace” he isn’t, nor does a keeper of a “kill list” deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. The right wing fundamentalists who care only about fetal life cannot be considered “pro-life” when they condone war. Without fair trials, the death penalty is actually murder and we are all accessories by supporting this administration (and the previous one). Vote Green, not greed or mean, so the world knows some of us care about their lives too.
First the “Peace Prize” given to Obama was a wish for him to end the wars that have been going on then for 8 years. He did wind down Iraq, from Pres. Bush’s orders to do so in the plan laid out. However he increased troop strength and has been escalating LRK’s from drones over twice that of Bush during his 8 years! He should give back that peace prize. In fact the Nobel Committee should demand it back but they won’t.
Obama seems to be the kind of Christian Bush and Cheney are. Military force of empire is anointed as a holy mission. Any others killed are the damned too. (Easier than listing them as being murdered by our military.) If not then they shouldn’t have been there and the “terrorist” killed was to blame too. See how that works?
Once again we resort to technology to simplify our mission, with some sense of the the challenge of proving guilt by association. Now, we have distanced ourselves from the earlier concept by using drones, to focus on proving guilt by geographic association. Does anyone suspect that our collective wisdom been left behind in the last century?
the answer for me is to become the militant that the drone strikes are supposed to prevent. be militant in opposing u.s. predation of the planet and it’s people.
Boats(military) kill people.We still build them.Planes kill people.We still build them.Guns kill people.We still build them.Helicopters….This is not an issue of the weaponized system of a pilotless vehicle that stays on station with smart look down and military applications.Like any gun it is the operator that must be held accountable.For shooting true or not.The systemology and forward force utilization is an advancement.
Such autonomous and remote weaponized RPV’s will make war even easier for us. Less people used the better they the owners can use them for their own geopolitical and resource acquisition plans. We still have the kind of military fit for a global empire, not a Democratic-Republic. That needs to change and damn fast too.
Night Gaunt.I do admit that what you just wrote is correct.
Moving forward this will frame the questions that will haunt the corridors of power for a long time to come.Philosophically- We will debate and decide who we are, in relation to our founding and our present day make up.That matched against the realities of the world and our place in it.