12.03.13
Culture of Violence a Disservice to National Security
Drones don’t just kill “targets”
Summary: How a culture of unprecedented violence leads to less security and more hostility towards the West
THE Russian press is having a day field. Violence in the United States is not just rising domestically (“A high school student suffered a brain injury and remains in a medically-induced coma after a Texas sheriff’s deputy tasered him,” according to this report) but also in other nations. Drones which are run by the CIA (targeting people the NSA staff chooses) are invading countries and blasting a lot of people, not just “targets” which the NSA selects (based on electronic communications and profiling, not a trial). Even the US corporate press is starting to provide coverage of the anti-drone movement [1]; the same goes for British corporate press [2], which is trying to give the other side of the story. In the Washington Post (close ties to the government and the CIA) yesterday there was a piece calling the drone war “immoral” (it’s actually illegal), attributing it to Obama although it’s Bush who started it.
Maybe one day it will be realised that giving children guns as toys (in a holiday that is supposed to be about birth), tasering children and killing children abroad with overpriced Hellfire missiles is just fueling the United States’ enemies and in no way serves the national interests (a.k.a. “National Security”) of this nation. That’s just what happens when paramilitaries take over a country. Feuds cannot be ended using violence; negotiation is needed and people who left the CIA say that negotiation did work. It’s just not as profitable as war. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Yemen’s New Ways of Protesting Drone Strikes: Graffiti and Poetry
Proponents argue that drones offer an efficient way of fighting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based affiliate of the global terrorist network. The Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi has endorsed the program, praising ongoing U.S.-Yemen counterterrorism cooperation and the “high precision that’s been provided by drones.” Human rights activists in Yemen and the families of many victims are outraged by the so-called “drone war” in the country, which the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates has resulted in between 21 and 56 civilian deaths. Aside from more conventional methods of protest – such as demonstrations, media campaigns, and the production of often scathing reports – activists are increasingly employing art as a medium through which to express their anger.
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‘There were pieces of my family all over the road’: Afghan citizen describes seeing relative’s burning bodies after deadly U.S. drone strike
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President Obama’s immoral drone war
U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries may be militarily effective, but they are killing innocent civilians in a way that is obscene and immoral. I’m afraid that ignoring this ugly fact makes Americans complicit in murder.
It is understandable why President Obama has made drone attacks his go-to weapon in the fight against terrorists and the Taliban. Armed, pilotless aircraft allow the CIA and the military to target individuals in enemy strongholds without putting U.S. lives at risk. But efficacy is not legitimacy, and I don’t see how drone strikes can be considered a wholly legitimate way to wage war.
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