Why I will never call myself a Democrat or trust any account of US violence published in the New York Times
The Obama administration has been killing thousands of people around the world in aerial attacks for years. Now, two bodies in the rubble have turned out to be Italian and American workers, so suddenly US policy has come under scrutiny. Since the US has assumed the right to kill any person anywhere in the world, discussion of international legality is laughable, but such obvious truths cannot be mentioned by mainstream press, such as the New York Times.
Here, in contrast, is a suggestion of sanity in a report by the Council of Foreign Relations: “Philip Alston, the former UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, condemns the U.S. . . , stating that "if other states were to claim the broad-based authority that the United States does, to kill people anywhere, anytime, the result would be chaos."” To me, “chaos” somehow fails to describe state-sanctioned murders around the globe, but at least Philip Alston moves us closer to an acknowledgement of US lawlessness, or, in other words, the obvious fact that US determination to flout international law renders it, by definition, a “rogue state” that constantly threatens the rest of the world.
After all, what act of global violence does the US deny itself? What is taken off the table? Does the only nation to use atomic bombs, the nation that stockpiles more nuclear weapons than any other, rule out “first-strike” attacks? Does the nation that, in the form of Agent Orange, used chemical warfare against Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians; that justified invasions of countries led by former puppet-dictators (such as Panama and Iraq) as “pre-emptive wars of self-defense,” and that tortured people under the name of “enhanced interrogation,” ever look back in remorse, or consider apologizing to the countless victims outside its borders, diverting its massive military budget to offer compensation?
Speaking of torture, listen to this reasoning put forth by the Times: “Obama administration lawyers have ruled that a special legal review should be conducted before killing Americans suspected of terrorism. Such a review, they have argued, amounts to the legal “due process” required by the Constitution, though some legal scholars do not believe such reviews meet the constitutional test.”
Legal experts, what can we do with them? How can they doubt that the government’s giving you a review before killing you should be considered “due process”? After all, it is a “special” review. In adopting such reasoning, Obama joins Bush as a torturer of words, an Orwellian hero silencing sooth-sayers such as Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden while tirelessly expanding the surveillance of the world. How proud people in the nation must feel to have the only Nobel Peace prize winner with a kill list on his desk.
Let’s take a look at a quote from the Times because, now that humans (Americans, I mean) are now being killed, some people may have ethical qualms:
“Most security experts still believe that drones, which allow a scene to be watched for hours or days through video feeds, still offer at least the chance of greater accuracy than other means of killing terrorists. By most accounts, conventional airstrikes and ground invasions kill a higher proportion of noncombatants. But without detailed, reliable, on-the-ground intelligence, experience has shown, drones make it possible to precisely kill the wrong people.”
So, the point appears to be that Pakistanis and Yemenis should be grateful that the US hasn’t invaded them, as in Iraq, which resulted in a million deaths (casting doubt on the “accuracy” of the invasion unless we just count all dead Iraqis as terrorists). Not mentioned, of course, is the other minor detail that ground invasions also result in American deaths, which might make them less attractive than killing people with video games. Who are these anonymous “security experts” anyway? How many of them are there that we can measure the majority or their opinions? Can anybody read this and see it as anything other than a feeble, blatant attempt to manufacture legitimacy for state murder?
What percentage of readers really believe that the US can pick out individual members living in regions throughout the world and kill them at will without incurring the outrage of the communities, producing the terrorism the nation is purportedly combating? I will concede that there are a few people in my home town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, (whose names I won’t mention) that I don’t particularly like but I wouldn't look kindly on a foreign government that sent in drones to take them out. Stating the obvious inevitably gives rise to certain questions: How insanely gullible and drunk on power have Americans become? Do they never fear that they, too, may one day, while abroad for example, similarly face death because they are “infidels,” who seem to be killed according to a logic roughly parallel to that which justifies endless, global war with “terrorists.” Is going around the world randomly decapitating infidels worse than killing Pakistani and Yemeni villagers who appear on video screens? While there may be some quibbling about which is really worse, both appear infinitely close to the bottom of the ethical barrel.
Another question to consider -- for the pragmatists out their not swayed by such sentimental stuff as the killing of people too weak to strike back -- concerns the spread of technology: The US tried to maintain a monopoly over atomic weapons, giving it the sole power to annihilate without fear of retaliation, but, as we now realize, it didn't work out. The result is that we now all must fear nuclear annihilation as atomic bombs continue to spread. Do Americans now believe that their monopoly on drone technology will last forever, that a day will not come when they, too, will not have to search the skies with anxiety?
But, don’t worry, the Times assures us, US drone attacks only kill a few innocent people:
“Mr. Zenko said that an average of separate counts of American drone strikes by three organizations, the New America Foundation, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Long War Journal, finds that 522 strikes have killed 3,852 people, 476 of them civilians.”
Compare these statistics with an article by Truthout:
“A recent investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has determined that fewer than 4 percent of drone strike casualties in Pakistan have been identified and confirmed through records as members of al-Qaeda. "The people running the drone program are taking enormous liberties with how they label people in order to try to rationalize the gross over-extension of the program and to cover up the fact that they're killing people knowing only little-to-nothing about them," Rep. Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, told Truthout. "They use the term 'insurgent' to describe almost every adult male in the area, and then the administration goes in and kills a very extensive number of children and females as well," he said. . . .
“Reprieve recently released a new analysis of publicly available data on drone strikes compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The findings reveal that targeted killings by drone strikes kill immensely more people than those targeted, making multiple strikes necessary in many cases. According to the analysis, as of November 24, the targeted killings of 41 men have resulted in the killing of an additional 1,147 people.”
So you have the choice of believing the Times or Truth Out, but before making up your mind, remember that the Times was a leading advocate of the invasion of Iraqi, constantly quoting groundless claims made by the Bush administration that ultimately succeeded in whipping Americans into a frenzy of fear and hatred. A few people are still out there searching for those weapons of mass destruction.
While I applaud many of Obama’s policies in the US, he is murdering innocent people around the world, which is why I will never say, “I’m a Democrat” and I will never support them financially. I am NOT Obama.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
http://www.truth-out.org/...
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NYTIMES.COM|BY SCOTT SHANE