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Advisor: ‘US Needs to Call off Drone Strikes in Pak’
Lahore - The top adviser to the US army chief in Afghanistan, David Kilcullen, has observed that the US drone strikes in Pakistan are creating more enemies than eliminating them, and hence, needed to be "called off."
(AFP/USAF/File/US Air Force) Responding to a congressman on what the US government should do in Pakistan, he said: "We need to call off the drones."
The Daily Times quoted Kilcullen, as saying that he has no objection to killing "bad guys" in Pakistan.
However, he added that the strikes were creating more enemies than they eliminate.
Kilcullen said that the drone strikes, which were "highly unpopular", gave rise to a feeling of anger that unites the population with the Taliban and could lead to "loss of Pakistani government control over its own population".
He said that insurgents used the drone strikes to stir up anti-Western and anti-government sentiment.
Another problem, Kilcullen noted, was "using robots from the air looks both cowardly and weak".
- Posted in
69 Comments so far
Show AllThe most eloquent response that comes to mind is DUH!
Sioux Rose
FREE: Exactly! As if we need experts to figure out the connection between the cold-blooded MURDER of innocents and why a bludgeoned nation's people begin to turn against our "land of the brave."
A subtitle for this article could be:
"Or How We Lost the War without Losing a Single Soldier"
"...except for suicides and accidents"
Pure and absolute cold-blooded murder. These drones will be Bush's legacy. These drones need to be outlawed now.
What the hell are you talking about? Obama has INCREASED the drone attacks since becoming president!
This is what the USA does for fun and profit;utterly destroy nations.
Bush completely destroyed two nations.Now O's going for destroying a nuclear armed democracy; a president gets more points when he destroys a democracy.
No other country has been so often and for so long successful at creating utter chaos and mega death.
It won't be long before Spanish judges put out arrest warrants for Obama and HIS administration. If the repusakins win in 2012 (that's about the time Obama's massive spending will turn into Obama's massive inflation) they will turn the tables on the demorats and charge Obama and his administration with war crimes (killing innocent civilians is a war crime) but demorats don't think that far ahead. In their bush derangement syndrome all they want to do is get bush and conveniently forget many of their current congressional leaders were in on what bush was doing making them just as culpable.
And what is wrong with that?
Obama, Pelosi, and the rest should be held responsible for their actions. And by sweeping war crimes under the table (or taking prosecution off the table), they are guilty as well. There is no excuse for ignoring war crimes.
"And what is wrong with that?"
Absolutely nothing, as long as you don't mind calling this country the United States of the UN. When we do that virtually all the freedoms we enjoy under the constitution and the bill of rights will be gone. What you just posted will get you arrested and put in jail for several years. Don't believe me - look to Europe, freedom of speech, gone, freedom of assembly (unless you are assembling FOR the government, gone, and the list goes on and on. I don't say we should IGNORE war crimes, just be realistic.
Obama's committing war crimes, there is no doubt bush has, even clinton did, actually if you bother to read history EVERY president since George Washington is guilty of either war crimes, crimes against humanity or both. What we need to do is change the culture in washington. Term limits for congress, 2 four year terms and your out. No more people serving in congress for 30+ years until they are 99 and can't see, talk, or think. Then follow Ron Pauls advice and cut the government down to size, just the size needed to fulfill the constitutional mandates. With the severe loss of power congress and the president will no longer think they are above the law.
It has nothing to do with the UN. The US has a moral and legal responsibility to prosecute its OWN war criminals under our OWN laws. If the US is not willing to do that, then other countries can take the lead.
We seem to be very quick to execute war criminals in other countries where we want their oil, but our own war criminals like Dick Cheney who has killed millions of innocents for his own and his friends' personal profit, continue to prosper.
And those freedoms in Europe that you lament as being gone - we voluntarily gave them up here when Bush and the Corporate Controlled Congress shredded the Constitution so that we could be "safe". Yes, I expect to end up in jail because I love the discarded ideals of our USA's former freedoms.
"The US has a moral and legal responsibility to prosecute its OWN war criminals under our OWN laws."
Yes, under our OWN laws, and Yes it does have to do with the UN and a one world government. Did you know,
“This Constitution and the Laws of the United States shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United states, shall be the Supreme law of the Land, and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or the Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
In other words, all provisions in the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, and all state laws can be obliterated in one fell swoop by a treaty signed by the president and approved by two thirds of the senate.
Some of the las the UN wants us to sign are, Law of the Sea Treaty (Some of the Convention's conservation provisions would provide new avenues for non-U.S. environmental organizations to affect domestic U.S. environmental policies by pursuing legal action in both US and international courts. In addition, requirements that nations either harvest their entire allowable catch in certain areas or give the surplus to other nations could result in mandated overfishing, The license fees and taxes levied on economic activities in the deep seabed area by the ISA would be, in effect, a form of 'taxation without representation'. Citizens would be indirectly taxed through business and governmental activities in the area.)
Charter for Global Democracy (The UN will be established as the central operating entity. All governments will be redesigned to operate through the UN. Independent sovereign states will essentially cease to exist. It will establish the new procedures that will govern how nations will interact with each other, as well as how they operate within their own borders. They will instead become "partners" in global governance.)
This is no conspiracy theory. Global warming treaties; global banking agreements; UN attempts to tax American citizens; regulations on parents' rights; political correctness; global economic equality; international gun controls; the World Court; the World Bank; UN support and promotion of making Islam the only religion you CAN NOT criticize. All usurp your freedoms the constitution and the bill of rights give you. Corporate Controlled Congress has not even come close to shredding the constitution like these treaties will.
Allowing our leaders to be extradited to foreign countries to be tried under their laws is a slippery slope. After our leaders next come YOU. The global governance and the treaties out of Durban II will take away your freedom of speech. For example say a moslem walked into a supermarket an blew himself up killing hundreds of people mostly women and children. You write here that you think it is horrid that islam would allow a moslem to do this (or something to that effect). You just blasphemed islam a crime in Pakistan punishable by death. Under these "new global" laws you would be extradited to Pakistan and executed.
As I said, as much as I want bush etc (dems and reps) to pay for their crimes, it must be here in the US. Otherwise it is a very slippery slope you are walking on.
Yes, I have read the Constitution and am familiar with the particular section you quote. In fact, that is what makes the Geneva Convention binding on our so-called leaders. So are you saying that you no longer like our Constitution? You are in good company with Bush and his cronies.
The provisions to have our leaders tried outside the country ONLY applies if we refuse to prosecute them ourselves. But we no longer have anyone left in government who will follow the laws and initiate prosecution, so they never will be held accountable for their crimes. Going back a long time now, our government was taken over by the likes of the CIA, and we now only have a mirage of Democracy.
Damn, YOU do have a reading comprehension problem, I hear you can enroll in adult education classes in high school to help correct that problem.
"So are you saying that you no longer like our Constitution?" Just where did I say that???
"The provisions to have our leaders tried outside the country ONLY applies if we refuse to prosecute them ourselves." BULL SH@T!!!! If you bothered to read the UN global governance treaties and comprehend what they say than you would know that ANYONE can be charged at anytime for a crime in a foreign country that was committed anywhere outside that country and be extradited to that country and face the penalty for that crime.
The example I gave you is valid, criticize islam in the US, it is considered defaming islam in Pakistan, you will be extradited to Pakistan and under their laws executed, so much for freedom of speech.
Under the UN we will have NO democracy, WAKE UP from your bush derangement syndrome!!!!
Here is where you said it:
"In other words, all provisions in the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, and all state laws can be obliterated in one fell swoop by a treaty signed by the president and approved by two thirds of the senate."
That is what the Constititution allows - like it or not, and I inferred that you did not like it. I apologize if that is not what you meant, but I could see no other meaning in your words. The framers recognized that some flexibility was needed, and trusted the combination of the President and Congress to make international treaties. What they did not recognize was that both branches could be so compromised by the CIA and other secret agencies that we no longer govern our own country.
The problems are not with the UN. They are homegrown while the electorate sleeps. And the problem was not just with Bush and Obama. Congress has gone along lockstep.
. . . "using robots from the air looks both cowardly and weak".
That is the essence of George Wanker Bush and George Wanker Bushism - cowardice and weakness. Add shortsightedness, incompetence and a generous helping of blood lust and you have the distillation of American foreign policy in the region.
"using robots from the air looks both cowardly and weak".
That is the essence of Barack Hussein Obomba and Barack Hussein Obombism - cowardice and weakness. Add shortsightedness, incompetence and a generous helping of blood lust and you have the distillation of American foreign policy in the region.
That's two posters who blamed Obama's actions on Bush! Amazing!! What delusions!!! Where's the Koolaid?
Obama has the power and authority to totally and completely ground all the drones. Instead he has increased the number in the air and the number of attacks. Like it or not IT'S OBAMAS WAR NOW koolaid drinker.
"Cowards" is an apt description! Tell me where there is any connection to "Brave" in what OUR military is doing. Sitting at a computer in a comfortable chair at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, thousands of miles from the "target", having no idea if there are mothers and babies in the vicinity of this deadly weapon you are guiding in for the "kill". Shame on this nation. Stop this pathology of warring. It just doesn't make sense! Brave is when you stand up and refuse to do what you know is wrong. Don't we know that killing and murdering is WRONG?
No need to call them off.
There's a new program in the works to alter some of the drones to drop black hats instead of bombs, along with instructions that anyone who hates our freedoms should wear them.
Then the follow-up drones can identify them as the 'bad guys' who need killin'.
Yeehaw
Kilcullen is a "commander-on-the-ground". My opinion on this matter is: stop blaming the Bushes but remind our current President that he should head the advise of his "commanders-on-the-ground", a mantra that this hot-air spewer has used several times to evade making hard decisions. What is he waiting for anyway? And who are the real cowards, the guys at Creech Air Force Base or the guys in the White House?
"Will the real cowards stand up please" We are all cowards who dare not stand up and say, "No I will not do this or be part of a society that condones killing and murder" That goes for those who work for the military, the MIC, the government etc. etc. Now do I have empathy for the young man/woman who is enticed into the military because Mc Donalds and the like is the only alternative, of course! Same goes for those who work in the killing factories making boms etc. so they may pay their mortgages and feed their appetites. This is a sick society that values the dollar above all else. We have been brainwashed into believing that acquisition of money and pretty things will give us status and make us happy. At what cost? Guilt, shame and anger. Time to be brave and feel proud that you are no longer cowards. Stand up and be counted say I, shivering in my boots!
As I have said so many times before, If we had drones flying high above our cities and towns, with somebody identifying "patriots" and relaying that to the controllers. If a downtown block of homes could be destroyed by missiles from these things with the attacking government paying us five hundred or a thousand bucks a head for their "mistakes," and continuing to try to kill American Patriots who were fighting this invader, causing yet more destruction, more "collateral damage," wouldn't our resistance strengthen with every one of these senseless attacks? Wouldn't we cease to believe anything they said and just work to eject them from our country?
Sadly, we apparently have no empathy anymore. That is probably what makes it easy to sit in that easychair and play the computer game with live drones and live/dead people.
Remember when the Mayor of Philly firebombed that tenement owned by African American community organizers? Killing how many chidren?
WACO ? Children incinerated to save them from abuse.
Killing Pashtun women so they need not wear Burqas.
And don't forget the American general in Vietnam with the classic line:
"We had to destroy the village to save it."
That's right expediency in our choice of killing tools. We have that option, you know, after all we are "Americans". You know, land of the free and home of the brave. Last remaining super-power and all that crap. With a new techno toy of mass destruction generated by our military-industrial complex every week. So this one makes us more enemies than friends (and in reality the bigger problem that it is internationally known and a violation of international law and therefore we need to get back to quieter less blatantly, presumably more defensible tactics like kicking in people's doors, elbowing old ladies out of the way, throwing people up against walls, shooting, raping, and torturing innocents and the other sorts of war crimes American soldiers and "military advisers" have been committing since Vietnam.) Yes, the drone attacks get us bad press and if we should be good at something it should getting good press, shouldn't we, after all we run corporate-sponsored show elections every 4 years to insure a democratically elected president for our sad, sick little so-called freedom loving democratic U.S. of A. U.S. imperialist out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW! And keep you bloody, genocidal, war criminal hands off Latin America!
The Drone attacks are clearly wrong, inhuman and too often the collateral damage is 10 times more than the intended targets. Instead we should force the hand of the Pakistani Military and ISI and make them disengage from the Taliban. They would definitely know how to do it since they are the ones that created it.
_________________________________________________
From another post:
This is an interesting review and im sure im gonna get the book to read up on it.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE02Df01.html
This excerpt kinda sums it up in a way but the book seems to be a fact driven analysis with enough footnotes to make your eyes glaze over ..
____________________ quote
Placing Pakistan at the heart of the problem, Fitzgerald and Gould contend that the only way for Afghanistan to obtain its real independence is for it to be freed from their domination. As such, they advocate strongly against negotiating with the Taliban:
Well-meaning peace activists have recommended reviving the practice of parsing between al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Some recommend engaging the Taliban as the [US] engaged the Soviet Union, Communist China ... Aside from not delineating between Pakistani Taliban and Afghan Taliban and that both use terrorist methods, such recommendations ignore the reality that the Taliban were expressly created "as a kind of experimental Frankenstein monster", by the CIA and Pakistani ISI to invade Afghanistan. That mission has not changed. More importantly, such recommendations wrongly paint the Taliban as an indigenous tribal force bent on bringing peace to a troubled land. (p 323)
Far from negotiating with the Taliban, "If any negotiations are to be conducted, they must begin with the state within the state sponsors of this Taliban terror, Pakistan's army and its [ISI] branch. It is this institution, which from 1973 on has played the key role in funding and directing first the mujahideen battle plan and then the Taliban ... Nothing can be accomplished without neutralizing them as a subversive influence and turning them toward the task of nation building." (p 324)
__________________________________-end quote
Since I am a social misfit who can't get a date, can I change that to "Make beer, not war"?
From what I remember, the IDF used actual manned aircraft to bomb.
zmann, maybe but Israel produces advanced drones or UAVs and sells them to many countries e.g. Georgia, India, even Russia. I imagine they like to try them out on real victims and, in fact, wasn't that convoy in Sudan shredded by Israeli drones?
Supposedly it was one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_450
http://defense-update.com/products/h/harop.html
Best not to let your children have any toy tanks etc. in the yard. The autonomous UAV above might factor in threat shape but not scale into its targeting algorithms.
Same wingspan as a 737:
http://defense-update.com/products/e/eitan-UAV.htm
Kill with impunity from the comfort of your armchair.
Last I heard, even Hezbollah has UAVs. It's getting crazy, although we seem to be the only country insane enough to wage a war with them.
All these nasty weapons we develop always seem to end up in the hands of foreign governments' and no doubt their spies are hard at work learning all they can about the drones and all the oher roboty things we're working on. how long you want to bet it'll be before we'll learn what being on the other end is like.
Thanks to the writer for spelling ADVISOR properly.
Call off Drone Strikes? But, but, but it's SPRINGTIME - that's when all the wedding parties are held.
This is America's most 'target rich' time of year.
Hi honey! Yeah, I shot up a wedding party today over in Pakistan. Probably killed a terrorist or two among the women and children. What's for dinner?
Someone needs to get after the mass murderers that build these Devil's Tools.
Insitu in Bingen and White Salmon, Washington. Owned now by Boeing.
When the hipster high-techies finish for the day, they head to the Gorge with their kite boards.
http://www.insitu.com/
It is time to get out of Afgan NOW!!!
The killing etc is only creating more enemies......when will people ever learn?????????????
It IS cowardly and weak, but bombing and killing everything that moves in the middle east is all the pentagon and whatever stooge in command knows how to do!
Arrested development...
I can only imagine the insanity if Pakistan lauched drones of their own off the coast of the US.
They would never do so because they are more civilized than us.
But if we make people not hate US, then what we do with all of our dollar$ in our DoD budget? And we have to be cowards, for this is no longer the land of the free and home of the brave. We elect the same people over and over, we seldom protest. Ignorance and shouting is what we call news. It's time for a mass migration, so we the terrorists can fight we the terrorists (if we can't fight them at home, we must fight them from abroad).
the military needs to give more bribes to the Pakistan officials. By then they will get used to drone attacks.
It's been obvious for a long time that this is the case--and indeed, the whole problem with a military "war on terror." Unfortunately, Obama appears to be a slow learner who embraces discredited policies, renames them, and is hailed as a genius (for now). Unless he begins thinking rationally, his devotees will eventually turn on him like a jilted trailer-park lover.
after 26 comments all of which are saying no to the drone attacks- I will say:
The drones are attacking murderers who persuade teenagers to strap on a suicide belts. They make their money from opium. The leaders of the Al Qaida Taliban are indeed really nasty people and deserve to be killed.
Trouble is that they are housed in the midst of mountains and neither the Pakistani army or our own military can get at them.
That is why we use drones and I am not offended by the use of drones for this purpose, yes even if innocent people are with these truly bad people. However, of course I am not for a wedding party being mistaken for a meeting of these evil doers. So excellent intelligence is still needed and if not available, yes then a drone is worse than not bombing at all and there will be a huge backlash.
However, if the evil persons who advocate suicide and murder and dope pushing and women subjugation are targeted and killed, then the local population will also be relieved-- they don't like them any more than we do.
700+ people have been killed in Pakistan by drones. 14 of those were people on a list of US targets. All the rest were women, children and peasants.
There was a study done that was posted here on CD showing about 90% of all deaths from U.S. airstrikes in Iraq were women and children. And that's with manned aircraft...
I agree with metamorph all the way. Talibans have no country and no religion and above all they have no humanity for they are to civilizatin what the aids virus is to the human body and they must be eradicated not next week not tomorrow but NOW.And all those Terrorist Sympathisers on here go back to kindergarden and start your education all over again and purge yourself from Brainlock, perhaps it will help you see the facts of life in the global war against terrorism and you can thank those who died for the the freedom you and your loved ones still have.
What kindergarten taught you this crap ?
The strongest message one can send in this society is to drop out of the old economy and join the new economy. The idea being the old saying, change it or lose it. Starve the beast!