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Drones and Democracy
ISLAMABAD - On May 12th, the day after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, two men from the area agreed to tell us their perspective as eyewitnesses of previous drone strikes.
One is a journalist, Safdar Dawar, General Secretary of the Tribal Union of Journalists. Journalists are operating under very difficult circumstances in the area, pressured by both militant groups and the Pakistani government. Six of his colleagues have been killed while reporting in North and South Waziristan. The other man, who asked us not to disclose his name, is from Miranshah city, the epicenter of North Waziristan. He works with the locally based Waziristan Relief Agency, a group of people committed to helping the victims of drone attacks and military actions. “If people need blood or medicine or have to go to Peshawar or some other hospital,” said the social worker, “I’m known for helping them. I also try to arrange funds and contributions.”
Both men emphasized that Pakistan’s government has only a trivial presence in the area. Survivors of drone attacks receive no compensation, and neither the military nor the government investigate consequences of the drone attacks.
Mr. Dawar, the journalist, added that when he phoned the local political representative regarding the May 12th drone attack, the man couldn’t tell him anything. “If you get any new information,” said the political representative, “please let me know.”
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.
It’s hard to slow down and look at horrifying realities. Jane Mayer, writing for The New Yorker, (“The Predator War,” October 26, 2009), quoted a former C.I.A. official’s description of a drone attack:
“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,” Jane Mayer continues, “that they have inspired a slang term: ‘squirters.’”
Just rubble and charred stuff…
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.
The social worker described four more cases in which he had been involved with immediate relief work, following a drone attack. He didn’t supply us with exact dates, and we weren’t able to find news articles on the internet which exactly matched his accounts. Riaz Khan, an AP reporter covering a drone strike on May 15th, noted differences in details reported by witnesses and official sources. “Such discrepancies are common and are rarely reconciled,” according to Khan. (May 15th, “Officials: US missiles kill 5 in NW Pakistan”)
Exasperated by the neglect and indifference people in Waziristan face, especially those who say they have nowhere to hide, the journalist and social worker began firing questions at us.
"If the US had good intelligence and they hit their targets with the first strike,” Safdar asks, “why would the second one be necessary? If you already hit the supposed militant target, then why fire again?”
"Who has given the license to kill and in what court? Who has declared that they can hit anyone they like?”
"How many ‘high level targets’ could there possibly be?”
"What kind of democracy is America,” Safdar asks, “where people do not ask these questions?”
Reliance on robotic warfare has escalated, from the Bush to the Obama administrations, with very little significant public debate. More than ever before, it is true that the U.S. doesn’t want our bodies to be part of warfare; there’s also not much interest in our consent. All that is required is our money.
But, you get what you pay for in the U.S.A. The social worker and the journalist assured us that all of the survivors feel hatred toward the United States. “It is a real problem,” said Safdar, “this rising hatred.”
- Posted in
32 Comments so far
Show AllAll the years of hard work done by Greg Mortenson and the CAI building schools and public works in Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan, and building relationships with the people there, erased in an instant of Hellfire.
Very relevant comment CapnRog. Have you ever thought that those actually guiding the empire's hidden machine don't really want people like Mortenson to succeed? I have thought of that many, many times.
Sioux Rose
Jill/Odoco/Gonzonews: Excellent posts.
"A shard of truth flying through the murky darkness"- - M.Parenti
Thanks, Jill
can we power down the world on September 22, 2012?
how much more of this must we tolerate in the name of tvs and heaters and refrigerators and cell phones and washers and dryers?
we are held hostage to our land, to our rents and mortgages...our very survival is threatened if we do not comply, and pay...
take the land back...take your life back...
give these innocent people a chance to live their lives by robbing these bastards of their ability to kill them indiscriminately for personal gain without consequence...
rob the bastards of their ability to pollute the gulf, or the arctic, or desertify the planet's belly...
gotta go, but join me, please!
Well said!
"What kind of democracy is America,” Safdar asks, “where people do not ask these questions?”
The best one in the world.
The powerful and their adviswers in academia and especially the mass media have worked very hard at neutralizing the threat presented by ignorant people who have the gall to take democracy seriously and fail to see it as a "necessary illusion" to keep the stupid proles in line, as that great Theologian-apologist of power (much loved by Obama) Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr said.
Keep up the good work, Kathy.
We are all guilty of war crimes by complicity in allowing our guv to carry out these corrupt and inhumane strikes.
These actions certainly don't make me feel safer.
Remember the mantra justifying our illegal military invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and soon Iran:
"We are fighting terrorists over there so we won't have to fight them over here".
Here's an op-ed which puts the lie to that:
Categories: PJB
Date: May 11, 2010
Title: Is the War Coming Home?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Faisal Shahzad sought to massacre scores of fellow Americans in Times Square with a bomb made of M-88 firecrackers, non-explosive fertilizer, gasoline and alarm clocks.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit with a firebomb concealed in his underpants. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shot dead 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood and wounded 29. Why did these men attempt the mass murder of Americans who did no harm to them? What impelled them to seek martyrdom amid a pile of American corpses?
Though all were Muslims, none seems to have been a longtime America-hater or natural-born killer. Hasan was proud to wear Army fatigues to mosque. Shahzad had become a U.S. citizen. Abdulmutallab was the privileged son of a prominent Nigerian banker.
The New York Times ties all three to the Internet sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemen-based imam born and educated in the United States who inspires Muslims worldwide to jihad against America. But, following Sept. 11, al-Awlaki had been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West.
Now President Obama has authorized his assassination.
What do the four have in common?
All were converted in manhood into haters of America willing to kill and die in a jihad against America. And the probability is high that there are many more like them living amongst us who wish to bring the war in the Af-Pak here to America.
But what radicalized them? And why do they hate us?
Taking a cue from George W. Bush, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of the Times Square bomber, "We will not be intimidated by those who hate the freedoms that make ... this country so great."
This was the mantra after Sept. 11. We are hated not because of what we do in the Middle East, but because of who we are: people who love freedom and stand for women's rights.
And that is why they hate us -- and why they come to kill us.
In a way this is a comforting thought, because it absolves us of the need to think. For no patriotic American is going to demand we surrender our freedom to prevent fanatics from attacking us.
The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens advances a parallel view. We are hated, he says, because of our popular culture.
We are loathed in the Islamic world, Stephens writes, because of "Lady Gaga - or, if you prefer, Madonna, Farrah Fawcett, Marilyn Monroe, Josephine Baker or any other American woman who has ... personified what the Egyptian Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb once called ‘the American Temptress.'"
This hatred is at least 60 years old, says Stephens, for Qutb wrote even before "Elvis, Playboy, the pill, women's lib, acid tabs, gay rights, Studio 54, Jersey shore and ... Lady Gaga."
Qutb's revulsion at American degeneracy is why his legion of Islamic followers hate us.
Again, a comforting thought. For, if Lady Gaga is the problem, there is nothing we Americans can do about it.
Yet, this is as self-delusional as saying the FLN set off bombs in movie theaters and cafes in Algiers to kill the French because of what Brigitte Bardot was doing on screen in "And God Created Woman."
American's toxic culture may be a reason devout Muslims detest us. It is not why they come here to kill us. Mohammed Atta's friends did not target Hollywood, but centers and symbols of U.S. military and political power.
U.S. Marines were not attacked by Hezbollah until we inserted those Marines into Lebanon's civil war. No Iraqi committed an act of terror against us before we invaded Iraq. And if the Sept. 11 killers were motivated by hatred of the immorality of our society, what were they doing getting lap dances in Delray Beach?
Osama bin Laden declared war on us, first and foremost, to end the massive U.S. presence on sacred Saudi soil that is home to Mecca and Medina.
Some may insist this was not his real motive. But, apparently, the Saudis believed him, for they quickly kicked us out of Prince Sultan Air Base.
As for the Taliban, they would surely make short work of Lady Gaga. But their stated grievance is the same as Gen. Washington's in our war with the British: If you want this war to end, get out of our country.
By Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Looking at America's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Maj. Hasan, Abdulmutallab and Shahzad decided that what we call the war on terror was in reality a war on Islam.
All decided to use their access to exact retribution for our killing of their fellow Muslims.
We are being attacked over here because we are over there.
Nor is it a good sign that U.S. intelligence is reporting that rising numbers of U.S. Muslims are making Internet inquiries about how and where to get training to bring the war home to America.
Thanks for the article. It says a lot when paleo-cons like Pat Buchanan or Paul Craig Roberts can sound like such voices of reason these days.
Pat Buchanan was against invading Iraq from the beginning. Prior to the invasion, I watched him debate a Washington Post "liberal" who was for the invasion.
The liberal/conservative dichotomy doesn't mean much in the elite world of foriegn policymaking.
Sioux Rose
CURMUDGEON: What I take from this article is apparently not what you do. First of all, it puts the burden of proof on the person who responds to countless attacks on his people to answer for HIS violence. This is like charging a woman who's been battered for years for premeditated murder when she finally uses the kitchen knife on her abusive spouse. It completely obliterates the entirety of what came before. How about US foreign policy and its CONSIDERABLE CRIMES against Muslims? To instead put the mojo on the few who try to fly over the cuckoo's nest on the (mistaken) wings of retaliatory aggression is quite a case of projection. It presupposes that we, the US are the civilized nation... all that while the nation's drones are taking out wedding parties when not carving bullets out of pregnant would-be mothers.
Second, just as the Catholic church used the fear of sin to try to control human sexuality for centuries; and just as programs on TV use sexually tantalizing scenes to hold minds hostage, this article contracts the whole of US foreign policy into whether or not our female actresses are temptations? That is an utterly Christian projection!
The Muslim world has A LOT to be angry about! Crimes against thousands and thousands of their citizens in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Palestine. Sure, the culture thing is A factor as the Muslim view of female power and sexuality is largely based on major restriction. However, to take this portion of the "culture war" and use it as the main event smacks of deflection of the most devious sort. On a scale of 1-10, I'd rate the naked aggression and resource acquisition as #1 & 2. The sexy US actress schtick might be #9. Pulease...
Hi SR
This article most assuredly does not contract "the whole of US foreign policy into whether or not our female actresses are temptations?"
You must not have read the entire article. For instance:
"Again, a comforting thought. For, if Lady Gaga is the problem, there is nothing we Americans can do about it.
"Yet, this is as self-delusional as saying the FLN set off bombs in movie theaters and cafes in Algiers to kill the French because of what Brigitte Bardot was doing on screen in "And God Created Woman."
"American's toxic culture may be a reason devout Muslims detest us. It is not why they come here to kill us. Mohammed Atta's friends did not target Hollywood, but centers and symbols of U.S. military and political power."
PB goes on to say:
"By Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Looking at America's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Maj. Hasan, Abdulmutallab and Shahzad decided that what we call the war on terror was in reality a war on Islam.
All decided to use their access to exact retribution for our killing of their fellow Muslims."
There is a lot about PB that is disturbing and sometimes frightening, but his opposition to W's, and now Obama's invasions of the Middle East has been unwavering.
Sioux Rose
DREAM JOE: Hard to explain, but the subtext seems to me to be strong on subliminals, reflecting the intellectual equivalent of a "Don't Touch, Wet Paint" sign, or negative (heavily planted) suggestion in the line of, "Don't look over here." In other words by stating that it's NOT about the sexy actresses, the idea that it IS is being planted; and it's absurd! Never under-estimate how the Right frames an issue. They are more slippery than the Gulf of Mexico, now that it's been oiled.
Opposition to the US oil wars defines this moment in history for me.
I'll take the isolationist conservative over the liberal interventionist at this point.
I think PB's position presents an interesting anthropological paradox. He is the arch-patriarch on culturekampf issues, but his opposition to the US middle east wars has been consistent and authentic, regardlesss of the President/war leader's party.
You are correct that PB's article does attempt to score some backhanded kulturkampf points for the conservative side. Nonetheleess, he is the sole right wing MSM voice of opposition to the wars.
End the military police state and sort out the rest later.
Sioux Rose
DREAM JOE: I find common ground with you and your observations on this post. I would add that Pat Buchanan and some of his conservative buddies are also right-on about ending the drug war. William Buckley, Jr. was outspoken on this debacle at one time. It's amazing when the extreme right and left meet; but then as you probably know, I am a great believer in everything "coming full circle," on cosmic as well as mundane planes.
"We are all guilty of war crimes by complicity"
And those who voted for Bush twice even more so.
The use of drones is murder if not a war crime.
And as Congress has not declared war against either Afghanistan or Pakistan, the strikes ordered by Obama make him a murderer.
The drones are killing civilians and perhaps "suspects" based on idiot "intelligence".
And of course under the Pashtun ethical code, each death must be avenged no matter now long it takes. A great recruiting tool for the Taliban.
On the other hand, if this American aggression against the Pashtun nation is considered to be a "war" it is certainly a war of aggression making Obomber and Bush war criminals.
Afghanistan never attacked Amerika. Nearly all of the 9/11 jihadists were from Saudi Arabia motivated by our past Big Oil foreign policy.
The crimes in Afghanistan are designed to further Big Oil global hegemony into the 21st century.
And now the BP crimes in the gulf have become an environmental war against the American people along with 11 dead oil rig workers.
"Who has declared that they can hit [with Predator drones] anyone they like?..... What kind of democracy is America where people do not ask these questions?"
Questions about the illegality of the escalating drone warfare in Afghanistan, Wiziristan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere were asked of a panel of law professors and think tank experts by a Congressional Committee just a couple of months ago. There was virtually no US mainstream media coverage of those hearings and the testimony at the time.
In a recently published book, Gary Wills (I believe) argued that the Cold War and post-Cold War militarism of the United States was very significantly a product of the American use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The threat of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal fueled three generations of domestic fear mongering, while simultaneously enhancing the unilateral warmaking powers of the executive branch of government relative to Congress. Wills argues that regardless of party affiliation, elected representatives in the House and Senate are terrified to take the partisan risk of questioning or second guessing any president's decisions rendered in the name of national security, based upon secret, highly classified intelligence information. Bush, Cheney, and Rove of course took that dynamic to a whole different level by playing the terrorist-with-a-weapon-of-mass-destruction card in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Muslim world.
One reason why ordinary Americans don't get all that riled up and ask questions about drone airstrikes is the legacy of post-WWII mentality. Better safe than sorry. Better them over there than us over here. Like Wills notes, once you've incinerated over 100,000 human beings with a single nuke, by comparison a "smart bomb" missle attack that only burns up a dozen innocent civilians to kill a Really Bad Evildoer or two (and over which there remains a shroud of official deniability) is small potatoes in the big moral equation.
Bill from Saginaw
Sioux Rose
BILL: What's the chance that lawyers like you can begin a movement that redefines the very concept of national security? I mean it's quite evident in events like Katrina and this Gulf debacle that "our" military is off playing paid guardian to the looters (cum corporations), and thus unavailable to do ANYTHING to preserve so-called national defense.
Just as Ross Perot had graphs drawn up for national television to demonstrate the actual status of a state like Arkansas (Bill Clinton's very own report card), we need similar visual depictions of WHERE THE MONEY IS GOING, and given this massive loss, what is NOT BEING FUNDED AT HOME. People need to see the direct relationship between these "offsets."
From there, a new national discussion about what homeland security means could be catalyzed. METAL has spoken of using parts of the FM radio dial to begin to create a "progressive presence."
George Lakoff, for all his democratic apologies, is sharp on the key cognitive item known as "framing." The framing of national defense is a ridiculous conceit and equally deceitful. The incursions into other lands leaving so many battered, broken, and bankrupt cannot in any sane society be coupled with the vain notion of bringing democracy to people thus abused/attacked. What it WILL do is ensure that some retaliation will find American citizens traveling abroad; or, given our wrecked economy, as the homeland and its services weaken, some nation that bought weapons from us may find ways to use them. We are far LESS safe. Deeds of senseless aggression create karma, and karma owns its own ingenious forms of boomerang. I believe our own bleeding Gulf is indicative of this, if in a form too symbolic for the left brain types to recognize.
Ideas?
Sioux -
I agree wholeheartedly that "national security" needs to be redefined in political discourse, and that both the diversion of public resources from domestic needs into a bloated network of global military bases and the creation of more enemies and more blowback should be candidly stirred into the debate. I am skeptical however that lawyers should be in the forefront of such a reframing process. In my opinion, this is what folks running for the House, the Senate, and other elected offices should be talking about, and what people in the streets should be agitating over.
It is absolutely remarkable how slender the legal reed is upon which targeted assassinations by the Central Intelligence Agency are ostensibly justified in the first place. It consists of a single vague, ambiguous phrase, tucked quietly away in one sentence of the 1947 National Security Act.
Uniformed soldiers kill enemy soldiers and sometimes civilians as the essential core component of their chosen "profession." They are trained to do this, ordered when and how to do this, and are supposed to be subjected to a rigorous chain of command heirarchy to hold them accountable for engaging in authorized acts of war rather than acts of murder.
The entire concept that spies should be deemed legally authorized to kill anybody as part of engaging in the core task of espionage and counter-espionage in the name of national security is ludicrous and morally indefensible. This James Bond 007 license-to-kill bullshit has always been nothing but testosterone fueled fiction. Congress needs to stick that bloody genie back in the bottle by amending and revising the National Security Act, and spelling out in black and white for these wannabe warriors that only soldiers obeying military orders to engage a designated enemy in combat can lawfully engage, in the name of the United States government, in acts that would otherwise be murder.
Few folks detest the bloody mindset of military warrior elites more than I do, but restoring back to the Pentagon command structure a monopoly upon warfare violence I believe is the necessary first step of the process. Once that is accomplished, the discussion can move on to a meaningful, winnable nuts-and-bolts-and-numbers debate about guns over there versus butter over here.
Lawyers have only a background role to play. It is political leaders who must lead or else get the hell out of the way.
Bill from Saginaw
Sioux Rose
Bill:
It just seems lawyers could own more clout when it came to defending just principles. In any case, I noticed the 007 thing, too... how Hollywood began to glamorize the role of "the international man of mystery with a license to kill" just when our CIA was creating its own secret government. Now that the mercenary forces have morphed into their own monster, what might happen if the US government defaults, would they go to work for "the other guy," i.e. our nation's stated enemy? If it's all about the money, and global economies are uncertain, where does that put the loyalty of those so close to the red button and an arsenal of weaponry that could kill every living thing in this world MANY times over? Some investment, and that it was marketed as "security," best bad joke of all.
"Lawyers have only a background role to play. It is political leaders who must lead or else get the hell out of the way."
Yeah but 90% of our political leaders are lawyers anyway. With a preponderance from elite law schools.
I think it takes a popular movement and a group dedicated attorneys.
Free Lynne Stewart!
Sioux Rose:
You hit the nail right on the head. We have become the most murderous nation on earth, and all the while our citizens live in a dream world with not the slightest thought given to the crimes committed in our name every day.
I look around me and I see "decent, law abiding, Christian" people who live in a state of total denial.
When will we wake up? I see no sign that it will EVER occur.
Jim Shea
Sioux
JIM: I think about these things every day. I would love to see deliverance come through a unified progressive peace/justice movement, and that may happen. But sometimes I think Nature is going to act as the great equalizer and promoter of ultimate wake-up calls first.
Hitting the same place twice, once a few minutes later, is a classic terrorist technique. The second hit is designed to strike terror into anyone wanting to commit GS after the first strike. (GS = good samaritanship). Anyone nearby who survived the blast, has a hole ripped in his psyche that could heal by rendering aid to the striken. The purpose of the second strike is to keep that hole from healing. Hence, the second strike only has to be threatened, and performed only often enough to keep the threat alive.
I wouldn't be surprised if America learned that one from Al-Qaida.
"they hate us for our freedom"
>>I wouldn't be surprised if America learned that one from Al-Qaida.
Notwithstanding the likelihood Al_Qaida a myth created by the US government in order to launch their "war on terror" (as documented in a documentary on the BBC) , it far more likely that the USA taught the tactic to Al_Qaida.
(Read as example how the US Air force deisgned the fire bomb raids on Tokyo to ensure that roadways used by rescuers to put out the flames were targeted with firebombs and how natural avenues of escape for the population fleeing the flames were also targetted so there was no way out)
I must complement you on your concise fact based observations regarding terroristic military tactics of the US.
Terrorism 'R US
Torture 'R US
"If the US had good intelligence and they hit their targets with the first strike,” Safdar asks, “why would the second one be necessary? If you already hit the supposed militant target, then why fire again?”
"Who has given the license to kill and in what court? Who has declared that they can hit anyone they like?”
"How many ‘high level targets’ could there possibly be?”
"What kind of democracy is America,” Safdar asks, “where people do not ask these questions?”
----------------
Damn good questions you'll never hear asked in the corporate media.
President Obama is now the "Law of The World" and the men behind him: The Council on Foreign Relations and Tri-Lateral Commission are the forces that move him....I was reading about David Coleman Headley and his relationship to the terrorist attack in Mumbai, another "False Flag Attack"...The U.S. Government refuses to allow an investigation by The Indian government...Why?
Simple, The FBI has to hide behind National Security and the CIA and ISI have a cozy relationship....Who ordered NORAD to stand down on 9/11? You have to protect "The Power Elite". Who confiscated the videos of the attack on the Pentagon? The FBI did to protect "The Power Elite"
"The Power Elite have authorized Obama to make an "Assassination List" and those assassinations will happen...There will be no witnesses and there is no Congressional Oversight....What type of country murders innocent people and closes its eyes? A country that is misinformed by the same "Power Elite" that creates "False Flag Attacks" and invades countries based off of fabricated information. Get ready, "They" want World War III and are prepared to sacrifice the American Economy.
"They" want World War III and are prepared to sacrifice the American Economy.'
All economies but their own. They are doing it to save their economy , which in such circumstances is known as saving their bacon. They are gangsters.
“this rising hatred.”
Thanks, Obomber!!