Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Drone strikes violate international law and should be stopped


Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued a joint report calling for those in charge of U.S. drone strikes in the Middle East to be tried for war crimes. I totally support this effort.

“The report is issued in conjunction with an investigation by Human Rights Watch detailing missile attacks in Yemen which the group believes could contravene the laws of armed conflict, international human rights law and Barack Obama's own guidelines on drones.”

Drone attacks are nothing but high-tech terrorism. Bombs can make no judgment about whom they kill, and anyone in the vicinity of an attack, man woman or child, is going to be collateral damage. And on top of everything else, our government is lying to us about the number of civilians hurt and killed by these attacks.

I don’t know much about international law, but it’s always been hard for me to believe that a drone strike in another country wasn’t a crime. If it happened here, we’d be at the UN and the World Court within hours, after retaliatory bombings, of course.

The war on terror continues to be used by the U.S. as justification for all manner of illegal and immoral activities around the world. How long will we allow this to continue? 

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