It’s Hard to Believe, But America is Using Drones to Perpetuate the War on Terror

In the concluding paragraph of an excellent piece in Counterpunch titled, “Reaper Madness: Obama’s Whack-A-Mole Killing Machine,” Doug Noble writes,

“What I’ve tried to show here is something more:  that these military miscreants have also known all along that their drone technology and targeting strategy are militarily bankrupt. They could not but be aware from military history and doctrine that these approaches have absolutely no possibility of defeating terrorist groups or keeping America safe. They must know that in fact the opposite is true, that their nefarious enterprise only further endangers us all. And yet they will continue ever more brazenly their Reaper madness, the scholars here all agree, until we find some way to stop them.”

This begs the question: Why, if the military knows drone strikes are counterproductive, de we keep using drones? I believe there’s only one plausible answer. America must have an enemy. In order to sustain our bloated, massively expensive military/industrial/media complex, we must have an evil “other” to do battle with, to justify the obscene amounts of taxpayer dollars being sucked into the black hole of “national security.”

The end of the Cold War and the communist empire ushered in a vacuum that was quickly filled with a new enemy, international terrorism. The 1990s saw the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, organizations the U.S. helped create and arm, but it wasn’t until the new Pearl Harbor of 9/11 that the war on terror shifted into high gear.

From the American perspective, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were just what the military ordered, but after well over a decade of fighting, it became obvious to even the most hawkish cheerleaders (except Dick Cheney) that the wars were a debacle that did far more harm than good. But we couldn’t just pick up our marbles and go home without somehow continuing the war on terrorists and unfriendly regimes in the region, so we sent in the drones.

Although many experts outside of Washington D.C. agree that the use of drones is ineffective and even counterproductive, Obama is enlarging the program, which for me, means that by the government’s reasoning, that’s exactly the point. Killing civilians means keeping the populace stirred up and angry at America which means more terrorists that we need to fight and the cycle continues ad nauseam. As horrible as it sounds, what other explanation can there be? 

The war on terror is a self-perpetuating farce designed to focus Americans away from the issues we face at home and keep the military/industrial/media complex fat and well-funded.

Can we handle the truth about our violent country?

As Americans, we love to characterize ourselves as a peace-loving nation that only commits acts of violence in self-defense or to aid our allies. Like so many of our bedtime stories about our country, it is a myth that sounds great in a political stump speech but isn’t borne out by the facts. Here are a few of those nasty, inconvenient facts:

We are a country born of violent revolution, and America has been at war 222 years out of 239 years since 1776.

The 2013 Global Peace Index by Vision of Humanity ranks the United States 100 out of 162 countries, behind countries like Sierra Leone, Mongolia, Brazil, Morocco, and Nicaragua. The organization defines peace as: "Harmony achieved by the absence of war, conflict or violence or fear of the aforementioned."

When the battleship U.S.S. Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor in 1898, this was the last push needed to force America into a war with Spain. The explosion and loss of life was blamed on Spanish forces, even though it was actually the result of a smoldering coal bunker fire that melted through a bulkhead into an ammunition locker.

A plan to attack American cities to justify war with Cuba was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962. Rejected by President Kennedy, Operation Northwoods remained classified for 35 years.

In 1964, President Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin incident, where it was claimed a U.S. ship was attacked by North Vietnam, to greatly escalate our military presence in South Vietnam. Later declassified documents revealed there was no attack on the ship by the North Vietnamese.

America invaded Iraq in 2003 based on claims that the country presided over by Saddam Hussien had concealed weapons of mass destruction, an active nuclear weapons program and was a supporter of al Qaeda, none of which proved to be true.

The A.C. Nielsen Company estimates that the average child will see 8,000 murders on television by the time he or she completes elementary school, and a given child will view over 200,000 acts of violence by the age of 18.

America has a homicide rate of 4.7 murders per 100,000 people, which is one of the highest of all developed countries.

The United States is by far the world's biggest arms exporter.

The U.S. has recently supplied firearms, armored vehicles, and items from a category that includes chemical and riot control agents like tear gas to nations with records of suppressing democratic dissent such as Algeria, Egypt, and Peru.

In 2013, the United States sent Israel at least $196 million in parts for military airplanes and helicopters, a category that includes F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters, both of which Israel is currently using to attack Gazan homes, offices and farmland. Total military aid sent by the U.S. to Israel stands at $3 billion annually.

America has secretly supported brutal dictatorships around the globe since the end of World War II, from Chili’s Augusto Pinochet to Libya’s Gaddafi to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.

Since the War on Terror began, 41 men have been targeted for drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. These strikes caused 1,147 deaths, and some of the targets are still believed to be alive. The Council on Foreign Relations estimates that drones have killed 3,674 people outside of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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? 

The lies drone on

A secret internal document prepared for Pakistan’s government indicates that as many as 400 innocent civilians, many of them children, have been killed in drone attacks over the past nine years.

Of course, the U.S. government insists that it’s only killed 50 or 60 “non-combatants,” which is somehow supposed to make it better. The thing about this latest report is that it was never meant to go public, so there was no reason for the Pakistani officials who prepared it to fudge the numbers up.

What warped rational is there for this kind of activity? So what if we kill a few dozen children, we got our SUSPECTED terrorist, who was never found guilty of anything in a court of law? If a murder suspect were hiding out in a childcare facility in Milwaukee, would we drop a bomb on the building to stop him?

Why is it okay to murder innocent Pakistani’s in our zeal to stop people we think might be terrorists? Why isn’t the UN loudly condemning this action? Why is the Pakistani government allowing it to go on or do they know that they really don’t have the power to stop it?

Our government is acting like an international thug, going wherever it wants to do whatever it wants regardless of the law or signed treaties. And to top it all off, they want to punish anyone who exposes their lies and atrocities to the world.

How have we come to this, but more importantly, how do we stop it?

Tonight's Presidential press conference...

Tonight President Obama is scheduled address the nation and discuss Guantanamo, six years after he promised to close the prison, and lay out his rationale for drone strikes. Should be entertaining.

I would like one courageous reporter…oh, I forgot, we don’t have those anymore, okay, one very drunk reporter, to ask the President this question: Is there any rationale of any kind that we would accept from a foreign government for dropping bombs on American soil? 

Our illegal and immoral drone program

Evidence continues to grow that America’s semi-secret drone program is far more complex and far more deadly than anyone in the Obama Administration has let on. The program has been justified over the years as one that only targets senior al-Qeada members, but evidence is mounting that a) targets are far more diverse, and include a variety of low-level Afghan and Pakistani militants, and b) the number of civilians killed is far higher than the Administration or CIA has admitted in public statements.

We are executing “suspected” terrorists who have not been tried and convicted of any crime, and murdering innocent civilians. This is outrageous and criminal.  We are doing it because there is no one on the planet big enough to tell us to stop.

Why is Obama condoning a program that murders innocent civilians? How is it that an individual as intelligent as Obama could be convinced this is a good idea? What if a drug lord from Mexico was hiding in Arizona? Would we tolerate the Mexican government sending over a drone to bomb his hiding place in a Phoenix suburb?

Our drone program is illegal and immoral and the Administration has been lying to us about it. It may have started under Bush, but Obama continues to defend and expand it. He should be shutting it down.  

Drones Over Peoria?

In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration began asserting the need for a stronger executive branch (dusting off their “unitary executive” theory) under the guise of the threat of terrorism. A president needed to act quickly and decisively to protect the country from another devastating terrorist attack, they argued, and, according to Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld, that meant giving the president new powers to capture and kill real and potential threats to the U.S. So over the remaining years of his Administration, Bush, with the help of the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act, assumed, more power to act unilaterally, resulting in Guantanamo Bay and black sites worldwide.

Of course, Bush’s second term ended in 2008 and a new President was elected. Unfortunately, the powers that Bush’s team coopted in the heat of a terrorist attack were quickly adopted by the new President, Barack Obama. And what would you expect? If you were the CEO of a company and your board of directors gave you sweeping new powers, would you, as the new CEO, rescind those powers? Probably not. One thing rulers are loathe to do is give up powers that they have. So fast forward to today, and you have the announcement that the Obama Administration believes it can use lethal force against American citizens on American soil under certain circumstances. This means if the President feels you are a threat, he can use drones to wipe you out. In Peoria or Denver or New Orleans. No arrest. No trial. No due process. Just “boom,” you’re dead.

Now Barack Obama seems like a sensible guy, and I’m sure others in his administration are just as sane and mentally stable as he is. They have all convinced themselves, and are trying to convince us, that of course no one is going to have to order the bombing of a house in Peoria. We’re sensible, rational people. You can trust us.

Uh, no we can’t. And that is why we have a Constitution. The Constitution is supposed to be our (the people’s) safeguard against the accumulation of too much power in the hands of too few leaders. That was the point of creating three branches of government as opposed to simply appointing a President (or king) to rule as he or she saw fit. Thanks to Bush and his posse of neocons, we now have an executive branch that thinks it has the power to be judge, jury and executioner under certain circumstances. And they get to determine the circumstances.

While Obama may be reasonable, what about the next President or the next? What if we elected a shoot-first-ask-questions-later cowboy like Rick Perry? Do you want him deciding who’s a threat to America and who isn’t? During the Occupy movement’s brief kerfuffle, the FBI categorized them as a terrorist group. The potential for abuse here is massive.

Defenders of the drone decision like to use hypothetical situations as evidence that the President needs this power. What about a guy strapped with explosives walking into a football stadium? That kind of thing. We are a nation of laws. The police already have the power and authority to stop a madman from hurting others, either by arresting him or, if the threat is imminent, shooting him. If there are people plotting terrorist attacks, they should be arrested and tried. Let the justice system determine their guilt and punishment, not a small cadre of government employees in a White House office.

The drone decision is frightening in its implications and we should all be letting Washington know that it is an unacceptable abuse of executive power.