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Archive for category Drone Attacks

From Connecticut to Pakistan

Posted by admin in Drone Attacks on January 5th, 2013

 

The horrible massacre in Newtown, Connecticut of 20 first-grade children and six teachers and other staff– and a mother and her son—has deeply moved the hearts of people across America.  Many have come together, especially in interfaith services, to express their sorrow for and empathy with the victims, and to seek closeness with each other and comfort and answers.  With an outpouring of compassionate statements by religious and political leaders nationwide and worldwide.  One, Pope Benedict XVI, expressing “his heartfelt grief and the assurance of his closeness in prayer to the victims and their families, and to all those affected by the shocking event.” (“World leaders express sadness, pain,” By Cassandra Vinograd, Associated Press, Boston Sunday Globe, Dec. 16, 2012)  Another, United Methodist Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar, writing, “May the God of love and truth images-46surround this community of Newtown, and help us all find our way to making the world a place of peace and safety for all of God’s children.” (New England Conference, The United Methodist Church, Dec. 14, 2012)

And in a prayer vigil in Newtown, President Obama saying that “this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together.”  That “we bear responsibility for every child.”  That “there’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace, that is true.”  That “’let the little children come to me,’ Jesus said, ‘and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.’” (“President Obama’s speech at prayer vigil for Newtown shooting victims (Full transcript),” By Washington Post staff,The Washington Post, Dec. 16, 2012)

But, In the face of global reality, whose children actually do “we bear responsibility for?”  Whose “God of love and truth” is really being called on to “make the world a place of peace and safety?”  Where do “our children” end and the children of the other begin?  Where does compassion run out and indifference set in?

The uncontrollable sobbing and shaking of mourning Newtown mothers and fathers thrusts open the door of our common humanity.  Such traumatic humanizing can radicalize the human heart, and even lead one’s god to become loving of the other and more truth-filled.  The horror and humanness of Newtown can transform and empower the human heart not to care just for “our children and our families,” but forall children and their families.  Newtown unleashes the power of the human heart to care and act– if it is informed of, or otherwise dares to understand and visualize for itself, the terrible suffering and shared humanness of other people.

Like the estimated 500,000 Iraqi children, most under age 5, who died between 1990 and 1996 as a result of US-controlled UN sanctions.  So many Iraqi mothers and fathers wept at their dying children’s bedsides because the sanctions prevented them from obtaining adequate medicine and food and sanitation.   And later, the UN-condemned, unnecessary US pre-emptive war against Iraq, resulting in the deaths of possibly over one million Iraqi civilians.  A war creating over 700,000 Iraqi widows and orphans begging on the streets. (“Iraq’s War Widows Face Dire Need With Little Aid,” By Timothy Williams, The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2009)  And severe sectarian violence continuing to this day, in the wake of Iraq’s “liberation” by the military of “the greatest nation on the face of the earth.”  With no alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction found, which was the pretense for the criminal war.  And, now, a repeat performance against Iran, with its alleged secret creation of a nuclear weapon, and  sanctions that create shortages of medicine and other necessary items and the strangulation of the health of Iranian children.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was a war crime against humanity, launched just two weeks after a United Methodist-professing president said, “I pray daily.  I pray for wisdom and guidance and strength.  . . .  I pray for peace.  I pray for peace.” (The New York Times, Mar. 7, 2003)  Which “God of love and truth” was former president George W. Bush praying to?  Evidently to an American and United Methodist god.  Instead of being put on trial, along with his god, for international war crimes, The United Methodist Church has erected a monument to him at Southern Methodist University:  ‘HOME OF THE GEORGE W, BUSH PRESIDENTIAL CENTER.’

It is not just about many United Methodists.  A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People found that “80% of evangelical white Protestants support” going to war against Iraq, “the highest tally of any group measured.”  (“Pope’s Emissary Meets with Bush, Calls war ‘Unjust,’” by Johanna Neuman,  Los Angeles Times,  Mar. 6, 2003)  (For an analysis of the positions of religious groups on the war against Iraq, see Alberts, “Mainstream Religious Leaders in Bushtime: Guardians of the Status Quo,” Counterpunch, Sept. 19, 2005.

To hear each other’s laughter and see each other‘s tears, allows the heart to experience each other’s humanness.  Awareness of our shared humanness can “make the world a place of peace and safety for all of God’s children.”    Like the children of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Gaza and the West Bank.

US drones alone, controlled by CIA operatives, have indiscriminately killed more than 200 children in these countries—children of the other, whose deaths are covered up by secrecy and silence.  As reported, In Afghanistan, “President Hamid Kaizai . . . criticized NATO for not being able to provide an explanation for the vans piled with bodies of women and children that villagers displayed to reporters.” (“Commander Apologizes for Afghan Airstrike,” By Alicia J. Rubin,The New York Times, June 9, 2012)  No names of the women and children were given.  No photographs of their mangled bodies.  No devastated and outraged loved ones were pictured or heard.  Why not?  To actually see “vans piled with the bodies of women and children,” would sicken and wrench and, perhaps, enlarge the heart.  In an instant, we would be struck by the murder and grief of people who look and think and feel like us—human beings murdered in our name.

Politicians, corporate profiteers, their guardian media and chaplains of the status quo keep war at a distance, far from the human heart.  Political explanations about US exceptionalism, “terrorists who hate our freedom” and keeping America safe box in the mind so that it does not go to the imperialistic heart of the matter.  Political leaders and their corporate masters and media watchdogs are about hardening the heart, not enlightening its mind’s eye.  The sacrificing of young American lives in imperialistic wars depends on the use of patriotism and sectarian Christianity to make other human beings out to be heartless– the other, when, in fact, he and she and their children are just like us.

Journalist George Monbiot puts his finger on the human heart in a piece called, “In the US, mass child killings are tragedies.  In Pakistan, mere bug splats.”  The subtitle makes the point: “Barack Obama’s tears for the children of Newtown are in stark contrast to his silence over the children murdered by his drones.”  Monbiot cites a report that indicates 64 children were among the 297 to 569 civilians killed in north-west Pakistan during President Obama’s first three years in office.  He writes, “Most of the world’s media, which has rightly commemorated the children of Newtown, either ignores Obama’s murders or accepts the official version that all those killed are ‘militants.’  The children of north-west Pakistan, it seems,” he continues, are not like our children.”  He concludes, “The have no names, no pictures, no  memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears . . . no grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.  . . . They belong to the other: to the non-human world of bugs and grass and tissue.” (the Guardian, Dec. 17, 2012)

When Rap Brown said that “violence is as American as cherry pie,” he was referring to the pervasive hardening of the human heart.  The use of “American exceptionalism” and Christocentric exclusiveness to wage wars against the mothers and fathers and children of the other.  Maintaining over 700 military bases throughout the world, and being the biggest exporter of weapons to other countries.  The continuing wealth-controlled hierarchy of access to economic and political and legal and religious power in America, still oppressing people of color, and now more and more white persons.  The 1% and their pocket-lined political servants now manufacturing a “fiscal cliff” to steal earned entitlements and needed services from America’s older and younger citizens alike.  The daily diet of violence provided by television shows, movies and video games.  The senseless Newtown killings that occur daily on the streets of America: young people especially, with no concrete educational and career hopes, killing each other, with guns as easy to obtain as “cherry pie.”

The human heart holds the key to how big our world is and can become.  It is about allowing ourselves to see the whole human picture.  Like the birth of Jesus.

It is not just the story about the prophesized birth of a baby in a manger, who would become a messiah and set his Jewish people free from Roman domination and bring “Peace on Earth.”  It was about a “troubled” King Herod ordering the massacre of all the Jewish children “two years old and under” in the region of Bethlehem to do away with any threat to his power.  It was especially about “Rachel weeping for her children; she could not be consoled because they are no more.” (Matthew 2: 1-18)  Christmas is about the human heart responding to Rachel and her children.  It is about “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Vincent Harding spoke to all of us about the technology of the heart in writing, “What we want is a new transformed society, not equal opportunity in a dehumanized one.” (There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America, Vintage Books, 1983)  The technology of the earth is used to fashion weapons of destruction.  Christmas reveals the transforming technology of the heart to “beat swords into plowshares . . . and study war no more . . . and no one shall make them afraid.” (Micah 4: 3-4)

The humanizing power of a child.  From Bethlehem to Connecticut to Pakistan.   It’s a small world for big hearts.

Mel King is a long-time Boston community activist, organizer, educator, author and political leader, who, in 1983, was the first Black candidate to make it to the finals in Boston’s mayoral campaign.  He is author of Chain of Change: Struggles for Black Community Development, South End Press, 1981, co-author with James Jennings of From Access to Power: Black Politics in Boston, Schenkman Books, 1986, and author of Streets, a Poem Book published by Hugs Press, Boston, 2006.  His e-mail address is mhking@mit.edu.

Rev. William E. Alberts, Ph.D., a former hospital chaplain at Boston Medical Center, is a diplomate in the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy.  Both a Unitarian Universalist and United Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics, religion and pastoral care.  His recently published book, A Hospital Chaplain at the Crossroads of Humanity, is available on Amazon.com   His e-mail address is wm.alberts@gmail.com.  

 

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HAMID KARZAI, THE SALAJEET PEDDLER OF KABUL; SELLS SILAJEET OF FEAR TO THE AMERICAN NATION, AND IS A SNAKE UP PAKISTAN’S SLEEVE

Posted by admin in Commentary, Drone Attacks, Foreign Policy, History, Makaar Dushman, Pakistan Fights Terrorism, Pakistan's Hall of Shame on December 28th, 2012

And, who came out he biggest winner in all the Wars in Afghanistan?  Of course India, it did not send a single soldier to fight in Afghanistan from 1987 to 2012. Thousands of Pakistani, US, and NATO soldiers have died fighting, but not a single Indian soldier has died in Afghanistan. And that you may call Indian chicanery or the Chanakiya doctrine, but, whatever, name you give it, good or bad, India played its cards right and won the great game.

HAMID KARZAI,THE SALAJEET PEDDLER OF KABUL IS A SNAKE IN PAKISTAN’S SLEEVE, AS THE NATION CONTINUES TO CARRY THE BURDEN OF OVER I MILLION PERMANENT SOVIET ERA AFGHAN REFUGEES

Hamid Karzai’s Anti-Pakistan Statements: With friends like Hamid Karzai, Pakistan needs no enemies.

“Pakistan is involved in a series of terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that the “recent assassination attempt on the country’s intelligence chief was planned in Pakistan.”

(CNN) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that “a suicide bombing targeting the country’s spy chief was planned in the Pakistani city of Quetta, and that he expects to raise the issue with Pakistani authorities.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai plans to confront Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari at a meeting in Turkey on Tuesday over the wounding of his intelligence director in a suicide bombing which he says was planned in Pakistan.

 

Drawing by Latuff.

Shilajit, also spelled Shilajeet or salajeet, is a pale-brown to blackish gummy brown substance found on rocks. Shilajit is found on steep rocks in the mountains of India, Himalayas, and Afghanistan. It has been thought to be an exudate of the plant Styrax officinalis and other plant and microbial substances. This substance is thought to be a complex mixture of organic humic substances and plant and microbial metabolites occurring in the rock rhizospheres of its natural habitat.  In Afghanistan and India, silajeet is claimed to libido and sexual thoughts. Hamid Karzai peddles the silajeet, not of libido arousal but of fear arousal. He keeps harping on the theme, like a broken record:“the Taliban are coming, the Taliban are coming to US and their NATO allies.”  

Pakistanis know, that Taliban, may have some power of mounting small scale probes or attacks, but for all intents and purposes, they are a spent force. But, for Karzai, US offers a gravy train, not only for himself,  his brother and relatives, but, also to the coterie of crooks, who forms his inner circle politically. He is really enjoying the prospect of taking the only global super Power, for as the American slang say, “for a ride.” He is laughing all the way to the Swiss, Cayman Island, and Luxembourg Banks. Hamid Karzai, is a master of playing both sides of the aisle. He has Loya Jirga with the Taliban and is allied with Baitullah Mehsud faction. He winks at their opium and heroin smuggling, and lets their shipment pass on to Europe. On the other hand,  he thinks Americans are too naive about the region, its tribal culture and mores,that he can sell them any bill of goods, he wants, including the Fear Factor of Bogeymen Al-Qaeda and/or Taliban reaching the shores of Long Island, a total absurdity.  At the same time he wants the American gravy train to continue till 2030 and feed his personal coffers. He has no regards for the young Americans, who lose their lives to Taliban attacks as well as IEDs. He wants to keep feeding the American people and politicians, the silajeet of fear, that the bogeymen, Taliban are ready to disembark on Coney Island. He understands that a psychology of fear works wonders on the American people’s psyche and keeps them worrying about the resurgence of Al-Qaeda and their cohorts the Taliban. He is a Master Proponent of  Domino Theory.  The Domino Theory was first developed under the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. It was argued that if the first domino is knocked over then the rest topple in turn. Applying this to South-east Asia Eisenhower argued that if South Vietnam was taken by communists, then the other countries in the region such as Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia, would follow (Ref:US Education Forum).  Eisenhower’s vice-president, Richard Nixon, was a devout follower of this theory. In a speech made in December, 1953, Nixon argued “If Indochina falls, Thailand is put in an almost impossible position. The same is true of Malaya with its rubber and tin. The same is true of Indonesia. If this whole part of South East Asia goes under Communist domination or Communist influence, Japan, who trades and must trade with this area in order to exist must inevitably be oriented towards the Communist regime. Karzai sells the fear to US that , “today Afghanistan is conquered by the so called Islamic “fundamentalist,” or Taliban, next to fall will be Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and rest of the Islamic World .”  So far, Karzai’s silajeet has sold well among the US congress, the US Executive branch, US Media, and US people, majority of whom would not be able to point to Afghanistan on a map of the World.. But  nevertheless, American people cannot be fooled for ever, they are begining to realize, that Karzai is nothing but, what people in the American south call, a “Flim-Flam Man.” He may not see it, but, the train of American peoples enlightenment and realization of the facts on the ground is heading inexorably coming towards Karzai. He may not accept to see it, but, its headlights are coming closer and closer, when its hits him, he will will be banished to the nirvana of iniquity. And, thats the truth!

 

Pakistan the Patsy in the Global Game

Pakistan played a key role as an ally of US and NATO in the defeat and ultimate disintegration of the Soviet Union. That was the biggest mistake in its over 60 years history. Thousands of Pakistan Army soldiers from the Pashtun belt fought as Mujaheddin, in the battle to make US and NATO nations safe from a Soviet onslaught. But, little did Pakistan know that how fickle the Western nations are, when it comes to protecting their own interests. Pakistan, by siding with the West, is still paying a very heavy price. An extra bonus has been added, which includes a constant barrage of drone attacks by its own allies, whose soldiers exult in calling Pakistani child drone victims as “bug-splats,”.  And to top it all, India, its inveterate enemy is enjoying the largesse of economic growth and expansion of exports to US , UK, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and NATO nations.

Pakistan has been left holding the bag full of exploding suicide bombers and so-called “Islamic” fanatics or “fundoos.” Never again, should Pakistan strike such a “chickenshit” bargain. The destruction of the Soviet Empire was a Phyrric victory for Pakistan, its people, and thousands of Pakistani soldiers, who laid down their lives as the so-called Mujahedin.  The Western agents from Arab countries like Osama Bin Ladin, Ayman Zawahiri, Abu Zubayda, the CIA trained “Mujahids,” became double-edged sword for Pakistan. After the Soviet-Afghan War, while US packed its bags and left, these “stalwarts” of the “Good War,” turned on their host Pakistan and became hell-bent on its destruction. Their presence in Pakistan not only earned it a bad name and provided fodder the Zionists and their Hindu cohorts in the Western Press and Media  A crescendo of propaganda was launched to declare Pakistan, a “Terrorist State.”If had not been for President George Bush Sr and Jr, and to a great extent President Obama and General David Petraeus, Pakistan would have been a proverbial toast.

And now to top it all, even the West and its NATO ally are starting pose a real time threat to Pakistan nuclear and strategic assets. the Qu’ranic exhortation to Muslims, not choose allies from other Abrahamic faiths, which Pakistan ignored are coming true.

And the Winner is…

And, who came out he biggest winner in all the Wars in Afghanistan?  Of course India, it did not send a single soldier to fight in Afghanistan from 1987 to 2012. Thousands of Pakistani, US, and NATO soldiers have died fighting, but not a single Indian soldier has died in Afghanistan. And that you may call Indian chicanery or the Chanakiya doctrine, but, whatever, name you give it, good or bad, India played its cards right and won the great game.

Pashtuns are Incorruptible, according the Code of Pashtunwali: 

Hamid Karzai has made mockery of Pashtunwali, a cornerstone of Pashtun character. Pakistan hosted millions of brethren Afghan refugees, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai was one of the refugees, who enjoyed the hospitality of Pakistani Pashtuns, but, this ingrate broke all norms of Pashtunwali and started a long romance with Pakistan’s inveterate Hindu enemy.  In other words, he urinated in the pot from which he received his meals. But, the flaws of Hamid Karzai’s weak and corrupt character are exploited by his stealth enemies, who wine and dine him, when he visits them India.India still hosts a large number of KHAD agents, who are waiting in the wings to land at Bagram Airbase, as soon as an opportunity occurs. The Guardian, UK states that: 

“Karzai and Abdullah had their men in the polling station, but there was no one for [Ghani], so we cheated for him. He is a very educated man and with good strategy for Afghanistan. Also we are all from his tribe in this area. I tried to put my extra ballots in our polling station, but I had some enemies who tried to take my picture so I went to another polling station and no one asked to ink my finger or anything, they just said bring cards and put them in the box. It was a very happy day.“Karzai’s men were paying 1,000 Afghani per family and Abdullah’s were paying 1,500 Afghani. But many people took money from Abdullah and voted for Karzai anyway.”(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/18/afghanistan-election-fraud-evidence)

Hamid Karzai Bit the Hand that Fed him

While most Afghans were grateful for Pakistan’s hospitality, safety, security, and largesse in feeding,clothing, educating, and healing their millions of refugees, Hamid Karzai, a backstabber, started plotting against Pakistan, so much so, that he tried to influence the opinion of US President Obama against Pakistan Army and people. Now, he is worried, that after US leaves Afghanistan, his chickens will come to roost. He makes secret trips to Pakistan, to seek a fellow crook Asif Zardari’s help to find a post US departure safe haven in Pakistan. But, he forgets, that Pakistani Pashtuns still adhere to Pashtunwali, and consider Hamid Karzai, a blot on the honor of  the Pashtun global community. 

Bennett editorial cartoon

Lest We Forget: If a Pakistani had one piece of bread, he gave half to his Afghan Refugee Brother or Sister

  At one time an estimated 10 million Afghan Refugees were living in Pakistan. Pakistanis fed, housed, and educated their children. These Afghan refugees still linger in major cities and take up Pakistan’s meagre resources. In 2012, Pakistan’s cities like Karachi host millions of Afghan, who came as refugees and never went back. However, this huge influx of Afghan Refugees has made Karachi, a tinderbox, where ethnic Afghans vie for jobs, food, and shelter, with the local population, who had migrated from India during the the 1947, Diaspora of Muslims of India.  
 
Afghans in Pakistan are the source of destabilization of nation, economically, socially, culturally, and most importantly present a security threat 
 
Pakistanis, even this day tolerate, love, respect, and honor their Afghan refugee brethren. But, Pakistanis patience is running out. Pakistan is a developing nation. It has 180 million people and topping that are at least several million undocumented Afghans, who use and abuse Pakistan on a daily basis in their blogs, newspapers, and media. Pakistani people are falling below the poverty line due to resources being grabbed by Afghans, some of whom have palatial houses not only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but in Dubai, US, Britain, Canada, India, and Europe, including Moscow. Pakistan is facing  a burden of feeding millions of extra mouths. It is a gargantuan task, in which a handful of brotherly country’s like Turkey are helping. The International Aid Agencies provide mere pittance to support this huge population. Moreover, western intelligence agencies recruits amongst these refugees to carry out surveillance of Pakistan’s defense and strategic sites.
 
US Looks the Other Way or Winks and Nods, at Indian RAWS Training of Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan attack Pakistan’s Frontier Constabulary.
 
 On top of this catastrophe, innocent Pakistanis in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Hyderabad, Faisalabad, Khuzdar, Bannu, Kohat, and in all major metropolitan areas are being blown to smithreens daily by bombs, planted by Afghan agents of Hamid Karzai working in tandem with RAW and Mossad. RAW, the Indian Intelligence Agency trains so-called Pakistani Taliban, and sends them across the Durand Line to attack Pakistani Frontier Constabulary and Frontier Police. Pakistan’s corrupt government led by Asif Zardari and his opposition chort Nawaz Shariff, have no sensitivity towards the enormity of problems, each and every day 180 million Pakistanis face.  They do not need an extra burden of carrying the load of a million or more Afghan refugees, who NEVER left. Pashtunwali has reached its limits, enough already. 
 
 
A GENUINE SILAJEET PEDDLER OF KABUL 
 Unknown-31

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In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats!

Posted by admin in Drone Attacks, Pakistan's Hall of Shame on December 26th, 2012

 

The people who operate the drones, Rolling Stone magazine reports, describe their casualties as “bug splats”, “since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed”. Or they are reduced to vegetation: justifying the drone war, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that “you’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back”. Barack Obama’s tears for the children of Newtown are in stark contrast to his silence over the children murdered by his drones

The Guardian, 

Connecticut Community Copes With Aftermath Of Elementary School Mass Shooting

A memorial to the victims of the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut. The children killed by US drones in north-west Pakistan ‘have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and teddy bears’. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty

“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.” Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world’s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

If the victims of Mr Obama’s drone strikes are mentioned by the state at all, they are discussed in terms which suggest that they are less than human. The people who operate the drones, Rolling Stone magazine reports, describe their casualties as “bug splats”, “since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed”. Or they are reduced to vegetation: justifying the drone war, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that “you’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back”.

Like George Bush’s government in Iraq, Obama’s administration neither documents nor acknowledges the civilian casualties of the CIA’s drone strikes in north-west Pakistan. But a report by the law schools at Stanford and New York universities suggests that during the first three years of his time in office, the 259 strikes for which he is ultimately responsible killed between 297 and 569 civilians, of whom at least 64 were children. These are figures extracted from credible reports: there may be more which have not been fully documented.

The wider effects on the children of the region have been devastating. Many have been withdrawn from school because of fears that large gatherings of any kind are being targeted. There have been several strikes on schools since Bush launched the drone programme that Obama has expanded so enthusiastically: one of Bush’s blunders killed 69 children.

The study reports that children scream in terror when they hear the sound of a drone. A local psychologist says that their fear and the horrors they witness is causing permanent mental scarring. Children wounded in drone attacks told the researchers that they are too traumatised to go back to school and have abandoned hopes of the careers they might have had. Their dreams as well as their bodies have been broken.

Obama does not kill children deliberately. But their deaths are an inevitable outcome of the way his drones are deployed. We don’t know what emotional effect these deaths might have on him, as neither he nor his officials will discuss the matter: almost everything to do with the CIA’s extrajudicial killings in Pakistan is kept secret. But you get the impression that no one in the administration is losing much sleep over it.

Two days before the murders in Newtown, Obama’s press secretary was asked about women and children being killed by drones in Yemen and Pakistan. He refused to answer, on the grounds that such matters are “classified”. Instead, he directed the journalist to a speech by John Brennan, Obama’s counter-terrorism assistant. Brennan insists that “al-Qaida’s killing of innocents, mostly Muslim men, women and children, has badly tarnished its appeal and image in the eyes of Muslims”.

He appears unable to see that the drone war has done the same for the US. To Brennan the people of north-west Pakistan are neither insects nor grass: his targets are a “cancerous tumour”, the rest of society “the tissue around it”. Beware of anyone who describes a human being as something other than a human being.

Yes, he conceded, there is occasionally a little “collateral damage”, but the US takes “extraordinary care [to] ensure precision and avoid the loss of innocent life”. It will act only if there’s “an actual ongoing threat” to American lives. This is cock and bull with bells on.

The “signature strike” doctrine developed under Obama, which has no discernible basis in law, merely looks for patterns. A pattern could consist of a party of unknown men carrying guns (which scarcely distinguishes them from the rest of the male population of north-west Pakistan), or a group of unknown people who look as if they might be plotting something. This is how wedding and funeral parties get wiped out; this is why 40 elders discussing royalties from a chromite mine were blown up in March last year. It is one of the reasons why children continue to be killed.

 

Obama has scarcely mentioned the drone programme and has said nothing about its killing of children. The only statement I can find is a brief and vague response during a video conference last January. The killings have been left to others to justify. In October the Democratic cheerleader Joe Klein claimed on MSNBC that “the bottom line in the end is whose four-year-old gets killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that four-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror”. As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, killing four-year-olds is what terrorists do. It doesn’t prevent retaliatory murders, it encourages them, as grief and revenge are often accomplices.

Most of the world’s media, which has rightly commemorated the children of Newtown, either ignores Obama’s murders or accepts the official version that all those killed are “militants”. The children of north-west Pakistan, it seems, are not like our children. They have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears. They belong to the other: to the non-human world of bugs and grass and tissue.

“Are we,” Obama asked on Sunday, “prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” It’s a valid question. He should apply it to the violence he is visiting on the children of Pakistan.


Twitter: @georgemonbiot

www.monbiot.com

Article ReferenceConnecticut Community Copes With Aftermath Of Elementary School Mass Shooting The Guardian, UK, Dec 17, 2012

References:

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/17/obama-speech-newtown-school-shooting

2. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-rise-of-the-killer-drones-how-america-goes-to-war-in-secret-20120416

3. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-23/world/35500278_1_drone-campaign-obama-administration-matrix

4. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012. Living Under
Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan.

http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Stanford-NYU-LIVING-UNDER-DRONES.pdf

5. eg http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=4043&Cat=13&dt=11/5/2006

6. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012, as above.

7. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/12/12/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-12122012

8. John Brennan, 30th April 2012. The Ethics and Efficacy of the President’s Counterterrorism Strategy. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-efficacy-and-ethics-us-counterterrorism-strategy

9. John Brennan, as above.

10. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012, as above.

11. http://dawn.com/2011/03/18/rare-condemnation-by-pm-army-chief-40-killed-in-drone-attack/

12. http://dawn.com/2011/03/18/rare-condemnation-by-pm-army-chief-40-killed-in-drone-attack/

13. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe

14. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe

15. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/17/obama-speech-newtown-school-shooting

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The lesser children of Pakistan

Posted by admin in Drone Attacks, Pakistan's Hall of Shame on December 26th, 2012

The lesser children of Pakistan

Unknown-19In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats

Barack Obama’s tears for the children of Newtown are in stark contrast to his silence over the children murdered by his drones

 

2009.08.21 Syed Wali Shah Aged 7, killed in strike Ob32 / Noor Behram

“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.” Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut.  There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.Description: http://www.area148.com/cms/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif

 

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world’s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

If the victims of Mr Obama’s drone strikes are mentioned by the state at all, they are discussed in terms which suggest that they are less than human. The people who operate the drones, Rolling Stone magazine reports, describe their casualties as “bug splats”, “since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed”. Or they are reduced to vegetation: justifying the drone war, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that “you’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back”.

Like George Bush’s government in Iraq, Obama’s administration neither documents nor acknowledges the civilian casualties of the CIA’s drone strikes in north-west Pakistan.

 But a report by the law schools at Stanford and New York universities suggests that during the first three years of his time in office, the 259 strikes for which he is ultimately responsible killed between 297 and 569 civilians, of whom at least 64 were children. These are figures extracted from credible reports: there may be more which have not been fully documented.

The wider effects on the children of the region have been devastating. Many have been withdrawn from school because of fears that large gatherings of any kind are being targeted. There have been several strikes on schools since Bush launched the drone programme that Obama has expanded so enthusiastically: one of Bush’s blunders killed 69 children.

The study reports that children scream in terror when they hear the sound of a drone. A local psychologist says that their fear and the horrors they witness is causing permanent mental scarring. Children wounded in drone attacks told the researchers that they are too traumatised to go back to school and have abandoned hopes of the careers they might have had. Their dreams as well as their bodies have been broken.

Obama does not kill children deliberately. But their deaths are an inevitable outcome of the way his drones are deployed. We don’t know what emotional effect these deaths might have on him, as neither he nor his officials will discuss the matter: almost everything to do with the CIA’s extrajudicial killings in Pakistan is kept secret. But you get the impression that no one in the administration is losing much sleep over it.

Two days before the murders in Newtown, Obama’s press secretary was asked about women and children being killed by drones in Yemen and Pakistan. He refused to answer, on the grounds that such matters are “classified”. Instead, he directed the journalist to a speech by John Brennan, Obama’s counter-terrorism assistant. Brennan insists that “al-Qaida’s killing of innocents, mostly Muslim men, women and children, has badly tarnished its appeal and image in the eyes of Muslims”.

He appears unable to see that the drone war has done the same for the US. To Brennan the people of north-west Pakistan are neither insects nor grass: his targets are a “cancerous tumour”, the rest of society “the tissue around it”. Beware of anyone who describes a human being as something other than a human being.

Yes, he conceded, there is occasionally a little “collateral damage”, but the US takes “extraordinary care [to] ensure precision and avoid the loss of innocent life”. It will act only if there’s “an actual ongoing threat” to American lives. This is cock and bull with bells on.

The “signature strike” doctrine developed under Obama, which has no discernible basis in law, merely looks for patterns. A pattern could consist of a party of unknown men carrying guns (which scarcely distinguishes them from the rest of the male population of north-west Pakistan), or a group of unknown people who look as if they might be plotting something. 

This is how wedding and funeral parties get wiped out; this is why 40 elders discussing royalties from a chromite mine were blown up in March last year. It is one of the reasons why children continue to be killed.

Obama has scarcely mentioned the drone programme and has said nothing about its killing of children. The only statement I can find is a brief and vague response during a video conference last January. The killings have been left to others to justify. In October the Democratic cheerleader Joe Klein claimed on MSNBC that “the bottom line in the end is whose four-year-old gets killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that four-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror”.

 As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, killing four-year-olds is what terrorists do. It doesn’t prevent retaliatory murders, it encourages them, as grief and revenge are often accomplices.

Most of the world’s media, which has rightly commemorated the children of Newtown, either ignores Obama’s murders or accepts the official version that all those killed are “militants”. 

The children of north-west Pakistan, it seems, are not like our children. They have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears. They belong to the other: to the non-human world of bugs and grass and tissue.

“Are we,” Obama asked on Sunday, “prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” It’s a valid question. 

Drone statistics visualised

These graphs accurately reflect the Bureau’s data on CIA drone strikes in Pakistan to February 16 2012, the date of the last known strikes.

They are designed to illustrate in the simplest possible way key statistical data from our investigation. 

A chart illustrating total number of strikes since 2004, minimum total casualties and reported civilian casualties. Data accurate as of 20/02/12.

This graph illustrates the number of reported civilian deaths year by year. Data accurate as of 20/02/12.

This graph shows the total number of people reportedly killed in CIA drone strikes. Data accurate as of 20/02/12.

This graph demonstrates all known drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 – 2012. Data accurate as of 20/02/12.

Source:  http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/08/10/resources-and-graphs/

 

 
 
 

In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats

Barack Obama’s tears for the children of Newtown are in stark contrast to his silence over the children murdered by his drones

Connecticut Community Copes With Aftermath Of Elementary School Mass Shooting

A memorial to the victims of the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut. The children killed by US drones in north-west Pakistan ‘have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and teddy bears’. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty

“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.” Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world’s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

If the victims of Mr Obama’s drone strikes are mentioned by the state at all, they are discussed in terms which suggest that they are less than human. The people who operate the drones, Rolling Stone magazine reports, describe their casualties as “bug splats”, “since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed”. Or they are reduced to vegetation: justifying the drone war, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that “you’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back”.

Like George Bush’s government in Iraq, Obama’s administration neither documents nor acknowledges the civilian casualties of the CIA’s drone strikes in north-west Pakistan. But a report by the law schools at Stanford and New York universities suggests that during the first three years of his time in office, the 259 strikes for which he is ultimately responsible killed between 297 and 569 civilians, of whom at least 64 were children. These are figures extracted from credible reports: there may be more which have not been fully documented.

The wider effects on the children of the region have been devastating. Many have been withdrawn from school because of fears that large gatherings of any kind are being targeted. There have been several strikes on schools since Bush launched the drone programme that Obama has expanded so enthusiastically: one of Bush’s blunders killed 69 children.

The study reports that children scream in terror when they hear the sound of a drone. A local psychologist says that their fear and the horrors they witness is causing permanent mental scarring. Children wounded in drone attacks told the researchers that they are too traumatised to go back to school and have abandoned hopes of the careers they might have had. Their dreams as well as their bodies have been broken.

Obama does not kill children deliberately. But their deaths are an inevitable outcome of the way his drones are deployed. We don’t know what emotional effect these deaths might have on him, as neither he nor his officials will discuss the matter: almost everything to do with the CIA’s extrajudicial killings in Pakistan is kept secret. But you get the impression that no one in the administration is losing much sleep over it.

Two days before the murders in Newtown, Obama’s press secretary was asked about women and children being killed by drones in Yemen and Pakistan. He refused to answer, on the grounds that such matters are “classified”. Instead, he directed the journalist to a speech by John Brennan, Obama’s counter-terrorism assistant. Brennan insists that “al-Qaida’s killing of innocents, mostly Muslim men, women and children, has badly tarnished its appeal and image in the eyes of Muslims”.

He appears unable to see that the drone war has done the same for the US. To Brennan the people of north-west Pakistan are neither insects nor grass: his targets are a “cancerous tumour”, the rest of society “the tissue around it”. Beware of anyone who describes a human being as something other than a human being.

Yes, he conceded, there is occasionally a little “collateral damage”, but the US takes “extraordinary care [to] ensure precision and avoid the loss of innocent life”. It will act only if there’s “an actual ongoing threat” to American lives. This is cock and bull with bells on.

The “signature strike” doctrine developed under Obama, which has no discernible basis in law, merely looks for patterns. A pattern could consist of a party of unknown men carrying guns (which scarcely distinguishes them from the rest of the male population of north-west Pakistan), or a group of unknown people who look as if they might be plotting something. This is how wedding and funeral parties get wiped out; this is why 40 elders discussing royalties from a chromite mine were blown up in March last year. It is one of the reasons why children continue to be killed.

 

Obama has scarcely mentioned the drone programme and has said nothing about its killing of children. The only statement I can find is a brief and vague response during a video conference last January. The killings have been left to others to justify. In October the Democratic cheerleader Joe Klein claimed on MSNBC that “the bottom line in the end is whose four-year-old gets killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that four-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror”. As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, killing four-year-olds is what terrorists do. It doesn’t prevent retaliatory murders, it encourages them, as grief and revenge are often accomplices.

Most of the world’s media, which has rightly commemorated the children of Newtown, either ignores Obama’s murders or accepts the official version that all those killed are “militants”. The children of north-west Pakistan, it seems, are not like our children. They have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears. They belong to the other: to the non-human world of bugs and grass and tissue.

“Are we,” Obama asked on Sunday, “prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” It’s a valid question. He should apply it to the violence he is visiting on the children of Pakistan.

Twitter: @georgemonbiot

 

Wikileaks: Kayani wanted more drone strikes in Pakistan

Published: May 20, 2011

Cables obtained state that Kayani was requesting the US for greater drone back-up.

Newly released Wikileaks cables revealed that the US military’s drone strikes programme within Pakistan had more than just tacit acceptance of the country’s top military brass, despite public posturing to the contrary. The cables state that the country’s military was requesting the US for greater drone back-up for its own military operations as long ago as January 2008.

According to cables , the US account of Kayani’s request for “Predator coverage” does not make clear if mere air surveillance were being requested or missile-armed drones were being sought.

According to the report of the meeting sent back to Washington by Patterson, Admiral Fallon “regretted that he did not have the assets to support this request” but offered trained US Marines (known as JTACs) to coordinate air strikes for Pakistani infantry forces on ground. General Kayani “demurred” on the offer, pointing out that having US soldiers on ground “would not be politically acceptable.”

As reported earlier in The Express Tribune, WikiLeaks cables revealed that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani allowed drone strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan, saying they would protest the attacks in the National Assembly and then ignore them.

When Interior Minister Rehman Malik advised the US to hold off “alleged Predator attacks until after the Bajaur operation”, Gilani brushed off the remarks saying:

I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.

According to a leaked cable published on NDTV, in an earlier meeting on January 9, 2008 with Codel Lieberman, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Kayani agreed that increased training and exercises with the US would be of great value, but urged that US-Pakistan military engagement remain low-key for domestic political reasons. Lieberman underscored need for Pakistan to hold free, fair elections in February.

They also discussed the need to add a humanitarian aspect to Pakistan’s counterinsurgency strategy. Kayani noted four areas in which the Army was requesting technical assistance.

A cable dated February 19, 2009 sates:

The strikes have put increasing political pressure on the Pakistani government, which has struggled to explain why it is allowing an ally to violate its sovereignty. The GOP so far has denied recent media reports alleging that the U.S. is launching the strikes from bases in Pakistan. Kayani knows full well that the strikes have been precise (creating few civilian casualties) and targeted primarily at foreign fighters in the Waziristans. He will argue, however, that they undermine his campaign plan, which is to keep the Waziristans quiet until the Army is capable of attacking Baitullah Mehsud and other militants entrenched there.

The cable states that Anne Patterson remarks that “Kayani is often direct, frank, and thoughtful. .. is an avid golfer, he is President of the Pakistan Golf Association. He smokes heavily and can be difficult to understand as he tends to mumble.

 

The full text of the cables can be read on Dawn.com, The Hindu and NDTV. WikiLeaks has previously released cables to other media organisations including Guardian and the New York Times.

 

 

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