The U.S. drone program kills people every week in many places around the world.
Drone-fired missiles
- execute suspects who haven't been proved guilty in a court of law;
- kill suspects just because capturing them is deemed to expensive or dangerous;
- are used in countries with which the U.S. is not at war and sometimes without the host country's formal legal authorization; and
- kill innocent women and children ("collateral damage") just because they happen to be in the vicinity of suspects.
Based on the above, IMHO the U.S. drone program is unconstitutional, illegal and includes many missions that constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
How many Americans are willing to spend even an hour with any surviving family of women and children who were killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere? What would we tell them to explain their loss and justify the drone strike?
- I'm sorry, I'm not the one who pulled the trigger?
- I trust my government, the CIA, NSA and Pentagon to keep me safe and select terrorists for execution with minimum collateral damage in other countries?
- I'm sure that our government will pay you some compensation?
- I just pay my taxes, vote and try to stay out of foreign politics?
- I'm not a lawyer, so whether what happened to your dead women & children is a crime should be investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and, if it decides that a crime was committed, the suspects should be tried in a U.S. federal court by a jury of my American peers.
- I know that my taxes fund the Drone program and bought the missiles that killed you women and children, but there's nothing that I can do? What? Write my Congressman, Senator, President?
- I didn't have the time (or, to be honest, the desire and will power) to research and protest against such a program? After all, I'm busy with work, children, TV, movies, music, sports and etc.
Are these morally defensible arguments? Is this what any one of us would like to tell G-d if questioned?
Guess what, folks? As tax payers and voters Americans bear direct responsibility for what the government & military that we finance with our taxes does at the behest of politicians that we put into office.
Is this what the Founding Fathers of America would have wanted when they declared independence from The British Empire and drafted the U.S. Constitution?
Where's the outrage and protest?
Here are some excerpts:
"Targeted killing by drones remains the US weapon of choice, famously called “the only game in town,” by former CIA director Leon Panetta. This despite a decade of worldwide moral outrage over its overwhelming civilian casualties, violations of international law, disregard for national sovereignty, dismissal of due process, and continuing secrecy.
The Obama administration recently announced that the drone killing program will in fact be increased by 50 % in the coming two years.
Now government documents leaked to the Intercept show conclusively that the US drone program kills thousands of innocents on bad intelligence and careless targeting while being falsely portrayed as a program of impeccable planning and precision execution.
The recently leaked “Drone Papers” - see http://www.drone-papers.com - reveal the extent of willful ineptitude in US drone operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, which rely on systematically faulty intelligence and astonishing inaccuracies in identifying targets. These revelations only further confirm what many of us already knew about the appalling failure, relentless deception and criminal lethality of the US drone program.
...
The publication this year of the Drone Papers reveals that the Obama administration, the US military, and the CIA have been lying all along about the drone assassination program, its targets and its civilian casualties. These documents also expose the obscene disregard for human lives pervading the entire operation, as the drone warriors pursue their technological dreams.
“Throughout human history,” the Stimson Report reminds us, “the ability to project force across significant distances has been a much sought-after military capability… and since the dawn of mechanization, militaries have sought to replace people with machines.” In this context, drones are the unholy grail.
The Drone Papers reveal that in its pursuit these Dr Strangeloves have been well aware of the horrific human costs of their enterprise and that they couldn’t care less.
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."
Please read the rest of the article at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/09/reaper-madness-obamas-whack-a-mole-killing-machine/
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