Saturday, July 13, 2013

'Signature strikes' and Obama's empty rhetoric on drones...

(...)

That day in Datta Khel, the signature behavior was a meeting, or "jirga," which is an assembly of tribal elders who convene to settle a local dispute. In this case, a conflict over a chromite mine was being resolved. And, in fact, the elders had informed the Pakistani army about the meeting 10 days in advance. "So this was an open, public event that pretty much everyone in the community and surrounding area knew about," says Stanford law professor James Cavallaro in the video.

Pretty much everyone in the community and surrounding area. But not U.S. intelligence. Or the head of the CIA. Or the president. Or the guy in Virginia or Nevada or some other undisclosed location pressing the button on the drone controller.

And so, almost all the tribal elders of the area were killed by the drone missiles. Akbar Ahmed is a retired Pakistani ambassador to the UK and now a professor at American University. "It's feeding into the sense that no one is safe, nowhere is safe, nothing is safe," he says in the video. "Even a jirga, the most cherished, the most treasured institution of the tribal areas. So we cannot even sit down and resolve an issue -- that is not safe anymore." As professor Cavallaro put it, "the loss of 40 leaders on a single day is devastating for that community."

And far from building stability in places like Pakistan, something the administration talks a lot about, in fact the strike actually removed, in one fell swoop, the most stabilizing forces in an entire community. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. New report documents the human cost of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen...
  2. Disgusted drone pilot quits air force...
  3. Obama lied about targets of drone strikes...
  4. Anti-drone protests hit New York...
  5. Naming the dead: five stories of drone victims...
  6. The United States has carried out more than 360 assassination drone attacks...
  7. Hey, hey, Barack! What do you say? How many kids have you killed today?
  8. A killer in the White House...
  9. The children killed by Obama's drones.
  10. The girl killed by Barack Obama - she never saw it coming...

No comments:

Post a Comment