Drone Strikes

[Prospero]

Killing at a distance. Death like a bolt from the blue. A week on from the monstrous attacks in Boston it is perhaps worth getting some perspective from another place where violence is enacted against many innocents - delivered remotely by America.

This is an account of a testimony to the US senate. Reported in the British Independent newspaper.

I do not post this as an attack on America. But it does help to understand how hearts and minds can be shaped. How enemies can be made.

Wednesday April 24th

Yemeni man brings the horror of drone strikes home to US Senate

Instead of first experiencing America through a school or a hospital, most people in Wessab first experienced America through the terror of a drone strike. What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of Americ


Just six days after a US drone bombed his village, killing five militants in the process, a 23-year-old Yemeni writer named Farea Al-Muslimi travelled to Washington D.C. to tell the US Senate about the impact the strikes are having in his country.

In a powerful testimony to the assembled senators on Tuesday, excerpts of which are printed below, Mr Al-Muslimi said that rather than fighting terrorism, US drone strikes in his country were fuelling it. He told the committee that he owed much to America, having first visited as an exchange student during his school years, and later won a scholarship to study for a semester at a US college. But he came with a simple request: that the US stop bombing his country.

“My name is Farea Al-Muslimi. I am from Wessab, a remote mountain village in Yemen, about nine hours’ drive from my country’s capital, Sana’a. Most of the world has never heard of Wessab. But just six days ago, my village was struck by a drone, in an attack that terrified thousands of simple, poor farmers. The drone strike and its impact tore my heart, much as the tragic bombings in Boston last week tore your hearts and also mine.

I am here today to talk about the human costs and consequences of targeted killing by the United States in Yemen.

Background

My family lives off the fruit, vegetables, and livestock we raise on our farms. We raise cows, goats, sheep, and hens. My father has been a farmer all his life. His income rarely exceeds $200 per month. He learned to read late in life, but my mother never did.

I have 12 living siblings. I should actually have 19, but we lost seven of my brothers and sisters. Some passed away in delivery due to a lack of quality medical services in our village. Others passed away when they were still young for the same reasons.

My life changed forever in the 9th grade when I was awarded a scholarship from the US State Department. The scholarship gave me an opportunity to study English for one year at Amideast, the American English Center in Yemen. This scholarship gave me new opportunities and allowed me to see the world beyond my village for the first time. I was later awarded a State Department scholarship to the Youth and Exchange Study program, which aims to build peace and understanding between the American people and people in Muslim countries.

That scholarship allowed me to spend a year living with an American family and attending an American high school. The year I spent at Rosamond High School in Rosamond, California was one of the richest and best years of my life.

The most exceptional experience was coming to know someone who ended up being like a father and is my best friend in the United States. He was a member of the US Air Force. Most of my year was spent with him and his family. He came to the mosque with me and I went to church with him. He taught me about his experiences in America and I taught him about my life in Yemen. We developed an amazing friendship that overcame our very different backgrounds.

A drone strike in my village

Today, I am a writer, speaker, and freelance journalist. One of the most rewarding experiences I have had has been working as a “fixer” for international journalists in Yemen and Beirut. Most of my work with international journalists has been in the southern provinces of Abyan, Aden, Al-dhalea and Lahj – three of the areas where the United States has focused its so-called “war on terror.”

Just six days ago, this so-called war came straight to my village. As I was thinking about my testimony and preparing to travel to the United States to participate in this hearing, I learned that a missile from a US drone had struck the village where I was raised.

For almost all of the people in Wessab, I’m the only person with any connection to the United States. They called and texted me that night with questions that I could not answer: Why was the United States terrifying them with these drones? Why was the United States trying to kill a person with a missile when everyone knows where he is and he could have been easily arrested?

My village is beautiful, but it is very poor and in a remote part of Yemen. In the past, most of Wessab’s villagers knew little about the United States. My stories about my experiences in America, my American friends, and the American values that I saw for myself helped the villagers I talked to understand the America that I know and love. Now, however, when they think of America they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads ready to fire missiles at any time.

Instead of first experiencing America through a school or a hospital, most people in Wessab first experienced America through the terror of a drone strike. What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America.

Visiting the victims

In my work with foreign journalists, I have visited many areas struck by drones or warplanes that residents believe were dispatched as part of the targeted killing program conducted by the United States. I have traveled most frequently to Abyan, an area in southern Yemen, which had been seized in early 2011 by Ansar Al-Sharia, a group aligned with AQAP.

In Abyan and other places in Yemen, I visited many locations where local residents were suffering from the consequences of targeted killing operations. I have met with relatives of people who were killed by drone strikes as well as numerous eyewitnesses. They have told me how these air strikes have changed their lives for the worse.

In early March 2013, I was working with Newsweek in Abyan when I met the mother of a boy named Muneer Muhammed. Muneer, an 18 year old boy, transported goods for shops via his donkey in the local souk of Ja’ar town. He had recently been engaged and was preparing for his wedding. Muneer was at work when a missile hit and killed him in May 2012. She told me, in tears, that if she ever meets the individual who shot the missile, she will “crunch him into pieces” in her mouth.

The people with whom we spoke in Abyan told us that Muneer was not a member of AQAP. But that has not stopped AQAP from trying to use his death to recruit supporters to their cause.

Days after Abyan was freed from AQAP control in June 2012, I met a fisherman named Ali Al-Amodi in a hospital in Aden. The day before, his house in Shaqra, on the sea side of Abyan, was targeted by a US air strike. Al-Amodi told me that he stood helplessly as his 4 year old son and 6 year old daughter died in his arms on the way to the hospital. Al-Amodi had no links with AQAP. He and other locals said that his house was targeted by mistake. In that same strike, four other children and one woman were killed. Witnesses said none were militants.

Later in June 2012, I visited Al-Makhzan, a town outside of Ja’ar, where a drone strike targeting Nader Al-Shadadi took place. Al-Shadadi is identified by the Yemeni government as a terrorist and a leader of Ansar Al-Shariah. He has been targeted at least three times in different places, but the strikes have missed him every time. This time, it targeted his aunt’s house. Neighbors say he was not there, and his aunt’s only son was killed. There is no evidence that the son was affiliated with AQAP.

I know that some policy makers in the United States and Yemen claim that AQAP does not use drone strikes as a tool to recruit more people to their cause. This is incorrect. The case of the Toaiman family in Mareb, as reported by NPR based on a trip in which I participated, is one specific example. The Toaiman’s oldest son joined AQAP hoping to avenge the death of his father, an innocent civilian killed by a drone strike in October 2011. The son has 28 brothers waiting to do so as well. One of his youngest brothers, a 9 year old, carries a picture of a plane in his pocket. The boy openly states that he wants revenge and identifies his father’s killer as “America.”

Stop targeted killings

I don’t know if there is anyone on Earth who feels more thankful to America than me. In my heart I know that I can only repay the opportunities, friendship, warmth, and exposure your country provided me by being their ambassador to Yemenis for the rest of my life, just as I was an ambassador for Yemenis in America. I strongly believe that I have helped improved America’s image, perhaps in ways that an official ambassador or other diplomat cannot.

I have to say that the drone strikes and the targeted killing program have made my passion and mission in support of America almost impossible in Yemen. In some areas of Yemen, the anger against America that results from the strikes makes it dangerous for me to even acknowledge having visited America, much less testify how much my life changed thanks to the State Department scholarships. It’s sometimes too dangerous to even admit that I have American friends.

Late last year, I was with an American colleague from an international media outlet on a tour of Abyan. Suddenly, locals started to become paranoid. They were moving erratically and frantically pointing toward the sky. Based on their past experiences with drone strikes, they told us that the thing hovering above us – out of sight and making a strange humming noise – was an American drone. My heart sank. I was helpless. It was the first time that I had earnestly feared for my life, or for an American friend’s life in Yemen. I was standing there at the mercy of a drone.

I also couldn’t help but think that the operator of this drone just might be my American friend with whom I had the warmest and deepest friendship in America. My mind was racing and my heart was torn. I was torn between the great country that I know and love and the drone above my head that could not differentiate between me and some AQAP militant. It was one of the most divisive and difficult feelings I have ever encountered.

As someone who has lived and worked on this issue very closely, I cannot help but feel that the American and Yemen governments are losing the war against AQAP. Even when drone strikes target and kill the right people, it is at the expense of creating the many strategic problems I have discussed today. Every tactical success is at the expense of creating more strategic problems. I do, however, believe that things can still be fixed. If the United States wants to win the battle against AQAP in Yemen, I strongly suggest that it consider taking the following steps:

* Stop all the targeted killing strikes.

* Announce the names of those already on the “kill list,” so that innocent civilians can stay out of harm’s way.

* Issue an official apology to the families of all civilians killed or injured by targeted killing strikes.

* Compensate the families of innocent civilians killed or injured by strikes conducted or authorized by the United States.

* In every village where there has been a targeted killing, build a school or hospital so that the villagers’ only experience with America will not be the death and destruction caused by an American missile.

Thank you very much.

[martin48]

War is a shit business. The guys in the right are the ones that win at the end of day!

Put the two stories together

Boston police chief wants drones for next year’s marathon

http://rt.com/usa/boston-marathon-surveillance-drones-452

[trish]

From the article:
Why was the United States trying to kill a person with a missile when everyone knows where he is and he could have been easily arrested?

Missiles, not drones are the heart of the matter. Of course participants of war are going to adopt whatever technology they can to keep their soldiers as safe and as distant from the action as possible. I know I would prefer it if my friends and family in the military could sit behind a joystick in Nevada rather than behind a missile launcher in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen. Both devices deliver missiles and missiles have a indiscriminately large kill radius. Indeed the surveillance provided by drones allow for a greater degree of discrimination. The issue is why use missiles at all if we can just walk up and arrest the target or send in a double aught agent to assassinate him. Of course that's easier said than done. Barring a declaration of war, we probably just shouldn't be assassinating or arresting people in countries in which we have no authority whether we do it by missile, bullet or with handcuffs.

[Ben]

Hypocrisy in foreign policy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3I8VfXkVrs

[Ben]

Gallup: 65 Percent Of Americans Support Drone Strikes On Suspected Terrorists:

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/03/26/gallup-65-percent-of-americans-support-drone-strikes-on-suspected-terrorists/

[Prospero]

65 per cent of the population of almost any nation - from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe - are ill informed. Gallup and opinion polls are virtually pointless.

[hippifried]

A bomb is any explosive device that is detonated in a deliberate attempt to harm people. Lots of folks seem to be more worried about delivery systems than the bomb itself, who's using it, who the targets are, or whether we perceive any value in the people we call "collateral damage" nowadays. Is it just me, or is the focus of the discussion all wrong?

[yodajazz]

Perhaps you could explain to me how a person in Yemen, is an eminent threat to the US? Not only do we have the most powerful military, but also 150 million guns in the hands of private owners. The simple act of putting ourselves in the place of another would tell us, most every thing we need to know.

[Ben]

Pakistani court rules CIA drone strikes are illegal:

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2013/05/09/pakistani-court-rules-cia-drone-strikes-are-illegal-and-war-crimes/

[fivekatz]

A bomb is any explosive device that is detonated in a deliberate attempt to harm people. Lots of folks seem to be more worried about delivery systems than the bomb itself, who's using it, who the targets are, or whether we perceive any value in the people we call "collateral damage" nowadays. Is it just me, or is the focus of the discussion all wrong?I think the delivery system causes so much concern because a dude sitting in an air conditioned room thousands of miles away can target that bomb with great accuracy and no risk to his life.

You aren't wrong that this has almost completely overwhelmed the subjects of state ordered assignation and just what the process is to come to the conclusion that drone attack is the best way to deal with a suspect.

While any "war on terror" is bound to be a dirty business and largely in the shadows as opposed to the conventional warfare that is the preference of the US, it does not mean that we should not question how these decisions are made.

All drones do is remove the risk for the aggressor while providing a very level of accuracy because the reduced risk allows for the drone to fly close to the targets.

IMHO while target assignation is very disturbing, the alternatives of the types conventional warfare and indefinite detention that the Bush administration favored or inaction until attack, a proactive campaign against terrorist leaders is preferable even if it does conflict with our code of ethics, which I won't claim it does not.

[shermanwt]

Wars suck, killing innocent civilians suck. But, taking out terrorists before they plan and attack is something I can live with. Yes, there is a coldness in the numbers game, there is no 'right' when 100 blame-free villagers get killed. However, taking out the WTC and killing thousands who were ALL innocents that were victims of those attacks is a strong motivator to do everything possible to thwart future similar attempts. If the policy is to eliminate terrorist cells and drones can do that, so be it. It is better than carpet bombing.

[hippifried]

This isn't like any other war. "Boots on the ground" doesn't work anymore. Conventional military power, nostalgically quaint as it may be, has become useless. That should be obvious by now.

I don't have a problem with the new tactics. There's dangerous people in the world. Taking out the charismatic leaders leaves the kool-aid crazy hordes in disarray so they can be herded in a different direction. BinLaden had to go. Couldn't have accomplished that if there'd been some magic force field making the Pakistani border (an imaginary line drawn by people who don't live there) sacrosanct. That asshole in Yemen talked an African kid into trying to take out an air liner by blowing up his underwear. Shoe bomber too, I think. He managed to get a highly educated US military officer (a shrink no less) to attack Ft Hood single-handedly. He had to go, & I don't give a shit where he was living or where he was born.

I'm really tired of all this incessant whining by the professional cry babies, who are never going to be happy until their own imaginary utopia is reached. Maybe I should make a YouTube vid. Call myself a philosopher or preacher, & take over where Reverend Ike left off.

[fivekatz]

This isn't like any other war. "Boots on the ground" doesn't work anymore. Conventional military power, nostalgically quaint as it may be, has become useless. That should be obvious by now.

I don't have a problem with the new tactics. There's dangerous people in the world. Taking out the charismatic leaders leaves the kool-aid crazy hordes in disarray so they can be herded in a different direction. BinLaden had to go. Couldn't have accomplished that if there'd been some magic force field making the Pakistani border (an imaginary line drawn by people who don't live there) sacrosanct. That asshole in Yemen talked an African kid into trying to take out an air liner by blowing up his underwear. Shoe bomber too, I think. He managed to get a highly educated US military officer (a shrink no less) to attack Ft Hood single-handedly. He had to go, & I don't give a shit where he was living or where he was born.

I'm really tired of all this incessant whining by the professional cry babies, who are never going to be happy until their own imaginary utopia is reached. Maybe I should make a YouTube vid. Call myself a philosopher or preacher, & take over where Reverend Ike left off.Agreed! You don't bring a swiss army knife to a gun fight.

The enemy is not going to line-up on a field of combat, they will hide in shadows and strike the civilian populations because it is the only tactic that they can execute give the military mismatch.

For all the whining about drones and the targeted assignation they facilitate it is how one deals with terrorism unless we just wish to sit back and turn the other check.

THere is nothing wrong with always questioning the logic and motives of the governments use of these tactics, but there will be the politicization
of the inquires.

But drones themselves? They are just the next thing, like ironclads, subs, large caliber guns, airplanes, jets, stealth jets. Each advance makes killing seem easier, less heroic and more detached from humanity.

[yodajazz]

Agreed! You don't bring a swiss army knife to a gun fight.

The enemy is not going to line-up on a field of combat, they will hide in shadows and strike the civilian populations because it is the only tactic that they can execute give the military mismatch.

For all the whining about drones and the targeted assignation they facilitate it is how one deals with terrorism unless we just wish to sit back and turn the other check.

THere is nothing wrong with always questioning the logic and motives of the governments use of these tactics, but there will be the politicization
of the inquires.

But drones themselves? They are just the next thing, like ironclads, subs, large caliber guns, airplanes, jets, stealth jets. Each advance makes killing seem easier, less heroic and more detached from humanity.


We have just stepped into the slippery slope, of moral insanity. Adolph just had a bigger operation. So it is now ok to execute people, without evidence, as long as it is far away enough, that we don't see it? Were told that there is minimal collateral damage. So called collateral damage, includes innocent human beings. How many? We don't have a good idea. Is that really OK?

But for the sake of brevity, I'll concede your point. Human life is not important, when you cant see it. And the only important people, are Caucasian Westerners. I say it's still wrong, because the whole thing is counter-productive. It creates more enemies that it kills. How do I know? It's by simple ancient practice of imagining my self in another's place. How would I feel, if my neighbors home was bombed by some nation, half way around the world? And then I have some 'collateral damage' to my property. So I hear the 'target' was visiting his family for his grandson's birthday party. Too bad about the others who were killed. I would justifiably feel moral outrage, and maybe vow to do something to help avenge the innocent. If nothing else maybe I could contribute some money, to groups that are seeking retribution.

It does not take belief in God, to understand there is a natural human fabric that hates injustice, especially the taking of innocent human lives. Ok, so there are groups out there that hate America. If they are not openly public, we cant assume that the general public supports them, so that it would then follow, that we have the right to kill anyone, who might just happen to be in their presence at the time of a drone strike. A more natural solution to the problem is to treat non-public groups as criminal activity. A crime based approach, holds individuals responsible for for their own actions.

There is an insidious (ok evil) force in the West that tries to blame Islam for terrorism. This force's real aim, is to control peoples mind for their own power and control. And they have been pretty successful at this. I have read parts of the Koran, which talk about, not taking of innocent lives, and how charity is the duty of every Muslim. So Muslims have a choice of how to live, just like all other people. And some estimate that 9 out of ten, choose a peaceful, to practice their religion. If Islam is causing people to fight against the West, how can, Muslims bomb and kill one another? Is this in the Koran? Hell no! Women suicide bombers? Double hell no!

Many American people have an unreal fantasy, that if Bin Laden had been killed early, there would have been no 9/11. It's a completely false fantasy, in several ways, but I wont take time to argue this here.

There may always be some evil people out there. But killing babies wont stop evil people. It's been tried for thousands of years and it has never worked. We would be much better off though if we granted all the people in the world the rights that have made the US, and the West strong. We need to save our drone violence, to situations of imminent danger, and there is nothing imminent to us going on in the mountains of Yemen, or other far away places.

[Stavros]

For all the whining about drones and the targeted assignation they facilitate it is how one deals with terrorism unless we just wish to sit back and turn the other check.

But drones themselves? They are just the next thing, like ironclads, subs, large caliber guns, airplanes, jets, stealth jets. Each advance makes killing seem easier, less heroic and more detached from humanity.

You deal with 'terrorism' by identifying its cause, as well as its practitioners. It isn't about 'whining about drones and targeted assassination' but facing up to a form of weaponry that murders innocent people while claiming to kill the guilty, without anyone being arrested and put on trial with evidence laid before a court -how convenient. You also have the conundrum of those men being tried by a military tribunal in Guantanamo because they were 'illegal combatants' in a war even though the USA never declared war on either Afghanistan or al-Qaeda while the latter did declare war on the US in 1998 -so does this mean Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in fact a 'soldier'? In which case he isn't a terrorist, and neither was Osama bin Laden.

This may just be sophistry to you, but just as the USA and Israel first murders people, then claims they were 'terrorists' -Israel doesn't arrest members of Hamas and put them on trial, just murders them first then dismisses them as terrorists- so at some point maybe, a drone will target the dude next to your house -who is, of course, a terrorist- and end your life as well, but like you suggest, tough shit on you.

If people are attacking the USA at home or abroad, you could just ask -why?

[trish]

It may be possible to identify and remedy the causes terrorism. But given human nature it seems unwise to expect those remedies would convert hardened terrorists to non-violence. So how are States to deal with active, hardened terrorists? Is it feasible to capture them and bring them to trial when they are living in the mountains of Pakistan or elsewhere? Do assassinations and the violent elimination of terrorist leaders and cells do more harm than good?

People are indeed attacking the USA and other western nations at home and abroad. Why? Probably because of our political meddling, our efforts to prop up tyrannical leaders, arm insurrections against governments unfriendly to our economic interests and attempt regime change all for the profit of western corporations and to satiate our hunger for oil. Drone strikes and Guantanamo are not primary causes of terrorism; they are (for good or ill) State responses to terrorism.

[fivekatz]

Drone strikes and Guantanamo are not primary causes of terrorism; they are (for good or ill) State responses to terrorism.Without a doubt they are reactions by hyper-armed military states to an insurgent and terrorist threat.

How each of react to these things is personal and based on our beliefs. I find Gitmo far more disturbing and torture disgusting. In my heart I know that everything that is wrong with the death penalty is wrong with assassination drone attacks. But perhaps oddly, I see it as a proportional tactic in an on-going battle with terrorists that wish to attack civilian populations.

Most of these fights have their roots in colonization and the move to economic domination combined with political interference. Now the greatest tool would be to render the antagonists greviance irrelevant by making fossil fuel a far less important resource. The West has no issues of note with Islam and evn less interest in the fate of these countries without oil.

Now the fact that nobody would give a flying shit about the Middle East and Climate Change would slow if the West created disruptive technologies that rendered oil a less cherished resource is a double win.

And at that point we will have our next great moral debate. Because of what it means to the health of the earth it can't happen too soon.

[hippifried]

You have to take out the troublemakers. The snake won't bite if you cut its head off. We've already started to finally address the underlying problems claimed to be behind the terrorist mindset. In the decades it will take to start actually dealing with reversing the affects of state & corporate occupation & subjugation over centuries, we still need to deal with the hate mongers who are effectively plying their craft right now. They found their niche, & aren't going to stop, regardless of what else is going on anywhere. They're just spewing mindless hatred, & it's working. People are dying because of it. You can't dial down the situation until you negate the bogus rhetoric, & you can't do that as long as the physical part of the insanity persists. Remove the individual charismatics from the equation, & it's easier to expose the organizations for what they are.

[fivekatz]

If people are attacking the USA at home or abroad, you could just ask -why?

I know why but what they are attacking is not their source of their grievances be it Halliburton, Exxon or any of the other Plutocratic forces that emerged as post Colonization period. They are taking the tactic of attack the civilian population, who in many cases are equal victims in hope of creating allies of the ordinary westerner.

But a lesson never learned is that brutal attacks on the innocent citizens of states that opponents have issues with, seldom cause those citizens to turn on the state but rather to support it. Perhaps no greater example exists than the bombing of London in WWII?

The Plutocrats aren't going down because of terror attacks on the US population at home or abroad, so even if you believe the cause just and the tactics misguided, it can only end with a population supporting its government to create greater safety be it by drone assignation or not.

It is all quite predictable politics and frankly if a "freedom fighter" kills my kids at play, while I might believe that US domination of their government and support of bad men in that government is wrong, I will cheer on my government when the shoot drones up the asses of those who took my children from me.

Human nature.

[Stavros]

I know why but what they are attacking is not their source of their grievances be it Halliburton, Exxon or any of the other Plutocratic forces that emerged as post Colonization period. They are taking the tactic of attack the civilian population, who in many cases are equal victims in hope of creating allies of the ordinary westerner.

But a lesson never learned is that brutal attacks on the innocent citizens of states that opponents have issues with, seldom cause those citizens to turn on the state but rather to support it. Perhaps no greater example exists than the bombing of London in WWII?

The Plutocrats aren't going down because of terror attacks on the US population at home or abroad, so even if you believe the cause just and the tactics misguided, it can only end with a population supporting its government to create greater safety be it by drone assignation or not.

It is all quite predictable politics and frankly if a "freedom fighter" kills my kids at play, while I might believe that US domination of their government and support of bad men in that government is wrong, I will cheer on my government when the shoot drones up the asses of those who took my children from me.

Human nature.

If you are going to privilege 'human nature' above the law, then you should dismantle your legal system and the Constitution of the USA.

Or you could try and introduce some coherence and consistency into a country that now prosecutes abortion doctors as murderers in one state, while allowing them in others; when the Governor in one state (Texas) sends innocent men to the death chamber when the Governor in another (Illinois) halts the same process; where a President locks people up without trial or evidence of a crime, and your military strategists kill men, women and children in a foreign country because you are convinced -without evidence being presented to the public -that they are an imminent threat to lives in the USA. Where is the law in any of this? Perhaps it no longer matters and you really do want anarchy loosed upon your world.

Your analogy with the bombings of British cities in World War II (not just London, consider the devastation inflicted on Southampton and Coventry) ignores the fact that it followed Britain's declaration of war against Germany; it was not part of an assumed threat without evidence. Your reference to plutocrats and a 'post colonization' period is obscure as neither the European empires nor the US colonized the Middle East, and without the capital that was used to discover and develop their petroleum resources, both regions -indeed, most of the world- would not have benefited from the success of this industry.

It may not be satisfactory, but the core argument that was developed by Osama bin Laden which one assumes informed the 'al-Qaeda' he was leader of, concerned the same debate over the meaning of Islam that has ebbed and flowed since the 7th century, and who, if anyone, has the right to claim the leadership of the Islamic world, and in particular, to claim sovereignty over the 'Holy Places'. The initial spark that infuriated bin Laden and many others, was the US stationing troops in Saudi Arabia after 'Desert Storm'; but this was symptomatic of the weakness of the Saudi regime that some Saudis saw as being too dependent on the US rather than being independent; but even this was part of bin Laden's broader view that the end of the Ottoman Empire in the period between the European carve-up in 1918 and the demise of the Sultanate in 1923 should have led to an Islamic Caliphate in its place. This, after all, is what the 'Jihadis' in Syria are fighting for. The US is in effect a 'soft target' in a proxy war that the extreme fringe is fighting with the Saudi regime; the US is involved for a variety of political and economic reasons. The US chose to get involved in the Middle East at a deeper level in 1958; it chose sides in 1967 when it supported Israel against the Arabs; it used Afghanistan as a proxy war against the USSR in the 1980s; the US supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq's war against Iran just as it is supporting -politically if not directly- the Syrian opposition because of its enduring obsession with Iran.

You had the choice to begin a rapprochement with Iran in 2001, and your President and his advisors (particularly John Bolton) vetoed it, sending US-Iran relations into a tailspin -you had the chance to demonstrate that enemies can become friends, and you blew it. Doesn't raise much in the confidence stakes, even with a new President in charge.

The irony of it all is that the global capitalist economy ties us all into the same circulation of capital, you can no more disengage from the Middle East than you can from Mexico or Canada. And you cannot add or subtract much to a debate on the 'straight path' in Islam than I can, nor define the meaning of 'straight'. Or maybe you can.

[buttslinger]

I think most Americans think of the USA as the country Jesus would dream up if he could, while the rest of the World sees the US as the Roman Empire. As far as foreign policy goes, I's rather have Caesar at the helm over Jesus. ALL of the western world condemns nuclear war, but we're all glad to have those ICBMs simmering in their silos in North Dakota. If there's gonna be a fight, we wanna win. I think most Americans went along with the Iraq war at first, because we figured if there is one thing Bush might be good at, it's stealing oil from the A-rabs and maybe bringing gasoline prices down to a dollar a gallon. Little did we know, even the republicans, Bush fucked up everything he touched. So now Obama has to fight terrorism ....not with no money.....but with a kajillion dollar debt. And that's a major factor in everything, keeping a brave face on not helping Syria, getting out of Afghanistan, forgiving illegals from invading our country, Drones are financed from the money we're going to have after Hilary has been in office for a few years, we're broke now. And while everything counts, I'd say at this time money is a huge factor in our overseas policies, and China is the emerging threat, not Iran, not North Korea. You'll never hear Obama badmouth money, the major question in American politics is whether money is wasted on senior citizens, or billion dollar battleships. Every so often a bigtime anchor on a national news network will say we need to spend a lot more time reporting the news from around the world. But the idea always gets shot down. The world is a bringdown, man.

[fivekatz]

I can't disagree with much of the sentiments of the fast few points, the USA is imperial nation combined of States with various, sometimes conflict laws. While this fall short of the total unique identities of the countries in Europe, yes US states have different laws, customs and even politics.

The US history is a clear picture of the imperialism of Europe finding the perfect location (the North American continent) to engage in mass genocide then taking those lands from the natives and then stripping the wealth from the land. The fact that Europeans parted from the imperial powers that landed and created their own empire is more than a footnote in history IMHO.

The US went from isolationist to imperialists as the frontier of North America was conquered and the Europeans were about to destroy their hold on the planet by engaging in not one but two costly wars (WWI and WWWII) that were wars for imperial supremacy and in the end two great empires were created the USSR and the USA.

The US in the post WWII era saw the conventional physical occupation colonialism to be obsolete. It played too much into the hands of the USSR, so while Europeans were slow to give over ultimate governance to native peoples, the demand was such that in the place of the colony either came a US or USSR puppet.

The current US policies at least as they apply to the Middle East are not done in a vacuum but are in the synergistic interests of NATO.

Most Americans went along with the second Iraq War out of mass culture fear. 9-11 was a game changer that allowed the ruling class to hypnotize the masses and actual misinform and scare them. Over 50% of America thought that Iraq has attacked us on 9-11, and over 50% of US citizens thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Why the Blair government join the Bush-Cheney train aside from the intoxication of being at the table of power I do not know.

I know on matters of international terrorism while American citizens feeling regarding how to deal with it a really all over the board, consistently Americans believe in the fact that terrorists do not get a nation state seat at the table.

The US debt is of little consequence in US policy, when the policy issues matter and make sense to a majority of those who govern. Debt aside if the US thought it could build a puppet democracy is Syria, the amount of resources and force that would hit that country would be nothing short of awesome. But the returns are in from citizen revolts as far back as the rise of Homeni in the late 70's, to Libya and Egypt and internal revolts do not tend to work in favor of the Western Governments or the corporations and plutocrats they serve.

IMHO the drones are used because not only is that sort of targeted attack more cost effective in terms of blood and treasure, it provides the US with a much more nimble foreign policy than a commitment of conventional force.

It is with no pride that I say that the strength of the military-industrial complex is such in the USA that regardless of our deficit if the President is so inclined to engage force at any level he chooses, the USA will do so. It isn't taxpayer money that dominants US foreign policy, it is plutocrat money.

Just my take

[Stavros]

One of the curiosities of history is that the word Empire has become the word used to describe power from one state over many, when the original word, Imperium means the exercise of power or authority, usually over people, so that in a very strict sense, the state of Texas is an Imperium -when early states were formed to rule from a place, usually a city, over people, those people often spoke different languages and had distinct cultural differences -France, Britain and Germany are obvious examples where language has become a 'unifying' force that once was a symbol of a new power: to this day there are some people who resent French, and it is still possible to become a British citizen without speaking a word of English, if Welsh (or Cymraeg) is the natural language.

Fivekatz I think you need to go back to the fall-out from the Reagan Presidency when a small group of hardline Conservatives were dismayed at the ease with which their Champion negotiated away the USA's arsenal of missiles with Gorbachev. One of the central propositions of these conservatives, who helped to shape the agenda for the Presidency of GW Bush, was that foreign policy should not compromise, that it should be aggressive, and that a new agenda for the Middle East could be opened in which dictatorship would be replaced by US-sponsored democracy: this would not only maintain the USA as the premier party in international diplomacy and negotiation, it would in the long term reduce the hostility to Israel. Iraq was seen as the weak link in the chain of Middle Eastern dictatorships, largely due to the unfinished business of Desert Storm, and also because regime change elsewhere was either deemed unnecessary because the regime was pro-American -eg, Egypt; or the unpredictable outcome was too radical to control -Saudi Arabia. The assault on Saddam Hussein was also to be a demonstration to Iran that dictatorship doesn't last and it was assumed that the 'democratic revolution' in Iraq would be an inspiration to the rest of the region. Iran's offer of a rapprochement with the US in 2001 was rejected because Conservatives don't compromise with such regimes, even reformist ones.

Tony Blair supported the USA's agenda but was keen to get involved in Iraq out of a belief that he could modify the worst excesses of US policy in Iraq from the inside, whereas the British element in the Coalition Government was treated with contempt, much as the US military regarded the British military occupation and 'government' of Basra as an abject failure.

What the purpose of NATO has become I don't understand: it was formed so that the states of Western Europe would have a military alliance with the USA to combat the strategic 'threat' of (or as a military balance to) the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe. It is now operating in Afghanistan on a completely different agenda.

There doesn't seem to be much response to the claim that the USA is murdering people accused of preparing attacks on the USA without the presentation of any evidence or the arraignment of the accused in court. Drones might look like an efficient military option, but politically -and all conflict is an extension of, if not compensation for politics -it looks like the USA has abandoned the rule of law. What happens when the USA is attacked by a missile fired from a drone?

[buttslinger]

I understand drones, it's the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War I don't understand. Driving around in circles waiting to hit am IED. Killing 100,000 civilians. Terrorists don't wear uniforms. Bush should have sent everything we had into Pakistan, killed Osama Bin Laden, and every American would have backed him up, even if he would be flirting with WW III. Cheney would be President now.

When the Nazis encountered a "terrorist" on the Eastern front they would line up ten villagers and shoot them. But it had no effect. They didn't know that Stalin had been doing the same thing for years.

There is no policy for terrorists. Morons taking their shoes off in airports. If the terrorists see us doing something, they'll shift their POLICY to adjust. Rules are for suckers.

9-11 happened because Clinton dropped a cruise missile on Bin Laden's camp and just missed him. The problem wasn't that we tried to kill him, the problem was we missed.

If we really want to defeat terrorists we should develop an electric car. Before the republicans get back in charge.

Violence is as American as cherry pie. Killing each other is practically a sport here. The USA is #1 because of the Atom Bomb. Murder is against the law, we gotta execute all the murderers.

[Ben]

Officials: US drone kills 4 militants in Pakistan:

http://news.yahoo.com/officials-us-drone-kills-4-militants-pakistan-062415816.html

Two drone strikes kill seven in southern Yemen-local official:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/01/us-yemen-drones-idUSBRE95006I20130601

[yodajazz]

I understand drones, it's the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War I don't understand. Driving around in circles waiting to hit am IED. Killing 100,000 civilians. Terrorists don't wear uniforms. Bush should have sent everything we had into Pakistan, killed Osama Bin Laden, and every American would have backed him up, even if he would be flirting with WW III. Cheney would be President now.

When the Nazis encountered a "terrorist" on the Eastern front they would line up ten villagers and shoot them. But it had no effect. They didn't know that Stalin had been doing the same thing for years.

There is no policy for terrorists. Morons taking their shoes off in airports. If the terrorists see us doing something, they'll shift their POLICY to adjust. Rules are for suckers.

9-11 happened because Clinton dropped a cruise missile on Bin Laden's camp and just missed him. The problem wasn't that we tried to kill him, the problem was we missed.

If we really want to defeat terrorists we should develop an electric car. Before the republicans get back in charge.

Violence is as American as cherry pie. Killing each other is practically a sport here. The USA is #1 because of the Atom Bomb. Murder is against the law, we gotta execute all the murderers.

Killing Bin Laden in 1999 would have not stopped 9/11. Bin Laden was never formally charged with anything directly related to it. He also denied that he had anything to do with it. Here's an article that goes into greater depth, although several things mentioned, are very well known.

http://911blogger.com/news/2013-02-02/osama-bin-laden-assures-he-did-not-plan-911

There are things in this article, I can modify. For example, Dick Chaney did say that Bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11. However when questioned about this statement at the end of the interview, when he was asked about it, he said that he meant to say Saddam Hussein.

One thing not mentioned in the article, is that Bin Laden's Fatwah, only authorized the killing of military personnel. This would be in accordance to the conduct of war authorized in the Koran.

[yodajazz]

I had not heard that Obama, made a speech signaling a change in guidelines for the use of drones, as well as the conduct of "the war on terror" on May 23rd, until just a few days ago. Although, the cynical, say he did not say anything at all, his guidelines do narrow the definitions of cases were they will be used. Anyone out there have opinions on this?

[Stavros]

I had not heard that Obama, made a speech signaling a change in guidelines for the use of drones, as well as the conduct of "the war on terror" on May 23rd, until just a few days ago. Although, the cynical, say he did not say anything at all, his guidelines do narrow the definitions of cases were they will be used. Anyone out there have opinions on this?


If you will permit me to make some annotated comments on the speech, published in the New York Times in full here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/us/politics/transcript-of-obamas-speech-on-drone-policy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

In the key passages on drones, Obama stresses the military necessity of the action in dealing with 'terrorists' plotting against the USA where host government is either incompetent or complicit, and claims civilian casualties may have been exaggerated:
America does not take strikes to punish individuals; we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can set.
Now, this last point is critical, because much of the criticism about drone strikes — both here at home and abroad — understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. There’s a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties and nongovernmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war. And for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But as Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives. To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties — not just in our cities at home and our facilities abroad, but also in the very places like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu where terrorists seek a foothold. Remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes. So doing nothing is not an option.


Thus, having previously routed endorsements for drone strikes through Congress 'in camera', he now intends the process to be more transparent:


Going forward, I’ve asked my administration to review proposals to extend oversight of lethal actions outside of warzones that go beyond our reporting to Congress. Each option has virtues in theory, but poses difficulties in practice. For example, the establishment of a special court to evaluate and authorize lethal action has the benefit of bringing a third branch of government into the process, but raises serious constitutional issues about presidential and judicial authority. Another idea that’s been suggested — the establishment of an independent oversight board in the executive branch — avoids those problems, but may introduce a layer of bureaucracy into national security decision-making, without inspiring additional public confidence in the process. But despite these challenges, I look forward to actively engaging Congress to explore these and other options for increased oversight.

I think the fundamental problem is that the Drones may be creating a reaction where none existed before. Obama argues the core of al-Qaeda has been trashed but that small, do-it-yourself groups have sprung up in Yemen, Somalia and so on, so that 'the threat' has not gone away, and that the USA can best counter these threats by helping under-performing, backward economies and societies progress, etc, the age-old argument that economic development fosters democracy, peace and goodwill to all men. That may be why some think the speech is bland.

But is the core problem the potential that drone strikes have to maintain, or even create a new loathing of the USA? The USA may be pulling out of Afghanistan, and reducing its visible presence to people in that region who want them gone, but the Taliban have not gone away, Afghanistan is up for grabs; the use of Drones in Syria is not inconceivable, and with the perpetuation of that conflict as a proxy confrontation with Iran and its allies, this is a problem that may drag the USA into controversial actions which cannot be 'solved' through Congressional oversight.

[yodajazz]

If you will permit me to make some annotated comments on the speech, published in the New York Times in full here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/us/politics/transcript-of-obamas-speech-on-drone-policy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

In the key passages on drones, Obama stresses the military necessity of the action in dealing with 'terrorists' plotting against the USA where host government is either incompetent or complicit, and claims civilian casualties may have been exaggerated:
America does not take strikes to punish individuals; we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can set.
Now, this last point is critical, because much of the criticism about drone strikes — both here at home and abroad — understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. There’s a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties and nongovernmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war. And for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But as Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives. To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties — not just in our cities at home and our facilities abroad, but also in the very places like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu where terrorists seek a foothold. Remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes. So doing nothing is not an option.


Thus, having previously routed endorsements for drone strikes through Congress 'in camera', he now intends the process to be more transparent:


Going forward, I’ve asked my administration to review proposals to extend oversight of lethal actions outside of warzones that go beyond our reporting to Congress. Each option has virtues in theory, but poses difficulties in practice. For example, the establishment of a special court to evaluate and authorize lethal action has the benefit of bringing a third branch of government into the process, but raises serious constitutional issues about presidential and judicial authority. Another idea that’s been suggested — the establishment of an independent oversight board in the executive branch — avoids those problems, but may introduce a layer of bureaucracy into national security decision-making, without inspiring additional public confidence in the process. But despite these challenges, I look forward to actively engaging Congress to explore these and other options for increased oversight.

I think the fundamental problem is that the Drones may be creating a reaction where none existed before. Obama argues the core of al-Qaeda has been trashed but that small, do-it-yourself groups have sprung up in Yemen, Somalia and so on, so that 'the threat' has not gone away, and that the USA can best counter these threats by helping under-performing, backward economies and societies progress, etc, the age-old argument that economic development fosters democracy, peace and goodwill to all men. That may be why some think the speech is bland.

But is the core problem the potential that drone strikes have to maintain, or even create a new loathing of the USA? The USA may be pulling out of Afghanistan, and reducing its visible presence to people in that region who want them gone, but the Taliban have not gone away, Afghanistan is up for grabs; the use of Drones in Syria is not inconceivable, and with the perpetuation of that conflict as a proxy confrontation with Iran and its allies, this is a problem that may drag the USA into controversial actions which cannot be 'solved' through Congressional oversight.

I agree with your comments. I have long seen drone use as being easily subverted, through civillian causualties figures being manipulated. We have no proof either way. The US could easily be fed false information, and eliminate someone else's enemies other than our own, and on and on. The good thing is that at least we see the consequences are being considered. I see the threat of them gaining power, is not really that great of a threat to us. Once any outsiders gain power, they get tempted by all that wealth and power have to offer. They also have administrate serious local issues. I could name many examples in history, but I'll use one, who most people don't think of: The Prophet Muhammad, himself, last phase of life was that of an administrator, not a spiritual mystic, or warrior.

In the event some true war bent, radical group does start to collect real war weapons, they will coming against our real strength. however the reality is that those weapons are mostly for keeping them in power against their own people. The real threat is not Islam. Muslims are still fighting over who was the rightful successor to the Prophet, (it will be 1481 years on June 8th). Sunnis have not central authority. How would they run the US, or the world?

[Stavros]

I agree with your comments. I have long seen drone use as being easily subverted, through civillian causualties figures being manipulated. We have no proof either way. The US could easily be fed false information, and eliminate someone else's enemies other than our own, and on and on. The good thing is that at least we see the consequences are being considered. I see the threat of them gaining power, is not really that great of a threat to us. Once any outsiders gain power, they get tempted by all that wealth and power have to offer. They also have administrate serious local issues. I could name many examples in history, but I'll use one, who most people don't think of: The Prophet Muhammad, himself, last phase of life was that of an administrator, not a spiritual mystic, or warrior.

In the event some true war bent, radical group does start to collect real war weapons, they will coming against our real strength. however the reality is that those weapons are mostly for keeping them in power against their own people. The real threat is not Islam. Muslims are still fighting over who was the rightful successor to the Prophet, (it will be 1481 years on June 8th). Sunnis have not central authority. How would they run the US, or the world?

Obama in his speech does not mention the Desert Storm/Gulf War following which US troops remained in Saudi Arabia -this was the spark that ignited Osama bi Laden as proof that the Saudi royal family and their 'Wahabi' interpretation of Islam were not fit to rule and was the core reason for al-Qaeda's attacks on the US in the Middle East, Africa and beyond: the goal was not to destroy the US but make its alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel too costly, and ultimately re-shape the whole of the Middle East by creating a 'Caliphate' in place of the modern states system. With British and US forces out of Iraq, and Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the raison d'etre for the al-Qaeda project in attacking the US/Britain no longer has its resonance, as was shown in London a few weeks ago by the man with bloodstained hands ranting on about British troops killing people 'in our lands'. If anything, murderous though it is, attacking people in the US and Britain, or France, through 'local action' is a soft option which only proves that it can be done to shock people, like shouting 'Fuck' in church or defacing the Lincoln Memorial with expletives. The real consequence of drones will come when many other state have them and use them, they could cause more havoc than nuclear weapons, which have rarely been used.

[Ben]

Holder’s amazing anti-drone war speech (http://www.salon.com/2013/07/18/holders_amazing_anti_drone_war_speech/)

In powerfully decrying Stand Your Ground laws, the attorney general effectively rebuked current U.S. foreign policy:

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/18/holders_amazing_anti_drone_war_speech/

[Ben]

July 2013 Update: US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia:

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2013/08/02/july-2013-update-us-covert-actions-in-pakistan-yemen-and-somalia/

[yodajazz]

News article. May 11, 2014 from Alternet.org :



Pilots Come Clean: Drone Warfare Is Riddled with Tragic, Bloody Errors



May 11, 2014 |
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here [3].

Enemies, innocent victims, and soldiers have always made up the three faces of war. With war growing more distant, with drones capable of performing on the battlefield while their “pilots” remain thousands of miles away, two of those faces have, however, faded into the background in recent years. Today, we are left with just the reassuring “face” of the terrorist enemy, killed clinically by remote control while we go about our lives, apparently without any “collateral damage” or danger to our soldiers. Now, however, that may slowly be changing, bringing the true face of the drone campaigns Washington has pursued since 9/11 into far greater focus.

Imagine if those drone wars going on in Pakistan and Yemen (as well as the United States) had a human face all the time, so that we could understand what it was like to live constantly, in and out of those distant battle zones, with the specter of death. In addition to images of the "al-Qaeda" operatives who the White House wants us to believe are the sole targets of its drone campaigns, we would regularly see photos [4] of innocent victims of drone attacks gathered by human rights groups from their relatives and neighbors. And what about the third group -- the military personnel whose lives revolve around killing fields so far away -- whose stories, in these years of Washington’s drone assassination campaigns, we’ve just about never heard?

After all, soldiers no longer set sail on ships to journey to distant battlefields for months at a time. Instead, every day, thousands of men and women sign onto their computers at desks on military bases in the continental United States and abroad where they spend hours glued to screens watching the daily lives of people often on the other side of the planet. Occasionally, they get an order from Washington [5] to push a button and vaporize their subjects. It sounds just like -- and the comparison has been made often enough -- a video game [6], which can be switched off at the end of a shift, after which those pilots return home to families and everyday life.

And if you believed what little we normally see of them -- what, that is, the Air Force has let us see (the CIA part of the drone program being off-limits to news reporting) -- that would indeed seem to be the straightforward story of life for our drone warriors. Take Rene Lopez, who in shots of a recent homecoming welcome at Fort Gordon in Georgia appears to be a doting father. Photographed [7] for the local papers on his return from a tour in Afghanistan, the young soldier is seen holding and kissing his infant daughter dressed in a bright pink top. He smiles with delight as the wide-eyed child tries on his military hat.

From an online profile [8] posted to LinkedIn by Lopez last year, we learn that the clean-cut U.S. Army signals intelligence specialist claims to be an actor in the drone war in addition to being a proud parent. To be specific, he says he has been working in the dark arts of hunting and killing “high value targets” using a National Security Agency (NSA) tool known as Gilgamesh.

That tool is named after a ruthless Sumerian king who ruled over Uruk, an ancient city in what is now Iraq. With the help of the massive trove of NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill recently explained that Gilgamesh [9] is the code name for a special device mounted on a Predator drone that can track the mobile phones of individuals without their knowledge by pretending to be a cell phone tower.

Lopez's resumé yields more details on what Gilgamesh is capable of. The profile writer claims that he "supervised a team of four personnel supporting the lead targeting force in Laghman and Nuristan provinces [in Afghanistan]. Assisted top-level commanders with developing concepts, approaches, and strategies to Capture/Kill HVTs [high value targets]."

Last year, on completing his time in the military, Lopez says he took a civilian job operating Gilgamesh for Mission Essential, an intelligence contractor providing technical support for Pentagon drones. For that company, he says he conducted "pattern of life analysis" and provided support for "targeting and strike operations." Lopez lives in Grovetown, Georgia, home to a joint Army-NSA code-breaking and language translation operation [10], involving 4,000 personnel that, since 9/11, has taken the lead in analyzing real-time data feeds from Central Asia and the Middle East.

Gilgamesh is just one of several NSA tools [9] used on drones to track targeted cell phones. Another program, Shenanigans, was designed specifically for use by the Central Intelligence Agency. According to other documents leaked by Snowden, an operation code-named Victorydance used these tools in March 2012 to map every computer, router, and mobile device in Yemen.

What do men like Lopez actually think about the sort of human destruction, not to speak of the destabilization of whole regions, that Gilgamesh and its like help to unleash? In his online job pitch, Lopez indicates straightforward pride in his work: "My efforts, both as a contractor and in the military, yielded success in identifying, locating, and tracking high value targets, and protection of U.S. and coalition forces." It would be easy enough to assume that the kind of analytical work such remote pilots do would result in a sense of job satisfaction and little more. And that, it turns out, would be a mistake.

Haunted by Death

In recent months, the first evidence that drones are not only killing thousands in distant lands, but also creating an unexpected kind of blowback among the pilots themselves, provides a curious parallel to the Epic of Gilgamesh [11], the 5,000-year-old poem about the Sumerian king. In the ancient saga, the gods are said to have sent Enkidu to befriend the cruel king and divert him from the oppression of his subjects. When the pair travel together to slay a monster named Humbaba, Gilgamesh begins to have nightmares about death and war, causing him to question their plan.

Today, like Gilgamesh of old, signals intelligence personnel connected to the drone programs have started reporting themselves haunted by the deaths that they have participated in, and plagued by the knowledge that, in the end, they often had next to no idea who they were actually killing. The publicity about a “kill list” in the White House has left the impression that those who find themselves on the other end of a drone-launched missile have been carefully identified and are known to the drone pilots. "People get hung up that there's a targeted list of people," one drone pilot told [9] the Intercept two months ago. His view, however, was quite different: "It's really like we're targeting a cell phone. We're not going after people -- we're going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy."

Brandon Bryant, a 28-year-old U.S. airman, whose squadron has been credited with 1,626 kills, was among the first to be openly critical of the impact of remote tracking and targeting, of, that is, robot war. Bryant was a "sensor operator," which meant that he operated the cameras on the drone aircraft as part of a three-person team that included a pilot and an intelligence analyst.

In an interview with GQ magazine last October, Bryant offered [12] a vivid description of a targeting operation in Afghanistan he took part in when he was just 21. "This figure runs around the corner, the outside, toward the front of the building. And it looked like a little kid to me. Like a little human person," he said. "There's this giant flash, and all of a sudden there's no person there."

Bryant says he asked the pilot: "Did that look like a child to you?" The message came back from another intelligence analyst: "Per the review, it's a dog."

After six years, Bryant couldn’t take it any more. He saw a therapist who diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder. This was a novel, even shocking development for an airman who had hardly ever come close to a battlefield. Bryant was suitably taken aback and, as a result, began speaking out against the system of killing he had been enmeshed in and what it does both to the killers and those killed. "Combat is combat. Killing is killing. This isn't a video game," he wrote in an angry tirade on Facebook. "How many of you have killed a group of people, watched as their bodies are picked up, watched the funeral, then killed them, too?"

Killing for the CIA

Bryant's campaign against drone war without accountability took on new life in late April when Tonje Hessen Schei, a Norwegian filmmaker, released her film Drone [13]. In it, Bryant reveals that his former colleagues in the Air Force had not just been carrying out drone strikes on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq where the military was involved in open warfare. They were also conducting the strikes in the supposed CIA drone assassination campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen.

This was news. The CIA’s “covert” drone wars in those countries were, it turns out, secretly Air Force operations [14]. "The CIA might be the customer, but the Air Force has always flown it,” Bryant says in the film. “A CIA label is just an excuse to not have to give up any information. That is all it has ever been."

Schei's film also reveals the name of the U.S. Air Force unit that does the CIA killing -- the 17th Reconnaissance Squadron [15] at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. "From what I was able to gather, it was pretty much confirmed they were flying missions almost exclusively in Pakistan with the intent to strike," Michael Haas, another drone pilot, told Chris Woods at the Guardian.

Thanks to the film, Bryant made an unusual connection in the world of drone pilots -- to the victims of Washington’s drone campaign, previously just so many pixels on a screen to him. Invited to Belgium [16] and Norway [17] to speak at the premieres of Schei's film, he met with Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who runs the Foundation for Fundamental Rights [18] and has been leading a campaign to put a face -- quite literally -- on the death and destruction CIA drone strikes have caused in his country.

Faces of the Victims

Up in the mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in northern Pakistan, a giant image of an orphan girl [19] is now laid out next to the mud houses of the locals. She is nameless, but according to her photographer, Noor Behram, she lost her parents in a drone strike in 2010 in the village of Dande Darpa Khel. Her picture, the size of a soccer playing field, is a product of Akbar's planning with the help of JR, a French street artist, and Clive Stafford-Smith, the founder of Reprieve [20], a British human rights organization. Their intent: to create images of the victims of Washington’s drone wars that could be seen from the sky. Smaller images have, in fact, been placed on rooftops in Waziristan. Their target audience: drone pilots like Bryant, Haas, and Lopez who, searching for targets to kill, might just see the face of the child of one of their previous victims. (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which keeps a tally [21] of drone victims in Pakistan, offers a provisional figure of up to 957 civilians, including as many as 202 children, killed between 2004 and the present day.)

For the last five years, Akbar and Smith have worked tirelessly on similar projects. One of their first efforts was to reveal [22] the name of the CIA station chief in Pakistan: Jonathan Banks. In December 2010, they brought a $500 million lawsuit against him in that country, causing him to flee. The next summer they put together a collection of Noor Behram’s photographs of the dead, as well as their relatives and neighbors, that was exhibited [23] in London.

Last year, Akbar even made plans to take the relatives of drone victims to testify before the U.S. Congress. Though he himself was denied entry [24] to the country, he succeeded. Rafiq-ur-Rehman and his two children, nine-year-old Nabila-ur-Rehman and 13-year-old Zubair-ur-Rehman, did speak at a special hearing [25] arranged by Representative Alan Grayson.

Now, with the unexpected support of a small but growing group of former drone pilots, a campaign against “targeted killings” might well take on a new life in the U.S. At least six other drone pilots have already spoken anonymously to Woods, largely confirming what Bryant and Haas have said publicly.

The Strain of Long-Distance War

There is evidence that other drone pilots are also beginning to crack under the pressure of drone war. Two recent studies by the Air Force strongly suggest that Bryant's PTSD diagnosis is no anomaly, that no matter how far you may be from the battlefield, you never quite leave it.

Published in June 2011, the first study [26] by Wayne Chappelle, Joseph Ouma, and Amber Salinas of the School of Aerospace Medicine at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio concluded that nearly half of the drone pilots studied had "high operational stress." A number also had "clinical distress" -- that is, anxiety, depression, or stress severe enough to affect them in their personal lives. The study attributed this to long “flying” hours and erratic shifts, but did not compare drone pilots to those in combat aircraft fighting above the battlefield.

A second study [27] by Jean Otto and Bryant Webber of the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, published in March 2013, compared drone pilots to those performing standard military missions. The level of stress, it found, was almost the same, a surprising conclusion for those who assumed that drone pilots were essentially video gamers.

"Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days," Otto told [28] the New York Times. "They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don't do that. They get out of there as soon as possible."

Some believe that drone stress is significantly related to a major shortage of pilots for such planes. A Government Accountability Office report [29] released in April tersely notes that "high work demands on RPA [remotely piloted aircraft] pilots limit the time they have available for training and development and negatively affects their work-life balance."

Speaking from the Heavens

There is, however, likely to be far more to it than that. After Bryant came forward, for instance, Heather Linebaugh, a former drone intelligence analyst, broke her silence, too. Writing [30] in the Guardian in late December, she summed up the largely unpublicized failure of Washington’s drones this way: "What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian's life all because of a bad image or angle." (And she didn’t even point out that, in the areas being attacked in Pakistan and Yemen, carrying a weapon is commonplace and not necessarily a sign that you are a “terrorist.”)

Linebaugh explained that, under these circumstances, a “mistake” had terrible consequences, and not just for those erroneously targeted, but even for the pilots. "How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile? How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?" She added, "When you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience."

And don’t count on Linebaugh being the last drone analyst to speak out, either. Whether future Rene Lopezes ever actually look down from the computerized “heavens” and see the picture of that little Pakistani orphan girl, we already know that they will see horrors that are likely to prove hard to absorb.

It is this third face of war, along with those of the “enemy” and innocent victims, which provides the crucial evidence that the drone project, Obama’s remote control campaign, is a failure; that it is not clinical but bloody and riddled with error; that it creates enemies even as it kills others; that it is, above all, no more a video game for those who fly the planes and loose the missiles than it is for those who die in distant lands.

[Stavros]

Thanks for the article.
The reality is that throughout the ages, soldiers have been disturbed by the very act they have been recruited to perform -murder. It is a terrible thing to kill another human. Some soldiers can do it and it doesn't bother them, for others it becomes a trauma they can never really shake off; and as this article shows, it doesn't seem to make any difference if the enemy is charging right in front of you, or wandering through an alley 6,000 miles away. And behind it all, is failed politics, even as we look to politics to bring this violence to an end.

[buttslinger]

Anybody who has ever been in combat will tell you it's a fucked up mess. Teenage Kids with high explosives getting shot at. Drones are unethical but ICBMs aren't? You want to strap a pilot on a drone so it's more humane?
Killing is a nasty business. And business is good....(cue Jack Bauer Music)