The U.S. Is a State Sponsor of Terrorism
Drone attacks are raw terror tactics that terrorize civilian populations
Now we know exactly how
many members of the U.S. House of Representatives care enough about
American terrorism to attend a Congressional briefing about a U.S. drone
attack that followed a classic terrorist pattern in killing a
grandmother and wounding nine children in Pakistan. Five.
Five members of “the people’s house” came to the briefing, and one of them was there for the full 90 minutes.
When one of the witnesses expressed disappointment at the turnout, a
congressman reassured him: this was better than we expected. They were
all Democrats.
Had any other American
lawmakers joined the audience of somewhat more than 100, they would have
heard some of the survivors describe the inexplicable (and unexplained,
because the CIA does not explain) attack in which the first drone
missile blew up a 67-year-old midwife as she was picking okra and
wounded two of her grandchildren. Others came out of a nearby house to
see what had happened and the second drone missile wounded seven more
children.
This is a classic terrorist
tactic, sometimes called the “double tap,” using the first explosion to
draw a crowd of first responders and onlookers as targets for the second
explosion. Typically the double tap attack rings up a higher score.
In a sane world there might be
more outcry against the world’s only superpower using terrorist tactics
on civilian populations in a half dozen or more countries, based on the
rationale of a global war on terror (no longer the official name) that,
so far, seems only to have added death and chaos to an already deadly,
chaotic world because no one in authority seems capable of coming up
with a less destructive way of defending our homeland at the expense of
any other homeland we select.
The Pakistanis keep telling us to stop killing their people
Even the organizer of the
briefing, Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, who showed great sympathy to the
family of the assassinated grandmother, somehow thinks the killings are
ultimately Pakistan’s fault. In a strange application of
blame-the-victim, Grayson told the BBC that drone strikes were not
possible without the approval of the Pakistani government.
“Pakistan has a strong air
force which has the power to impose a restriction on its borders
whenever it chooses to,” Grayson said, leaving listeners free to infer
that he had no objection to Pakistani planes shooting down American
drones. He also claimed that the Pakistani army of a million soldiers
should be able to control hundreds of militants easily, perhaps looking
back to the swift American success against counter-insurgencies
elsewhere in the region.
Pakistan’s information
minister, Pervaiz Rashid, promptly rebutted Grayson and reaffirmed the
Pakistani government’s rejection of drone attacks as violations of
Pakistani sovereignty that were most effective in creating more
militants. He spoke of Pakistani unanimity in opposition to drone
attacks, of growing international opposition to drone attacks, and of
his hope that his government would succeed in ending drone attacks soon.
Like Grayson, Rashid avoided the central fact of drone attacks around
the world: the United States is an outlaw nation that continues to
violate international law with impunity; it is a rogue state that others
cannot control at a cost they are willing to bear. (Other states
currently waging drone warfare include Great Britain in Afghanistan and
Israel in Gaza.)The day after the Grayson terror-strike briefing, Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif met with President Obama at the White House and reiterated Pakistan’s opposition to drone attacks in his country. Publicly, the prime minister put the issue in the broader context of the war on terror:
“Pakistan and the United States
have a strong, ongoing counterterrorism cooperation. We have agreed to
further strengthen this cooperation. I also brought up the issue of
drones in our meeting, emphasizing the need for an end to such strikes.”
[emphasis added]
Obama doesn’t talk about secret wars, even when everyone knows about themPresident Obama did not show enough respect for Sharif even to acknowledge publicly that America’s drone war might be an issue for those being attacked.
This was the same lack of
response the president earlier gave another Pakistani emissary, Malala
Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Taliban shooting victim. Malala visited the
White House October 11 for a chat with the president and a photo op with
his daughters. The only public acknowledgement of the American drone
war came in Malala’s statement after the meeting:
“I thanked President Obama for the United States’ work in supporting
education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees. I also
expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent
victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the
Pakistani people.”
The cover story for the
president is that the CIA runs America’s drone wars, so they’re by
definition secret, regardless of how many people know about them. This
is a doublethink decision that was made by the Bush administration when
the drone war began, which is thought to be 2004. Any self-respecting
war crimes tribunal would explore this issue in detail and assign
accountability accordingly. Until then, American drones can kill
indiscriminately in a bombing campaign that officially doesn’t exist,
even though everyone knows it does and many officials talk about it
publicly (but anonymously).
The result can sometimes be
unintended hilarity, as when the president, in his unresponsive comments
about Prime Minister Sharif, said that they had talked about “senseless
violence, terrorism, and extremism,” which is certainly a usefully
euphemistic phrase that describes the U.S. drone wars, among other
terrorist activities. The president compounded this dark joke by going
on to say with a straight face that “we need to find constructive ways
to … respect Pakistan’s sovereignty.”
Respecting other nations’ sovereignty really isn’t the American Way
The president wouldn’t have to
go whole hog into respecting Pakistani sovereignty – he could start with
a gesture, a small offer of good faith, like forbidding the CIA to
exercise the pure terrorism of the double tap technique. Pakistani
doctors and nurses and good Samaritans might not be grateful, but they’d
be alive.
Or the president could start
even smaller, he could just forbid the CIA from blowing up the mourners
at funerals of earlier missile attack victims. That would show respect
at least on a traditional Mafia level.
The United States doesn’t admit
that it employs these terrorist tactics in its terror war on terrorism.
But there’s a sweet spot in that – the president would not have to
admit he’s stopped them, either.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience
in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20
years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers
Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life
magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television
Arts and Sciences.
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