The Continuing Terror of U.S. Drone Strikes
December 21, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On December 20, the New York Times reported from Yemen: "A hail of missiles slammed into a convoy of trucks on a remote desert road, killing at least 12 people....this time the trucks were part of a wedding procession, making the customary journey from the groom's house to the house of the bride. The Dec. 12 strike by the Pentagon, launched from an American base in Djibouti, killed at least a half-dozen innocent people, according to a number of tribal leaders and witnesses, and provoked a storm of outrage in the country. It also illuminated the reality behind the talk surrounding the Obama administration's new drone policy, which was announced with fanfare seven months ago."
From Pakistan to Yemen, tens of millions of people live in daily danger of terrorist attack—from U.S. drones. Surveillance and attack drones hover over villages constantly, creating an atmosphere of never-ending tension and fear. They strike seemingly at random—assassinating those targeted by NSA and CIA "intelligence" as threats to the U.S. empire in one form or another, but also wiping out wedding parties, and blowing up homes with women and children. Follow-up strikes are consciously planned to assassinate medical and emergency first responders. Amnesty International reports that "According to NGO and Pakistan government sources the USA has launched some 330 to 374 drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and September 2013...according to these sources, between 400 and 900 civilians have been killed in these attacks and at least 600 people seriously injured."
In the wake of global condemnation and some (but nowhere near enough) exposure and protest in the U.S., Obama claimed (with fanfare) in May of 2013 that he has put in place new policies that the U.S. will only use drones to assassinate people who are a "continuing and imminent threat to the American people." And he will only launch drone strokes when there is a "near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured."
To date, no U.S official has made a case in public that the people targeted in the strike on the wedding party in Yemen posed a threat to any Americans, and the Yemeni press has unambiguously documented that at least many of the victims on were not even intended targets.
As Larry Everest wrote in Revolution: "What kind of empire and global order is it that depends on violence to preserve such oppression and suffering? That murders 68-year-old grandmothers, blowing them to pieces as they tend their small fields, and then attacking their children and grandchildren when they try to help? Or that massacres chromite miners, landless farmers, and near-penniless drivers? What is legitimate about trying to violently preserve a world in which millions upon millions are forced to live in destitution and fear, now, in the 21st century? Yet this is, at bottom, what the 'war on terror' is about.
"Why should anyone accept U.S. drone strikes, Obama's lies, and most fundamentally, this kind of world?" (The Illegality, Illegitimacy & Immorality of U.S. Drone Strikes, available at revcom.us).
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