If you have a conscience, this is going to hurt

This post from Chris Floyd about the Bush-Obama Af-Pak war:

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1865-depraved-indifference-drone-wars-whack-jobs-and-imperial-terror.html

Please K&R if you want more DUers to read this important and sobering analysis.

Depraved Indifference: Drone Wars, Whack Jobs and Imperial Terror
Written by Chris Floyd
Wednesday, 28 October 2009 00:03

I have often admired Jane Mayer's reportage. She has helped expose several elements of "the dark side" of America's worldwide Terror War. Her latest article in the New Yorker outlines the CIA's use of "Predator" drones to kill people by remote control in Pakistan. As the magazine notes, the Obama Administration is relying on these covert drone killers more and more, as it escalates America's military attacks in Pakistan -- ostensibly a sovereign nation allied to the United States.

Mayer's article relates a chilling story of suburban killers -- many of them stateside, firing their missiles from comfortable cubicles before heading home for dinner with the family -- operating in a secret program outside all traditional lines of legality and accountability. (Even the extremely low levels of legality and accountability that weakly adhere to the business of wholesale slaughter and destruction known as war.) For example, part of the program has been "outsourced" to private companies, who are killing people -- including hundreds of innocent civilians -- for profit, with American tax money.

The New Yorker's website has now published an interview with Mayer expanding on the original story. It too is chilling -- but not only for the further details of this state murder program. What is equally disturbing is the bloodless consideration of this bloody enterprise, based on the assumption that there is nothing essentially wrong with such an assassination program (with its inevitable "collateral damage"), as long it is more transparent, with the "legal, ethical and political boundaries" of the death squads clearly drawn.

The very first question gives us a glimpse into the bizarre, depraved moral universe of the American establishment:

How has the use of Predator drones by the United States changed the situation in Pakistan?

Well, there’s good news and bad news. According to the C.I.A., they’ve killed more than half of the twenty most wanted Al Qaeda terrorist suspects. The bad news is that they’ve inflamed anti-American sentiment, because they’ve also killed hundreds of civilians

rest at link:
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1865-depraved-indifference-drone-wars-whack-jobs-and-imperial-terror.html

I figured it was more important to get the link out to people than wait until I had time to clip and format.

I'm very pleased to see that it's getting a lot of views from DUers.

:hi:

Keep it up, Obama! :hi: :sarcasm:

:puke:

I have no illusions that the Taliban and Al Queda are any kind of freedom fighters.

If we weren't over there, pounding away, someone else would be - Russia, China, the EU if they dared be seen doing it in broad daylight.

Greg Palast, anyone?

That's the proper punishment for being somewhere near those whom you consider non-freedom fighters, or who are suspected of same?

Not the kind of thing to give you the warm fuzzies. WE are reminding me more and more of the Imperial forces from Star Wars, with the death star.

... neither Dems nor Republicans are likely to fuss much about it.

...I've been saying it for years, how much I hate feeling like I'm living inside the Death Star.

It's funny. The post WWII world was so willing to accept the U.S. as some benign force, and were glad to cede the military thing over to us. Over the years, we started to believe our own hype about being good and noble and the world's savior; and that our military superiority was a sign from God that all this was actually true. Somewhere along the way, our military enterprise became totally corrupted and has morphed into the high tech equivalent of the Imperial Forces that we see today. No moral center. Our government engages in secret assassinations, subverting governments, spying, drug running and mischief of all kinds, in the name of "keeping us safe" ha ha ha. It is all to protect the financial elites and keep the war machine running.

Sorry, had to rant...

He was saying that over the years the US has killed more innocent civilians than were murdered in the Holocaust. Not standing armies or even resistance groups, but civilians who are just in the way. Millions have been killed to further US interests which means furthering corporate interests.

Americans have got to stop accepting this as somehow normal. The government may say it's to protect us or that they do it for us, but that's not true. The American lifestyle has no right to exist when people in other countries have to die for it. Hopefully we are waking up now that we're realizing it's never been for us or about us.

You have to subscribe on line and I don't have the money to do that right now.

This is the one area I just can't agree with the President (there may be more but none pop up so high as this)

so upsetting.

So, I don't think it's exactly "disappointing" as some would have it.

How I wish "change" had been more than a slogan. Rather there could and should have been a sober discussion on which direction American wants to take, one which I believe the country was ready to have. I'd sure rather have had that than the smarmy talk about reaching across the aisle.

if either of the other two won the election. Both of them had awful track records in regards to slaughtering brown people in other lands.

That's why I wished the primary had focused on substance rather than puppy love.

The candidates should have been challenged to earn their progressive bona fides, and Obama's obscure (but great) speech way back when should have been backed up by a real repudiation of the Reaganesque politics that rule our country to this day. Instead, because he had blind support from progressives, he wasn't challenged to use that silver tongue of his to articulate liberal values to the country at large, preferring instead to drag the Overton Window to the right to cater to the "centrists" and right-wingers with fables about partnering with "the party of ideas."

Though I was a Clinton supporter (once Edwards dropped out), I didn't think Secretary of State was an ideal job for her, since she hadn't proven her ability to renounce America's hawkishness. Neither one of them has done much to suggest to me that they really reject American imperialism.

In any case, it's refreshing to see DUers responding well to a really thoughtful post about the blood on our collective hands.

and added support for the troop's families - which he is doing. Also cutting back on some no bid war machine contracts that serve nothing other than stuff corporate pockets.

This is not exactly 'expanding the military' as you would like to have us think.

but then again, I don't know everything, and neither do you.

From change.gov:

"Expand to Meet Military Needs on the Ground: Obama and Biden support plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps by 27,000 Marines."

http://change.gov/agenda/defense_agenda/

but I also can't say whether it's really true as info gets so manipulated and tampered with.

I am unable to read that site, old cranky comp on a lot of sites. gets to be quite a handicap.

He said throughout the campaign that he wanted to expand the military. That's what we voted for.

edited to take out an undeserved cranky reply.

*

The absence leaves you as free as an unmanned drone.

while maintaining a conscience, so something's gotta give.

Just because some think it's a failure or that nothing can be salvaged doesn't make it so.

almost close to being right.

but then I'd have to believe the Lying Bush and Blair when they first made up their invasion story - when they had the sympathies of the world on their side after 911 and no one had the guts to question their 'proof' because it would be bad manners.

It is never right to devastate a country with state of the art technology and what seems to be a limitless budget in whatever economic climate, and then turn around and call 'them' the terrorists.

My right to believe it's a good thing to fight the fight we should have long ago.

To have our robot planes massacre their civilians. For a minute there, I was afraid it was a bad idea.

for high value targets.

Noted in the article Chris excerpts? Not much of anyone from the Greatest Nation on Earth, evidently.

Shall we keep going around in circles?

:popcorn: