Our immoral drone war

[The Northerner]

Media coverage of unmanned attacks -- and the resulting civilian deaths -- miss mounting anger within Pakistan

One news story last month generated two distinct headlines: “AP investigation Finds Drones Kill Far Fewer Civilians Than Many Pakistanis Are Led to Believe” and “Fresh Evidence of CIA Civilian Deaths in Pakistan Revealed.”

Both headlines rely on the same data, but reach entirely different conclusions. Implicit in the Associated Press headline is the idea that the Pakistani public is being misled about the nature of America’s covert drone war, which is otherwise acceptable. The AP reporter visited the site of 10 recent drone strikes in Pakistan, and concluded after interviews with locals that out of a total of 194 deaths, 56 had been “civilians.” But even the second article, from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which emphasizes the reality of civilian casualties, does not quite capture the full story of what is going on.

Don’t worry, we are told by Attorney General Eric Holder, no American laws were violated in the process of killing U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki in Yemen. If America’s own citizens are not safe from drones, why do we expect Pakistanis to calmly sit and watch the missiles rain down on their kind?

The fact is, there is almost no oversight or accountability over the drone strikes in America, and certainly none in Pakistan, rendering the term “civilian” entirely useless in the discussion of any legal, ethical or strategic appropriateness of the targeted killing campaign.

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/americas_immoral_drone_war/singleton/

[msongs]

1. our president can kill anybody he wants. no US or heavenly laws apply here. What about the next prez

who will start killing anyone he/she wants in the USA?

[indepat]

2. It is unlikely the next president would want to kill any citizen not agin'

us, 'cause you are either with us or agin' us and you don't go out willy-nilly killing of those with us (unless, of course, through inadvertent collateral damage in killing those agin' us).