Hatred: What drones sow

[The Northerner]

If the New York Times had run a story late in the spring of 2008 revealing that the Bush administration, including Karl Rove, met weekly to mull a “kill list” of suspected jihadists, one can be sure that congressional Democrats and liberals would be apoplectic. There might even be people marching in the streets. Now the anti-war left is quiescent.

Glenn Greenwald blames the authoritarian mind-set of the Washington policy class, while Chris Hedges blames the death of the effective liberal class, both of which are factors. But there’s another less judgmental explanation. Liberal Americans, like conservatives, prefer instability (and randomized violence) overseas to a diminishing of their sense of security at home. Destabilization as security policy may be shortsighted but it is recognizably American.

Destabilization is certainly what President Obama has delivered. “Both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the United States than when Mr. Obama became president,” noted Times reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane in their “kill list” story. Yemen has been the country of origin for three of the most serious attempted attacks on U.S. civilian targets in recent years. Pakistan is the only nuclear state where Islamic fundamentalists compete for power, and its people are measurably more antagonistic toward America than they were when George W. Bush left office.

The metrics are dismal. The advent of the drone war in Yemen has coincided with the growth of al-Qaida there. When the Obama administration began the strikes in December 2009, al-Qaida had 200-300 members and controlled no territory. Now White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan tells a group of New York cops that it has “more than 1,000? members. Gregory Johnsen, a journalist working on a book about the counterterror war in Yemen, says, “Al-Qaida now controls towns, administers courts, collects taxes, and generally acts like the government. It never had that before.”

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2012/06/12/hatred_what_drones_sow/singleton/

[AhmsoRealwidit]

1. Hatred: What drones sow

First of all, I LOVE your posts. REAL HONESTY is REQUIRED in a Democracy. Most don't have the guts to reply to what you post. Apologists and blind supporters of the Administration remain silent when "our man" does the same despicable things the last rogue administration did. Every stupid murderous drone strike creates ten more enemies for every extra-judicial killing. Do we feel safer yet????? GREAT FOR THE MIC, though. MORE ENEMIES - MORE BULLETS AND BOMBS SOLD.