"How now? A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!" Shakespeare
The UN Human Rights Organization has issued a report, under the direction of Philip Alston (Alston is an Australian by birth and a prominent international law scholar and human rights advocate. He is currently the John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. The report is critical of the US CIA program of Predator drone attacks which have killed nearly 1400 Pakistanis in the Tribal Areas of northwestern Pakistan. See: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/14session/A.HRC.14.24.Add6.pdf
Note that the Predator Drone is an unmanned, high-flying, silent, hovering, small plane which carries a TV camera and is armed with powerful rockets.
Since 2004, President Obama has increased the use of drone attacks and has come under increasing criticism for his actions. According to the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) President Obama has given his permission "some 135 attacks in northwestern Pakistan … since 2004 which have killed between 944 and 1,398 individuals, about 30 percent of whom were "non-militants," according to the New American Foundation, which derived its numbers from media reports.” (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2010/0603/US-defends-unmanned-drone-attacks-after-harsh-UN-report).
The not-so-secret campaign, perhaps used by Obama as a cudgel to defend his unsteady command of the CIA and his own military, and to satisfy the bloodthirsty Republican opposition, has been spoken of openly in Washington. Indeed, Obama himself has referenced the "secret program" in public when he made an inappropriate joke about the use of drones in a well-reported crack to a journalist at a recent White House Correspondent’s Dinner, stating with his characteristic broad smile: “You will never see it coming”. After which everyone in attendance laughed heartily, casually ignoring the four or five hundred unfortunate Pakistani civilians who were mistakenly targeted, or happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and "did not see it coming" either. To make matters worse (a too common occurrence in this Administration) Mr Obama has notoriously added an American citizen to his Predator drone “execution list". Recently, the New York Times (and other outlets) revealed that the Moslem Iman, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born and raised in New Mexico, but now resides in Yemen has been targeted by Obama for extrajudicial execution...This is a Moslem Imam, and an American citizen(See:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html.) Al-Awlaki resides in Yemen and is not in or remotely near an American battleground. He has been implicated indirectly in the Fort Hood massacre and in the Christmas "underwear" bomber plot. Though, as an American citizen does he not have the presumption of innocence until proven guilty by a court of law? No one has proof of his guilt, no one has even interviewed this man. The Obamanians are too willing to take the law into their own hands. In their willingness to execute this citizen outside of the law they threaten us all and make a mockery of our Constitutional rights.
This UN report should make Administration insiders and the President think more carefully about extrajudicial executions. How would they like it if China or Russia took up the same habit? Though, in fact it has been going on for some while..routinely practiced by Israel which nonchalantly eliminates its various foes this way. But the USA is not Israel!!
The Alston report questions the legality of the actions and the “play-station” mentality of the CIA agents who—sitting far from the battlefield in front of a console in a cushy air-conditioned module somewhere in a secret Nevada location…press a button and kill, kill, kill! These men and women who exterminate others from afar are not military personnel and as such have no military immunity (Such immunity is reasonable considering that on the battlefield combatants are more or less equal-- in their intent to harm or neutralize each other—and their equal exposure to dismemberment and death). But this is not so with the CIA's drone “play-station-joy-stick jockey” who presses a button to make a "kill" thousands of miles away safely sitting in front of a console--there is no exposure to retaliation or harm---thus making the act of distant killing--- a simple case of state sanctioned murder --the unlawful killing of another human being without just cause or excuse.
The CSM piece quotes Jane Mayer, (from The New Yorker) who wrote "that the appeal of drones has increased as public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has waned: “It’s easy to understand the appeal of a “push-button” approach to fighting Al Qaeda, but the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force. And, because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.”
The CSM piece also quotes Micah Zenko, who states” that insurgents appear to be adapting to drone attacks and their usefulness may be waning. But he also argues that drone attacks remain an "essential tool for killing terrorists" even if their use should be more carefully scrutinized.”
Zenko’s chilling statement that drones are “an essential tool for killing terrorists” sounds familiar. I have heard that or similar sentiments used by the neocons in the last Bush Administration. That is the crux of the matter. Zenko’s assumption that the target is indeed a ”terrorist”. How do we know they are terrorists? What is the proof? Who makes the decision? Sine there is no legal decison--these are called “extrajudicial” executions. They are outside of any legal framework.
The CSM piece states that “targeted Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents in northwest Pakistan have responded to the increasing efficiency of the drone strikes by developing standard defensive tactics. [They've begun] killing suspected informants who provide intelligence, destroying communication towers that can better intercept satellite and cell phone signals; they've dispersed into smaller cells; they've moved into heavily populated areas where it is very unlikely that the United States will attempt strikes. So they've adapted defensive strategies in response...” The battle goes on.
Alston concludes that these “operators” (when and if they become known to appropriate authority) could be held accountable by the states in which the killings took place, or here in the USA where applicable laws apply. Such an outcome would serve well the interests of justice---and humanity.
Get the picture?
rjk
