hahahah all Presidents are such fuckers….
Addendum: Remember, this is similar to the conflict Obama had with the leaders of Iraq. Basically: Iraq and Afghanistan, despite being warzones, seem to be more progressive in re: establishing a rule of law than our current President. Happy Election, everyone!
So what sort of asshole do you have to be to think this is a good idea?
The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen by launching strikes against terrorism suspects even when it does not know the identities of those who could be killed, U.S. officials said.
Securing permission to use these “signature strikes” would allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior, such as imagery showing militants gathering at known al-Qaeda compounds or unloading explosives.
Let’s see here….
As in Iraq, the killing and abuse of civilians by occupation forces has been an integral part of this dirty war from its earliest days. As it drags on, ever more outrages emerge. Last year, members of a US unit were convicted of killing Afghan civilians for entertainment, cutting off body parts as trophies and leaving weapons with the corpses to make it seem as if they were killed in combat.
Nor is such depravity just a US habit, of course. Last year a hungover British guardsman stabbed a 10-year-old boy in the kidneys for no reason. British soldiers are currently on trial for filming their abuse of Afghan children, while US WikiLeaks files record 21 separate incidents of British troops shooting dead or bombing Afghan civilians.
The line between deliberate and accidental killings is in any case a blurred one. As the US General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of Nato troops in Afghanistan, commented: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”
“Massacres are the inevitable result of foreign occupation”
All the Historians sighing “No shit, Sherlock” … If you say “I support the war” (or, even worse, “I support the occupation”) but follow up with “But I certainly don’t support these atrocities committed by the troops,” then there is an essential disconnect going on in your brain. If you think we should still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, then you think we should be murdering children. If you think we should still be “fighting” in the Middle East, then you support things like the desecration of the bodies of the dead. Whether you realize that or not is a different matter. War is a crime in itself AND a crime from which these crimes inevitably follow.
versus a quote buried towards the end of the article:
“This is not just about dishonoring the Koran, it is about disrespecting our dead, and killing our children,”
Fuck the Times.
Dr. Waitman Beorn, the Iraq vet and Holocaust studies expert who blew the whistle on Marines’ use of a Nazi SS flag in Afghanistan, explains how poor moral judgment can snowball in a military culture.
This is actually the opposite direction of how war and war crimes work. War Crimes proceed from War itself. Racism, as well, proceeds from war itself. To quote myself, RACISM IS PART OF A PSYCHOSIS THAT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FOR THE STATE TO WAGE WAR. The conclusion of those involved in the Nuremberg trials was that war crimes follow from the grand crime that is war itself. Absolute kudos to Dr. Beorn for exposing the racist, fascist, murderer fuck Marines (Hoo-rah, you dumb shits), but woe be to his scholarship and his experience if he can’t see War Itself as the problem and this sort of racism as not an aberration, but absolutely par. If you want to end war crimes, wishing for a “purer” war is useless. The “poor moral judgement” is war waged by the State in the first place.
Barack Obama on the drone program that kills 1 militant for every 10-15 civilians. (via jonathan-cunningham)
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) states, similarly, that “noncombatant casualties” from drone strikes are “kept to an absolute minimum” … you will notice that neither Obama nor Feinstein will define for us what they seem to mean by “huge number”, “noncombatant”, or “absolute minimum” … And yet, it’s important that they try to define this for us, because it seems we’re speaking an entirely different language.
Also, you could call me pie-in-the-sky* for saying so, but I think “absolute minimum” should be defined as 0 and “huge number” should be defined as 1.
*hey, i like pie and skies and fuck you and your ideas about “just war” waged by the State
