Global Research
Drones: Obama’s Invisible War
In the midst of a crisis
which has in recent weeks created a political chasm between Russia and
the United States, there is an ongoing carnage in the name of combating
terrorism against Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia.
The story of the CIA-led killer
drones which are killing women and children on a daily basis is a tale
accorded inexcusably scant attention in media. Indeed it is being
ignored.
Just recently, the US director
of national intelligence James Clapper ordered US senators to remove a
provision from a major intelligence bill that would require the
president to publicize information about drone strikes and their
victims.
The bill originally required the
president to release a yearly report clarifying the total number of
“combatants” and “noncombatant civilians” killed or injured by drone
strikes in the previous year.
Reports clearly indicate the
number of drone attacks on Muslim countries has increased tremendously
since Barack Obama took office in 2009. Quite ironically, the man who
was initially compared to Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize
nine months later.
I for one always presumed that
George W. Bush was a political retard who thought he was burdened with a
messianic mission and that he felt he had to save the world. Quite
naturally, the election of a colored president in the US engendered some
false hope that there might appear tangible political upheavals in the
country in its approach towards the world in general and toward the
Muslim world in particular.
To the dismay of many, this
dream was however shattered altogether to be ensued by an era of
apocalyptic darkness and escalating mass murders in the international
arena.
According to the New America
Foundation, a Washington-based public-policy institute, Obama authorized
193 drone strikes in Pakistan alone from 2009 to 2011, that is, over
four times the number of attacks that President George W. Bush
authorized during his two terms.
To date, the liar-in-chief has
only acknowledged that the United States has killed four Americans in
drone strikes. According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
Obama has launched over 390 covert drone strikes in his first five years
in office and thousands of civilians have been killed in the strikes.
The drone warfare is indeed a
war in disguise, a form of war meant to lull American public who are
manifestly fed up with their government’s military interventions on the
one hand and to vindicate their gory policies through a mechanism of
invisibility on the other.
Contrary to their claims that
the drones are only used to wipe out the al-Qaida elements in different
parts of the Muslim world, their strikes have however proven to kill
civilians. Women and children are unfortunately among the routine
victims of their ‘targeted’ assassinations.
For the US government, war has
taken a new shape, ranging from cyberwar to drone strikes, from
assassinations to other forms of covert operations.
It is agonizingly sad to see
that certain governments including Pakistan and Yemen have been even
collaborating with the CIA, providing them with the space for their
inhumane intrusion.
A known victim of the
assassination drones attacks is Pakistan which had long declined to
admit that it had been aware of the attacks and that it had even helped
the US government. In 2011, ex-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
acknowledged that his government clandestinely signed off on US drone
attacks. It was actually part of a deal by Washington to help retain the
Pakistani strongman in power.
A cable sent in August 2008 and
later posted online by Wikileaks, then-US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne
Patterson mentioned a discussion about drones during a meeting that also
involved Malik and then-Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
“Malik suggested we hold off
alleged Predator attacks until after the Bajaur operation,” Patterson
wrote. “The PM brushed aside Rehman’s remarks and said, ‘I don’t care if
they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the
National Assembly and then ignore it.’ ”
Yemen’s president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has also confessed
that he “personally approves every US drone strike in his country and
described the remotely piloted aircraft as a technical marvel that has
helped reverse al-Qaeda’s gains.”
Further to that, there are
third-party governments which are aiding and abetting Washington in
carrying out its massacre of the civilians in Africa by allowing them to
use their military sites in the country. According to a report by the
German Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, the Stuttgart-based supreme
command of the United States Africa Command (US Africom) and the Air
Operations Center (AOC) at the US air force base in Ramstein, in the
state of Rhineland Palatinate, are directly involved in the drone
attacks.
With a morbid mind, former US
president George W. Bush, who was incapable of truth, commenced a series
of invasions and military expeditions in the Muslim countries, caused
inconceivable human losses and left a legacy of horror and bloodshed
which came to be followed by his successor Barrack Obama. Then in order
to keep up appearances and beguile the American public, Obama who was
essentially expected to behave differently took the wars from the
battlefields to the towns and exacted an irretrievable toll on the
civilians under the banner of fighting terrorism.
By all standards, Obama is a
brazen criminal and those who collude with him in perpetrating these
acts of atrocity are no better. All of them are indeed under the
watchful eyes of God and they shall meet their dismal reckoning.
As Noam Chomsky once said, “Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.”
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www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
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Copyright © Dr. Ismail Salami, Global Research, 2014
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