Years ago I pondered the menace of the Empire’s drone wars: here and here.
The New york Times has warned that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue may be engaging in a “‘Whac-A-Mole’ approach to counterterrorism.” Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, does it not? Silly old Jimmy Carter was laughed at for once stating he sought nuclear policy advice from his daughter. Now we have a deadly serious policy operating on the principles of a carnival game.
Droning On and On.
It seems “Whac-A-Mole” was the perfect description of the program. Read this: The Drone Papers. In Edward Snowden style someone has leaked detailed classified information about America’s drone wars.
The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama’s drone wars.
The Intercept.
From the “Firing Blind” section:
The Obama administration has portrayed drones as an effective and efficient weapon in the ongoing war with al Qaeda and other radical groups. Yet classified Pentagon documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the U.S. military has faced “critical shortfalls” in the technology and intelligence it uses to find and kill suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia.
…
A report last year by retired Gen. John Abizaid and former Defense Department official Rosa Brooks noted that the “enormous uncertainties” of drone warfare are “multiplied further when the United States relies on intelligence and other targeting information provided by a host nation government: How can we be sure we are not being drawn into a civil war or being used to target the domestic political enemies of the host state leadership?”
In 2011, for example, U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that they had killed a local governor because Yemeni officials didn’t tell them he was present at a gathering of al Qaeda figures. “We think we got played,” one official said. (The Yemeni government disputed the report.)
We’re being played while we play with fire, firing blindly at phantoms of enormous uncertainty. That reminds me of the people’s part in electoral politics.
Shooting missiles at local politicians and goat-herders in foreign countries does nothing to fight terrorism. Muslim terrorists are in America and operating freely – in Boston, Oklahoma City, Chattanooga, etc. More are being imported by the master terrorists in Washington.
These proxy operations only serve the military-industrial complex and the bankers. And, we are rapidly running out of money to pay them.
All of this will end, it just won’t end well.
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