In the early 1970s, I spent two summers slinging pork loins in a Chicago meat-packing factory. Rose Packing Company paid a handful of college students $2.25 an hour to process pork. Donning combat boots, yellow rubber aprons, goggles, hairnets and floor-length white smocks that didn't stay white very long, we'd arrive on the factory floor. Surrounded by deafening machinery, we'd step over small pools of blood and waste, adjusting ourselves to the rancid odors, as we headed to our posts. I'd step onto a milk crate in front of a huge bin full of thawing pork loins. Then, swinging a big, steel T-hook, I'd stab a large pork loin, pull it out of the pile, and plop it on a conveyor belt carrying meat into the pickle juice machine. Sometimes a roar from a foreman would indicate a switch to processing Canadian pork butts, which involved swiftly shoving metal chips behind rectangular cuts of meat. On occasion, I'd be assigned to a machine that squirted meat waste meat into a plastic tubing, part of the process for making hot dogs. I soon became a vegetarian.
But, up until some months ago, if anyone had ever said to me, "Kathy Kelly, you slaughtered animals," I'm sure I would have denied it and maybe even felt a bit indignant. Recently, I realized that in fact I did participate in animal slaughter. It's similar, isn't it, to widely held perceptions here in the United States about our responsibility for killing people in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq and other areas where the U.S. routinely kills civilians.
The actual killing seems distant, almost unnoticeable, and we grow so accustomed to our remote roles that we hardly notice the rising antagonism caused by U.S. aerial attacks, using remotely piloted drones. The drones fire missiles and drop bombs that incinerate people in the targeted area, many of them civilians whose only "crime" is to be living with their family.
Villagers in Afghanistan and Pakistan have little voice in the court of U.S. public opinion and no voice whatsoever in U.S. courts of law. Aiming to raise concern over U.S. usage of drones for targeted killings, 14 of us have been preparing for a trial here in Las Vegas, where we are charged under Nevada state law with having trespassed at Creech Air Force Base, in nearby Indian Springs, Nevada.
The charges stem from an April, 2009, action when several dozen people held vigils at the main gate to Creech AFB for ten days. One of our banners said, "Ground the Drones, Lest Ye Reap the Whirlwind." Franciscan priest Jerry Zawada's sign said: "The drones don't hear the groans of the people on the ground, -- and neither do we." Jerry carried that sign onto the base on April 9, 2009, when 14 of us attempted to deliver several letters to the base commander, Colonel Chambliss.
Nevada state authorities charged us with trespass. We believed that international law, which clearly prohibits targeted assassinations, obliged us to prevent drone strikes. "It is incumbent on pilots, whether remote or not, to ensure that a commander's assessment of the legality of a proposed strike is borne out by visual confirmation," writes Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, "and that the target is in fact lawful, and that the requirements of necessity, proportionality, and discrimination are met."
The United States isn't at war with Pakistan. U.S. leaders repeatedly stress that Pakistan is our ally. Nevertheless, U.S. operated drones are used for targeted killing in North and South Waziristan. "Targeted killing is the most coercive tactic employed in the war on terrorism," according to the Harvard Journal. "Unlike detention or interrogation, it is not designed to capture the terrorist, monitor his or her actions, or extract information; simply put, it is designed to eliminate the terrorist."
The Pentagon claims that the drone attacks are an ideal strategy for eliminating al Qaeda members. Yet in the name of bolstering security for U.S. people, the U.S. is institutionalizing assassination as a valid policy. Does this make us safer?
General Petraeus may perceive short-term gains, but in the long run it's likely that the drone attacks, as well as the night raids and death squad tactics, will cause blowback. What's more, drone proliferation among many countries will lessen security for people in the U.S. and throughout the world.
With the usage of drones, the U.S. populace can experience even greater distance and less accountability because U.S. armed forces and CIA agents, invisible to the U.S. populace, can assassinate targets without ever leaving a U.S. base. Corporations that manufacture the drones and technicians who design them celebrate cutting edge technology and rising profits.
In a Las Vegas courtroom, on Sept. 14, the judge who hears our case has an unusual opportunity to help accelerate that process by allowing expert witnesses to speak about citizen obligations under international law and our protected rights under the constitution of the U.S., all in relation to our duty to abolish drone warfare.
Recalling my own involvement in slaughter, I'm ashamed that I took the job for no other reason than to earn a few dimes more, per hour, than I might have gotten at a job that didn't involve killing. It took me four decades to realistically assess what I'd done. Will it take 40 years for us humans to acknowledge our role in slaughtering other human beings who have meant us no harm
Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
The people of Afghanistan are not without Wisdom. They know that all they must do is to endure. All leave, eventually! that is the history of this country.
we cannot endure another 9-10 years of stalemate at this high cost! (2) TWO BILLION U.S. DOLLARS PER WEEK! The numbers are before us for all to see! they are saying "CAN YOU HEAR ME? NOW!"”
Long ago we had a child's series story books, called - What Kathy Did and What Kathy Did Next
:)
Loved them so.
We hope you guys win the case, but win or lose - You all have done a good thing.
The use of Drones, together with the use of Tasers, is wrong on so many levels and some thing we too feel strongly about. For one - It's barbaric. And who wants to go back there, to barbarism?
While not yet obvious to all, there's really no going back to business as usual for the powers that be.
No matter how much they may kick & scream right now.
Once when asked about Western Civilization, Mr.Gandhi replied "that would be nice" - 2010, 21st Century and seems we've got a little more to do, to get there. While what passes for Western Civilization, is groaning & cracking, falling apart, under the weight of so many unbelievable things done in the name of preserving it. Keeping it safe.
Take care. Best wishes. Thank you for writing.
But this also resonates with your broader point: what is the meaning of a life, distant and remote, that is hardly seen at all by camera or radar, that will be snuffed out by drone attacks? We have worked carefully to shield our senses from the meaning of lives we destroy, and so they end up meaning nothing. And that always leads to abuse. Even if the violence is justified, we cannot know because we cannot weigh it against the value of the lives of our victims.
This is also a strategic, military problem, because while foreign lives may be meaningless to us, they are not to the nations, families, and communities who suffer our attacks. And we breed ever more enemies by our miscalculation to the worth of their lives.
America is busily mixing up the recipe for more and more responses against our acts of state terrorism around the world. But that's part of the game - the next 911 will justify even more murderous American behavior around the world, and so on and so on - this is the perpetual war that keeps the Neocons dancing over our roof
Where are the Neocons without perpetual wars for Israel? - nowhere, it's the reason for which they exist
How ridiculous is it to pretend we can murder people all over the world and somehow, like a 5 year old, not seem capable of realizing that they will fight back against us in any way they can? It is a fundamental lie and victory of the Neocons to prevent this realization.
We 'intervene' and kill - they will fight back anyway they can - and then we cry and call them terrorists.
It's a ridiculous Neocon argument and is only advanced by those who want some justification for their murderous policies in the Middle East - meaning Israel - or those supporting Israel, the Israeli-Americans or "Neocons"
Drones are like driving commercial airliners into civilian homes - similiar acts of asymetric warfare.
The people who are the targets of these attacks think we're cowards and weak for using them as well, weak like these chickenhawk Neocons
great article
Did 9/11 make us all mad? Our memorial to the innocents who died nine years ago has been a holocaust of fire and blood . . .
Did 9/11 make us all go mad? How fitting, firestorm nine years ago should turn out to be a crackpot preacher threatening another firestorm with a Nazi-style book burning of the Koran. Or a would-be mosque two blocks from "ground zero" – as if 9/11 was an onslaught on Jesus-worshipping Christians, rather than on the atheist West.
But why should we be surprised? those international crimes against humanity: the half-crazed Ahmadinejad, the smarmy post-nuclear Gaddafi, Blair with his crazed right eye and George W Bush with his black prisons and torture and lunatic "war on terror". And that wretched man who lived – or lives still – in an Afghan cave and the hundreds of al-Qa'idas whom he created, and the one-eyed mullah – not to mention all the lunatic cops and intelligence agencies and CIA thugs who failed us all – utterly – on 9/11 because they were too idle or too stupid to identify 19 men who were going to attack the United States.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-nine-years-two-wars-hundreds-of-thousands-dead-ndash-and-nothing-learnt-2076450.html
Thank you, again.
In the post-Vietnam era, a great military thinker arose in the ashes to show the way forward. His name was John Boyd, and although his military experience was as a fighter pilot, his keen mind allowed him to study and digest the lessons of the history of warfare. He was among a group that worked hard to affect reform in the way we prepare for and fight wars. Since his death, our country has retrogressed. The few who learned the lessons of Vietnam are dead or disenfranchised. What remains is largely a band of people who remind us of Lewis Mumford's wonderful quote about the military being the refuge of third rate minds.
Up through World War I 90% of war casualties were soldiers; since then the balance has shifted so that now 90% or more of the casualties are civilians. Although the brutality of World War II was unprecedented in scale, the fraction of civilian casualties was relatively small compared to today. This is a direct result of our penchant for indiscriminate use of force and remote control warfare. It is criminal, nothing less.
On the other hand, the total number of humans killed in warfare is relatively small compared to
WW II. In today's world the 'indiscriminate' use of force is fairly restrained, compared to WW II.
I can't say i miss the old days all that much.
But you know what, I blame more the Pakistani government...why are they allowing such horrible things? why?...corruption? then people should get rid of those leaders
Benazir Bhutto was running for PM. She was an extremely corrupt politician, but she was nothing compared to her husband, who currently has office. She had the sympathy vote because her father was PM and also assinated, she was pretty, she was a woman...in a country full of uneducated and destitute people, they mistook her for a savior she became the first woman PM. And in return she swindled the nation out of billions. when she was assinated (most likely by her own husband), her political party had the sympathy vote. she was said to have been separated from her husband, and when she died her party won and he suddenly swooped in and declared himself Prime Minister. in the days after her death, he was grinning wide in every photo op with his plastic veneers. Benazir's niece holds him responsible for killing her father when he caught him having an affair. He was called out of his house and shot in the street. The street was cordoned off so no one could come in, not even ambulances. The entire country knows that our PM has stolen billions from Pakistan, and his murder list is long. No one voted for him, no one thought in a million years that he would swoop in like that. The problem is- he's Don Corleone, without a sense of justice. we didnt vote him in- how make him go?
Fatima Bhuttos father (benazirs brother) found out and wanted to tell his sister (the PM).
they fought about it,
and then Zardari had him shot in cold blood.
this is our prime minister. no one is happy with him. but when a guy is this dangerous and reckeless, and has this much money, how are we to go about getting rid of him?
and even if we had a good leader, even that guy wouldn't be able to say no to america. right now our leaders do whatever america says, even allowing the drones to kill civilians, and the american gov puts it out there in the press that the pakistani gov isnt doing enough. imagine if we were doing less. its a rock and hard place situation. america has the upper hand in this, and i really hope people like Kathy Kelly can help out the people in Pakistan who have no say in the matter.
We spend billions on weapons systems. Lets spend some more money on knowing when it is the right time to use them and when we should stand down.
There is no security realized from killing a Pakastani or Afghani civilian who was simply minding his own business and had the unfortunate circumstance to be standing or sitting where the drone dropped its load.
These civilians LIVE there, they did not "had the unfortunate circumstance to be standing or sitting where the drone dropped its load."
you don't gain any security by killing random innocent people.
in fact i keep trying to tell people, it's making the situation much worse. you're wasting all this money to increase terrorism, because thats whats happening. the pakistani government is hopeless, but what would expect more wisdom from america. this appeal is also in the best of america's interest- to stop terrorism.
Point 1 - I don't like the fact we are their in the first place
Point 2 - If we have to be there, I want as much protection for our soldiers as possible - (My kid is a soldier)
Point 3 - If we use weapon systems such as Predators, then the rules of engagement must be rigorous to the point that we avoid civilian casualties or we don't use them (as I said in the first paragraph)
Point 4 - Your snarky comment about things being easy to write while I'm drinking coffee is insulting.
Both drone and manned-aircraft pilots need to take reasonable care in the use of deadly force, but there is no legal distinction between flying for real and flying by radio. In fact, the drone pilot is in a more perilous position, legally if not materially, because he or she cannot claim mortal danger as a stressor and defense. Being told that an identified target on a video is legitimate is a reasonable defense under any plausible rules of engagement.
10,000 years ago, arguments were settled with sticks. I'm sure the development of arrows and guns caused hand-wringing about their fair use. There was very well documented concerns in navies about the first use of submarines. If anything, the introduction of drones allows more time for careful target selection than does a manned strike, and should lead to fewer casualties.
The fundamental legality of killing when entrusted with government-issued explosives is indeed a debatable point, but it is accepted as a near-universal practice.
It is important not to let distaste for the means of killing distract from the analysis of the wisdom of the policy behind it. I contend that the families of the wedding guests and farm workers wrongly killed in the 'stans are not concerned about whether the missile that killed their loved ones was released by a finger 20,000 feet above or 8,000 miles away.
One mild criticism of your excellent comment: we should not confuse rules of engagement with the law of war. RoE's are orders commanders give governing the conduct of battle. They may be, and in limited armed conflict situatons, commonly are, much more restrictive than what the LoW allows.
Thus, conduct which violates rules of engagement may be perfectly legitimate under international law. We frequently afford protected persons and places much more immunity from fires than they are legally entitled to, for political reasons.
"What many forget is that ordinary Pakistanis have suffered more as a result of corruption and terrorism than anyone else. Before 2002, when President Pervez Musharraf sent the Pakistani army into the tribal areas at the behest of America, there had never been any suicide bombings and there was no Pakistani Taliban. Since then more than 8,000 civilians have been killed in suicide bombings and 30 militant groups are operating illegally in the country."
-Jemima Khan
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/article370378.ece