On August 14th of this year, I provided five suggestions for the President upon his inevitable re-election. As I had a one in two chance of being correct, I chose the right face of the coin. As such, I can now say the chickens have come home to roost, so it’s time to revisit the advice, one item at a time. Here was the first and, in my opinion, the most important of the five:
1). Let’s start with the big one: drone attacks. Stop them. You crossed the line by authorizing the killing of American citizens without trial or any other semblance of due process. This is wrong, by any measure. In your acceptance speech after the election, please confirm that these attacks will stop. Period.
I read the transcript of his acceptance speech from Chicago last Wednesday morning, but nowhere did I see anything even remotely like what I requested. So thus far I’m 0 for 1. But I remain undaunted. I still believe what I said above is so. And other voices are joining in. Here’s one from Barbara Lochbihler, Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament. She is founder of the German Human Rights Institute in Berlin.
Here’s a link to an op-ed piece from a lady who – of course – agrees with me…
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-s-legally-questionable-drone-campaign-by-barbara-lochbihler
If you don’t care to read the whole thing, let me give you an excerpt from what she said:
every drone strike will not only undermine human rights and international humanitarian law, but will also further widen a legal loophole that other governments and armed groups will not hesitate to exploit.
And there’s the rub, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet pointed out to us a few centuries ago. Or in saucier language, what’s good for the goose is gonna be good for the Iranians, or Talib or angry Australian peaceniks.
How could we criticize the Assad regime for targeting civilians when we do the same thing with drones? The Air Force is now training more recruits to operate drones than to fly planes – a major step in this sanitized version of warfare?
The biggest challenge is this: are we foolish enough to believe that this relatively simple technology can’t be used against us? If we fear Al Qaeda getting a dirty bomb, it’s certainly easier to see how they could gain access to a drone and use it to kill innocent civilians (as we reportedly have been doing in Pakistan.)
So the next time you’re in your back yard, maybe enjoying a friendly barbecue or a children’s birthday party, look up into the sky and listen for a buzzing noise like a mosquito. And think about what it would be like to constantly have to live in fear of what falls from that buzzing noise.
