Sunday, October 16, 2011

US Chair Force Inviting Drone Attacks on Our Homeland

Here's a letter I wrote to the NY Times, not published in response to their op-ed,  Coming Soon: The Drone Arms Race

It borders on treason that the US Chair Force is permitted to sit at their computers, playing with their joysticks, assassinating” suspected terrorists” thousands of miles away, without benefit of evidence, charges, or trial—impersonally murdering selected targets based on “military intelligence”, a dubious proposition in these millennial times, given the fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan.   Does anyone believe that our computers are so finely calibrated that we are not slaughtering innocent men, women and children as well—or wreaking “collateral damage” as our military marauders are wont to call unsuspecting innocents murdered in the paths of our deadly forces?

President Obama is currently authorizing this shooting frenzy in six countries--Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia, with no publishable legal authority for these unconstitutional crimes.   Even the Nazis were entitled, under America’s rule of law, to a trial at Nuremberg.  But regardless of the moral, ethical or legal considerations, what about the sheer stupidity of allowing our military to set this awful precedent that will surely result in blowback and the killing of innocent Americans?   After all, mastery of drones isn’t like arcane nuclear technology which enabled us to maintain our technical superiority, for the most part, for more than 65 years (although with the commercial push to spread “peaceful” nuclear technology to wannabe nuclear countries, giving them the keys to their own bomb factories, our technical superiority will fade).  Any computer nerd can target a drone to rain terror or death by remote control anywhere in the world.


Will somebody put a stop to our wildwest cowboys shooting off their technology, mindlessly disregarding the consequences to life and limb?   Perhaps we need a Council of Grandmothers, like the one established by the Iroquois Confederacy, with absolutely authority to remove the Chief if they felt he was engaged in an ill-advised war.  Isn’t it time to take the toys away from the boys and set our country on its proper, lawful path?




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