Category Archives: War

UPDATED: The Year of the Killer Drone

Barack Obama, Criminal Injustice, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Military, Technology, War

A drone can be “an idle person who lives off others; a loafer, a drudge,” also known as Barack Obama. A drone is also “a pilotless aircraft operated by remote control,” frequently utilized by the aforementioned “idle person who lives of others” to kill others.

“When Obama was sworn into office in 2009, the nation’s clandestine drone war was confined to a single country, Pakistan, where 44 strikes over five years had left about 400 people dead, according to the New America Foundation. The number of strikes has since soared to nearly 240, and the number of those killed, according to conservative estimates, has more than quadrupled.” (WaPo)

The New America Foundation breaks it down in a table. Between 2004 and 2007, when Genghis Bush reigned supreme, we killed 112 Pakistanis. The total number of Pakistanis eliminated by drone between 2004 and 2011 was 2,680.

Do the math. Obama is the killer drone.

UPDATED (Jan 1. 012): STARSHIP TROOPERS USA.

UPDATE II: War Games: Smash ‘Em & Put Them Together Again

Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law, Terrorism, The State, War

Look; isn’t Uncle Sam wonderful? This little Pakistani girl below “was burned beyond recognition by a U.S. drone and left for dead in a trashcan. … She was found by a medical mission team two years ago and was described as ‘lucky’ by staff as two other children found with her were killed by the military attack.”

The child was “brought to the U.S. from her home in Pakistan,” where American surgeons patched her up, sort of. That’s the least we Americans can do. One of her new caregivers named the child Shakira, which means thankful. Evidently some dolt thinks little Shakira should be grateful that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men COULD put little Shakira together again.

UPDATE I (Dec. 23): FROM “JUST WAR FOR DUMMIES” (March 12, 2003):

I’m no pacifist. While I don’t condone the lingering American presence in Afghanistan, and while I doubt the abilities of the U.S. military to contain al-Qaida there, I supported going after bin Laden’s group in that country. That was a legitimate act of retaliation and defense, accommodated within St. Augustine’s teachings, whereby a just war is one “that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects.”
Al-Qaida was responsible for the murder of 3,000 Americans. The Taliban openly succored the organization and its masterminding leadership. Mr. Bush had asked the hosting Taliban to surrender bin Laden and his gang. The Taliban refused, insisting on defending their murderous guests.

UPDATE II (Dec. 24): In reply to Theodor Lauppert below: And this writer “isn’t generally considered a source for” the strengthening of the positive law, international or other.

Refugees In The Failed State of Iraq

Barack Obama, Bush, Democracy, Iraq, Middle East, Military, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, Religion, War

Saddam Hussein ruled over what the state department considered a rogue state, Iraq. The US eliminated Hussein and invaded his country (not in that order). Thanks to the American invasion, Iraq is now a failed state, where the politically weak are forsaken, and a muscular majority exercises its authority (a dispensation also known as democracy). The deposed dictator had kept a lid on the cauldron of sectarian strife, now boiling over in Iraq.

I’ve covered the plight of the millions of Iraqi refugees we helped uproot.

Against the backdrop of “Obama basking in the Iraq withdrawal” comes a reality check: a report, via CNN, on those Iraqis who have been internally displaced.

While war supporters may console themselves with the fact that “displacement is not new in Iraq,” as this Brookings-Institute observes, Iraq since the blessings of Bush is suffering a displacement crisis.