Some dead children are mourned; others are dehumanised.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cMere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts \u2026 These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.\u201d(1) Every parent can connect with what Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.<\/p>\n
It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world\u2019s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them; no pictures on the front pages of the world\u2019s newspapers; no interviews with grieving relatives; no minute analysis of what happened and why.<\/p>\n
If the victims of Mr Obama\u2019s drone strikes are mentioned by the state at all, they are discussed in terms which suggest that they are less than human. The people who operate the drones, Rolling Stone magazine reports, describe their casualties as \u201cbug splats\u201d, \u201csince viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.\u201d(2) Or they are reduced to vegetation: justifying the drone war, Obama\u2019s counterterrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that \u201cyou\u2019ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.\u201d(3)<\/p>\n
Like Bush\u2019s government in Iraq, Barack Obama\u2019s administration neither documents nor acknowledges the civilian casualties of the CIA\u2019s drone strikes in north-west Pakistan. But a report by the law schools at Stanford and New York universities suggests that during the first three years of his time in office, the 259 strikes for which he is ultimately responsible killed between 297 and 569 civilians, of whom 64 were children(4). These are figures extracted from credible reports: there may be more which have not been fully documented.<\/p>\n
The wider effects on the children of the region have been devastating. Many have been withdrawn from school because of fears that large gatherings of any kind are being targeted. There have been several strikes on schools since George W Bush launched the drone programme that Obama has expanded so enthusiastically: one of Bush\u2019s blunders killed 69 children(5).<\/p>\n
The study reports that children scream in terror when they hear the sound of a drone. A local psychologist says that their fear and the horrors they witness is causing permanent mental scarring. Children wounded in drone attacks told the researchers that they are too traumatised to go back to school and have abandoned hopes of the careers they might have had: their dreams as well as their bodies have been broken(6).<\/p>\n
Obama does not kill children deliberately. But their deaths are an inevitable outcome of the way his drones are deployed. We don\u2019t know what emotional effect these deaths might have on him, as neither he nor his officials will discuss the matter: almost everything to do with the CIA\u2019s extrajudicial killings in Pakistan is kept secret. But you get the impression that no one in the administration is losing much sleep over it.<\/p>\n
Two days before the murders in Newtown, Obama\u2019s press secretary was asked about women and children being killed by drones in Yemen and Pakistan. He refused to answer, on the grounds that such matters are \u201cclassified\u201d(7). Instead, he directed the journalist to a speech by John Brennan, Obama\u2019s counterterrorism assistant. Brennan insists that \u201cal-Qaida\u2019s killing of innocents, mostly Muslim men, women and children, has badly tarnished its appeal and image in the eyes of Muslims\u201d(8). He appears unable to see that the drone war has done the same for the United States. To Brennan the people of north-west Pakistan are neither insects nor grass: his targets are a \u201ccancerous tumour\u201d, the rest of society \u201cthe tissue around it\u201d. Beware of anyone who describes a human being as something other than a human being.<\/p>\n
Yes, he conceded, there is occasionally a little \u201ccollateral damage\u201d, but the US takes \u201cextraordinary care [to] ensure precision and avoid the loss of innocent life.\u201d It will act only if there\u2019s \u201can actual ongoing threat\u201d to American lives(9). This is cock and bull with bells on.<\/p>\n
The \u201csignature strike\u201d doctrine developed under Obama, which has no discernable basis in law, merely looks for patterns(10). A pattern could consist of a party of unknown men carrying guns (which scarcely distinguishes them from the rest of the male population of north-west Pakistan), or a group of unknown people who look as if they might be plotting something. This is how wedding and funeral parties get wiped out; this is why 40 elders discussing royalties from a chromite mine were blown up in March last year(11). It is one of the reasons why children continue to be killed.<\/p>\n
Obama has scarcely mentioned the drone programme and has said nothing about its killing of children. The only statement I can find is a brief and vague response during a videoconference last January(12). The killings have been left to others to justify. In October the Democratic cheerleader Joe Klein claimed on MSNBC that \u201cthe bottom line in the end is whose 4 year-old get killed? What we\u2019re doing is limiting the possibility that 4 year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.\u201d(13) As the estimable Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, killing 4 year-olds is what terrorists do(14). It doesn\u2019t prevent retaliatory murders; it encourages them, as grief and revenge are often accomplices.<\/p>\n
Most of the world\u2019s media, which has rightly commemorated the children of Newtown, either ignores Obama\u2019s murders or accepts the official version that all those killed are \u201cmilitants\u201d. The children of north-west Pakistan, it seems, are not like our children. They have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears. They belong to the other: to the non-human world of bugs and grass and tissue.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we,\u201d Obama asked on Sunday, \u201cprepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?\u201d(15) It\u2019s a valid question. He should apply it to the violence he is visiting on the children of Pakistan.<\/p>\n
References: <\/b><\/p>\n
1. http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2012\/dec\/17\/obama-speech-newtown-school-shooting<\/p>\n
2. http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/news\/the-rise-of-the-killer-drones-how-america-goes-to-war-in-secret-20120416<\/p>\n
3. http:\/\/articles.washingtonpost.com\/2012-10-23\/world\/35500278_1_drone-campaign-obama-administration-matrix<\/p>\n
4. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012. Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan. http:\/\/livingunderdrones.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Stanford-NYU-LIVING-UNDER-DRONES.pdf<\/p>\n
5. eg http:\/\/www.thenews.com.pk\/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=4043&Cat=13&dt=11\/5\/2006<\/p>\n
6. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012, as above.<\/p>\n
7. http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2012\/12\/12\/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-12122012<\/p>\n
8. John Brennan, 30th April 2012. The Ethics and Efficacy of the President\u2019s Counterterrorism Strategy. http:\/\/www.wilsoncenter.org\/event\/the-efficacy-and-ethics-us-counterterrorism-strategy<\/p>\n
9. John Brennan, as above.<\/p>\n
10. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012, as above.<\/p>\n
11. http:\/\/dawn.com\/2011\/03\/18\/rare-condemnation-by-pm-army-chief-40-killed-in-drone-attack\/<\/p>\n
12. http:\/\/dawn.com\/2011\/03\/18\/rare-condemnation-by-pm-army-chief-40-killed-in-drone-attack\/<\/p>\n
13. http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2012\/oct\/23\/klein-drones-morning-joe<\/p>\n
14. http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2012\/oct\/23\/klein-drones-morning-joe<\/p>\n