U.S. UNDER OBAMA ALLOWS DRONE MISSILE STRIKES AGAINST RURAL VILLAGERS IN PAKISTAN

I call upon Pres. Barack Obama to halt all drone missile attacks against Pakistani villagers. Today, BBC reports that the U.S. fired another missile killing nine people.

Reports the BBC:

"At least nine people have been killed in an airstrike on suspected militant targets in Pakistan's tribal region of South Waziristan, local officials say.

"Pilotless US drone aircraft are thought to have carried out the attack in which missiles were fired at a house near the town of Wana on the Afghan border."

Obama is wrong if he thinks that firing missiles at Pakistani insurgents or at Taliban members is going to "win hearts and minds" of ordinary Paksitanis.

If I was a Pakistani, I would be outraged at the intrusion of foreign drones from the United States attacking villages in my sovereign Pakistan. I don't care how pure the American motives against "terrorists," I would totally resist the violation of my country's national territory.

Obama and Gates say that they will attack Al Qaeda whereever it exists. This too is foolhardy and unworthy of Barack Obama. Al Qaeda is not some living monster. It consists of farmers, teenagers, villagers, who are consumed with religious fundamentalism that thinks it is doing God's will to attack the West. There is no way that Obama's missiles are going to defeat unsophisticated and poorly educated religious fundamentalists.

I say, stop this killing of ordinary rural Pakistanis from the sky by the Americans.

STOP DRONE MISSILES KILLING DOZENS OF VILLAGERS IN WAZIRISTAN

Who is the person in the Obama administration who thinks firing missiles into Pakistani villages and killing dozens of men, women and children is effective? Oh, because they are Taliban and Al Qaeda types? It seems to me that everyone in poor Pakistani villages in Waziristan is an "Al Qaeda type." And many certainly are Taliban because they live in a backward uneducated society that has embraced Islamic fundamentalism.

But that does not mean the United States should kill them. And under what rule of law under international law does the U.S. have the right to enter another country's territory and fire missiles from unmanned drones at people's homes?

No matter how many Talibani Americans kill by these missile raids, others will take their place, probably in the ratio of 100 recruits for each person killed. This American program is doomed to utter failure Obama thinks it will decimate the Talibani or the "Al Qaeda types."

Have I mentioned the hatred and animus that these drones are stoking in the hearts of all Pakistanis? No wonder the leader of the Pakistani Taliban warns that his fellow believers will somehow mount an attack on Washington D.C.

Pamela Constable reports for The Washington Post:

"Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamist leader from the South Waziristan tribal area in northwest Pakistan, called several international news agencies in Pakistan to assert responsibility for the armed occupation of the police training compound that ended with 11 people dead.

"He also told reporters that he was planning to attack targets in the U.S. capital in retaliation for more than 30 strikes by unmanned U.S. aircraft that have targeted suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries in northwest Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.

""Soon we will launch an attack on Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," Mehsud told the Associated Press. In a separate phone conversation, he told Agence France-Presse that his forces had carried out the police academy attack near the city of Lahore as an act of revenge for the U.S. drone raids. "There will be more such attacks," he said."

As I said, this reaction is perfectly understandable. If you were a poor Pakistani farmer in some small village, and your neighbor's house was incinerated by an American missile fired from an unmanned drone and piloted by some CIA type thousands of miles away, and you saw your neighbor's whole family, men, women, children all dead from the attack, what would your reaction be?

STOP FIRING U.S. DRONE MISSILES INTO PAKISTANI VILLAGES

I have called for the United States to stop shooting missiles from drones at Pakistani villages in the Waziristan. Why? Because the missiles kill civilians - women, children, non-combatants, non-jihadists. Furthermore, the U.S. has no business trying to kill jihadists. If anything, Pakistan should arrest those deemed violating the law and give them a fair trial. This is the civilized and fair method of punishing law breakers, not targeting them with a missile shot from an unmanned drone and fired by some CIA guy thousands of miles away.

Sunday's The New York Times carries an article by Mark Mazzetti in Week in Review on this very topic. The upshot is that for U.S. officials, sending armed unmanned drones into Pakistan is the best of many alternatives. I object to the policy.

Mark Mazzetti writes:

"But in Pakistan, some C.I.A. veterans of the tribal battles worry that instead of separating the citizenry from the militants the drone strikes may be uniting them. These experts say they fear that killing militants from the sky won’t undermine, and may promote, the psychology of anti-American militancy that is metastasizing in the country.

"“Unless we come up with a coherent Pakistan policy, then nothing works,” said Milton Bearden, who as C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad once led the agency’s campaign to arm Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviet Union."

Imagine having missile-carrying drones flying over your house. What would you think of the country that sends them above your head? Would you fear having a missile blow up your home and family, maybe fired in mistake by some CIA operative who has no idea who you are or where your children sleep or where your elderly parents sit?

The U.S. merely shows its contempt for Pakistani villagers, for human life, and above all for the rights of the individual. Stop the killing of innocent civilians in the quest to kill one Al Qaeda type. Firing these missiles merely tells the world that Americans have no respect for the individual, that they are willing to kill 25, 50 or 100 just to kill some Al Qaeda leader.

Writes Mazzetti:

"Over the last six months, C.I.A. operatives wielding joysticks have launched more than three dozen strikes by Predator and more heavily-armed Reaper drones. Missiles fired from them have hit militants gathering in mountain redoubts, and they have hit truck convoys ferrying ammunition across the border into Afghanistan.

"Some agency veterans draw comparisons to the Israeli policy of “targeted killings” of Hamas leaders — killings that claimed scores of the group’s top operatives in the Palestinian territories, but didn’t keep new recruits from attacking Israel.

"Intelligence officials in Washington and Islamabad said it was nearly impossible to measure the impact of the strikes on the so-called “war of ideas.” Even when precise, the drone strikes often kill women and children in militant compounds. When that happens, local Pashtun customs of “badal” obligate their survivors to seek revenge."

Killing Pakistani villagers by missiles fired from drones will only exacerbate the hatred already felt by Pakistanis towards America. Revenge will be paramount. Having seen their children and family members destroyed by some deadly American missile, Pakistanis in Waziristan will consider any and all options to revenge and redress this cruel U.S. attack from the sky.