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.

KILLING PAKISTANIS BY U.S. DRONE MISSILES AS REPREHENSIBLE AS AMERICAN TORTURE OF AL QAEDA SUSPECTS

There is a report today about still another U.S. missile strike into some Pakistani village in South Waziristan. This is terror inflicted from the sky. Besides it is rough justice. No court, no judge, no jury has declared that these people must die at American hands. Barack Obama should call an immediate halt to these executions.

I have been writing about U.S. missile attacks fired from unmanned drones prowling overn backward agrarian villages in western Pakistan. How many lives have been lost, men, women, children, all at the whim of some CIA agent sitting somewhere in some secret CIA office in Phoenix and pushing the fire button on his computer console controlling the lethal drone?

Today, in The New York Times Week in Review, Scott Shane asks what is the difference between the morality of these drone attacks and the torture authorized by Bush and Cheney on Al Qaeda suspects.

Writes Shane:

"WHEN the Central Intelligence Agency obliterates a dozen suspected terrorists, along with assorted family members, with a missile from a drone, the news rarely stirs a strong reaction far beyond Pakistan.

"Yet the waterboarding of three operatives from Al Qaeda — one of them the admitted murderer of 3,000 people as organizer of the 9/11 attacks — has stirred years of recriminations, calls for prosecution and national soul-searching.

"What is it about the terrible intimacy of torture that so disturbs and captivates the public? Why has torture long been singled out for special condemnation in the law of war, when war brings death and suffering on a scale that dwarfs the torture chamber?"

Shane does not seem to anwwer to his own question, satisfied to just present it. But
the answer is clear for me: both are equally immoral and reprehensible.

IS MUMBAI ATTACK A RESULT OF BUSH/CHENEY POLICY OF FIRING MISSILES AT VILLAGES IN WAZIRISTAN?

The tragedy is still not over in Mumbai. It appears that some of the shooters are young Muslim Pakistanis. Why they committed these atrocities is not clear, but a few observations are in order.

If the group is all from Pakistan, the suspicion arises that they are taking revenge for the injustices they perceive committed against certain Muslims in Pakistan. I suspect that the Bush/Cheney policy of shooting missiles into Muslim villages in Waziristan and other Pakistani tribal areas is implicated.

Bush/Cheney & Co. think it is permissible to drop bombs and fire missiles if they can kill a few "terrorists." But to the uneducated villagers, the Americans are slaughtering innocent women, children and farmers. Imagine what your feelings would be towards the Americans if your children were incinerated in one of the many missile attacks over the last few months.

The Bush/Cheney policy of dropping bombs and missiles does more harm than good. It may kill a few on the wanted list, but it also kills innocent bystanders and ordinary Pakistani peasants. Survivors surely will hate anything to do with America and western civilization that treats their lives of no value. They will look to revenge the killings.

Could this dreadful attack in Mumbai be the first of many acts of revenge?

STOP U.S. ATTACKS ON SYRIA AND PAKISTAN

Stop American raids into Syria and Pakistan. They do much more harm than any benefit of catching some mid-level Al Qaeda sympathizer. They kill innocent women, children and villagers. The arouse intense anti-American sentiment that will last for decades. They spur bystanders to join the insurgency with the goal of killing American soldiers and officials.

NO MORE U.S. MISSILES INTO PAKISTANI VILLAGES

The BBC reports that a U.S. unmanned drone fired missiles into a house in South Waziristan, killing 20 people.

As I wrote several times before, this illegal U.S. incursion into Pakistan must stop.

First, it is a severe violation of human rights. Each of those 20 people deserved to live and to live in peace and without fear of being blown to bits by an American bomb.

Second. Whoever in the White House thinks that the U.S. has a right to attack an agrarian village in Pakistan has no knowledge or concept of international law. Such an attack violates Pakistan sovereignty and is an insult to all Pakistanis.

Third. A military strike like this one killing ordinary Pakistani peasants does severe damage to the fight against militant Islamism and forever destroys any Pakistani goodwill towards the U.S., at least in the surrounding Pakistan areas. Military action cannot accomplish peace or uproot "terrorism." All it can do is exacerbate ill will between Pakistani Islamists and Americans.

So again I say, ground all U.S. war planes, whether manned or unmanned. Cease firing missiles into Pakistan. Stop the killing of civilians.