Post by The Thought Police (admin) on Dec 3, 2014 8:37:18 GMT -5
Covert Drone Strikes Should be Declared Illegal
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others,”- Nelson Mandela
This quote from Nelson Mandela, a man who had his freedom taken from him by those he opposed in the form of walls and prison bars, is still of vital relevance today in the 21st century. The stripping of people’s freedom still happens as much now as it did then, but the modus operandi has changed, and in the place of prisons and camps we have perpetual surveillance and executions, in the form of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, has increased exponentially in the past decade, with the United States alone operating just under 7,500 of these weapons. The use of drones in warfare is nothing new, with the very first Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, a flying torpedo named the Kettering Bug, making its first flight in 1918. The original function of drones, was for intelligence gathering, taking pictures of the enemy's trenches, artillery positions etc. and due to the success of drones performing this role, many countries such as the UK, the US and Israel have developed and constructed large drone fleets over the course of the late 20th century. But alongside having powerful spying capabilities, these new drones carry weapons with which to kill. With more and more nations arming themselves with unmanned drones every year, and with an ever increasing number of lawless attacks and killings, drones are an extremely relevant and controversial subject that is threatening the very freedom of those unable to resist their oppressive force.
The typical argument(s) that generals use to promote the use of drones is that they are low-cost, low maintenance aircraft, capable of extremely long sorties over hostile territory-without risk of life. These arguments are true: drones do cost less to develop and construct than conventional manned aircraft, with the average cost of a Reaper drone being nearly 180million dollars less than that of an F22 Raptor, a modern manned fighter. This is because designers are able to forgo costly cockpits and life support systems, while the pilot, who flies the aircraft remotely from a friendly airbase, is never put at any risk. This avoids the potent public fallout which follows in the wake of service personnel deaths. The drones are operated by rotating teams around the clock, allowing near uninterrupted surveillance of target areas, which has contributed to the capture of numerous terrorists and their leaders. Being able to track the movements of individual people, undetected from altitudes of up to 65,000ft, in the case of the Global Hawk UAV, is an asset that armed forces around the world simply cannot ignore, and then being able to kill that individual with a precision guided missile at the push of a button is a revolutionary step forward in combat.
That is, if the target that you strike is the correct one. Every year more and more innocent civilians, including women and children, are being killed by drone strikes, with over 160 children reported by the Bureau Investigates, a not for profit investigative journalism forum, as dead as a result of seven years of the CIA’s drone strikes in Afghanistan. Even with the ability to monitor a target for hours, or days before a strike, drone handlers are still killing the innocent, and in some cases hitting the wrong target altogether. A study by Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that for every terrorist killed by a strike, anything up to fifty civilians are killed. Is this style of harming the innocent to attack the few really the hallmark of a ‘civilised’ country?
And just where are these strikes taking place? Well, many of the attacks carried out by the United States are in the theatres of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the government has been openly engaged in an armed conflict. But drones also operate in Somali, Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and even the Philippines, Libya being the only country of these five which the US government was actually engaged in conflict with. This remote assertion of power and influence by violence harks back to the days of European colonialism, the laws and rights of these target nations being completely disregarded. And it is this blatant ignorance which is fuelling insurgency and driving the radicalisation of every-day people worldwide. Leaders of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda or Al-Shabaab can try in vain to drum up support for their religious wars for years, but if just one drone strike kills a local farmer's son or a lawyer's wife, that can radicalise an entire village to support the anti-West cause. Less than 2% of all strike victims are high value targets, the rest are civilians, children, and alleged combatants. One of the most destructive and murderous strikes of the last decade was a drone attack on an assumed “Taliban training camp,” in Pakistan, on October 30th 2006. With the push of a button, the “training camp”-later revealed to be a school-was struck with a high explosive warhead, killing 69 children, one of which was only seven years old. The people of Pakistan were outraged, with shops and offices closing across the region as protests spread. Despite this, the US embassy in Islamabad did not even comment on the case, reflecting the general mood of disinterest by US leaders. Many supporters of the use of drones argue that, had more conventional methods of attacking been used-such as a Tomahawk cruise missile or a fast-jet strike-- the death toll could have been far higher. This does not justify the use of drone's in any way however, because it is more than likely that surveillance from drones is what enabled the attack in the first place, and an increase in events such as this is destabilising many countries in the Middle East and the Somalian peninsula.
Like the bombing of the school in Pakistan, if ever a Pakistani or Iraqi pilot sitting in an F16 was to drop a bomb on an American, British or French school, the public outcry in the West would be ferocious, with those responsible held to account for their actions. So why is it then that in Pakistan, when nearly 70 children were killed, was there no-one held to account?
It is widely believed that this immunity is due to the faceless, and unaccountable way by which the drones are used. The infamously secretive Central Intelligence Agency carries out the bulk of American strikes, with most operations classified as “covert,” meaning the government has the right to deny they ever took place, making it impossible to trial anyone for a killing which 'never happened.' It is unimaginable what pain this must cause for the families of victims, to be told that their dead family member was never killed at all. And a trial is what would be required for a case like this, as according to Amnesty International, a leading human rights group, drone strikes by the US "may constitute war crimes or extrajudicial executions," source- The Guardian. This means that in their quest to achieve world peace and order, the United States is in fact breaking international law and effectively murdering foreign nationals, creating great strain between America and the nations whose territory it is launching strikes in. The same country which fought fascist extremism in Europe in the Second World War and brought countless war criminals to justice in the docks of The Hague, is now breeding a new generation of military leader who is just as evil and corrupted as the generals of Nazi Germany with an equal disregard to the value of human life. For the perpetrators of these killings to be truly accountable, the western militaries must open rank, and flush out the criminals from within their midst, lest they become a face-saving force of self-opportunism.
And the criminals don’t just belong in the military, but in the upper echelons of Government too. Under the Obama administration, the use of drones has increased by more than six times compared to usage under President Bush-who was seen by many as a warmongering power lover with empirical ambitions-with the unmanned drone swiftly becoming Obama's weapon of choice when dealing with unwanted opposition. Brushing aside the laws and regulations that exist to keep civilians safe around the world-regardless of their background, religion or creed- drones are swiftly becoming the scourge of the third world and the Middle East. But it is only a matter of time before western governments turn their sights on dissenters within their own ranks, the inkling of this idea already shown to be in action with the deliberate killing of US citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki by an American drone in 2011, followed by similar killings of three more US nationals. It seems the days of a fair trial are behind us if this fashion of 'justice' continues, with a small facet of government acting as judge, jury and executioner, suppressing and controlling their own people in a way even more illegal and unjust than the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. Only with the creation and implementation of laws governing the responsible use of drones can we avoid a dystopian future in which the state can spy with impunity on each and every one of us, and terminate us with the pretence of acting at all 'suspiciously'. Outspoken critics of government could be discreetly taken out by drone strike, the constant threat of attack from above throttling free speech and enhancing government control, and as drones become cheaper and cheaper the crosshairs grow wider and wider. By their very nature, drones are a tool for spying and surveying, and with their misuse could come grave consequences for all of us. In the early days of Nazism the people believed that their government was acting in their best interests, just as British and American citizens do today. But the evidence is mounting up against this belief, and as Karl Marx once said; “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” If the citizens of the past could see the rise of the drone as we do, would they stop it before their governments repeat the past, or take the same disconcerted attitude as us?
tribune.com.pk/story/229844/the-day-69-children-died/
drones.pitchinteractive.com/
www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/07/02/resources-and-graphs/
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/amnesty-us-officials-war-crimes-drones
www.cbsnews.com/news/who-were-the-4-us-citizens-killed-in-drone-strikes/
Read more: falkirklanguages.proboards.com/thread/226/persuasive-essay-re-draft#ixzz3KqFOcpYw
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others,”- Nelson Mandela
This quote from Nelson Mandela, a man who had his freedom taken from him by those he opposed in the form of walls and prison bars, is still of vital relevance today in the 21st century. The stripping of people’s freedom still happens as much now as it did then, but the modus operandi has changed, and in the place of prisons and camps we have perpetual surveillance and executions, in the form of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, has increased exponentially in the past decade, with the United States alone operating just under 7,500 of these weapons. The use of drones in warfare is nothing new, with the very first Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, a flying torpedo named the Kettering Bug, making its first flight in 1918. The original function of drones, was for intelligence gathering, taking pictures of the enemy's trenches, artillery positions etc. and due to the success of drones performing this role, many countries such as the UK, the US and Israel have developed and constructed large drone fleets over the course of the late 20th century. But alongside having powerful spying capabilities, these new drones carry weapons with which to kill. With more and more nations arming themselves with unmanned drones every year, and with an ever increasing number of lawless attacks and killings, drones are an extremely relevant and controversial subject that is threatening the very freedom of those unable to resist their oppressive force.
The typical argument(s) that generals use to promote the use of drones is that they are low-cost, low maintenance aircraft, capable of extremely long sorties over hostile territory-without risk of life. These arguments are true: drones do cost less to develop and construct than conventional manned aircraft, with the average cost of a Reaper drone being nearly 180million dollars less than that of an F22 Raptor, a modern manned fighter. This is because designers are able to forgo costly cockpits and life support systems, while the pilot, who flies the aircraft remotely from a friendly airbase, is never put at any risk. This avoids the potent public fallout which follows in the wake of service personnel deaths. The drones are operated by rotating teams around the clock, allowing near uninterrupted surveillance of target areas, which has contributed to the capture of numerous terrorists and their leaders. Being able to track the movements of individual people, undetected from altitudes of up to 65,000ft, in the case of the Global Hawk UAV, is an asset that armed forces around the world simply cannot ignore, and then being able to kill that individual with a precision guided missile at the push of a button is a revolutionary step forward in combat.
That is, if the target that you strike is the correct one. Every year more and more innocent civilians, including women and children, are being killed by drone strikes, with over 160 children reported by the Bureau Investigates, a not for profit investigative journalism forum, as dead as a result of seven years of the CIA’s drone strikes in Afghanistan. Even with the ability to monitor a target for hours, or days before a strike, drone handlers are still killing the innocent, and in some cases hitting the wrong target altogether. A study by Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that for every terrorist killed by a strike, anything up to fifty civilians are killed. Is this style of harming the innocent to attack the few really the hallmark of a ‘civilised’ country?
And just where are these strikes taking place? Well, many of the attacks carried out by the United States are in the theatres of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the government has been openly engaged in an armed conflict. But drones also operate in Somali, Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and even the Philippines, Libya being the only country of these five which the US government was actually engaged in conflict with. This remote assertion of power and influence by violence harks back to the days of European colonialism, the laws and rights of these target nations being completely disregarded. And it is this blatant ignorance which is fuelling insurgency and driving the radicalisation of every-day people worldwide. Leaders of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda or Al-Shabaab can try in vain to drum up support for their religious wars for years, but if just one drone strike kills a local farmer's son or a lawyer's wife, that can radicalise an entire village to support the anti-West cause. Less than 2% of all strike victims are high value targets, the rest are civilians, children, and alleged combatants. One of the most destructive and murderous strikes of the last decade was a drone attack on an assumed “Taliban training camp,” in Pakistan, on October 30th 2006. With the push of a button, the “training camp”-later revealed to be a school-was struck with a high explosive warhead, killing 69 children, one of which was only seven years old. The people of Pakistan were outraged, with shops and offices closing across the region as protests spread. Despite this, the US embassy in Islamabad did not even comment on the case, reflecting the general mood of disinterest by US leaders. Many supporters of the use of drones argue that, had more conventional methods of attacking been used-such as a Tomahawk cruise missile or a fast-jet strike-- the death toll could have been far higher. This does not justify the use of drone's in any way however, because it is more than likely that surveillance from drones is what enabled the attack in the first place, and an increase in events such as this is destabilising many countries in the Middle East and the Somalian peninsula.
Like the bombing of the school in Pakistan, if ever a Pakistani or Iraqi pilot sitting in an F16 was to drop a bomb on an American, British or French school, the public outcry in the West would be ferocious, with those responsible held to account for their actions. So why is it then that in Pakistan, when nearly 70 children were killed, was there no-one held to account?
It is widely believed that this immunity is due to the faceless, and unaccountable way by which the drones are used. The infamously secretive Central Intelligence Agency carries out the bulk of American strikes, with most operations classified as “covert,” meaning the government has the right to deny they ever took place, making it impossible to trial anyone for a killing which 'never happened.' It is unimaginable what pain this must cause for the families of victims, to be told that their dead family member was never killed at all. And a trial is what would be required for a case like this, as according to Amnesty International, a leading human rights group, drone strikes by the US "may constitute war crimes or extrajudicial executions," source- The Guardian. This means that in their quest to achieve world peace and order, the United States is in fact breaking international law and effectively murdering foreign nationals, creating great strain between America and the nations whose territory it is launching strikes in. The same country which fought fascist extremism in Europe in the Second World War and brought countless war criminals to justice in the docks of The Hague, is now breeding a new generation of military leader who is just as evil and corrupted as the generals of Nazi Germany with an equal disregard to the value of human life. For the perpetrators of these killings to be truly accountable, the western militaries must open rank, and flush out the criminals from within their midst, lest they become a face-saving force of self-opportunism.
And the criminals don’t just belong in the military, but in the upper echelons of Government too. Under the Obama administration, the use of drones has increased by more than six times compared to usage under President Bush-who was seen by many as a warmongering power lover with empirical ambitions-with the unmanned drone swiftly becoming Obama's weapon of choice when dealing with unwanted opposition. Brushing aside the laws and regulations that exist to keep civilians safe around the world-regardless of their background, religion or creed- drones are swiftly becoming the scourge of the third world and the Middle East. But it is only a matter of time before western governments turn their sights on dissenters within their own ranks, the inkling of this idea already shown to be in action with the deliberate killing of US citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki by an American drone in 2011, followed by similar killings of three more US nationals. It seems the days of a fair trial are behind us if this fashion of 'justice' continues, with a small facet of government acting as judge, jury and executioner, suppressing and controlling their own people in a way even more illegal and unjust than the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. Only with the creation and implementation of laws governing the responsible use of drones can we avoid a dystopian future in which the state can spy with impunity on each and every one of us, and terminate us with the pretence of acting at all 'suspiciously'. Outspoken critics of government could be discreetly taken out by drone strike, the constant threat of attack from above throttling free speech and enhancing government control, and as drones become cheaper and cheaper the crosshairs grow wider and wider. By their very nature, drones are a tool for spying and surveying, and with their misuse could come grave consequences for all of us. In the early days of Nazism the people believed that their government was acting in their best interests, just as British and American citizens do today. But the evidence is mounting up against this belief, and as Karl Marx once said; “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” If the citizens of the past could see the rise of the drone as we do, would they stop it before their governments repeat the past, or take the same disconcerted attitude as us?
tribune.com.pk/story/229844/the-day-69-children-died/
drones.pitchinteractive.com/
www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/07/02/resources-and-graphs/
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/amnesty-us-officials-war-crimes-drones
www.cbsnews.com/news/who-were-the-4-us-citizens-killed-in-drone-strikes/
Read more: falkirklanguages.proboards.com/thread/226/persuasive-essay-re-draft#ixzz3KqFOcpYw