Oh, This Is Lovely

This country likes to think of itself as a “world leader,” and indeed we are in many ways. We win the most medals at the Olympics, we have the most supercomputers, we win more Nobels, we have more colleges and universities, we use the most oil and gas…

Well now, according to a United Nations report, we are also the world’s leading “user of targeted killings,” mostly by use of remotely piloted drones.

The author of the report, according to the article in CNN News, goes on to say that some 40 nations are developing the same pilotless drone technology which we have, and that we are establishing dangerous new rules of war with the way we use ours.

"The United States seems oblivious to this fact [the manner in which it is changing the rules of war] when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals around the globe," he said. This "ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions."

We seem even to be quite proud of the increase in our use of “targeted killings.” Roger Cressey was on Hardball Tuesday to explain just how wonderful this program is, and to brag about just how many Obama has killed during his presidency and, moreover, how he has spread the effort
to far more countries.

"He‘s doing extremely well. He‘s launched military strikes not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia. … So if you look at the Predator program alone, Chris, under the Obama administration, we‘ve killed at least two dozen senior al Qaeda and Taliban officials. Under the Bush administration, it was probably that same level, maybe a little bit less. And what we talking about here, less than two years of a presidency."

He did admit to some “Cost-benefit—there‘s always collateral damage.”

As to our invasion of the airspace of other sovereign nations, well he didn’t mention Yemen or Somalia, but one must consider that we are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and Cressey says that the government of Pakistan not only approves, but actually likes having us do it. The people of that country, perhaps, not so much.

“It‘s very difficult to sell elements of the Pakistani population on why this is necessary. That‘s why the Pakistani government will, every now and then, admonish us or criticize us. But they‘re not pulling the plug on the program. That tells you why they like it.”

The man was practically having an orgasm as he described the program.

So forget Bush and his flight deck swagger; Obama has more notches in his gun in sixteen months than Bush racked up in eight years. And he didn’t even need to don a flight suit to do it.