Drone warfare - International Human Rights

Populations have become accustomed to the crimes committed on their behalf by their criminal leaders. YES, the responsibility lies with YOU! Brave new world remote control war technologies are responsible for hundreds of innocent deaths yet the US military continues to deploy clearly INAPPROPRIATE weaponry in inappropriate situations.

The latest in a series of ‘drone’ or UAV attacks has resulted in almost one hundred dead civilians, including dozens of women and children. Children that have ALL been prematurely ROBBED of the greatest gift Creation bestows – LIFE! And yet WE ALLOW the killing of innocents to continue! I view with concentrated focus the old men responsible for ordering these attacks, Bush, Cheney, (Rumsfeld) Gates and numerous others in the military – who should know better!

I have been trained to kill with precision and skill in the service of my country. Targets are identified, acquired and dispatched – directly! There is no room for error; soldiers are chosen for specific skills and trained accordingly. Today we have ‘refugees’ from video game arcades killing hundreds of innocent people via video screens and ‘joysticks!’

The ‘success’ of these methods we see reported regularly! Yet the mindless incompetents running the USA have increased these attacks. The world is forced to look to China and Russia for assistance; both nations are only too happy to oblige!

The current Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, openly announced the death of ideology in Australian political life. No longer are we guided by certain beliefs and values – it seems everything, including the most sacred gift of all, has been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. I suppose in such a world the lives of innocent men, women and children amount to nothing.

However, there is a cost to everything and the cost of this new ‘brave’ world is our politicians' lives are worth even less than the innocents they kill. It should therefore be no surprise to anyone when they are targeted and dispatched with skill and clarity.

Pakistan déjà vu Cambodia
by William Pfaff via rialator - williampfaff.com Saturday, Sep 13 2008, 10:35pm

Paris, September 11, 2008 – The United States has just invaded Cambodia. The name of Cambodia this time is Pakistan, but otherwise it’s the same story as in Indochina in 1970.

An American army, deeply frustrated by its inability to defeat an anti-American insurgent movement despite years of struggle, decides that the key to victory lies in a neighboring country. In 1970 the problem was the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. Today it is Taliban and al Qaeda bases inside Pakistan, which the United States has been attacking from the air for some time, with controversial “collatoral damages.”

George W. Bush has now authorized independent ground assaults on Taliban and al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s Tribal Territories, without consultation with Pakistan authorities. These already have begun.

This follows a period of tension, with some armed clashes, between American and Pakistani military units, the latter defending “Pakistan’s national sovereignty.” Pakistan public opinion seems largely against “America’s war” being fought inside Pakistan.

Washington’s decision was made known just in time for the 7th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that opened the first phase of the “war on terror,” after which “nothing could ever be the same.” We no doubt have now begun phase two.

The eventual outcome of the American intervention in Cambodia in 1970 was Communist overthrow of the American-sponsored military government in that country, followed by genocide. The future consequences in (nuclear-armed) Pakistan await.

There is every reason to think they may include civil protest and disorder in the country, political crisis, a major rise in the strength of Pakistan’s own Islamic fundamentalist movement, and conceivably, a small war between the United States and the Pakistan Army, which is the central institution in the country, has a mind of its own, and is not a negligible military force.

In Afghanistan, American and NATO forces have been complaining for many months that victory over the Taliban was impossible so long as there were secure Taliban bases in Pakistan’s largely unaccessible Tribal Territories.

Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf was told by his American allies to clean the Taliban out of the Territories or the U.S. Army and NATO would do it for him. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama made the same threat. John McCain concurred. Musharraf had been looking for a negotiated arrangement with the tribesmen.

Pakistan’s military intelligence services created the Taliban while they were collaborating with the CIA to form the moudjahidine that drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Many in the service still support the Taliban as a useful instrument against India, and to keep Afghanistan out of the hands of more dangerous enemies.

Musharraf was forced out of office. The U.S. brought in exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, expected to be cooperative. She was assassinated, presumably by Islamic extremists. Her widower has been elected to take her place, and declares himself an enemy of terrorism. However the United States has already taken the matter into its own hands.

In the Vietnamese case, the American military command held that it could win the war by invading Cambodia to destroy the Communist headquarters, the COSVN, imagined by the Americans to be an underground Pentagon, and to cut the so-called Ho Chi Minh trail, along which supplies and arms for the Viet Cong Communist insurrection were being transported. The argument made was that finding the headquarters and cutting the route would destroy the insurrection.

Initially, the unhappy Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, desperately trying to keep his country out of the Vietnam war, was persuaded to turn a blind eye to U.S. bombing of Cambodia. A military coup followed in 1970, installing an American puppet general. B-52 saturation bombing ensued, without the desired military effect, but killing many Cambodians.

The joint U.S. and South Vietnamese “incursion” came in April 1970; it simply pushed the supply operations deeper into Cambodia, and COSVN proved to be a group of huts, long abandoned. Richard Nixon said he acted to prove that the United States was not “a second-rate power.” “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation acts like a pitiful helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

The native Cambodian Khmer Rouge subsequently defeated the American-backed military regime in Phnom Penh. Genocide followed, the “killing fields,” on which the United States turned its back, condemning the triumphant Vietnamese Communist government when it later invaded Cambodia to stop the killing.

© 2008 by Tribune Media Services International

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