Carne Asada Reporting

Regarding my post on Al Jazeera last week, my friend Ian E-bright e-wrote:

I still can't support AJ showing beheadings. I think it helps to achieve terrorist goals which is paranoia and crippling fear. It plays right into their game.

And then I says:

Me neither.

But I have to think, if I had a choice between showing ALL the effects of war, or cheerleading war, I'd have to choose the former.

And those terrorists weren't in Iraq until our warring brought them in...

However, lost lives should never be celebrated and I don't want to make it seem like I'm exploiting those lost lives for a political/ideological point...

As if to prove my point a new report asserts that over two thousand people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Drone Wars in Pakistan over the last four years by the CIA.

The report notes that the attacks target Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas where “people usually carry guns and ammunition as a tradition. US drones will identify anyone carrying a gun as a militant and subsequently he will be killed.” Pakistan’s government, which has only a nominal presence in the region, traditionally brands anyone killed by the US a “suspect.”

And while 2,043 is a lot of people to kill in the past five years, over 75% of them were actually killed in the past two years since President Obama took office. 2009 saw over 700 people killed in the CIA drone strikes, and the report shows 929 more killed in 2010.

Some people are thinking to fight back, though they most likely would never, ever win. The title here says it all:

Pakistani Boy Files Lawsuit Against US Officials After Losing Legs in Missile Attack

photo © 2009 [BarZaN] Qtr [Boston] | more info (via: Wylio)
The article goes on to mention that the attacks are kept secret by the US government. Which isn't necessarily true. It's not that we aren't allowed to know about the bombings. It's that our media is selective about what to tell us about our own acts of aggression. Which means, they only share The Good Stuff. And they censor out the rest. Not because they're forced to. After all, we have freedom of the press here, right?

But then why?

And of all the things to get upset with Obama about (him being a secret Muslim, or terrorist-sympathizer, or a Marxist or whatever other lie dream they can lie up), hardly anyone is upset that the Obama-led US is terribly great at conquest, at murder, at assassinations, renditions, nation-building...

Horrible, right? Or not such a big deal... Again, imagine it was done on your doorstep, to your countrymen...

Of course, there have always been massive casualties of war (for example, the nukes that fell on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki) even by many of our nicest presidents. But we never really get around to calling them what they are - unprovoked murder.