|
|
May 22, 2013
|
|
|
|
 Predator NationPosted on May 14, 2012
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch This piece originally appeared at TomDispatch. Here’s the essence of it: you can trust America’s crème de la crème, the most elevated, responsible people, no matter what weapons, what powers, you put in their hands. No need to constantly look over their shoulders. Placed in the hands of evildoers, those weapons and powers could create a living nightmare; controlled by the best of people, they lead to measured, thoughtful, precise decisions in which bad things are (with rare and understandable exceptions) done only to truly terrible types. In the process, you simply couldn’t be better protected. And in case you were wondering, there is no question who among us are the best, most lawful, moral, ethical, considerate, and judicious people: the officials of our national security state. Trust them implicitly. They will never give you a bum steer. You may be paying a fortune to maintain their world—the 30,000 people hired to listen in on conversations and other communications in this country, the 230,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security, the 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, the 4.2 million with security clearances of one sort or another, the $2 billion, one-million-square-foot data center that the National Security Agency is constructing in Utah, the gigantic $1.8 billion headquarters the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency recently built for its 16,000 employees in the Washington area—but there’s a good reason. That’s what’s needed to make truly elevated, surgically precise decisions about life and death in the service of protecting American interests on this dangerous globe of ours. Advertisement We’re talking, in particular, about the use by the Obama administration (and the Bush administration before it) of a growing armada of remotely piloted planes, a.k.a. drones, grimly labeled Predators and Reapers, to fight a nameless, almost planet-wide war (formerly known as the Global War on Terror). Its purpose: to destroy al-Qaeda-in-wherever and all its wannabes and look-alikes, the Taliban, and anyone affiliated or associated with any of the above, or just about anyone else we believe might imminently endanger our “interests.” In the service of this war, in the midst of a perpetual state of war and of wartime, every act committed by these leaders is, it turns out, absolutely, totally, and completely legal. We have their say-so for that, and they have the documents to prove it, largely because the best and most elevated legal minds among them have produced that documentation in secret. (Of course, they dare not show it to the rest of us, lest lives be endangered.) By their own account, they have, in fact, been covertly exceptional, moral, and legal for more than a decade (minus, of course, the odd black site and torture chamber)—so covertly exceptional, in fact, that they haven’t quite gotten the credit they deserve. Now, they would like to make the latest version of their exceptional mission to the world known to the rest of us. It is finally in our interest, it seems, to be a good deal better informed about America’s covert wars in a year in which the widely announced “covert” killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan is a major selling point in the president’s reelection campaign. No one should be surprised. There was always an “overt” lurking in the “covert” of what now passes for “covert war.” The CIA’s global drone assassination campaign has long been a bragging point in Washington, even if it couldn’t officially be discussed directly before, say, Congress. The covertness of our drone wars in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere really turns out to have less to do with secrecy—just about every covert drone strike is reported, sooner or later, in the media—than assuring two administrations that they could pursue their drone wars without accountability to anyone. A Classic of Self-Congratulation Recently, top administration officials seem to be fanning out to offer rare peeks into what’s truly on-target and exceptional about America’s drone wars. In many ways, these days, American exceptionalism is about as unexceptional as apple pie. It has, for one thing, become the everyday language of the presidential campaign trail. And that shouldn’t surprise us either. After all, great powers and their leaders tend to think well of themselves. The French had their “mission civilisatrice,” the Chinese had the “mandate of heaven,” and like all imperial powers they inevitably thought they were doing the best for themselves and others, sadly benighted, in this best of all possible worlds.
1
2
3
NEXT PAGE >>>
TAGS:
|
Does Anything Change in Los Angeles With Election of New Mayor?
Email 
Print
Share
Email to a friend
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
Tags|Bazaar|Podcast|About Us|Contact Us|User Agreement|Privacy Policy|FAQ: Comments and Moderation | Google+
© 2013 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
By berniem, May 19, 2012 at 9:59 am Link to this comment
While the nit-wit contingent of this nation is running around forming their Keystone Kops militias, be advised that a surreptitious resistance movement is afoot and grows in strength in contemplation of the eventual slide into fascism this nation is rapidly heading for. The OWS serves as a feint and probe of the system’s contingencies while the resistance develops and refines its means of derailing the insane course charted by the greedy and power hungry. Eventually all will be forced to committing to being part of the solution or the problem! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!!!!!
Report thisBy Night-Gaunt, May 18, 2012 at 6:18 pm Link to this comment
Right now people are not only accepting CCTV’s every where but are forgetting about them. The same with RPVs. Who knows how many UFO sightings were of secret use of them here? The NSA has been spying on everyone for some time. Even before they were officially authorized to do so. Now just wait till we are told, after some “terrorist” disaster, that now we must arm them and use them for policing functions. First for “Muslim Terrorists” then later anyone else. What they do now in killing suspects using Hellfire missiles may eventually be used here after long training in other countries.
Report thisBy RHONDA, May 16, 2012 at 12:42 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The blow back from drone use will be tremendous. Over
Report thisthirty years ago, when people were worried about the
Soviets, I’d say, “Who’s the most dangerous country on
earth?” Yeah, we’re exceptional. Are we ready to fear
the sound of aircraft overhead which might be an armed
police drone? Only a handful of people remember WWII
and terror from the sky. I can only imagine, but I
don’t think it’s something we’d like to live with.
By Night-Gaunt, May 15, 2012 at 8:50 pm Link to this comment
Those drone strikes, he assured his listeners, are based on staggeringly “rigorous standards” involving the individual identification of human targets. Even when visited on American citizens outside declared war zones, they are invariably “within the bounds of the law,” as you would expect of the preeminent “nation of laws.”
The strikes are never motivated by vengeance, always target someone known to us as the worst of the worst, and almost invariably avoid anyone who is even the most mediocre of the mediocre. (Forget the fact that, as Greg Miller of the Washington Post reported, the CIA has recently received permission from the president to launch drone strikes in Yemen based only on the observed “patterns of suspicious behavior” of groups of unidentified individuals, as was already true in the Pakistani tribal borderlands.)
How long will it be before corporations and local police start using them for the same reason here in this country? First to just spy on but later use weapons to kill such suspicious people without a lick of proof they are the person they claim and have any proof that could show in court these people have done anything illegal and are worth the death penalty. It that passes muster in our present court system then they can just use death squads to do it all over our country. Then target and wipe out criminal cartels etc. Where does it end?
Vector56 what is old is new again. So long as the USA endures none of them will be prosecuted unless they go to certain countries. (Henry Kissinger knows full well he is at risk so he travels very little. He knows what happened to Adolf Eichmann in 1962.)
Report thisBy it's only Scott, May 15, 2012 at 12:26 pm Link to this comment
Probably wouldn’t be a good idea to plan an outdoor wedding.
Report thisBy vector56, May 15, 2012 at 4:49 am Link to this comment
A few things about this whole thing (assignation by drone) bug me? I thought after WWII we established that “I was just following orders” does not work any more? During the attack on Iraq America made it very clear to Iraqi lower level commanders on the ground when we were not sure they did not have chemical (tactical) weapons, that even if they were ordered to us such weapons against our invading troops that after we win they would be held personally responsible!
Those who sit in Nevada and play with their joystick while killing human beings half way around the world should not feel that international laws we have agreed to in the past will not come back to bite them in the ass.
Under the Geneva Conventions and other Inter national rules of war the US has agreed to, Obama is a War Criminal for covering up and refusing to prosecute the Bush War Crimes. All in the Military and CIA who carried out these unlawful acts are also War Criminals.
Report thisBy gerard, May 14, 2012 at 3:54 pm Link to this comment
A FEW OF MY NOT-FAVORITE THINGS
Missiles on rootfops and drones in the offing,
This is a matter too serious for scoffing.
London Olympics must be well prepared
To ward off the A’rabs of whom we’re so scared.
Never a moment too soon to be armed,
Just to be sure that nobody is harmed
By stray IEDs from the Mujahadeen
Hiding in subways right next to the Queen.
Property-management will not be pleased,
But throughout the contests the rules won’t be eased
Gated communities must be protected
But slums and bordelos need not be affectd.
Such is the temper of permanent war
And these are a few of the things I abhor!
Report this(*written after reading that missiles were to be put
on London rooftops in preparation for the Olympics)
By diamond, May 14, 2012 at 1:59 pm Link to this comment
Is anyone really surprised that having used these killing machines to assassinate those they designate their ‘enemies’ in foreign lands, they are now determined to use them to spy on and assassinate those they deem their ‘enemies’ in their own lands. A drone can fly over a demonstration and identify anyone at that demonstration. They then go on a list. They can be surveilled, their house can be entered when they are not there and evidence can be planted. Then the police can come back with a warrant and arrest them and then they can be placed on a ‘no fly’ list etc. All kinds of other harassments and invasions of their privacy and their liberty can take place: I always wondered how destroying democracy was going to protect us from ‘terrorists’. Now it’s very clear who the terrorists are and 99.9% of them are not Muslims and also not the least bit interested in democracy, or protecting it.
Report thisBy PatrickHenry, May 14, 2012 at 1:01 pm Link to this comment
Somewhere in Maryland on the shores of the Chesapeake bay a drone is zero’d in on a suspected al qaeda bar-b-que…..we think.
Report this