We hold these Truths to be self-evident...
Pakistan’s government reported US drones killed only civilians in 39 of 44 attacks on their country in 2009; with over 700 innocent civilians killed, according to Pakistan's most widely-read English newspaper. Pakistan has repeatedly publicly denounced the US attacks, making the US guilty of War Crimes as they do not have explicit permission from Pakistan’s government.
Senator and 2008 Republican Presidential choice John McCain called the unlawful program effective and that it should continue. In Orwellian conclusion, Mr. McCain said, "We are always with Pakistan and the people of Pakistan, and our relationship does not have time limitation.” Mr. Obama must be in agreement for this prima facie unlawful program, as more drone attacks have occurred in the first year of his presidency than all years of his predecessor.
The US refuses to discuss the program, calling its CIA-managed program “covert.” New York University law professor Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions since 2004, reports his requests for US legal justification for apparent extrajudicial executions are always denied. The US claims its secret program is legal, despite the obvious violation from Pakistan’s public refusal of permission.
The last report on civilian deaths from the US was in July 2009 from the Brookings Institute concluding at least ten civilian deaths for every alleged terrorist killed, and a total consistent with the anonymous Pakistan government report of total 2009 drone deaths. The number of US-caused drone executions is corroborated by leading Pakistani journalist Amir Mir and in the NY Times by counterinsurgency experts David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum.
Some analysis of Pakistan’s refusal of US armed attacks on their soil: if Pakistan is covertly in agreement with the US, they must publicly disagree or else be in likely admission of murder under Pakistan law. If so, the US would also be guilty of mass murders under Pakistan law. With Pakistan’s public refusal, the US is guilty of War Crimes.
Analysis: The drone war is:
- unlawful on its face,
- covert and from the same secretive people who torture and lied to initiate illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
- kills targets who are lawfully engaging US troops in self-defense from an unauthorized and unlawful armed attack and invasion from the US on Afghanistan,
- kills civilians at an evil ratio even if the CIA secret evidence against alleged “terrorists” is justified,
- probably greatly increases the number of people who will commit acts of terror against US targets.
Also, this unlawful program fits with academic definition of “terrorism.” Terrorist attacks are unlawful, indiscriminately kill civilians, create fear and are ideologically driven for a political goal.
The US ideological goal is hegemonic control of the Middle East, demonstrated by
· US unlawful rejection of UN Security Council Resolutions for international cooperation in Afghanistan, and instead choosing unauthorized armed attack and invasion,
· US lies of evidence (known as they were told) for unauthorized and unlawful armed attack and invasion of Iraq,
· US lies of omission and commission to threaten war with Iran, including official policy of first-strike use of nuclear weapons for contrived possible future threats from Iran
· US unlawful attacks in Pakistan as perhaps an entry-point for further destabilization.
Policy response: Gandhi and Martin Luther King advocated public understanding of the facts and non-cooperation with evil. I’m among hundreds who advocate:
- Understand the laws of war. These were legislated after WW2 and are crystal-clear that only self-defense, in a narrow legal meaning, can justify war. This investment of your time takes less than an hour and empowers you to legally stand for ending these Wars of Aggression.
- Communicate. Trust your unique, beautiful, and powerful self-expression to share powerful information as you feel appropriate. Understand that while many people are ready to embrace difficult facts, many are not. Anticipate your virtuous response to being attacked and give it in the spirit of competition, just as you do in other fields.
- Refuse and end all orders and acts associated with these unlawful wars and constant violation of treaties. Those involved with US military, government, and law enforcement have an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution. Unlawful acts only move forward with sufficient cooperation and public tolerance. Stop cooperating with the most vicious crime a nation can commit: war.
- Support global security through cooperation, dignity, justice, and freedom. End poverty through global cooperation to achieve the UN Millennium Goals by developed countries investing 0.7% of their income. End extremism by providing all humanity with an opportunity to live a life of peaceful creativity. Create a US Department of Peace to help.
- Prosecute the war leaders for obvious violation of the letter and spirit of US war laws. You can only understand how these wars are specifically unlawful by investing the time to do so. Because the crimes are so broad and deep, I recommend Truth and Reconciliation (T&R) to exchange full truth and return of stolen US assets for non-prosecution. This is the most expeditious way to understand and end all unlawful and harmful acts. Those who reject T&R either by volunteering their name and/or responding when named are subject to prosecution after the window of T&R closes.
Please share this article with all who can benefit. If you appreciate my work, please subscribe by clicking under the article title (it’s free). Please use my archive of work to help build a brighter future.
I include the PuppetGov 6-minute video, "We are the ones we've been waiting for."
Comments policy: I welcome questions and comments that are civil and pertain to the article topic. Impolite and impertinent comments will be deleted.
Please also consider that I’m among hundreds of writers who have documented our own government’s disclosure of propaganda programs to support their wars. I suspect my articles are under such propagandistic attack from comments that use typical rhetorical fallacies to distract readers from the facts. I invite readers to sharpen their ability to discern such propaganda. They are characterized by a combination of: never addressing the facts, diverting attention through unsubstantiated belief in an alleged expert, irrelevant data, straw-man attack that distorts the facts, ad hominem attack of insults to the messenger, and lies of omission and commission.
I will use such comments to point-out the propaganda or delete them at my discretion. Again, all relevant and polite questions and factually accurate comments are welcome. As a professional educator I’m in agreement with my experience and research: we learn best from multiple perspectives in mutual commitment to understand the facts, see those facts from diverse points-of-view, and consider various policy proposals of what we should do.
We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For from PuppetGov on Vimeo.
Comments
Which part of the Pakistani government says this? The Dawn News piece doesn't identify the agency, quote a spokesman, nothing. It doesn't even have a byline.
It's entirely possible the statistics are correct - but based on the Dawn article, it's equally possible they were made up from whole cloth.
???:
Dawn is Pakistan’s first newspaper and their “paper of record;” the number of civilian deaths is consistent with the Brookings Institute report. That said, you’re correct that I should have stated the alleged government source is anonymous, much like US government reports of classified/covert programs and intentional and unintentional leaks. I did find and add further corroboration from two other respected sources: leading Pakistani journalist Amir Mir and in the NY Times by counterinsurgency experts David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum.
Thank you for the comment and opportunity to improve the article :)
Terrorists illegal combatants, and do not wear uniforms, so they are civilians. They hide among noncombatants, their hiding among noncombatants is a war crime. When a terrorists hides, he does not, by law, gain protection, rather he takes protection from the non-combatants. The law is written that way so that the terrorists have no incentive to violate the law.
". . . making the US guilty of War Crimes as they do not have explicit permission from Pakistan’s government. " - Permission to kill innocent civilians? LOL, priceless!
". . . kills civilians at an evil ratio . . . " - I hesitate to even ask . . . Another good one!
Offer Truth and Reconciliation.
"The freedom for criminals to repent and live the short amount of time they have remaining in their physical bodies in peace is an attractive deal for them and us."
LOL, awesome!
"US war laws explained"
War has evolved, it is typically no longer state vs. state. "War laws" have not kept up, and the old ones are no longer valid. "Non-combatants" no longer has any valid meaning outside of propaganda. Don't believe me? Just ask any jihadi (not in front of a camera).
"death toll from governmental violence of over 230 million human beings."
You correctly point out how dangerous governments are, and then promote even bigger government via the UN?
Don Meaker:
“Terrorist” and “unlawful combatant” as labels from the US as an invading nation with no legal authorization under the UN Security Council or UN Charter Article 51 under the legal meanings of “armed attack” and “self-defense.” The people fighting the US are fighting in legal self-defense against invading Americans, Don. If China unlawfully invaded the US and called our self-defense acts as terrorism and unlawful, we’d see that as paper-thin propaganda.
Therefore, you are writing in complete violation of law. Being American is a legal distinction UNDER US LAW.
You are writing for fascism and US empire.
Thank you for helping readers see the difference between how their country is designed and the murder you argue for.
Viking:
Historical accuracy is a huge problem, I agree. Without diverting attention, the false-flag attack by Germany onto Poland is uncontested among professional historians as far as I know. My point is for Americans to consider that PNAC had plans to conquer the Middle East, but wrote they needed a “new Pearl Harbor” to do so. The plans for invasion were already prepared before 9/11.
False-flag attacks are historical fact. Readers should consider that the US wars were designed to initiate from 9/11 as a false-flag attack, or at the least to use 9/11 as an emotional tool to foist unlawful wars on the American public and the world.
Steve:
You find unlawful Wars of Aggression, civilian extrajudicial executions, and a legitimate policy proposal (T&R) to end these massively complicit crimes as funny. You then argue for lawless wars, the unrestrained mass murder by professional killers with the most powerful weapons to do so. That is who you are. Consider what you see in that mirror.
You then slur “jihadi” as the mass murderers. When the US has unlawfully invaded, the people resisting are lawfully doing so. You ignore this.
You are ignorant and/or lying about the UN Millennium Goals to end poverty. A million children die every month from preventable poverty and history shows ending poverty REDUCES POPULATION GROWTH RATES IN EVERY HISTORICAL EXAMPLE. You show zero compassion for these human beings, Steve.
I accuse you of being the very type of propagandist I warn about in my Comments Policy in the article. You lust for war and fear-monger for it in repulsive glee.
Readers, please study and learn.
I appreciate your work and I am about to become a subscriber because you substantiate your claims, and you write with clarity.
Thanks.
Of all the links, I find Peter Bergen's (the corroborated link) to be most persuasive, since he explains the sources and methodology.
"However, of those killed in drone attacks from 2006 through mid-October 2009, approximately 500 to 720 were described in reliable press reports as militants, or roughly two-thirds of the total killed.
"Based on our count of the estimated number of militants killed, the real total of civilian deaths since 2006 appears to be in the range of 260 to 320, or one-third of those killed."
Even those lower numbers, however, emphasize the basic problem with using military (or CIA) force, especially force applied from a distance: it's a very blunt instrument.
As someone has said, "Using military force for a surgical strike is like doing open heart surgery with a chainsaw."
So I gather it's customary for you to remove comments that point out your obvious political bias? Objectivity may warrant the title of "nonpartisan", however, because your articles contents are mostly editorial in nature and relect first person leanings towards a specific ideology, you should reconsider that title.
???:
The main point is that the attacks are unlawful on their face, should be refused by our military, and prosecuted. I recommend Truth and Reconciliation to get the whole truth out, which is probably beyond any of our imaginations.
We know disinformation includes death numbers. The official US figures were only 5% of the only peer-reviewed study for Iraq, to give you an idea of what to expect. In this case, verification of numbers is particularly difficult.
But again, any strike in this case is unlawful, murderous, and should be refused by military under their oath to the US Constitution to only engage in lawful war. Pakistan is violating their own murder laws with US complicity or the US is engaged in War Crimes.
Clay Pope:
Read my Comment Policy. What you’ve written so far is ad hominem. You have a case of my bias that distorts a comprehensive understanding given the limits of specific articles?
Ok: make your case. Include facts I exclude, or refute my factual claims. I take “nonpartisan” title because Dems and Reps as the Left and Right arms of the same corporatocracy; oligarchs who practice fascism and only provide an illusion of choice to duped Americans in their controlled corporate media. Both parties are war parties, bankster bailout parties, crippling unemployment parties, torture parties, Wall St. pimp parties, and destruction of unalienable rights parties.
Given so far all you’ve done is slur my work; yeah, I’ll delete such comments. Wouldn’t you, Clay, if you were interested in a serious discussion of the facts of this life and death subject?
Of course, if all you’re interested in is noise, distraction, and confusion, then so far your comments seem to fit that profile.
I ask if "civilians" who give aid, comfort and harbor our enemies can be properly classified as civilians in this global war on terrorism we are in. It is a shame this is the way the terrorists chose to fight, using indiscriminate IEDs, homicide bombings, etc, at the same time hiding behind the skirts of their oppressed females and families. They are the ones who put their children at risk, by hiding amongst them for political advantage. It is no different than what goes on in Gaza. Maybe we just ought to use a few blunt instrument Vietnam daisy cutters or MOABs to send a message, instead of relatively precision Hellfire surgical strikes. This is a war that won't end until every cockroach is stamped out. Remember 9/11 and start taking the gloves off instead of trying to be politically correct all the time. Make jihad very painfull for the scum to even think about continuing.
You don't accept the correction that it's the CIA, not the military, making the Predator strikes in Pakistan?
How does that make you anything other than a propagandist yourself?
???:
The CIA is taking “credit” but it’s part of a military mission. You just take what the CIA reports as the truth given the history of massive lies in support of these wars, ????
Read my Comment Policy. Your focus on irrelevant data and omission of the central point that this operation is unlawful on its face will have me delete such comments.
Sniper310:
The US invaded Afghanistan unlawfully. What would you expect their men to do, just accept the invasion? What would Americans do if China invaded, put-up one of their oil company executives as President and then supported sham elections to keep him in power while returning the nation to the largest opium producer in the world, hmmm?
You’d be resisting, sniper310. You wouldn’t be “hiding” but living in your home. You’d be making IEDs. Oh, and you support Israel’s largest concentration camp in the world! And you want larger weapons to kill more civilians, and then, I don’t understand this part, are all Muslims cockroaches?
You don’t know jack about 9/11, sniper310. KSM was waterboarded 183 times to get his “confession.” Look it up.
Thank you for helping to make the choice clear between your endless and escalating unlawful wars and the UN Charter to eliminate war as a foreign policy while cooperating for justice, dignity and freedom.
Okay, I get it now. You don't care about accuracy, just about pushing your agenda.
Too bad, because if you were simply accurate, you'd accomplish a lot more. As it is, anyone who takes the time to follow your links can see you are ignoring important facts.
???:
Yeah, my agenda is limited government under the law of the US Constitution, especially with unlawful wars that cost us trillions in long-term costs, kill millions (so far), and cause such misery multiple others wish for death.
Go ahead and follow the facts you find more important than that with other journalists who’ll ponder who’s really behind unlawful covert programs the military denies rather than demand they be stopped now, investigated, and either prosecuted or offered Truth and Reconciliation. Go ahead and speculate what might be disclosed later while allowing without your dissent any stronger than “morally questionable” these murderous acts under our flag and with our tax dollars.
You state my passion to end this atrocity is “not caring about accuracy” and “pushing an agenda” plus “ignoring important facts.” Are you familiar with the psychological term “projection”? Look it up.
You build a brighter future your way and I’ll do so my way.
Choose carefully.
I guess this whole thesis goes out the window, now that the fact US Special Operations forces were killed in Pakistan while working with the Pakistan military indicates this has all been authorized by the Pakistani government.
oops:
The only status change is that the American families of the deceased can and should press criminal and civil charges against the US government for murder under their own state laws, as the current Pakistan government denial of approval of US use of force indicates unlawful US use of force. As I wrote above:
Some analysis of Pakistan’s refusal of US armed attacks on their soil: if Pakistan is covertly in agreement with the US, they must publicly disagree or else be in likely admission of murder under Pakistan law. If so, the US would also be guilty of mass murders under Pakistan law. With Pakistan’s public refusal, the US is guilty of War Crimes.
Pakistan's already admitted the US forces were there and are there under an assistance agreement. They're working with the Frontier Corps, an authorized militia under the Pakistani constitution. They also have primary responsibility for patrolling the borders regions with Afghanistan.
The only murder charges the families of the dead soldiers could file would be against the Taliban scum who blew up not only the soldiers but several school kids.
Real nice people you support.
Oops:
This article is about the US killing Pakistanis in a drone war.
Again, regarding this topic: if Pakistan is covertly in agreement with the US, they must publicly disagree or else be in likely admission of murder under Pakistan law. If so, the US would also be guilty of mass murders under Pakistan law. With Pakistan’s public refusal, the US is guilty of War Crimes.
Real nice unlawful war or mass-murder you support.
I point out the unlawful killing of innocent civilians and you say I support terrorism. Real nice American values of unalienable rights you support. Real nice Christian values of love you support.
I’ll delete your further off-topic comments.
I see... so stuff your pseudo-christian values where the sun don't shine, you pompous jackass. Go kiss the poor misguided fanatics who think blowing up a bunch of school girls is legitimate warfare.
oops:
Why are you attacking a journalist pointing out 140 innocent civilians are killed for every CIA-alleged terrorist, the topic of this article, if you care so much about these school girls and their families?
Anyone can see that these extrajudicial assassinations cause terrorism; where is your outrage regarding the topic of this article?
Where is your outrage against the US killing school children from my article, “US "death squad" handcuffs, executes 8 Afghan school children; Karzai demands arrests, US refuses”?
The US unlawful acts of murder of civilians are putting our soldiers there at risk. The “poor misguided fanatics” are US “leadership” for these unlawful wars.
I propose my solutions above in the policy response section.
What are yours?
Mr. Herman,
I find it quite simple. America was attacked by Al queda, therefore America is legally able to protect itself. Al Queda operates many places in the world without its own nation, so we must attack them where they live, to protect our people from future attack. Everyone and their mother knows the US is trying to kill Al queda officials because they want to kill Americas on American soil. Al queda leaders embed themselves with civilians...so whose fault is it then really? America does not indicrimately attack civialns, they discriminate bhetween houses where top al queda leaders live and those of civilians and use percision guided missles. Al queda blows themselves up soley to kill civilians: terrorism.
America must eradicate all extremist Muslim factions who seek to kill infidels in order to perpetuate our lives and the lives of our children. Deal with it.
okay so "deal with it" came off a little smug, especially since you are dealing with it as a journalist. I didn't realize it till after i posted...sorry.I wanted to add one more point: I think the reason top CIA and military officials are willing to launch what you and many other liberal thinkers would consider an unlawful attack on Afghanistan/taliban/al qauda/ect., including the drone strikes that kill innocent civilians(though I believe their relative innocence is depatable) is because we are dealing with an enemy that is willing to explode nuclear ordinance within our country's borders given the opportunity. If this did happen, which I believe is made far less likely through predator drone strikes and the war on terror in general, than those in these top CIA/military positions would be justly crusified. I feel Bush was afraid of this, which is why he went a little war crazy( this probably isn't debatable anymore), although our borders have been relatively secure since then.
2 of 2:
You have zero Muslim friends in this country and should make some to understand 99% of Muslims are like 99% of Christians: just trying to live a good life. Fanatics, like you who advocate for lawless mass murder of infidels (you won’t get the irony of your statement to kill them makes you a dangerous fanatic), should be isolated and arrested for crimes and advocating crimes, like you advocating murder, James.
You call anyone advocating for limited government under the Constitution as “liberal”? You need to expand your political vocabulary. Mine’s pretty broad and what you are is fascist.
Good luck with your future, Scrooge.
Tick-tock, your time to stand for truth, justice, and the American way under the law is a time-sensitive offer.
choose carefully.
Readers and James:
1 of 2:
“America was attacked by al Qaeda” according to the 9/11 Commission that relied on testimony from torture and a government that lied in every justification for wars with Afghanistan, Iraq, now Iran, and destroys the US Constitution.
Uh-huh.
You’re a sucker or a propagandist, and sooo afraid little Jamesy-waimsy! Yeah, go kill more children and grandparents, James. That’ll make you safe and your children proud! They are lawfully defending their land against our unlawful invasion.
But you show no interest in the UNSC Resolution for international cooperation to discover, arrest, and prosecute terrorists, do you James? You didn't read the links to discover the rules for lawful war, did you?
That makes you not only a coward, but stupid. Oh, is this coming-off harsh? Wait, I've got more...
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