Salon.com > Drone Attacks

Drone victim: U.S. strikes boost al-Qaida recruitment

Thu, 02 May 2013 19:00:00 +0000

On April 17, a 23-year-old Yemeni activist and journalist named Farea Al-Muslimi tweeted about a U.S. drone strike on his village, Wessab, which he describes as “the Yemen capital of misery with its beautiful mountains no one from outside remembers.” In the strike, five alleged members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) were killed. The U.S. droned Yemen 53 times last year, tripling the number of attacks from 2011, and incurring a civilian casualty rate between 4 to 8.5 percent. On April 23, Al-Muslimi gave stirring testimony at the first U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the legality of drone wars.

In the exclusive conversation below, Al-Muslimi tells Salon about the drone strikes’ devastating toll on Yemeni civilians and how the current U.S. counterterrorism policy in Yemen is like “reading from a manual '10 Steps on How to Lose a War.'”

Afghan villagers flee U.S. drone strikes

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:43:00 +0000

KHALIS FAMILY VILLAGE, Afghanistan -- Barely able to walk even with a cane, Ghulam Rasool says he padlocked his front door, handed over the keys and his three cows to a neighbor and fled his mountain home in the middle of the night to escape relentless airstrikes from U.S. drones targeting militants in this remote corner of Afghanistan.

Rasool and other Afghan villagers have their own name for Predator drones. They call them benghai, which in the Pashto language means the "buzzing of flies." When they explain the noise, they scrunch their faces and try to make a sound that resembles an army of flies.

"They are evil things that fly so high you don't see them but all the time you hear them," said Rasool, whose body is stooped and shrunken with age and his voice barely louder than a whisper. "Night and day we hear this sound and then the bombardment starts."

The U.S. military is increasingly relying on drone strikes inside Afghanistan, where the number of weapons fired from unmanned aerial aircraft soared from 294 in 2011 to 506 last year. With international combat forces set to withdraw by the end of next year, such attacks are now used more for targeted killings and less for supporting ground troops.

When can your government kill you?

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:00:00 +0000

At John Brennan’s confirmation hearing to be director of the CIA earlier this month, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked him whether the administration could let the public know under what circumstances the government believes it can kill Americans within the United States. The exchange takes on added resonance today, as new reports reveal the Obama administration continues to hide its targeted killing authority, even from Congress.

“I've asked you how much evidence the president needs to decide that a particular American can be lawfully killed and whether the administration believes that the president can use this authority inside the United States,” Wyden reminded Brennan at the Feb. 7 hearing. ”What do you think needs to be done to ensure that members of the public understand more about when the government thinks it's allowed to kill them, particularly with respect to those two issues: the question of evidence and the authority to use this power within the United States?”

Recognizing American privilege

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 22:26:00 +0000

I pretty much always agree with the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky. Just last week I hailed his article appraising Hillary Clinton’s political career (to date) as the best of a lot of great profiles. But I had just as strong a reaction, only this time a negative one, to his Wednesday piece on the Obama administration’s “white paper” on targeted killings of American citizens. It got me thinking more deeply about the debates I’ve been having with liberals and progressives on this issue over the last couple of years.

Tomasky opened by admitting that whenever he’s evaluating a politician’s actions, he’s always written “with part of my brain focused on the question of what I would do if I were in Politician X’s position. This line of thought came so naturally to me that I imagined everyone did this. But I guess everyone doesn’t.”

No, everyone doesn’t. I do sometimes, and not others. But it’s a worthwhile thought exercise. Tomasky continues, noting that he’d just read the targeted killing white paper, and:

Liberals love drones too

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Civil libertarians are hoping to use John Brennan’s testimony today before the Senate Intelligence Committee to call attention to the administration's controversial drone program, which too often seems to go unscrutinized. Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to lead the CIA, and Obama's counterterrorism adviser, is perhaps the government’s leading advocate of the expanded use of lethal drones, and an architect of Bush-era terrorist detention policies, making the stakes especially high. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, one of the Senate’s most ardent defenders of civil liberties, suggested he may even filibuster Brennan’s nomination.

Civil libertarians often gripe about the fact that no one, especially mainline Democrats, seems to care much today about their issues, even though civil liberty concerns helped galvanize the opposition to George W. Bush in his second term and propel Democrats to victory in 2006 and 2008.

When liberals ignore injustice

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 23:27:00 +0000

Last year Brown University’s Michael Tesler released a fascinating study showing that Americans inclined to racially blinkered views wound up opposing policies they would otherwise support, once they learned those policies were endorsed by President Obama. Their prejudice extended to the breed of the president’s dog, Bo: They were much more likely to say they liked Portuguese water dogs when told Ted Kennedy owned one than when they learned Obama did.

But Tesler found that the Obama effect worked the opposite way, too: African-Americans and white liberals who supported Obama became more likely to support policies once they learned the president did.

More than once I’ve worried that might carry over to bad policies that Obama has flirted with embracing, that liberals have traditionally opposed: raising the age for Medicare and Social Security or cutting those programs’ benefits. Or hawkish national security policies that liberals shrieked about when carried out by President Bush, from rendition to warrantless spying. Or even worse, policies that Bush stopped short of, like targeted assassination of U.S. citizens loyal to al-Qaida (or “affiliates”) who were (broadly) deemed (likely) to threaten the U.S. with (possible) violence (some day).

Drone strikes lead to deadly reprisals for spies

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 16:27:00 +0000

The New York Times' Saturday highlighted another dark product of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan. Local informants who aid the CIA are tracked down and slaughtered by al-Qaida militants. According to the Times:

For several years now, militant enforcers have scoured the tribal belt in search of informers who help the C.I.A. find and kill the spy agency’s jihadist quarry. The militants’ technique — often more witch hunt than investigation — follows a well-established pattern. Accused tribesmen are abducted from homes and workplaces at gunpoint and tortured. A sham religious court hears their case, usually declaring them guilty. Then they are forced to speak into a video camera.

The taped confessions, which are later distributed on CD, vary in style and content. But their endings are the same: execution by hanging, beheading or firing squad.

“Drones are not a security solution”

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:57:00 +0000

Robert Greenwald, head of the progressive internet video and documentary film company, Brave New Films, recently traveled to Pakistan, supported financially by hundreds of BNF donors, to witness firsthand the stories of families who have had innocent loved ones killed by U.S. drone attacks. Greenwald is challenging both the morality and the factual effectiveness of the U.S drone program as we learn more about the failures and questionable policies. The U.S. claims that drone missiles are aimed at potential terrorists but because the ground rules of who can be targeted is both vague and has been loosened, the number of innocents being killed has risen sharply. Furthermore, the information that is used to target people, appears to be the result of a system of bribery at the local level, which is of questionable reliability.

A debate to be ashamed of

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 18:06:00 +0000

It was the moment progressives had been waiting for. Bob Schieffer turned to Mitt Romney and said, "What is your position on the use of drones?"

Twitter gasped. Up to that point, Schieffer had thrown one softball after another, but here was the high hard one down the middle. For many liberals, President Obama's aggressive deployment of drones to kill suspected terrorists in northwestern Pakistan is a stain on the current administration that cannot be washed away, a profound betrayal of civilized values. A campaign of murder from the skies in a country that is supposedly our ally -- how is this remotely conscionable?

But liberals are also accustomed to Obama getting a free pass on the topic from the mainstream media and political elite. So just hearing the word "drones" spoken was shocking -- here it was, finally, a chance to address this ongoing national shame before an audience of millions and millions of Americans.

And then came Romney's response, which basically boiled down to drones are awesome!

Activists go where US drones strike

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:45:00 +0000

For a decade, Code Pink activists have been a central fixture at anti-war protests around America. Not for the first time in its history, the group's supporters are putting their bodies on the ground where U.S. bombs strike.

A delegation of 32 American women have traveled to Islamabad and will march alongside Pakistani organizers and political groups to South Waziristan -- a nucleus of Taliban militancy regularly struck by U.S. drones. The aim of the trip is to draw greater attention to the harm wrought by drone attacks, while reaching out and building solidarity with Pakistanis on the ground.

"We want to make it known to Pakistanis that there are Americans with a conscience who do care about their lives," Code Pink co-founder and delegation organizer, Medea Benjamin told Salon on the phone from Islamabad.

"We've encountered some overwhelming admiration over the fact that we're here, willing to put ourselves at risk," said Benjamin, who said she has been meeting with human rights groups, women's groups, Pakistani generals, U.S. diplomats and even members of the military spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Islamabad.