A local radical writer who clearly supports our military, right-or-wrong, complains of the ACLU’s (as he sees it) anti-American, unpatriotic “attempt … to end drone aircraft attacks against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and other locations throughout the Middle East.” He seems to forget drones are also aimed at Taliban insurgents and their leaders. The writer forgets much, including the fact that ACLU lawyers are ever ready to guard his very own right to voice the anti-American People opinions he holds. Confused among his several biasses, prejudices and big commitment to support the worst people in this country, he ignores for several smoke-screening paragraphs the ACLU’s actual point in suing the federal government, which he later admits is merely to seek “information on when, where and against whom drone attacks have been, and can be, authorized; the number and rate of civilian casualties; and other basic information essential for assessing the wisdom and legality of using armed drones to conduct targeted killings.”
Nowhere does ACLU indicate a wish to deprive the U. S. military of an offensive weapon. Its ever-humanitarian concern is to avoid or prevent indiscriminate use that results in “collateral damage,” an innocuous sounding phrase that means unintended maiming or killing of civilian noncombatants who are unfortunately too near a target. to escape the blast or hit. This radical-rightist fellow insists such concerns (which include perennial defense of the underdog in legal battles) are “totally not American.” On his say-so alone, they are dangerous, crazy, seditious and treasonous. (By golly, they must also be Socialists! Goodness! They care about people more than cash.) He finds ACLU’s actions incomprehensible, indefensible, septic and immorally supported by pro-bono aid from Ivy League law schools and shamefully shielded by our un-American, leftist news & opinion spinning media.
This radically-committed guy has no clear view of facts on the ground in Afghanistan, but he’s absolutely sure of his opinions, as usual. But, the trouble with unmanned drone aircraft strikes applies equally to manned air strikes. How can your op-intel and sensing devices get surgically refined enough to quit killing entire families and hamlets where a Taliban fighter or Al Qaeda agitator may be hanging out part of the time, or leaving part of his ammo in a house? It’s not possible, which may mean the whole, slam-bang approach is wrong and will build up ever greater resistance and hatred for the West. This radically-overcommitted guy thinks war justifies any degree of inhumanity. War must be holy and humans expendable as dollars and bullets.
On Thursday, 3-3-11, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux wrote: NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, apologized for the accidental killing of 9 Afghan boys in an air strike. He said that helicopter crews would be re-briefed on directives for preventing civilian deaths. NATO, he said, “accepts full responsibility for this tragedy and will continue to thoroughly investigate this incident to understand why this happened and try to prevent this from happening in the future.” The news comes amid accusations that NATO troops have been killing dozens of civilians. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has repeatedly lambasted the U.S.-led coalition, saying that these latest victims were “innocent children who were collecting firewood for their families during this cold winter.” [See the full article via the following link:
<http://www.care2.com/causes/human-rights/blog/nato-apologizes-for-civilian-deaths/>]
It is further interesting to note that this otherwise decent, sociable, retired gentleman cannot discern any difference between an “insurgent” drawn into local, guerilla combat by his communal relations or threatened situation and a “terrorist” alienated from human feeling who aims to commit destructive atrocities against Western countries or their satellites for religious or ideological motives. The gentleman as usual exhibits strange blindnesses and inconsistencies.
Does it appear that in swinging his dark tarbrush against Holder, Miller, Soros, Baldwin and Clooney he looks un-American himself to the point of resembling a domestic terrorist whose only weapon safe to himself is tendentious speech? Could anyone wonder whether or not he and two or three others of his ilk are paid agents of kleptocratic conspirators, more than just being bad-natured purveyors of semantic dreck that misframes readers and thwarts intelligence?
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