God King Unilaterally Orders Murder of Grandmother

October 31, 2013 by Mark Shea

Not a problem. She was Pakistani. We can just declare her guilty of something after the fact per standard American policy.

It’s good to be king, Mr. President.

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What Are Your Thoughts?leave a comment

ivan_the_mad

I can’t even begin to imagine myself in their shoes. Pray God that this nation repents of its murder abroad, and that their grandmother and the other victims of our military might know His infinite mercy and eternity with Him.
Jon W

“Now I prefer cloudy days when the drones don’t fly. When the sky brightens and becomes blue, the drones return and so does the fear….

This is like something out of a novel about totalitarianism. What are we?
- chezami
  
  A crony capitalist national security empire trying to solve our problems by aiming money, bullets and lies at them.
  - Chesire11
    
    On this we can agree. BTW, if you haven’t read it, I would recommend Andrew Bacevitch’s (Col. US Army, Ret.) excellent book “The Limits of Power,” which excoriates the refusal of the American culture to face difficult choices, and accept material limits, and the use of force to preserve an impossible illusion of limitless economic growth.
    - Jon W
      
      I’ve just been reading Thucydides. I’m convinced the US is Athens, circa 430 BC. All we need now is a plague and an Alcibiades.
      - Chesire11
        
        I agree. I was reading him during the 2004 election cycle and was taken aback at the similarity between his description of the situation in Corcyra, and our modern political scene.
ganganelli

Why is the Kenyan Muslim killing Muslims?
- Chesire11
  
  Who is that?
  - ganganelli
    
    The occupant of the White House that Mark likes to mock as Dear Leader.
    - Chesire11
      
      Oh, the twice elected President of the United States of America!
      
      He is ethnically part Kenyan, but born American, and he’s not Muslim.
      - Jon W
        
        Ugh. Mark’s post on racism attracted some crazy. The “Obama as crypto-Muslim” has got to be the weirdest conspiracy theory ever. Give me grassy knolls and Bush ordering the Israelis to set up 9/11 via their secret BFFs the Saudis, any day.
        
        AnsonEddy
        
        Nah. Ganganelli is the same person who was referring to people as teahadists last week. Just a garden variety troll.
    - chezami
      
      If you think I believe him to be either Kenyan or Muslim, you clearly have not been reading my blog very attentively.
- D.T. McCameron
  
  Setting aside the, well, crazy for a moment: what would preclude a Muslim from killing another Muslim? Or is the Kenyan part the key?
  - Stu
    
    He meant Keynesian.
Chesire11

While I disagree with the cavalier manner in which the drone war against Al Qaeda, and the Taliban is being prosecuted, I also have to scoff at the outrage which views it as some sort of unprecedented moral quantum flop. Innocents died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as in the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, to say nothing of civilian deaths in the Vietnam War, etc…

It is sad to say, but though it is immoral, and deserves condemnation, it is hardly an unprecedented, or exceptional offense.
- D.T. McCameron
  
  It probably stems from the notion our killing-by-remote is more targeted, accurate, and humane than (to use the phrase du jour) “boots on the ground.”
  
  Doubtless reinforced by an artificially inflated track record.
  http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/
  - Chesire11
    
    Interestingly, Greenwald notes the propaganda value to the US of declaring every victim of drone strikes a Muslim militant, but seems oblivious to the value to the militants of declaring every victim an innocent Muslim. That’s much of the point of irregular warfare – to blur the lines between innocent civilian, and legitimate military target, both before, and after the fact.
    
    Of course, Greenwald is a uniquely gullible member of a gullible tribe, so…
- Stu
  
  This is still bit different. Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the fire bombings all targeted civilians outright. It was part and parcel of the early theories of air power as laid out by Giulio Douhet. In that line of thinking, the thought is that to end a war quickly, civilians should be targeted aggressively so that they call for their government to end hostilities. Now that is wacky but even in WWII, we were still sorting such things out in terms of tactics which is why you had military leaders who subscribed to this line of thought. Whereas nowadays, we generally do go to lengths to avoid civilian casualties. But even so, one can target a legitimate target and still end up having collateral deaths which is ostensibly what happened here.
  
  That being said, the question should come up is “What are we achieving and does the death of this woman (or others like her) make sense in all of this?” And Is our current practice of just targeting individuals we don’t like all over the world outside of a stated war just? As both a retired Officer (and aviator), I really have issues with drones. Not to say they can’t be an effective military tool but the effect so far has been that it makes it too damn easy for politicians to invoke military action with only political risk to consider. I think I preferred them having to engage in the calculus of weighing the risk of actual American life when contemplating such action.
  - Chesire11
    
    I think you put your finger right on the nub of what bothers me the most about the legitimacy drone war, namely that it makes the military option too tempting. It makes it too easy for policymakers to adopt a response that, while viscerally gratifying in the short term, does little to nothing to address the underlying causes, and in many cases may prove to be counterproductive in the long term.
    - Stu
      
      Yes. It is incredibly devoid of any strategic thought.

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God King Unilaterally Orders Murder of Grandmother