Maine Owl

NPR just loves 'em

Update: In THIS story from last week, according to figures provided by Rabia Ali, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, "546,000 have registered as internally displaced people" in Pakistan due to drone attacks and army activity. Sheesh! That certainly is beginning to look like the U.S. Iraq playbook being run by President Bush Obama!

With appropriate sarcasm, NPR Check posted Monday on a...

... Pakistani News report that -- according to Pakistani authorities -- US drone attacks since January 2006 have killed 14 al-Qaeda leaders and 687 civilians. Dang! 687 to 14. Last time I did my maths that came to 49 civilians killed for every al-Qaeda operative killed.

The post mentions previous pieces describing the NPR reporting as "gooey" and "weak-kneed."

Yes. And I've been deeply concerned myself (see HERE and HERE) about the way these diabolical machines are celebrated. Sadly, I have had very little community response to the messages I have sent regarding these extremely important issues. I have written to NPR and Mike Michaud. The result is zilch. Reapers evidently are great. This is how President Obama evidently also feels, while he escalates the Afghan-Pakistan war. No way I can campaign on this all alone.

Perhaps THIS report on Democracy Now! yesterday provides news of an effort worthy of support.

Peace Activists Arrested After Protesting US Drones in Nevada

AMY GOODMAN: ... last week a group of peace activists staged the first major act of civil disobedience against the drone attacks in the United States. On Thursday, fourteen people were arrested outside the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where the Air Force tests the unmanned drones used in Pakistan. The activists were arrested after holding a ten-day vigil dubbed "Ground the Drones."

Interviewed is Father Louis Vitale. A lot is said in the segment about how the drones work, how they're flown by remote control thousands of miles from their targets (as I've written in the earlier posts). But here's a stunning aspect of the drone program--the effect on some of those who fly them. Wouldn't you think that as NPR's Mary Louise Kelly has reported, members of the Air Force all would see the "distinct advantage to flying by remote control, instead of long tours of duty overseas," including "dinner with your wife" after a day at the office.

Not so fast, according to Father Vitale, "You don't get rid of PTSD":

FATHER LOUIS VITALE: I'll tell you exactly what the colonel, the commander, or the vice commander from Nellis Air Force Base, exactly as he described it to me. He says, "Well, you know, it works out rather nicely. They live with their families in Las Vegas. They drive out and drop the kids off at school, drive out in the morning, fly their missions, drop their bombs. They can go home and have dinner with their family in the evening."

In the meanwhile, what he doesn't quite cover is that, meanwhile, they blew up a school, remember, in Afghanistan. And from what you see from YouTube—in fact, you had P.W. Singer on your show, and he talked about somebody sent him a clip of one of those drones dropping a missile that later—and he saw, you know, the collateral damage right in his face, because the drone hangs around. And they are in that booth for twelve hours. And so, they're all day long monitoring what they're doing and seeing it. Then you go home.

They have interviews with them and the commanders that have been particularly in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, in which they talk about—they've got about forty minutes or so on the way home to kind of shift. You don't get rid of PTSD, instant PTSD, in twenty, forty minutes. In one way, they say it's kind of intriguing, because it's just like an arcade. They learn real fast. The pilots are old-stock pilots, you know, and they're used to flying, you know, F-14s, F-16s. But the sensor operator is—was originally there for the cameras. They were basically doing surveillance, intelligence work. But they also carry four Hellfires on the early Predators and much more on the Reaper, not only more missiles, but also bombs, hundred-pound bombs. And so, they guide them in with the lasers right in there, and they see what they do. And then they’ve got to live with that. And that's a terrible thing to live with.

It doesn't take much courage to drop a deadly bomb on someone from 10,000 miles away. Is a tactic that has a 98% collateral damage rate even right on its own merits, or will it cause more terrorism than it will solve? Meanwhile, will it cause more psychological damage than the war-making geniuses probably have ever considered?

Come on people, let's at least get a letter writing campaign going. You know the addresses!