Droning on about American Drones

A commentary on Medea Benjamin’s new book, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control: Killing individuals (and whoever is near them) via drones (“unmanned aerial vehicles”) has become the primary substitute in U.S. public policy for capture/imprisonment/torture. As Medea Benjamin documents, the United States has avoided detaining people, only to murder them with a drone days […]

Why can an US President place an American citizen on an assassination list?

Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights asks: Is this the world we want? Where the president of the United States can place an American citizen, or anyone else for that matter, living outside a war zone on a targeted assassination list, and then have him murdered by drone strike. [In an earlier […]

The legality of killing Osama bin Laden

The Guardian reports that the chorus of official applause from international leaders over the death of Osama bin Laden has failed to silence doubts about the killing’s legality. Despite widespread backing for the raid, there is a growing demand for the precise legal basis of the US operation to be explained. Prof Nick Grief, an […]

Assassination Inc. at the heart of America’s military strategy

The U.S. has conducted assassination programs in the Third World for decades, but the actual killing — though directed and financed by the C.I.A. — has been largely left to local paramilitary and police forces. This now has changed dramatically. What is unprecedented today is the vast number of Americans directly assassinating Muslims — through […]

The ironies of Christian conscience

The Rev. William P. Mahedy, a chaplain in Vietnam, tells of a soldier he encountered on the field of battle. The soldier approaches the chaplain and asks: ‘Hey, Chaplain … how come it’s a sin to hop into bed with a mama-san but it’s okay to blow away gooks out in the bush?’ Mahedy later wrote […]

Iraqi unemployment rate of 25-50 percent with 53 percent living in slums

Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq. UN-HABITAT, an agency of the United Nations, recently published a 218-page report entitled […]

Repercussions of Unmanned Drone Warfare, the Weapon of Choice – Present and Future

When a young Pakistani-U.S. national pleaded guilty last week to a failed attempt to detonate explosives packed in a vehicle in the heart of New York City, he was conscious of the fact he would have killed dozens of civilians, including women and children. His justification: “Well, the (U.S.) drone-hits in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t […]

U.S. “ill-defined license to kill without accountability”

The United States was identified Wednesday as the world’s No. 1 user of targeted killings — largely as a result of its dependence on unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A report released by the United Nations called the drone attacks part of a “strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability” and […]

The difference between killing and murder

‘Thou shalt not kill’ What does this commandment  really mean? There is a difference between killing someone who is trying to kill you, vs. taking the life of someone who does not have the power to harm you. The first is killing. The second is murder. In the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where […]