Back when I was knee high to an antelope, in the scented 1960s, the U.S. was engaged in what is now described as “limited war” in Vietnam. Our concept of limitation is, well, somewhat limited, as it amounted to an all-out attack on Vietnamese society, particularly in the South Vietnam hinterlands, which took the brunt of the bombing, defoliation, and other depredations. Part of that policy was establishment of “Free-fire zones” – when night fell and the friendlies were inside the wire of the strategic hamlet, anything that moved beyond the wire was fair game. Hence the shooting, the bombing, etc.
Our drone war in Pakistan-Afghanistan, and essentially everywhere else, runs on a similar principle. It isn’t as all-out, of course, but it appears to be nearly as random. And just as every living thing in the Vietnamese countryside was assumed to be Viet Cong, every military age male in the tribal areas of Pakistan is, by definition, an extremist, a combatant, a terrorist, and therefore the target of killer drones, piloted by some dude who works at a terminal in a trailer about fifty miles from where I’m sitting right now.
That definition of “military aged male” appears to be expansive enough to include the 67-year-old grandmother of Rafiq Rehman, a school teacher in North Waziristan. She was killed by a drone-fired missile while tending her crop. (Rehman and his family were interviewed on Democracy Now! a couple of weeks ago.)
This policy is not only criminal, it’s stupid, unless of course the objective is to generate future conflicts. People in these tribal areas live under the buzz of killer drones every day of their lives. There is simply no telling when you, your father, your daughter, your best friend will be blown to bits at random by an unaccountable power, an out-of-control empire pressing its advantage against people who cannot defend themselves against this deadly technology. As an American of a certain age, I grew up under the threat of nuclear war. There was a sense of danger that attended every day of my generation’s childhood. This drone war is much more tangible, much more immediate, but psychologically corrosive in a similar way.
We are investing in a generation of people who hate our guts. We need to stop this now.
luv u,
jp
That’s all good, but it’s just a step in the right direction. Gay Americans are still second-class citizens, barred from full civil rights as of this moment. As of now, there is an institutional necessity to allow gays to join the military – with an all-volunteer force like ours, we cannot wage two (or perhaps three) simultaneous wars without providing incentives to talented people of every persuasion to participate. The trouble is, when they return to civilian life (those who don’t choose to make the military a permanent career), they find themselves unable to marry, to raise a family, or to hold certain types of positions in some states. Not a dissimilar situation to that of the late 1940s, early 1950s, when black soldiers returned to the segregated south and a nearly equally racist north. My guess is that it’s just a matter of time before the crumbling edifice of discrimination against gays falls entirely to pieces.