Sunday, November 06, 2011

Team America

A day in never-ending wars;

Among the group was Tariq Aziz, a quiet 16-year-old, who had come after he received a phone call from a lawyer in Islamabad offering him an opportunity to learn basic photography to help document these strikes. . . .

Tariq was proud to be part of this meeting. About 18 months earlier, in April 2010, his cousin Aswar Ullah was killed by a missile fired from a drone as he rode a motorcycle near Norak. . . .

What none of us could have imagined was that 72 hours later, this football-loving teenager would himself be killed by a CIA drone, along with his 12-year-old cousin Waheed Khan. . . .

Tariq and Waheed’s death brought the total number of children killed in drone strikes to 175, according to the Bureau’s own findings. As part of an ongoing investigation, the Bureau has documented 306 strikes from remotely piloted drones that have killed between 2,359 and 2,959 people. Over 85% of them have been launched by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Tariq came from a poor community on the border with Afghanistan. He was the youngest of seven children. His father, Mumtaz Khan, was away working in the United Arab Emirates as a driver to support his family. Waheed’s family was equally poor – the 12-year-old worked in a local shop for a salary of just Rs 2000 a month (roughly £15 or $23)

Shooting missiles at kids has become the new norm for America.. from the "liberal socialist" President of all people..

I wonder what would happen if instead of firing weapons at the brown people, we actually dropped food and medicine on them. It stands to reason that if you're killing all these people because they might kill one of us, you might get better results if you instead gave them a reason to stop hating us.. and maybe actually help change their culture away from the sickening religious fundamentalism.

But then.. we're told this is some sort of ideological struggle that can only be resolved if one side or the other is eliminated. We happen to have the better guns.

.... oh, by the way, food and medicine costs less than predator drones. Just a thought.

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