Talking about drones and the dirty war
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If you want to understand how Obama can get away with drones, indefinite detention and the rest of it, you need to read Gene Lyons' column Obama's realpolitik drone strategy.
Lyons has spent much of his career documenting abuse of power. He has never been a Kool Aide drinker. That he can write a column like this is a measure of the task we have before us.
To put it plainly, if we cannot convince people like Lyons that the drone campaign does much harm and little good, then we cannot convince America. Rather than snide remarks, we need to address his concerns.
Looking back at Argentina's Dirty War (and I think Argentina is the historical comparison that makes the most sense) it started with a genuine domestic security crisis. Initially people like Jacobo Timmerman were supportive of the dirty war as an unhappy necessity. It was just gradually, by reporting on abuses, that Timmerman began to understand that the whole thing was out of control. Prisoner without a cell, without a number is a book for our times.
We need to talk about Tariq Aziz:
A group of Pakistanis met in Islamabad late last month to discuss the impact of U.S. drone strikes in their communities. One of the attendees was a 16-year-old boy named Tariq Aziz, who had volunteered to learn photography to begin documenting drone strikes near his home. Within 72 hours of the meeting, Aziz was killed in a U.S. drone strike. His 12-year-old cousin was also killed in the Oct. 31 attack.
If Pakistan is ever to become a stable democracy, we need people like Tariq Aziz. Now he has been stolen from us. We need to publicize such cases until the destructive quality of our policy is made clear.
We need to convince more Americans to read The Friday Times to consider the Pakistani point of view.
Finally we need to keep reminding everyone that more soldiers die from suicide than in combat. Clearly we are asking them to do things that they cannot live with.
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Gene Lyons ? ? ? WTF ?
Gene has devoted his life to defending Democrats, especially Republican-lite Democrats like Clinton and Obama. He is obviously a tribalist. Yes, he has drunk the kool-aid. I am surprised that you take him seriously.
There will always be tribalists. It's in our DNA. Don't waste a lot of time on tribalists, they don't listen to reason, since they are motivated by tribal identify, not by facts or by universal values.
Public opinion can change quickly, as it did for the Vietnam war -- the Tet Offensive, Kent State, Walter Cronkite speaking out against the war, MLK speaking against the war, LBJ refusing to run, My Lai, the "Napalm Girl," McCarthy challenging Humphrey, etc.. A tipping point was reached.
Another example is how black opinion on gay marriage shifted after Obama spoke in favor of gay marriage.
What we -- the non-tribalists -- can do, is what Walter Cronkite and MLK did. We can point out that we're not winning, that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, that we are being lied to. We can portray our "enemies" as human beings, and imagine what it is like to be in their shoes, and imagine how they must view us.
Tribalists do not naturally think that way, so they need to be shown, with stories and pictures. The pictures of My Lai and "the Napalm Girl" had a tremendous impact on the American public. For the first time, we saw the Vietnamese as HUMAN BEINGS who were suffering.
Where are the pictures of the women and children who are being turned into red mist by drones ? You certainly don't see them in the mainstream media. Even in the alternative media, all we typically get is a brief text story saying that suspected "militants" got blown up. Rarely any pictures. We need to put a human face and a human story on those drone attacks.
If enough people speak out against violence, particularly leaders, then eventually a tipping point can be reached, and public opinion can change rapidly. The tribalists will follow, as tribalists always do.
it is more accurate to say that he went after
Kenneth Starr than to say he defended Bill Clinton.
Tet turned America against the Viet Nam war so much that we elected and reelected Richard Nixon and did not get out until we were forced to in 1975. It is arguable that the anti-war effort was so mishandled that it extended the war and that it was the soldiers themselves who ended the war by organizing against it.
If you think that Obama has turned the black community in favor of gay marriage, or even shifted opinion, you need to get out more.
The reason we don't have any pictures of drone victims is that it is very dangerous work, just ask Tarig Aziz.
Journalism was dangerous in Vietnam & WWII, as well
What's changed is the guy in the WH: Obama locks up journalist who reported on drone victims in Yemen
Nixon was elected on a promise that he had a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam war quickly. In any event, then as now, voters did't have a meaningful choice, since both parties support essentially the same foreign policy.
Polls show that black support for gay marriage jumped 18 points after Obama "evolved."
Getting back to the original topic, VastLeft sums up the war question nicely.
Never even heard of the guy before
And wish i hadn't at all.
Yes, the task of turning America's monumental ignorance into reason is a great one. I only need one column to know that Lyons has been monumentally ignorant his whole life. That shit didn't even make sense beyond his jingoistic bomb the darkies into submission morality.
He clearly knows absolutely nothing about foreign policy or the actual situations Obama's inserting drones into. He also knows nothing about terrorism, and certainly is to blithely idiotic to realize that the drone campaign in Pakistan has nothing to do with international terrorism and everything to do with the war in Afghanistan (which so many rotten liberals supported even though a retarded chimpanzee couldn't have predicted the mess the US finds itself in on the evening of 9/11). He fails to connect blatantly obvious dots. The Soviets launched air strikes against Pakistani areas in the Soviet Afghan War. They did so because the mujahedin were basing out of Pakistani tribal areas, supported by the ISI. Of course Lyons is too ignorant to understand that it was the US that taught and helped Pakistan start this game and that it won't help Obama any more than it helped the Soviets.
He then goes on to simply equate the situation in Yemen with that in Pakistan. Again, he's a classic Democrat (it appears) when it comes to foreign policy. They're neck-in-neck with the GOP for being utter and complete fuckups on the world stage. Cause ya know Carter started the fucking around in Afghanistan/Pakistan and supporting the same people Obama feels it necessary to drone to death today.
I'll bet he's written at least one column on R2P or some variation on the theme, cause Dems love a humanitarian war. It let's them get their imperial violence on with a clean conscience.
"I do solemnly swear (or
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mad props to axelplouffe for realizing that obama the constitutional scholar is soooo 5 years ago. clever of them to attempt remaking his image into obama the religious scholar; certainly gene lyons seems willing to argue that the musings of a couple of long-dead gurus are sufficient justification to subvert the ungodly constitution.
C'mon, presstitutes have to
C'mon, presstitutes have to earn a living too.