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21st century robotic wars
By JAMAL KANJ
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Thursday, September 13,
2012
ON the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a new
'sanitised war' is reshaping the future of America's military industrial
complex.
The drones, or the new robotic war, is operated by a galaxy
of military bases stretching from the Creech Air Force Base in the desert of
Nevada, traversing through CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, before
landing on new desert airstrips in the Middle East.
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles' main mission is tracking and
targeted killing of alleged terrorists.
Earlier this month, a drone using the newly introduced, more
accurate Small Smart Weapon or Scorpion missile, delivered a direct hit, by
mistake, killing 13 family members near the town of Rada, Yemen.
Following the raid, Yemeni activist Nasr Abdulla said:
"I would not be surprised if a hundred tribesmen joined the lines of Al
Qaeda... This part of Yemen takes revenge very seriously."
Last May, a Yemeni official told The Washington Post:
"There is a psychological acceptance of Al Qaeda because of US
strikes."
In modern history, no military power was able to
unequivocally win a guerilla war.
The hardest fought battle is for the hearts and minds of the
average person; the US is squarely losing this war. The drone killings of
innocent bystanders, by mistake or utter recklessness, breeds resentments and
new Al Qaeda recruits.
The latest was not an isolated incident. A 2009 study by
Daniel Byman at the Brookings Institute concluded that drone strikes have
killed "10 or so civilians" for "every mid- and high-ranking
(terrorist) leader".
US officials continue to downplay the loss of civilians
while publicly asserting their best efforts to avoid "collateral
damage".
But this claim is disputed by Micah Zenko of the Council of
Foreign Relations, who recently wrote: "The claim that the 3,000+ people
killed in roughly 375 non-battlefield targeted killings were all engaged in
actual operational plots against the US defies any understanding of the scope
of what America has been doing for the past 10 years."
Another major blunder was last November's killing of more
than 24 Pakistani soldiers in what became known as the Salata incident,
prompting the government to close the border for Nato supplies into
Afghanistan.
Last June, 18 civilians were killed at a wedding in the
village of Logar, forcing the Afghan president to demand a halt to drone
strikes.
Eleven years after 9/11, every branch of the US military,
including the CIA, has its robotic drones operating throughout the world.
US Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Georgetown University
professor Gary Solis warned that allowing CIA civilian agents to engage in
armed conflict would directly contravene US laws.
The drone franchise business has branched into a new
extension of the military industrial complex, with its parallel lobbying arm
backing the new, permanent war economy manifested by more than 60 new
cross-functional military bases around the globe.
Late last year, online magazine Salon referred to a
Congressional Budget Office report saying the "Department of Defence plans
to purchase 730 new medium-sized and large unmanned aircraft systems" in
the next decade.
Like the intercontinental missiles in the sixties, and Star
Wars technology in the 1980s, robotic drone warfare is reinventing the military
industrial complex of the 21st century.
The only victor in this longest of US foreign wars is a
coalition of single-issue think tanks, political leaders and business hucksters
driven by mutual interest fostered by a culture of killing, vengeance and
profit.
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