The Western Counter-terrorist strategy is a failure
The counterforce, counterintelligence military strategy of the Western Powers in the Middle East is a complete failure.
Maybe we should stop bombing people in their own countries for no reason other than profit.
What if ISIS was dropping flying robot bombs and killing people near your home every week.
Would that make you want to surrender to them and let them install a new puppet government? That is the model the western powers are following.
It only serves the interests of the super rich industrialists who profit from eternal war, and the giant bloated militarys designed to fight the Soviet Union which had ten thousand nuclear weapons, 50 thousand tanks, and six million men under arms.
The media has managed, through selective reporting and selective outrage like that over the atrocities on Belgium this week, to get people so scared that they treat IS, which is 2-3 divisions worth of light infantry and press-ganged, barely trained conscripts, as though it is an existential threat on the scale of the old Soviet Union.
Copyright © 2016 Henry Edward Hardy
Secret drone court? No, thanks!
The idea of establishing a secret “drone court” modeled on the FISA court is an exceptionally bad one. Here in brief are some of my objections:
The court and its proceedings would be secret. It would be even worse than the infamous English Star Chamber. Even in the Star Chamber you had to be accused of doing *something*. As I understand it, the standard being articulated by the US administration now is “imminent danger”. Hello, “Minority Report” scenario anyone?
These death warrants would constitute a “Bill of Attainder” which is very expressly and categorically prohibited in the US Constitution Article I Section 9.
It is a fundamental and blatant violation of customary international law, in particular the 1923 Hague Convention. No you cannot bomb civilians. No you cannot bomb mosques and hospitals. No you cannot bomb people away from the battlefield.
Granted these prohibitions were blatantly ignored in the latter phases of WWII by all major participants. Nonetheless the principals in the German V-1 and V-2 rocket program were tried for war crimes in the Dora trial of 1947. But they were acquitted of all charges and found refuge in the US, where their work became the basis of the US space and missile programs. The drone is the modern inheritor of the Nazi V-1 buzz bomb both in scientific development and in the shocking lack of ethics.
It is murder. It is lying. It is covert and unaccountable. It is a grim violation of international law and simple human decency. It is clearly unconstitutional.
Come on Congress and President Obama. Think about this. How hard can it be to see what is right?
International Law on the Bombing of Civilians
Copyright © 2013 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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