Comment
sent to NYT forum on Jan 7 article “Congress to See Memo Backing drone Attacks
against Americans”
I’ve
felt ambivalent about the drones for a long time, refused to condemn the one
that killed Anwar Al Aleki – and was once asked by a co-patriot debater
how I’d feel if Obama sent a drone missile at me, an American citizen living
abroad. I replied that I didn’t expect he’d aim one at me since I had come
abroad simply to do a humble university job and not join an organization that
was at war with the US and had a long history of massacres against Americans.
As far as I’m concerned if you join such an organization whose aims are to
destroy the US, attack its interests and kill its citizens, you can’t count on
your citizenship to protect you. Al Awleki obviously gave up his citizenship
with its rights & privileges when he joined al Queda, the organization
behind 9/11 and with which our government was officially at war. Plus Awleki's
string of misdeeds, fatwas issued against American cartoonists and suspected
involvement in even more dangerous plots, justified force (Farouk said that
Awleki sent him). Yes, it would have been better to arrest and put the man on
trial, but in Yemen, from everything I could tell, this was clearly
impractical. I’ve read that al Queda’s goal in starting a war with the US was
to lure American soldiers into the desert and mountains where Bin Laden thought
they could be easily slaughtered. Viewed in this perspective, the drones are probably the better alternative though still morally dubious with all the
"collateral" deaths. Nevertheless, that the issue is being debated
publicly shows that the US gov’t is still accountable to its people and the
world (esp. Pakistan & Yemen); hopefully, the secrecy charge will no
longer apply, and the moral, political and military issues will get finally an
airing. Actually, this incident reassures me about the basic integrity of our
system despite its many failures, especially in foreign policy. Perhaps after deliberation the drone program will be cut back, cancelled or better regulated. The drones certainly are a horrible evil but the evil that gave rise to them has to be fully gauged as well. (Of course you may dismiss these views as the ramblings of an expatriate badly out of touch with opinion in the USA!).
Glenn Greenwald's Guardian Op Ed "Racism Drives the War on Terror" reprinted here in the Gulf News (31March '13) opinion section, is an impassioned but (I feel) misguided attack on the US rationale for targeting and killing Anwar Al Awleki last year (by a drone strike in Yemen). Greenwald takes a high moralistic tone in his argument that the reason Americans approved of the killing of Awleki but --as shown in a poll -- did not approve in general of the idea of assassinating American citizens abroad-- can only be ascribed to racism against Arabs and Muslims. Assuming the statistics & poll are correct, his assumption still seems unverified and unverifiable. Awleki stood out as an especially dangerous fanatic, and the decision to kill him was not trivially based on racism. First, Awleki belonged to and headed an especially virulent branch of Al Quede, an organization at war with the US; anyone who joins it can't be expected to be protected by their citizenship. As a declared enemy in wartime, he had to expect retaliation. Not only that, Awlaki was involved in or certainly connected to several murderous plots in the US: the most dastardly of these the Christmas 2011 attempt to bomb a passenger plane in Detroit by the Nigerian "underpants bomber" (name: Farouk somebody) was provably sent by Awlaki; Col Nidal Hasan's murderous outburst at Ford Hood killing 13 (he had corresponded with Awkeki) is suspicious at least. The (failed) Times Sq bomber may not have had a clear connection to Awlaki (this case still up in the air it seems). However, people forget that Awleki also threatened with death fatwas several American cartoonists, first the creators of South Park then a cartoonist in Seattle who defended them in a satirical harmless way. I don't like to say her name because she had to go underground and assume a new identity. To me this latter case is far from insignificant (though entirely forgotten now) because it revived the earliest Muslim assault on the whole world's civil liberties perpetrated by the Ayatollah Khomeini when he condemned Salman Rushdie to death. These are the common sense reasons -- and not any kind of racism-- why I approved of the drone attack that killed Awlaki, and I imagine most Americans felt the same. Why wait for a successful repeat of 9/11 or a Rushdie sequel to neutralize this dangerous man? It's certainly too bad his son suffered the same fate, but the father was clearly the more guilty of his son's death by putting him in harm's way.
Documentation:
From My Northwest: "The FBI warned Norris [the cartoonist] they considered the threat by Anwar al-Awlaki, who has ties to the failed Times Square bombing attempt, serious."
Glenn Greenwald's Guardian Op Ed "Racism Drives the War on Terror" reprinted here in the Gulf News (31March '13) opinion section, is an impassioned but (I feel) misguided attack on the US rationale for targeting and killing Anwar Al Awleki last year (by a drone strike in Yemen). Greenwald takes a high moralistic tone in his argument that the reason Americans approved of the killing of Awleki but --as shown in a poll -- did not approve in general of the idea of assassinating American citizens abroad-- can only be ascribed to racism against Arabs and Muslims. Assuming the statistics & poll are correct, his assumption still seems unverified and unverifiable. Awleki stood out as an especially dangerous fanatic, and the decision to kill him was not trivially based on racism. First, Awleki belonged to and headed an especially virulent branch of Al Quede, an organization at war with the US; anyone who joins it can't be expected to be protected by their citizenship. As a declared enemy in wartime, he had to expect retaliation. Not only that, Awlaki was involved in or certainly connected to several murderous plots in the US: the most dastardly of these the Christmas 2011 attempt to bomb a passenger plane in Detroit by the Nigerian "underpants bomber" (name: Farouk somebody) was provably sent by Awlaki; Col Nidal Hasan's murderous outburst at Ford Hood killing 13 (he had corresponded with Awkeki) is suspicious at least. The (failed) Times Sq bomber may not have had a clear connection to Awlaki (this case still up in the air it seems). However, people forget that Awleki also threatened with death fatwas several American cartoonists, first the creators of South Park then a cartoonist in Seattle who defended them in a satirical harmless way. I don't like to say her name because she had to go underground and assume a new identity. To me this latter case is far from insignificant (though entirely forgotten now) because it revived the earliest Muslim assault on the whole world's civil liberties perpetrated by the Ayatollah Khomeini when he condemned Salman Rushdie to death. These are the common sense reasons -- and not any kind of racism-- why I approved of the drone attack that killed Awlaki, and I imagine most Americans felt the same. Why wait for a successful repeat of 9/11 or a Rushdie sequel to neutralize this dangerous man? It's certainly too bad his son suffered the same fate, but the father was clearly the more guilty of his son's death by putting him in harm's way.
Documentation:
From My Northwest: "The FBI warned Norris [the cartoonist] they considered the threat by Anwar al-Awlaki, who has ties to the failed Times Square bombing attempt, serious."
