The world is aghast about the shooting of 14-year-old activist and student Malala Yousafzai, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province by the Taliban. But what’s the difference between that atrocity and the murders by the U.S. of other Pakistani civilians using Predator drone planes?
At Least the Taliban Don’t Use Drones
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Do you really want an answer to your question, Ted? I don’t think so. You are starting to resemble FOX news in the way that you pose, poser. As far as the world is aghast, first of all, most Americans don’t know the word aghast, because they want is an iPhone5 before anything else, and the last time they were ALL AGHAST – it was to lynch Zimmerman or express their great intelligent feelings about Britney Spears. Given your talents – I would have Obama holding one of his homemade beers – after all, he actually is human, and his hobby is making beer, not cocktails with umbrellas – Getting back to drones versus crazy MF’s boarding a bus for kids to kill one of them- WTF? – How can you even try to compare this against what i do? Ted – I would suggest that you discontinue your efforts in cartoons and move over to actually doing something positive. Your negative efforts are getting less and less in return. Live, learn and do something positive – it actually works, and I am not an ad for “Google Pays me Thousands of Dollars Every Gay”
rikster: caught this interesting comment mixed in with your insanity: “How can you even try to compare this against what i do?”. Are you saying you’re one of the video game murderers who pilot these awful things? If so, you have the blood of innocents on your hands – even more directly than those of us who aren’t doing all we can to stop this insane mors ab alto.
Video game murderers? No – I actually think the people guiding these drones are misled and don’t really understand what they are doing and the consequences of their actions. I’m an English teacher, and I am amazed at how Ted can now begin to rall about Malala, while much other more important issues continue. Geez- you people get all AGHAST about small things and beat each other like crazy about them – like exoplantdude – and then bark like dogs about things that are very small in the big picture. If I was exobuttheadian, then i would suggest that you be executed, but I’m not – so i suggest you STFU – ignorant retard as you are.
For God’s sake – “At least the Taliban don’t use Drones”? WTF? Like this would be better if they did? Come-on Ted, get real. Geez, guys, the Taliban will kill their own kids and family if they cross the line of any of their crazy religious or cultural beliefs. I was told over 15 years ago by an American who grew up in Afghanistan as a kid while his father was an American sodier based in Afghanistan that we Americans could never understand these people – because they love warfare and hatred – it’s part of their nature and upbringing – to be a fighter ans soldier was better than being a peaceful shop-owner. If I could, i would turn this part of the world into green radioactive glass. Much easier than the misery thay continues on and on trying to deal with people who live in a different century andd only want to kill for Kali or Muhammed or whatever.
” … they love warfare and hatred … ”
That hardly distinguished “us” from “them.”
Sorry Falco – My friend who grew up in Afghanistan told me that even when offered money and resources to stop and build a business or live a peaceful life, that many of the Afghanis would never accept it. Instead, they prefer killing. He said that endless wars and occupation have created a type of person that knows and respects no other attitude or goal. If this is true, then what would you propose other than what you would do for a crazy mad dog or anything else that cannot be reasoned with? This is what I see. We should have left them alone and never gone there. They are berserk and beyond reason. The idea that a kid would spend his life and effort to come to immigrate to America to kill us is amazing. Get a clue – either get away from them or eliminate them – the same advice for dealing with a rabid dog.
To rikster:
There is an easy solution for Americans of such delicate sensibility: STAY THE FUCK OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES’ COUNTRIES.
Instead we pay over 50% of our taxes (http://tinyurl.com/6aj4zqu) to make more or less continuous wars on others around the globe (http://tinyurl.com/5uy93) since WWII.
So whether a country suffers (them) or causes (us) “endless wars and occupation” the same “type of person that knows and respects no other attitude or goal” is created.
As one of those who barks against the small and large things, a few points:
1. As the saying goes: millions of deaths are a statistic; one death is a tragedy. The individual case allows for a better comprehension of the totality of what has occurred. Additionally, large problems are seen as intractable, even when they aren’t. Look at smoking. Kills hundreds of thousands (a 9/11 twice a week and you’d have the same level of dying). You can go all the way back to “The Brady Bunch” to see that in the 1970s, people were against smoking. (Remember when Greg got caught with a pack of smokes in his jacket?) But you can’t fight the tobacco companies. They win the court fights, they win the representatives, they win because they have all the money. So you go for something small. No smoking in theaters. No smoking in restaurants. No smoking in hospitals. Why? Because the smokers think they have a right to smoke, like I have a right to drink coffee. When I point out that it isn’t the smoking, it’s the exhaling (and the littering — I know only two smokers in my entire life who didn’t treat the whole world as an ashtray for their filters and package cellophone) and that I’m perfectly okay with them smoking AND exhaling, as long as they allow me to drink my coffee AND then piss out the end product all over their hair and clothing, suddenly, I’m the monster.
2. Ted’s point on the predator drones is exactly correct. The fact is inescapable: the drones are killing (by an enormous factor) more civilians than terrorists. Granted, this has always been the case with bombardment: the bombs don’t magically allow the innocent to escape. But that doesn’t excuse it. America always holds itself up as a representation of the highest ideals: democracy, freedom, the highest-quality pornography, milkshakes in multiple flavors at the drivethrus that gird this great land of ours. We are always telling people that we are better than they are over in Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Norway, etc. But we never come through on that, do we? Certainly not when blowing innocent people into hamburger.
3. I wonder if Romney’s people will use this point in the final debate (I say Romney’s people because Romney, himself, isn’t debating. He has been prepped and coached by his team. The words might be his, but the ideas and the mindset will be the groupthink of Team Romney). I wonder about the effect of Romney saying: “Mr. President. Your predator drones are killing something like 50 innocent people for every so-called terrorist. All this will do, as anyone can tell you, is generate more terrorists out of the surviving family and friends of those innocent people who have been killed. My question to you, sir, is this: If it were your two precious daughters (repeat “two precious daughters” after a momentary pause) who’d been killed by someone 6,000 miles away, would you be satisfied with a message delivered by an intermediary that said your thoughts and prayers were with them, or would you start looking for ways to kill Americans? Mr. President?” And then just keep hammering the point home throughout the debate: killing the innocent simply guarantees more terrorists in the future.
@Alex
2. And that is why I have a problem with the ridiculous claim that Obama “killed” all these people. Killing implies a level of intent that simply is not there in this case. There’s a large difference between people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and as you put it . . .”not allowing the innocent to escape” and actually killing someone. Imo, anyone who claims Obama has “killed” these people instead of classifying them as the accidental deaths which they are has outed themselves as only out to score political points.
3. I imagine the reaction would be raucous laughter, as given that Romney has called drones “important tools in the war on terrorism” (a war which he clearly intends to expand), he would’ve yet again outed himself as a complete and utter hypocrite- saying whatever he believes the audience wants to hear.
While I agree wholeheartedly with the central point- that all the war on terror does is create more terrorists- for you to think that Romney could have the slightest shred of credibility on this is beyond bizarre.
@Whimsical, By your standards the 9/11 hijackers never “killed” anyone. Those office workers were “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” right? Those deaths were accidental.
No. When you drop explosives from the air, you are by law and logic killing anyone who gets killed as a result.
This is doubly true with Obama’s despicable “double tap” drone strikes, where a second missile strikes rescue workers who come to rescue the wounded and carry away the dead.
@Alex-
Oh, and I’ve been saying for years that Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, and Norway are all BETTER than the U.S. Even if they are just as shitty as us to other countries(which, really, they mostly aren’t), they take care of their own a lot better.
@Ted
Oh, what a load of crap. The 9/11 hijackers clearly intended to kill Americans, they just didn’t care who they killed. World of difference from being unlucky and in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The only way that comparison is even remotely valid is if you’re trying to tell me that Obama just wanted to kill brown people, and didn’t particularly care who they were. And if you’re seriously trying to sell that as your point, you’re even further gone into ODS than I thought.
@Whimsical: Dropping bombs willynilly into the tribal areas–which is what Obama does, as proven by studies that show that by the Pentagon’s own accounting, they hardly ever hit their targets–is morally indistinguishable from 9/11.
Sorry Ted, the ONLY way it’s indistinigushable from 9/11 is if the Pentagon is randomly dropping bombs just for the express purpose of killing brown people- and if they are, you’re gonna have to do a hell of a lot better than “Cause I say so” as proof of that.
Randomly killing people because the Pentagon emplys shitting tech and inaccurate bombers and intentionallly killing people are two morally very different things, and always will be.
If we’re really going to assign blame without intent, than fine- were Romney to be elected (which he won’t be) you’d be responible for anyone killed on his watch.
@Whimsical wrote: “Randomly killing people because the Pentagon emplys shitting tech and inaccurate bombers and intentionallly killing people are two morally very different things, and always will be.”
Am I the only person who doesn’t see a substantial difference?
Am I the only person who doesn’t see a substantial difference?
Between killing with intent and accidental death? I would certainly hope so.
Anyone not engaged in sophistry or blinded by their desire to score political points will tell you intent matters.
@Whimsical, Dropping bombs on a house IS killing with intent. The fact that you don’t know who is inside doesn’t change that.
Thanks, Ted, for showing the hypocrites once again paying the homage they owe – and seem so willing to pay – to vice. Murder by religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan is, of course, despicable – and was, at the time of the US decision to support them on 3 July 1979, of which the ineffable Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński is so proud – while murder by people of unknown religious sensibilities running drones from a chair in the United States is, to them merely «collateral damage». Wonder what they’d say if Afghans were running drones over the US….
Henri