Writing in The Guardian, a former drone operator mocks US politicians’ defense of the murderous program she was a part of for years.
Thoughts of a Former Drone Operator
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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I heard the 911 perps called ‘cowards’ on a number of occasions. Seriously? I mean they rode their instruments of destruction to their own deaths. That’s not cowardice by anybody’s book.
So – just how brave is it to push a button while sitting miles away from the scene?
I’ve head Al Qaeda called ‘murderers’ for killing innocents. But we’ve killed several orders of magnitude more innocents. We claim the right to use drones to kill people in countries we’re not even at war with, all because of 911. We claim the right to collective punishment as a moral imperative.
If it’s moral for us to kill a thousand for every innocent killed – then it’s moral for them to do the same thing. By our own reasoning, then, they’ve got the right to kill every, single American citizen five times over.
Well, yeah. That’s what the hijackers were told. That no American is innocent of what his country does to the Arab world. So in turn, we have adopted the same viewpoint it would seem.
I think the 9/11 hijackers are called cowards because they killed helpless people, but I agree it’s silly. Maybe they’re cowards for ‘taking the easy way out.’ Haha.
I think the reason that our government leaders call the terrorists “cowards” is in order to dehumanize them. It really isn’t any more complicated than that.
Certainly. I was just trying to get at the rationalization for saying so.
Dehumanization courtesy of the Ministry of Truthiness. Other samples include:
“They hate us for our freedoms”
“911 was an unprovoked attack”
“Guantanamo detainees are guilty”
“Afghanistan was responsible”
“Iraq was responsible”
“Islam was responsible”
(uhh, is there a limit to the size of the posts? There seems to be no limit to the amount of organic fertilizer produced by MiniTru)
@ CrazyH –
.
You didn’t list: “They’re trying to build an atomic bomb!”
.
Oh, wait – In view of recent developments at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, they don’t even need a bomb. All they have to do is develop a failed reactor and cause a melt-down.
«Faulty information» is the name of the game, Ted, and has been ever since it began to be played. To take an example about to become a century old, consider the WW I British propaganda about German soldiers tossing Belgian babies into the air for bayonet practice. What was it Pogo used to say – «we have met the enemy and he is us» ?…
Henri