After a harmless personal quadcopter drone piloted by a drunk intelligence agent (you can’t make these things up) crashes on the White House lawn, a spooked Obama demands action on regulating UAVs. This comes after years of foot-dragging which has put the US drone industry at a disadvantage.
Drone Hits Home
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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Indeed, a truly exceptional “Empire as Victim” moment.
Not at all exceptional, falco, the Empire is always a «victim». which is why it needs and uses those bloated military and (un)intelligence resources to attack others all ’round the globe. As we know, it is hated because of its «democracy» – whatever that is….
Henri
At least a large minority, if not a majority, of Americans agree: none of the blame for the children’s deaths can be assigned to the US. It was the terrorists who are trying to destroy the US who are entirely responsible for the deaths of any innocents, assuming anyone who was killed by the US was innocent, when US law, following Thrasymachus, says that all those killed by the US were guilty of capital offences, and those targeted were heinous murderers.
As Socrates pointed out, Thrasymachus’ definition of ‘justice’ lacks internal consistency, and so is disqualified as a prescriptive definition; Thrasymachus defended his definition as descriptive rather than prescriptive. So all the victims of the US drone strikes were both guilty, so they deserved to die, and also innocent, so those targeted were also guilty of murdering all those innocents killed by US drone strikes.
So as long as the US is the strongest nation, it can do no wrong. It is ‘justice’ for the US to drone children, and a heinous crime for anyone to drone the White House lawn.
True.
Let’s not forget Terror is an emotion, and emotions are subjective experiences of sentient beings.
Anyone who feels terror as a consequence of another’s action has been terrorized by that other’s action and can be said to be a victim of terrorism.
To see mass destruction is to see an objective fact of what is.
Mass destruction by bombing, without regard to the means of bomb delivery, produces terror in sentient beings. All bombing of sentient beings is terrorism.
Reclaim the words and use them where they apply without political connotations and limitations where the objective mass destruction and the subjective emotion are in a cause/effect relation.
Declaim all political usage of the words as jingoism and war propaganda designed to incite hatred, fear, and war fever.
When the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was bombed the question was asked by a reporter if it was terrorism. Of course it was terrorism.
But the political hacks claimed it may not be terrorism, and then decided it was not terrorism, because it could not be attributed to a Middle Eastern nation.
I think Ted is using the wrong word. Narcissist? The condition is better described as psychopathic.
Ah, but narcissism is one of the defining characteristics of psychopathy…. 😉
Henri
They SAY the drone over the Whitehouse was flown by a “drunken intelligence” agent!
Good point !…
Henri