Drones Undermining Democracy – A Protest Letter By Salman Ahmad To The US State Department.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
As a UN Goodwill ambassador and an artist with a conscience, I want to use this opportunity to register my protest against the indiscriminate use of US drones in the war in Afghanistan.These drones are radicalizing more youth than AL-Qaeda or the Taliban can ever hope to do and are not even considered a game changer in the conflict in Afghanistan & Pakistan.
There is more anti-Americanism now in Pakistan than there was during the Bush era. Killer drones are the worst way to win hearts and minds of the people & many American & global voices like President Jimmy Carter's are openly cautioning against setting this dangerous precedence of drone warfare.I hope that you can convey my protest to Ambassador Marc Goodman, the US army personnel & the CIA operatives who order these strikes. The US needs to lead the world with responsibility & uphold the best ethics of just warfare in keeping with international law.
I want to remind us all of heeding Doctor King's quote: "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period… was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
The following article was written by Peter W. Singer for The New York Times.
In democracies like ours, there have always been deep bonds between the public and its wars. Citizens have historically participated in decisions to take military action, through their elected representatives, helping to ensure broad support for wars and a willingness to share the costs, both human and economic, of enduring them.
America, our Constitution explicitly divided the president’s role as commander in chief in war from Congress’s role in declaring war. Yet these links and this division of labor are now under siege as a result of a technology that our founding fathers never could have imagined.
Just 10 years ago, the idea of using armed robots in war was the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. Today, the United States military has more than 7,000 unmanned aerial systems, popularly called drones. There are 12,000 more on the ground. Last year, they carried out hundreds of strikes — both covert and overt — in six countries, transforming the way our democracy deliberates and engages in what we used to think of as war.
We don’t have a draft anymore; less than 0.5 percent of Americans over 18 serve in the active-duty military. We do not declare war anymore; the last time Congress actually did so was in 1942 — against Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. We don’t buy war bonds or pay war taxes anymore. During World War II, 85 million Americans purchased war bonds that brought the government $185 billion; in the last decade, we bought none and instead gave the richest 5 percent of Americans a tax break.
And now we possess a technology that removes the last political barriers to war. The strongest appeal of unmanned systems is that we don’t have to send someone’s son or daughter into harm’s way. But when politicians can avoid the political consequences of the condolence letter — and the impact that military casualties have on voters and on the news media — they no longer treat the previously weighty matters of war and peace the same way.
For the first 200 years of American democracy, engaging in combat and bearing risk — both personal and political — went hand in hand. In the age of drones, that is no longer the case.
Read the full article here!
This technology seems like an open door invitation to the war mongers of the U.S. to invade anyone at anytime. Pretty scarey stuff. This is definitely and clearly a defined path to desensitizing war. A double-edged sword. The good of it being fewer of our soldiers being harmed or killed, but the bad of it being a cold realization that not only the bad guys (and probably very few of them) but also many innocents are and will be affected. This is a safe but cowardly way of war...and, perhaps, method of take over of other countries.
I dont think so.US is doing right by killing terrorists .All persons who are spreading terror by killing innocent people must be killed.I also recommend other countries who are victims of terrorism should join US.
Did you say Democracy??