CHALLENGING DRONOTOPIA - War Is A Crime .org

The Little Flower straw bale house under construction; photo taken in 2006 by Roger
Straw.
Our presentation Saturday morning focused on specifics of drone research in academia
in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee, and the establishment of an Air National
Guard Reaper drone control base at Nashville International Airport.
I said that the immorality of drone killings is not mentioned as much as it should be and
that religious leaders from denominations that spoke against the Viet Nam War have been
relatively mute about drones and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
During the Q & A, one man asked how the drone attacks were any different from carpetbombing
in World War II or other bombing. I said that with respect to morality there is
no difference, but that the world had now come to recognize the horror and
unacceptability of carpet-bombing and that the fact that we are not killing hundreds of
thousands of people means nothing to the people being killed; they are just as dead as if
they were being carpet-bombed.
We had already talked about the illegality of drone killing under international and
domestic law in that death sentences are being imposed without the accused having the
benefit of a trial and with the President of the United States acting as the arresting officer,
the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner.
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