CHALLENGING DRONOTOPIA - War Is A Crime .org
CHALLENGING DRONOTOPIA - War Is A Crime .org
CHALLENGING DRONOTOPIA - War Is A Crime .org
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Please view this report as a step toward a continuing conversation on what we all can<br />
do to stop the drone killing and to end the globalization of US military power. Please<br />
send your thoughts, and we will publish them. nickmottern@earthlink.net<br />
PART ONE – WHAT WE EXPERIENCED ON THE ROAD<br />
“U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.”<br />
In the late afternoon of September 20, 2012, in Room 101 of Maginnes Hall at Leigh<br />
University, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a young woman student from Yemen touched<br />
off a blast of reality that startled and sobered 50 or so of her fellow students and<br />
townspeople attending a talk I was giving about US drone attacks and surveillance.<br />
Paraphrased, she said:<br />
“I get the feeling that there are those in this room who value American lives much more<br />
than the lives of other people in the world. I am from Yemen. I am a city girl, but I live<br />
not far from a village where I have family members and where US drones killed 40<br />
people who were doing nothing but minding their daily business. The people in the<br />
village have no idea why this happened, they know nothing of al-Qaeda; they are trying<br />
to sue the United States.”<br />
After she spoke, there were other comments and questions, but her words hung in the<br />
air, a stark personal, undeniable witness to the fact that yes, US drone attacks are killing<br />
people and creating great suffering. For all of us there, drone killing now had a face, and<br />
the United States stood convicted. At the end of the Q & A, people went up to her to talk<br />
and to say they were sorry for what is happening; several, including me, gave her a hug<br />
and more thanked her for speaking out.<br />
The woman, with a sweet, friendly disposition, speaking in a soft, direct but extremely<br />
firm way, crystallized what appears to be the main reason that the American public is so<br />
accepting of drone wars – that is, the widely-held feeling that Americans are exceptional.<br />
This notion and the mistaken belief that drones have enabled the US to enter an ideal<br />
state of warfare in which the US can kill without consequences are the twin fantasies<br />
fueling our drone wars, leading to the illegal killing of thousands and the terrorizing of<br />
tens of thousands more.<br />
Her remarks were echoed the next day in the Q & A portion of a similar talk I gave at<br />
Lafayette College when a man from Pakistan said that the drones are a waste of money<br />
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