To all those now hailing the re-election of Barack Obama as a triumph of decent, humane, liberal values over the oozing-postule perfidy of the Republicans, a simple question:
Is this child dead enough for you?
This little boy was named Naeemullah. He was in his house -- maybe playing, maybe sleeping, maybe having a meal -- when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door.
As we all know, these drone missiles are, like the president who wields them, super-smart, a triumph of technology and technocratic expertise. We know, for the president and his aides have repeatedly told us, that these weapons -- launched only after careful consultation of the just-war strictures of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas -- strike nothing but their intended targets and kill no one but "bad guys." Indeed, the president's top aides have testified under oath that not a single innocent person has been among the thousands of Pakistani civilians -- that is, civilians of a sovereign nation that is not at war with the United States -- who have been killed by the drone missile campaign of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Yet somehow, by some miracle, the missile that roared into the residential area where Naeemullah lived did not confine itself neatly to the house it struck. Somehow, inexplicably, the hunk of metal and wire and computer processors failed -- in this one instance -- to look into the souls of all the people in the village and ascertain, by magic, which ones were "bad guys" and then kill only them. Somehow -- perhaps the missile had been infected with Romney cooties? -- this supercharged hunk of high explosives simply, well, exploded with tremendous destructive power when it struck the residential area, blowing the neighborhood to smithereens.
As Wired reports, shrapnel and debris went flying through the walls of Naeemullah's house and ripped through his small body. When the attack was over -- when the buzzing drone sent with Augustinian wisdom by the Peace Laureate was no longer lurking over the village, shadowing the lives of every defenseless inhabitant with the terrorist threat of imminent death, Naeemullah was taken to the hospital in a nearby town.
This is where the picture of above was taken by Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan who has been chronicling the effects of the Peace Laureate's drone war. When the picture was taken, Naeemullah was dying. He died an hour later.
He died.
Is he dead enough for you?
Dead enough not to disturb your victory dance in any way? Dead enough not to trouble the inauguration parties yet to come? Dead enough not to diminish, even a little bit, your exultant glee at the fact that this great man, a figure of integrity, decency, honor and compassion, will be able to continue his noble leadership of the best nation in the history of the world?
A long excerpt, I know, but it's not a short post. And quite difficult to find a place to "cut off" when excerpting. Please read the whole thing.
3 comments:
I read the whole thing, of course, as I read all of Chris' essays. I cried because I used to have little boys who are now big boys. I never had to worry about a stray weapon killing them and can't even grasp what unimaginable grief the child't parents must be feeling. I made an "informed decision" about voting, Jim, as you did, so neither of us voted. We haae that, at least.
Jim:
Chris Floyd publishes pictures that he has no way of authenticating. Right now his website tells a tale about an Israeli attack on Gaza - when in fact the Israelis are responding to rocket attacks from Gaza. Over 750 rockets have been launched at the Israelis in 2012 and three civilians in Israel died the other day. But Mr. Floyd is blind to the real aggressors in the middle east. One picture published by Hamas of a dead child supposedly killed in Gaza (not on Floyd's site) turned out to a child killed in Syria in October - it is called propaganda.
War is hell always but dealing with Islamists eliminates any hope of civilized cessation. In Afghanistan and Pakistan we can send in troops to be killed or we can send in drones - at least until Obama shuts down and pulls out of that nonsense war.
So ... I guess that child's not dead enough for you.
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