Let’s Extend Our Grief to the Deaths of ALL Innocent Children
Professor Juan Cole made these remarks yesterday in his blog, Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion:
Of the some 3000 persons killed by US drones, something like 600 have been innocent noncombatant bystanders, and of these 176 were children. In some instances the US drone operators have struck at a target, then waited for rescuers to come and struck again, which would be a war crime. Obviously, children may run in panic to the side of an injured parent, so they could get hit by the indiscriminate second strike.
[…]
Someone actually wrote me chiding me that the Newtown children were “not in a war zone!” Americans seem not to understand that neither is Waziristan a “war zone.” No war has been declared there, no fronts exist, no calls for evacuation of civilians from their villages have been made. They’re just living their lives, working farms and going to school. They are not Arabs, and most are not Taliban. True, some sketchy Egyptians or Libyans occasionally show up and rent out a spare room. So occasionally an American drone appears out of nowhere and blows them away.
Robert Greenwald of the Brave New Foundation explains further: (warning: graphic and not for the squeamish):
Read Juan Cole’s complete post here: “Let’s also Remember the 176 children Killed by US Drones”
One thought on “Let’s Extend Our Grief to the Deaths of ALL Innocent Children”
I have been waiting for someone to state the obvious and I thank Mr. Cole, with whom I have differences, for this blatant truth.
Of course we all are horrified by the events in Newton Connecticut as any sane and rational person would be. Yet the death toll in the Middle East continues to rise as both Mr. Cole and Mr. Greenwald point out. Perhaps a case might be made for the theory that ten years of war, torture, and the seeming unending killing of innocents abroad has infected our own culture.
I was on a forum directly after the events of 911 and the question was asked,”why did those events happen?” One poster, a retired schoolteacher in fact, a man who had marched with Doctor King in Selma and Montgomery, stated simply,”because we had it coming”. He was promptly banned from that forum. Yet that simple answer has remained with me all these years later.