Hellfire from the sky - Or America's Crimes Exposed

United States President Barack Obama, who is due to visit India in early November, has virtually adhered to almost all the security policies of his predecessor. In fact, he has enhanced some of the most reprehensible policies of the George W. Bush administration, including the targeting of civilians by unmanned drones. Rendition (kidnapping) and indefinite detention of terror suspects have increased under his watch.

President Obama has substantially increased defence spending and has expanded the war in Afghanistan. A Federal Court in the U.S. overturned a decision by a lower court granting former prisoners tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the right to sue for damages. The Federal judge said he overturned the ruling because he supported the Obama administration's position on the issue. He stated in his judgment that “there is a painful conflict between human rights and national security”. The judge concluded that fundamental human rights had to be sacrificed at the altar of national security.

Before assuming the presidency, Obama had promised to give up the unlawful practices of the Bush administration such as the rendition of suspects to secret CIA bases in countries such as Romania and Poland, where they were routinely subjected to torture.

Such practices may have diminished somewhat, but the Obama administration has wholeheartedly endorsed the Bush administration's policy of eliminating terror suspects using pilotless high-tech drone aircraft. Instead of using the laborious technique of capturing alleged terrorists from their hideouts in crowded cities and remote villages, the drones just bomb the house or village where the suspects are holed up. In the process, there has been huge collateral damage. Innocent civilians killed far outnumber those killed in the fight against the occupation.

Ever since he took office two years ago, Obama has made the deadly drones a key instrument in his fight against the militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The drones are also being used liberally to target militants in Yemen and Somalia. The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Obama had, since assuming power, authorised more than 120 drone attacks in Pakistan. During the eight years of the Bush presidency, there were only an estimated 60 such drone attacks. The drone attacks have contributed significantly to the alienation of the Pakistani public from the U.S. and the rise in suicide attacks on American and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) targets.

The CIA had targeted the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mesud 16 times with drones. It was only in the last attempt that it succeeded in getting him. In the last attack alone, around nine of his relatives and friends were killed. Most of those killed in the continuing drone attacks have been poor civilians living in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. More than 700 civilians were killed in 2009. This year the numbers are bound to rise substantially.

The drones, many of which are launched by CIA operatives from Pakistani military bases, allow the U.S. military to function from Pakistani territory without attracting much domestic attention. Washington and Islamabad have never publicly acknowledged the presence of U.S. troops on Pakistani soil.

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http://www.frontline.in/stories/20101119272305500.htm

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