The Liberal Gun Club Forum

I Met a 16-Year-Old Kid. 3 Days Later Obama Killed Him

Last October I was at a jirga in Islamabad where 80 people from Waziristan had assembled to talk about the US Predator drones that buzz around overhead, periodically delivering death by Hellfire missile. A jirga is the traditional forum for discussing and resolving disputes, part parliament, part court of law. The turbaned tribal elders were joined by their young sons on a rare foray out of their region to meet outsiders and discuss the killing. The isolation of the Waziris is almost total – no western journalist has been to Miranshah for several years.

At our meeting I spoke as the representative westerner. I reported the CIA claim that not one single innocent civilian had been killed in over a year. I did not need to understand Pashtu to translate the snorts of derision when this claim was translated.

An outdoor meeting of military age males? Traditional jirga... or terrorist training camp? Well, according to Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama, it's the latter.

During the day I shook the hand of a 16-year-old kid from Waziristan named Tariq Aziz. One of his cousins had died in a missile strike, and he wanted to know what he could do to bring the truth to the west. At the Reprieve charity, we have a transparency project: importing cameras to the region to try to export the truth back out. Tariq wanted to take part, but I thought him too young.

Then, three days later, the CIA announced that it had eliminated "four militants". In truth there were only two victims: Tariq had been driving his 12-year-old cousin to their aunt's house when the Hellfire missile killed them both. This came just 24 hours after the CIA boasted of eliminating six other "militants" – actually, four chromite workers driving home from work. In both cases a local informant apparently tagged the car with a GPS monitor and lied to earn his fee.

Anybody who thinks this is at all an effective method of "fighting terrorism", even if you think it is something that can be successfully bombed into non-existence, is completely fucking insane. If you think that the CIA is at all and ever worthy of trust, particularly the blind trust that its actions overseas in any way benefit us or make us in anyway safer, you're an idiot.

Meanwhile, I'm sure Tariq Aziz' family would like to mourn him, maybe hold a funeral, but if they did the CIA would likely target yet another large group of civilians.

In February, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented that after the U.S. kills people with drones in Pakistan, it then targets for death those who show up at the scene to rescue the survivors and retrieve the bodies, as well as those who gather to mourn the dead at funerals: “the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals.” As The New York Times summarized those findings: “at least 50 civilians had been killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help those hit by a drone-fired missile” while “the bureau counted more than 20 other civilians killed in strikes on funerals.”

This repellent practice continues. Over the last three days, the U.S. has launched three separate drone strikes in Pakistan: one on each day. As The Guardian reports, the U.S. has killed between 20 and 30 people in these strikes, the last of which, early this morning, killed between 8 and 15. It was the second strike, on Sunday, that targeted mourners gathered to grieve those killed in the first strike

I wonder who else uses the tactics of secondary explosions as a tactic? Oh yeah, other terrorists.

Terrorists may use secondary explosive devices to kill and injure emergency personnel responding to an initial attack, the FBI has again warned U.S. law enforcement agencies.
PoliceOne has previously sent alerts of this subject, and we again warn law enforcement to be vigilant during all terrorist-type incidents for secondary attacks or explosions.

You just won't let up on this drone thing will you? I mean so what if innocent civilians are getting killed and the people we're after deserve a trial?

Tariq Aziz huh? Did he have coke bottle glasses and tell the news media that the Americans are not in Baghdad while tanks rumbled by in the background?

So when do we get the posts about how ebil Obama is going to start using the drones against his "enemies" stateside?

Droners. Birthers. Truthers. Any real difference?

UAV's being used in ground attack role mean about as much as fighter aircraft being used in ground attack role. Talking about the fact that they're UAV's is fearmongering.

wlewisiii wrote:So when do we get the posts about how ebil Obama is going to start using the drones against his "enemies" stateside?

Droners. Birthers. Truthers. Any real difference?

I hear he's gonna use them on Bradley Manning supporters

There could also be innumerable articles starting with:

"I met a 16 year old boy. 3 days later he strapped a bomb onto himself and killed 50 women and girls because they dared attend school."

"I met a 16 year old boy. 3 days later he was blown up while at a meeting attended by wanted violent Jihadists."

"I met a 16 year old boy. He was used as a propaganda tool to put an innocent face on a deadly tyrannical intolerant force. 3 days later he was blown up while in the company of most wanted murderers."

The sooner we exit that wasteland the sooner we can stop arguing among ourselves about it. For the record, my vote is going to the one who promises to disengage and withdraw immediately and I don't give a rats ass what color hat he or she is wearing.

wlewisiii wrote:So when do we get the posts about how ebil Obama is going to start using the drones against his "enemies" stateside?

Droners. Birthers. Truthers. Any real difference?

Are you saying the drone attacks don't happen?

Are you really drawing an equivalence between people who are convinced that Obama was born in Kenya, and people who think that the use of unmanned drone strikes in Pakistan, with little oversight or accountability, is an ultimately self-defeating idea?

Trying to determine if you're really that dishonest.

whitey wrote:

wlewisiii wrote:So when do we get the posts about how ebil Obama is going to start using the drones against his "enemies" stateside?

Droners. Birthers. Truthers. Any real difference?

I hear he's gonna use them on Bradley Manning supporters

"Ha ha, people are mad about bad things I'm fine with because it's my team doing it. Eyeroll! Tee hee!"

Awake wrote:There could also be innumerable articles starting with:

"I met a 16 year old boy. 3 days later he strapped a bomb onto himself and killed 50 women and girls because they dared attend school."

"I met a 16 year old boy. 3 days later he was blown up while at a meeting attended by wanted violent Jihadists."

"I met a 16 year old boy. He was used as a propaganda tool to put an innocent face on a deadly tyrannical intolerant force. 3 days later he was blown up while in the company of most wanted murderers."

I missed the legal defense where somebody else doing something bad to other people makes it okay for you to do something bad to other people.

So, Tariq Aziz was in the company of "most wanted murderers"? I'm sure you have some proof of that. Or are you just okay with kids dying so long as you can justify it in your own mind with some glib response?

We're not talking about obscure political theory here, arguing the finer points of this ideology or that ideology, we're talking about real things happening to real people. We're talking about people dying, and the level of acceptance that progressives suddenly have for it. Or, as Digby said recently,

Obviously, I don't know how much the above attitudes track with Tessler's "racialization spillover" index so maybe it legitimately represents a major change of heart among liberals who now support the same repressive policies they hated during George W. Bush's term. Clearly some of this is party tribalism as well. And there is a genuine trust and belief in Obama's leadership which probably accounts for some of it. But whatever it is, there can be little doubt that this president, for whatever reason, has managed to persuade many liberals to support security policies they were adamantly opposed to just a few years ago.

Amazing how all it takes to turn Democrats into hawks is a hawk Democrat President. Shouldn't be that surprising, it's far from the first time that has happened.

I agree that drones are an inpersonal (not sure if that is the word I want) way to strike an enemy at best but I can understand the reasoning behind them.
The one thing I like about them is the lack of troop commintment involved in their use but the inability of a drone to reconize the difference between friend,foe or inoocent is troubling to me and regardless of the good or bad about the drones is that we should cease all military action in Afghanistan and bring everyone there home,Osama is dead and that was the mission,,so it's over.A guy I worked with for a short time served in Afghanistan,was wounded in combat and gave a very good description of how it went over there,he said"It's like playing Whack a Mole with one arm tied behind your back and not knowing what the mole looked like and once you did figure out who the mole was you had to wait for permission to kill it"

Certain criminal gangs, the mob, cartels, and such, go after family, relatives (even distant) of their enemies to avoid being threatened in the future.

I guess we learned well from that?

Xela

Okay, Stop right here!

The problem is NOT that they are using drones, but that they are KILLING INNOCENT CIVILIANS.

Jesus, some of you are almost as scary as the tea baggers. I suggest everyone step back, breathe, forget about team democrat and team republican for a minute and think about why it's okay to kill innocent civilians when our shores are not in imminent danger.

Or are you all just fine with indiscriminate killing of civilians who just happen to be in a suspicious location, suspicious being very arbitrarily defined here.

Xela wrote:Certain criminal gangs, the mob, cartels, and such, go after family, relatives (even distant) of their enemies to avoid being threatened in the future.

I guess we learned well from that?

Xela

Dude even the mob doesn't hit funerals, we have surpassed the mob in terms of sheer terror. At this point it is safe to say the real terrorists in this conflict is the United States.

Funerals and first responders.

After a drone strike, all the first responders know is that there was an explosion of some sort. They don't know that a Predator did it, until the Predator kills them.

But research by the Bureau has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.

So our government is officially less honorable than the mob? Wonderful.

well at least we have acquired the most powerful defensive weapon ever conceived of by man: a reputation for extreme vengeance.

For the record, I'm not OK with drone strikes, I'm against the war so how would I be in favor of them? It gets tiresome when every post you start or add to is the constant this or that about what Obama is doing wrong. We get it Progurt, you don't like him. Why don't you stick this bullshit on your blog or is it that no one reads your ramblings so you have to subject us to it. Why not try talking about guns once in a while, this is after all a gun forum.

For the record, I appreciate Progurt's efforts at informing us.

There's a solution that Mark and the mods keep bringing up if someone is pissing you off: put them on ignore.

Deciding that Progurt's contributions are worthy of censorship would be capricious, given the general lack of active moderation on this forum.

(I've said this before but it is worth repeating: I think the forum would benefit from allowing users to make threads disappear from their view of the forum. Don't like a thread title? Or the first post in the thread? Bomb it! And you'll never see it again. Users cannot do this now but it is technically implementable. Unfortunately, I do not think this is as simple as flipping a switch on in the forum configuration. I could try my hand at a Greasemonkey script but then the burden would be on users to install it and use it properly, and it would probably be extremely fragile.)

I wouldn't go so far as saying Progurts posts piss me off, but to suggest that I should just put him on my ignore list rather than be able to voice an opinion is absurd.

whitey wrote:I wouldn't go so far as saying Progurts posts piss me off, but to suggest that I should just put him on my ignore list rather than be able to voice an opinion is absurd.

First you tell Progurt that he should only post his stuff about Obama on his own blog ( along with the obligatory insult ) then you say you won't put him on ignore so you can comment ( well, insult him ) on his posts...

For the record, in Muslim nations " Tariq" and " Aziz" are names as common as " Bob" and " Jones" are in the States.

Thanks for the info Progurt. There was an interesting article (I wish I remember where I read it) that talked about how President Obama has received support from Dems and liberals that, under the Bush administration, were condemned roundly.

Partisanship anyone?

KVoimakas wrote:Thanks for the info Progurt. There was an interesting article (I wish I remember where I read it) that talked about how President Obama has received support from Dems and liberals that, under the Bush administration, were condemned roundly.

Partisanship anyone?

As progurt has explained many, many times, it's playing for team democrat. Blame the other side for everything, and praise your side for everything and spin it to look good, even if what you just got done condemning the other side for is what you are praising your side for now. People have an amazing ability to ignore the failings of their own sides (yes fellow Marxists we are no different, even though we have math and precedent on our side), Instead of acknowledging their flaws they make up excuses and at the end of the day say "well, it's the best we can do, go team!". This will not change any time soon, as it is one of the most deeply seated problems of the human mind that prevents us from progressing. Fundamentally we are lazy and it is easier to make excuses than to devise new solutions.

the comedian wrote:For the record, in Muslim nations " Tariq" and " Aziz" are names as common as " Bob" and " Jones" are in the States.

Kinda figured that but I was making a slight joke about the name. I guess Marxists have no sense of humor and yes, I'll go as far as joking about a dead kids name.

the comedian wrote:

whitey wrote:I wouldn't go so far as saying Progurts posts piss me off, but to suggest that I should just put him on my ignore list rather than be able to voice an opinion is absurd.

First you tell Progurt that he should only post his stuff about Obama on his own blog ( along with the obligatory insult ) then you say you won't put him on ignore so you can comment ( well, insult him ) on his posts...

The insulting goes both ways, except I can take whereas you seem to have an issue with only me when I do it. Sorry, from now on anytime Progurt posts another plagiarized post from the interwebs I'll just keep my mouth shut and bow down to the Almighty for enlightening me on where I have been led astray

whitey wrote:

the comedian wrote:For the record, in Muslim nations " Tariq" and " Aziz" are names as common as " Bob" and " Jones" are in the States.

Kinda figured that but I was making a slight joke about the name. I guess Marxists have no sense of humor and yes, I'll go as far as joking about a dead kids name.

Yeah, we don't have a sense of humor- when it comes to mocking the dead.