UPDATED: See Post #58... Jesus... :( ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

[WillyT]

Last edited Tue Aug 6, 2013, 09:04 PM - Edit history (1)

Letter to Obama and Hadi on Yemeni drones
Friday, 02 August 2013 15:25

Link: http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/americas/6770-letter-to-obama-and-hadi-on-yemeni-drones

[snappyturtle]

1. Was that a well reasoned letter, or what? THe author is right: we're

making more enemies. I can't believe self defense is used as a reason
to use drones. I'm going to join you.....

[Jackpine Radical]

54. The OP didn't reproduce the letter. Here's part:

Dear President Obama and President Hadi

My name is Faisal bin Ali Jaber. I am a Yemeni engineer from Hadramout, employed by Yemen's equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency. I am writing today because I read in the news that you will be meeting in the White House on Thursday, August 1, to discuss the "counter-terrorism partnership" between the US and Yemen.

My family has personally experienced this partnership. A year ago this August, a drone strike in my ancestral village killed my brother-in-law, Salem bin Ali Jaber, and my twenty-one-year-old nephew, Waleed.

President Obama, you said in a recent speech that the United States is "at war with an organisation that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first." This war against al-Qa'ida, you added, "is a just war - a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense."

President Hadi, on a trip to the United States last September, you claimed that "every operation [in Yemen], before taking place, [has] permission from the president." You also asserted that "the drone technologically is more advanced than the human brain".

Why, then, last August, did you both send drones to attack my innocent brother-in-law and nephew? Our family are not your enemy. In fact, the people you killed had strongly and publicly opposed al-Qa'ida. Salem was an imam. The Friday before his death, he gave a guest sermon in the Khashamir mosque denouncing al-Qa'ida's hateful ideology. It was not the first of these sermons, but regrettably, it was his last.
- See more at: http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/americas/6770-letter-to-obama-and-hadi-on-yemeni-drones#sthash.r1h9EdSj.dpuf

[WillyT]

58. I Was Too Upset At The Time... Here's The Entire Letter:

July 31, 2013

Dear President Obama and President Hadi

My name is Faisal bin Ali Jaber. I am a Yemeni engineer from Hadramout, employed by Yemen's equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency. I am writing today because I read in the news that you will be meeting in the White House on Thursday, August 1, to discuss the "counter-terrorism partnership" between the US and Yemen.

My family has personally experienced this partnership. A year ago this August, a drone strike in my ancestral village killed my brother-in-law, Salem bin Ali Jaber, and my twenty-one-year-old nephew, Waleed.

President Obama, you said in a recent speech that the United States is "at war with an organisation that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first." This war against al-Qa'ida, you added, "is a just war - a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense."

President Hadi, on a trip to the United States last September, you claimed that "every operation [in Yemen], before taking place, [has] permission from the president." You also asserted that "the drone technologically is more advanced than the human brain".

Why, then, last August, did you both send drones to attack my innocent brother-in-law and nephew? Our family are not your enemy. In fact, the people you killed had strongly and publicly opposed al-Qa'ida. Salem was an imam. The Friday before his death, he gave a guest sermon in the Khashamir mosque denouncing al-Qa'ida's hateful ideology. It was not the first of these sermons, but regrettably, it was his last.

In months of grieving, my family have received no acknowledgement or apology from the U.S. or Yemen. We've struggled to square our tragedy with the words in your speeches.

How was this "self-defense"? My family worried that militants would target Salem for his sermons. We never anticipated his death would come from above, at the hands of the United States. In his death you lost a potential ally – in fact, because word of the killing spread immediately through the region, I fear you have lost thousands.

How was this "in last resort"? Our town was no battlefield. We had no warning – our local police were never asked to make any arrest. My young nephew Waleed was a policeman, before the strike cut short his life.

How was this "proportionate"? The strike devastated our community. The day before the strike, Khashamir buzzed with celebrations for my eldest son's wedding. Our wedding videos show Salem and young Waleed in a crowd of dancing revellers, joining the celebration. Traditionally, this revelry would have gone on for days – but for the attack. Afterwards, it was days before I could persuade my eldest daughter to leave the house, such was her terror of fire from the skies.

The strike left a stark lesson in its wake – not just in my village, but across Hadramout and wider Yemen. The lesson, I am afraid, is that neither the current U.S. or Yemeni administrations bother to distinguish friend from foe. In speech after speech after the attack, community leaders stood and said: if Salem was not safe, none of us are.

Your silence in the face of these injustices only makes matters worse. If the strike was a mistake, the family – like all wrongly bereaved families of this secret air war – deserve a formal apology.

To this day I wish no vengeance against the United States or Yemeni governments. But not everyone in Yemen feels the same. Every dead innocent swells the ranks of those you are fighting.

All Yemen has begun to take notice of drones – and they object. Only this month, Yemen's National Dialogue Conference, a quasi-Constitutional Convention which I understand the U.S. underwrites, almost unanimously voted to prohibit the unregulated use of drones in our country.

With respect, you cannot continue to behave as if innocent deaths like those in my family are irrelevant. If the Yemeni and American Presidents refuse to engage with overwhelming popular sentiment in Yemen, you will defeat your own counter-terrorism aims.

Thank you for your consideration. I would appreciate the courtesy of a reply.

Yours Sincerely,

Faisal bin Ali Jaber

Sana'a, Yemen

From Link at OP.

[theHandpuppet]

61. Thanks for posting the letter in its entirety

Powerful stuff.

Sadly, when even a forum like DU becomes a place where more people would rather discuss urinals or whether to take a bath, I think it's too late to hope that public outrage can bring an end to the murder being done in our name.

[NuclearDem]

2. Jesus fucking Christ.

Fuck this. No, seriously, fuck this. Fuck this murdering horseshit being done in our name, and fuck the fuckers who do it.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. I just hate being the bad guys.

Fuck this and fuck everybody that supports it. The parasites do the evil and we pay the price.

[theHandpuppet]

4. Murder being done in our name

If only we would muster as much outrage at the injustice of killing innocent men, women and children as we do for a fawn or a dog.

[sabrina 1]

5. The reason we can't is they have done a truly effective job of dehumianizing over a billion

human beings so Americans don't view them as 'humans'. They are 'ragheads', 'camel jockies' and most of all 'terrorists'.

And think about it. When does our Corporate Owned Propaganda machine, the MSM, every show a photo of a precious little girl with a bullet in her arm, or worse a baby whose flesh has been burned off by one of our WMDs? There is a reason for that.

And if you show photos of the reality of our great WOT, you will be accused by the defenders of these crimes of 'posting war porn'. Used to be just Bush supporters who called photos of dead children anything but they are, crimes. Now sadly I'm seeing it on the supposed left.

[NuclearDem]

6. I had a post hidden not too long ago for exactly that reason.

If someone gets too fucking queasy over a picture of what these fucking wars are doing to people, just imagine how the victims feel.

[sabrina 1]

8. When you're defending the indefensible, you cannot look at what it is you are really defending.

Back during the Bush days I posted a series of tragic, horrific photos from Fallujah taken by Dahr Jamail, hoping (I was very naive back then) that if they saw what we were actually doing there, some of them might be moved to condemn it, especially since we were lied to about that war and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

What I learned was never to underestimate the willful blindness of the true believers in their 'team'.

It was a lesson I never forgot. Up to then I gave them credit as human beings that maybe they didn't know. But I was wrong.

Sorry you got a post hidden for showing the reality of these wars, that doesn't speak well of DU.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

7. Agreed. And they have effectively enacted an out right BAN on any of our WAR IMAGES

Any that actually shows the horror of war, thats' for sure.

They have learned a lot since Vietnam.

And what does that say about our 'free' press?

We need to be shown the images of war, or these horrors will be allowed to continue indefinitely.

[theHandpuppet]

10. Yes!

I totally agree.

[sabrina 1]

12. Maybe ordinary people need to do it themselves. I remember someone leaving fliers in super

markets eg, during the Bush years showing the reality of the war we were led to believe would be 'over in weeks, months' and would be pristine, no blood, no dead children' etc.

Otoh, people seem impervious to the suffering of innocent people when they are trying to defend something that really cannot be defended and is even harder to defend if they don't remain blind to the reality. So those who need to see what they are supporting probably would 'outraged by the photos' rather than the crimes.

[theHandpuppet]

13. 'outraged by the photos' rather than the crimes

Yep -- sad to say I think you are spot on.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

15. Yes. It really is up to us these days, and with the internet, we do have a lot more power

than we give ourselves credit for.

Those who would suppress these images are in the end helping to prolong these wars, and I would hope that there is not some kinda blanket ban on DU from posting these critical images.

[sabrina 1]

19. I never saw any ban on war photos, so long as they had a warning in the headline.

But again, if you are going to support these killings, you should be able to look at what you are supporting.

I often think of the excuses made by the German people which were generally not accepted, that they 'didn't know' what was going on. However, it is possible that back then many of them did not know.

But when history records this dark era in our own history, no American can say 'we did not know'.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

21. Good to know

but like you said... history will not be kind to us.
(not that it is already, and is why the reTHUGs want to whitewash our history books)

[Le Taz Hot]

39. He/she is talking about me

and no, the photo originally did not have a warning and it was posted within a thread. I tried to explain that people who are hyper-sensitive to graphic photos/descriptions pay a price, sometimes for years, for viewing photos depicting violence. He/She keeps insisting that I and others with this condition "view it to see what is being done in our names!11!1111" A little compassion and understanding for this condition would be nice but, apparently, we won't be seeing that anytime soon. Just wanted to fill you in on the background.

[G_j]

17. sadly

it would seem they "learned" more from Vietnam than we did.

[HardTimes99]

37. Combine that with the fact that the spoiled kids of the middle-, upper-middle and upper

classes no longer have to serve and you've got a recipe for some real imperial atrocities.

I think it is highly revealing that the only military court martialled and doing time for Abu Ghraib were privates and corporals (and maybe a Sergeant?). Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney continue to walk around free men.

[theHandpuppet]

9. I truly believe...

... that the photojournalists whose work was published in magazines such as LIFE helped to bring an end to the Vietnam War. Now you can't even post the gruesome truth on DU -- too unpleasant, I guess, for many. Well folks, turning your head away won't make it go away. MASS MURDER is being done in our name.

[matthews]

41. Photos of My Lai and a little girl running naked down the road after being hit with

napalm had the power to turn this country against another unwinnable war. That's why we're no longer supposed to see what we're really doing.

[MisterP]

45. or "taqiyya gay-killing woman-stoning superstitionists who secretly want to take over the world"

that's the "bluewashed" friendly version of Gellar that's allowed on liberish forums over and over and over

[Luminous Animal]

11. "I would appreciate the courtesy of a reply." (Crying)

[sabrina 1]

14. It is a truly sad letter. But as he points and it is a fact, the more innocent people they kill

the more enemies they create. He seems to believe they really want to end the 'WOT'. It's worse than that imo, they want to continue it and killing people DOES create more enemies. Without enemies you can't get all that money to fight them.

I hate how cynical I have become. But either we have the stupidest people in the history of the planet running things in this country, or I am right. I'm not sure it makes much difference.

[Luminous Animal]

24. It's as if a rabbi is begging for dignified consideration from the nazis

There I said it.

[sabrina 1]

26. One thing is for sure, he will not receive any response to his plea. I hate to do so,

but I agree, your analogy rings true. Maybe if he was carrying a sack of money, a few billion, or so, someone might respond to him, at least out of curiosity, But from the Western Colonial States he will not be viewed as a human being, sadly. They have lost their soul.

[Blue_In_AK]

16. That's appalling.

What have we become?

[theHandpuppet]

20. "We have met the enemy and he is us."

-- from Pogo, by Walt Kelly

[Blue_In_AK]

22. Sadly appropriate.

[progressoid]

18. This war "is a just war - a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense."

BULL

SHIT

[Rosa Luxemburg]

23. These drones are not very accurate!

[Demo_Chris]

25. Guys, it's okay when WE do it. It's not like we are Republicans or something. nt

[sabrina 1]

27. Thanks, I almost forgot. Drones don't kill people as dead as they did when Bush was doing it.

I HAVE to stop forgetting that, need some more reeducation classes.

[Demo_Chris]

30. Just let the letter in front of the name determine your values. nt

[Mnemosyne]

28. 'Making terrorists faster than we can kill them' was a bumper-sticker during the * regime, it seems

nothing changes.

[tblue]

29. Damn. I'll do it.

I'll apologize to this man and his family if POTUS is not statesman enough to do it. My gosh! What an outrage.

[Bonobo]

31. My number one issue with Obama is that he has made this normal for Democrats...

As if it is some form of "pragmatism" to do this...

As if it is acceptable or at least tolerable.

WELL IT FUCKING ISN'T.

And if it drives me from the party and from the elections, well guess what? Maybe that is the correct response.

Sorry Godwin, but think "Good Germans" and you will get the idea.

[99th_Monkey]

32. This is so fucking wrong-headed. WTF is Obama thinking on this?

Any idiot can see we are creating more "terrorists" faster than
we could ever kill them. It's completely nuts.

[HardTimes99]

38. It's like General William Westmoreland has been rehabilitated and his strategy

of 'attrition' (a massive failure, btw) given a second chance.

[blkmusclmachine]

33. We're guilty, by association with this corrupt Administration.

[darkangel218]

34. No, we're not.

We had no idea is going to be like this.

[LWolf]

46. Only if you weren't paying attention.

I acknowledge that most simply focused on the fact that he publicly "opposed" the war before it started and before he got to Congress, and didn't pay attention to what he said and did after. Is that an excuse for "having no idea?"

As a matter of fact, both he and HRC voted consistently to fund the Iraq war up until 2007, when they were looking at the primary race. He did sometimes criticize the Iraq War; key word being "Iraq." He wanted to focus the war on terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In 2007, he said he was open to unilateral action against Al Qaeda in Pakistan, with or without the permission of the Pakistani government. He also talked about wanting to send more troops to Afghanistan.

He was clearly hawkish on the War on Terror long before people started voting for him in primaries. So if Democrats "had no idea," why is that? Were they so caught up in the primary wars that they weren't paying attention? Was Democratic attention and awareness selective?

[darkangel218]

47. I guess so.

I, at least, had no clue. And I feel like like an idiot because of it.

[LWolf]

48. Moving forward

can we do a better job of paying attention the next time around? I'd like to think so, but I'm not really optimistic.

[darkangel218]

50. I think a lot more people will pay attention.

I just hope that all those broken promisses won't make people so apathetic that they will just sit out the next elections.

[LWolf]

51. Well, I'll be there.

Hope or not, I'm always there.

[darkangel218]

53. +1

[WillyT]

35. Morning Kick !!!

[WillyT]

36. And Another...

[WillyT]

42. One More...

[WillyT]

56. Almost Done...

[WillyT]

57. Second To Last Kick From Me...

[Bryn]

40. I feel so sick

I'd quit USA if I could

[Octafish]

43. ''What's the big deal? They were just Arabs?''

"Gotta fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. Right? Amirite?"

Reading a lot about that attitude on DU, of all places, these days.

[theHandpuppet]

44. k & r

I guess this is a subject that most would like to avoid so I'm giving it a kick.

[snooper2]

49. yes?

[theHandpuppet]

52. Do you find this topic amusing?

Or have I misinterpreted your post?

[snooper2]

55. Somebody sent a query for me

[theHandpuppet]

60. What a shame...

You apparently think a thread about innocent people being killed by drones is a source for your amusement. I think you're being missed in the DU Lounge.

[snooper2]

62. look, I'm a real busy being...

be ready next time you call-

[felix_numinous]

59. The proponents of endless war do not

and/or refuse to envision a future of peace based on mutual respect. As long as war profiteers are allowed to write foreign policy, they WILL manufacture enemies for future profit and job security.

We cannot expect any change from within this self perpetuating system... It's expecting the MIC pig to slaughter itself, and that will not happen. It does seem since the powers that be accepted the collateral damage in Japan, things have dramatically gone downhill after that. Sorry it is my opinion.

When human life loses such value, and peace activists and whisteblowers are enemies of the state, the system has become sociopathic.

We need representatives that can dismantle this police state and kick some corporate ass, because all of this 'acceptable' collateral damage now includes us-- chickens came home to roost!!!