Drone war defensive: The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan has quit, undermining Obama's reassuring tale

[EFerrari]

The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan has quit, undermining Obama's reassuring tale of remote control war.

The Obama administration is escalating its public relations offensive for global drone war, even as popular opposition in nuclear-armed Pakistan imperils the U.S. government’s longstanding alliance there. As the abrupt resignation of U.S. ambassador Cameron Munter calls into question the sustainability of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, the White House is doubling down on its policy of aerial war in Muslim countries.

After years of secrecy, denials and no comments, the Obama administration is now hastening to defend the drone war publicly. This media offensive, launched on May 1 by White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, was bolstered by the release of “Letters from Abbotabad,” a selection of 17 documents out of the reported 6,000 seized from the house where Bin Laden was killed.

Obama’s public diplomacy on drones has its uses on the 2012 campaign trail, but for U.S national security policymakers it is needed to counter the daily reports out of Pakistan that virtually everybody from the pro-American foreign minister to the Islamist right opposes the drone war. In the country’s upcoming presidential election, perennial populist candidate Imran Khan is surging on the strength of his pledge to shoot down U.S. drones.

At stake are NATO supply lines into Afghanistan. Five months ago, Pakistani authorities protested a U.S. drone strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers by barring U.S. resupply trucks from Pakistani roads. The U.S. is now flying supplies into Afghanistan, an expensive proposition for a cash-strapped country. The Nation, a leading newspaper in Pakistan, says the resignation of Munter, who was sympathetic to Pakistani arguments against the drone strikes, “could complicate efforts to repair alliance with the U.S. and reopen NATO supply into Afghanistan.”

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/drone_war_defensive/singleton/

[The Northerner]

1. K&R

[sad sally]

2. These continued attacks in Pakistan, plus the other five countries the US is waging drone war on,

not only creates more terrorists and hatred toward us, it undermines the credibility of the governments of
of those countries.

The CIA has no intention of stopping drone attacks in Pakistan, obviously done at the request of the President, even if means murdering innocent people and assassinating "bad" people without any legal justification.

The scary thing is that so many Americans simply accept and shrug off any outrage that drone attacks murder children and other noncombatants. "Too bad," is the sentiment, "the innocents who were murdered shouldn't live where they do, besides those people are different than us, they hate America, they've always been at war with someone, so too bad they had to die."

The administration is carrying out secret, taxpayer funded attacks, killing an unknown number and refusing to confirm or deny the extent of damage done by their "signature strikes" in countries we are not at war with.

If this level of violence were being committed under a Bush administration there would be outrage; under an Obama administration there is acceptance. sad...

[Unaccountable]

3. Spam deleted by gkhouston (MIR Team)

[EFerrari]

4. Did. You'd do better not to personalize it with that photograph though, imo.

Then the response of your readers wouldn't be contingent on how they felt about the president.