We droned the shit out of Yemen. No one talks about it here. But everyone's talking bout it in Yemen [View all]

[Catherina]

By Joshua Hersh

Yemen Drone Strikes Bring New Round Of Terror To Embattled Country

Posted: 08/10/2013 11:10 pm EDT

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Over the previous week, the United States and other Western nations ramped up terror alerts about Yemen, a small nation on the tip of the Arabian peninsula that attracts a disproportionate amount of American attention. A recent terrorism alert prompting the closures of nearly two dozen American embassies around the Arab world was "emanating from Yemen," the U.S. said, and earlier in the week American citizens were urged to flee Yemen. The staff of the U.S. embassy there was spirited to Germany on a military cargo plane.

However, as the week progressed, signs of terror did not take the form of an attack by al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, an increasingly powerful franchise of the feared terrorist organization, but instead, as Haykal Bafana, a Sanaa-based Yemeni lawyer, put it recently, of an "orgy of drones."

Over the past 10 days, at least nine American drone strikes have been conducted across the country's remote provinces, most recently on Saturday evening. At least 36 people, all of them immediately deemed "suspected militants" by the Yemeni government, were killed, according to wire service counts. On Thursday alone, there were three drone attacks, an unprecedented rate; Saturday's was the fifth in 72 hours.

For those left in Yemen, it has been like living in a universe parallel to the one described in American terror alerts, Bafana said on Saturday. "It's like there are two different Yemens," he said. "The one the U.S. and Yemeni government claims is always under a terrorist threat, and the one we actually live in, with drones. It's like they stepped through the looking glass."

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Earlier in the week, he said, when an American P-3 Orion spy plane circled over Sanaa for nearly 10 hours, loudly buzzing as residents tried to celebrate the start of Eid, residents stopped in their tracks to protest. "People were standing in the street and screaming at it," he said.

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"When there is a normal war, people can hide, or they can stay away from the military -- they can make choices and be careful," al-Muslimi said. "But when drones come, you just don't know when you'll be next. The fear is incredible."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/yemen-drone-strikes_n_3737554.html

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Saturday, 10 August 2013 KSA 08:15 - GMT 05:15

Drowning out the drones in Yemen?

The past few days, drones had been hovering over Yemen and killing innocent people and militant suspects. And then this Thursday President Obama sent a greeting to the Muslim world on the occasion of the Eid. He sent 'warmest' greetings. The message contained other things which I won’t mention because it does not matter. Why would a 'warm' greeting of an American president matter to me to someone living in an Arab country? Why should I care about the positive gestures he offers. Moreover why would he even bother to send his greetings? What does he feel when he signs the greetings with the same pen which signs the command to use drones?

I cannot answer that, but when I read his greetings, I was also reading news of drones flying over Yemeni cities and villages. And the greeting tasted bitter. I felt that his greeting was charged with double standards, hypocrisy, and disregard for our lives. For a moment I felt that as far as Obama was concerned, the lives of foreign citizens do not matter. It crossed my mind that we are bugs. I asked myself if or not he sincerely believe that we are entitled to live safely. Do we matter?

Drone injustice

I am a realist and a pragmatist. So I tried to justify it. I sincerely did. I said there are terrorists. They threaten us. They kill us. They also threaten the United States and they kill American citizens. So why should I be angry at killing them? I went online. I read the justifications presented by those who support it. But no matter how much I thought or read, I could not overcome the fact that such an act is illegal, immoral, unjust, counterproductive and racist.

What we have here is a pure act of murder cloaked in words like: self-defense, last resort, proportional, and just. But the naked truth is that those being killed are suspects. Any sensible law would not allow the execution of a human being without a process of proving that they are guilty of the crimes attributed to them. Terrorist or not, they have rights as humans. Or maybe Obama and his administration think not. They are after all Arabs and Muslims. So maybe they are fair game. What makes it worse it that absolutely innocent individuals are also killed in the process. And the drones still continue. It is as if it does not matter for Obama that a few children are killed as long as he is ‘protecting’ the American people. So what? They are Arab children. And we have many of them. So what if one or two fall down while the killing of American enemies goes on. Collateral damage is the technical word they use.

But the damage does not stop. Not only is Obama illegally executing suspects and murdering innocent people. In the process he terrorizes a whole nation. Yemenis are constantly looking up the sky. Faces become white from fear with the sound of the hum of the drone far away. Obama wants to kill 6 people and in the process terrorizes more than 20 million and to put a cherry on top, kills a ‘few’ more who were not on the list. Sometimes he does not even get the ones he was after. So he takes another shot. But so what. It is only Yemen. And I can say the same for Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those nations do not need to feel safe. Only Americans should feel safe. Everyone else can lie down and die. What adds insult to injury is that Obama actually considers it a just war. He actually considers that terrorizing a whole nation is proportional. The only way that this war is just or proportional is to consider that the lives, security and wellbeing of Twenty million+ Yemenis are worthless.

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http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2013/08/10/Drone-attacks-in-Yemen-can-t-be-drowned-out.html