Pepe Escobar: For CIA drone warriors, the future is death

[unhappycamper]

For CIA drone warriors, the future is death
By Pepe Escobar
Dec 23, 2010

Forget the iPad; the ultimate icon of fetishized commodity is the drone. Israelis do it - and sell them like hot cakes. Mexicans do it - to patrol their side of the border. Brazilians wanna do it - to patrol the Rio favelas. Saudis wanna do it. Uzbeks wanna do it. Everybody's singing: Let's do it. Let's fall in love (with the drone).

~snip~

Taliban momentum, anyway, is just an afterthought. What matters for the White House is to smash ("significant progress") al-Qaeda, allegedly holed up not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan's tribal areas. Take them Pakistani Talibs out from the air, with the CIA playing Ride of the Valkyries, just like in an orgiastic Facebook-friendly remix of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, with all those US Marine tanks rolling along in Helmand province offering a cute counterpart. I love the smell of a burning Talib in the morning. Makes me think of ... re-election.

But what about collateral damage? Tough guys of the "real men go to Tehran" type say this is for sissies (the New America Foundation says around a third of drone deaths are civilians, but that's hugely underestimated, according to Pakistani sources.) Blowback, anyway, is guaranteed to last until the 22nd century.

So it's not the Pentagon but the CIA that is showering Death from Above over dirt-poor mud-hut villages in a country against which the US is not at war. Things may change - witness the frenzy to legally nail "terrorist" Julian Assange - but US law does not exactly condone mass assassination campaigns.

The CIA drone war is obviously secret and illegal. That can be fixed with the incoming chairman of the US House Armed Services Committee updating the congressional authorization for this extended war on al-Qaeda. As for Pashtuns collaborating with the CIA, they are technically Afghans, not Pakistanis, from different tribes; that will foster centuries of subsequent tribal trouble once the families of the dead ascertain who the snitches are.

[Tunkamerica]

1. Okay, so is this a real column? The language, Pepe Escobar as the writer, the Asian bride popups....

it all seems so legit.

[unhappycamper]

2. I've been reading Asia Times for a long time now.

According to their 'About Us' page:

http://www.atimes.com/mediakit/aboutus.html




Asia Times Online comprises atimes.com, a free website, atimes.net, an advertisement-free site for subscribers, and atchinese.com, a free site for Chinese readers around the world. These are quality Internet-only publications that report on and examine geopolitical, political, economic and business issues. We look at these issues from an Asian perspective; this distinguishes us from the mainstream English-language media, whose reporting on Asian matters is generally by Westerners, for Westerners.

We are served by more than 50 correspondents and contributors in 25 Asian countries, the US, and Europe. Additional content is provided by news services and renowned think tank and investment analysts and academics.

Asia Times Online was founded at the beginning of 1999 and is incorporated and duly registered in Hong Kong. It derives its revenues from advertising, the resale of original content to other publications and news services, and subscriptions to atimes.net.

Historically, in our publication policy and editorial outlook, we are the successor of Asia Times, the Hong Kong/ Bangkok-based daily print newspaper founded in 1995 and associated with the Manager Media Group, which had to cease publication in the summer of 1997 as a result of the Asian financial crisis. Like its predecessor, Asia Times Online gives its readers worldwide an overview of Asian news events, looking behind the headlines that are the staple of the news agencies and networks.

Asia Times Online is reaching a rapidly increasing global readership. Our readers are people of influence - investors, executives, diplomats, academics, journalists - who need to know about Asian political, economic and business affairs. We have become a "must read" for Westerners and Asians who do business with each other.

[Tunkamerica]

3. Pepe Escobar? You think that's a real writer? Spengler? This shit is fishy.

It would behoove you to either drop it or do some real research.

[unhappycamper]

4. From wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_Escobar

Pepe Escobar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pepe Escobar (born 1954) is a journalist based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He writes a column entitled The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online and is analyst and correspondent for The Real News Network. His prescient article, 'Get Osama! Now! Or else...', was published by Asia Times Online two weeks before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.<1>

Bibliography

* Escobar, P. 2007, Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War, Nimble Books.
* Escobar, P. 2007, Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge, Nimble Books.
* Escobar, P. 2009, Obama Does Globalistan, Nimble Books.

:shrug:

[Tunkamerica]

5. "Get Osama! Now! Or else..."

"Yet inside Afghanistan today, where the Saudi Arabian lives in exile, Osama is a minor character. He is ill and always in hiding - usually 'somewhere near Kabul'... 'His organization, the Al Qa'Ida, is split, and in tatters.'"


That's actually pretty interesting.

[xchrom]

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