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Has Obama Gone Kill Crazy With His Predator Drones?

By Takahiro Sasaki

22 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.
-Barack Obama

It’s become a rarity in the last year to find intelligent and well-informed citizens whom still deem Barack Obama a saintly man. I will personally admit that I was duped by the media into believing that Obama was different from his predecessor and truly sought alternative methods of bringing about peace. It didn’t take long for me to experience a feeling of disillusionment when familiar images and headlines of pandemonium in the Middle East came pouring through the circuits of my television. It became so blatantly obvious that our Nobel winner was only perpetuating the 21st century’s first holocaust. I think what awoke this naïve nation the most is Obama’s current unbridled use of lethal technology upon the dispossessed Middle Eastern population.

Try to visualize for a moment a world where your children have to live in constant fear of being annihilated by unmanned aerial vehicles that patrol the skies day and night. Well that world you just imagined exists right here on planet Earth in a country known to us as Pakistan.

According to the New American Foundation, a Washington, D.C. think tank, civilian casualties are estimated at 1 in 3. It doesn’t stop there; Pakistani authorities assert that of the 44 Predator drone attacks in 2009 only five targets were correctly identified. The outcome of this clumsy robotic marksmanship was 700 civilian causalities. That’s why it must come as no surprise that the Air Force will be steadily increasing the fleet of drones in the Middle East through 2013. At least General Atomics must be delighted. Pakastan is not the only country that has been bombarded by drone warfare. These aerial vehicles are spreading like a plague across the globe, infecting countries such as Somali, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and most likely others. The drone problem has become so repulsive that a respected Guardian journalist referred to the “Obama Doctrine” as the “Kill Doctrine,” alluding to his use of drone warfare.

Some may argue that Obama is nothing more than a powerless pawn that gives eloquent speeches to calm a confused nation. Even if this may be true the word Obama was originally meant to symbolize hope, freedom, peace, and change. The creators of this word intended only positive attributes to be associated with Obama in order to unite an American population toward common goals. They certainly did not want it to be marred by evil and torture as became of the word Bush. Unfortunately these spreading Predator assaults are only tarnishing a word that corporations pumped billions into. Today we see no visible end in these cowardly assaults on humanity. So just take a minute to ask yourself, what does the word Obama mean to me?

Takahiro Sasaki is involved in international politics and writing has always been a hobby of his. He has two beautiful daughters and currently lives in Japan with his family. Takahiro writes occasionally for www.ithp.org but has requested that his work be spread far and wide.