In October 2011,
16-year-old Tariq Aziz attended a gathering in Islamabad where he was taught how
to use a video camera so he could document the drones that were constantly
circling over his Pakistani village, terrorizing and killing his family and
neighbors. Two days later, when Aziz was driving with his 12-year-old cousin to
a village near his home in Waziristan to pick up his aunt, his car was struck by
a Hellfire missile. With the push of a button by a pilot at a U.S. base
thousands of miles away, both boys were instantly vaporized-only a few chunks of
flesh remained.
Afterwards, the
U.S. government refused to acknowledge the boys’ deaths or explain why they were
targeted. Why should they? This is a covert program where no one is held
accountable for their actions.
The main
architect of this drone policy that has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of
innocents, including 176 children in Pakistan alone, is President Obama’s
counterterrorism chief and his pick for the next director of the CIA: John
Brennan.
On my recent
trip to Pakistan, I met with people whose loved ones had been blown to bits by
drone attacks, people who have been maimed for life, young victims with no hope
for the future and aching for revenge. For all of them, there has been no
apology, no compensation, not even an acknowledgement of their losses.
Nothing.
That’s why when
John Brennan spoke at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington DC
last April and described our policies as ethical, wise and in compliance with
international law, I felt compelled to stand up and speak out on behalf of Tariq
Aziz and so many others. As they dragged me out of the room, my parting words
were: “I love the rule of law and I love my country. You are making us less safe
by killing so many innocent people. Shame on you, John
Brennan.”
Rather than
expressing remorse for any civilian deaths, John Brennan made the extraordinary
statement in 2011 that during the preceding year, there hadn’t been a single
collateral death “because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the
capabilities we’ve been able to develop.” Brennan later adjusted his statement
somewhat, saying, “Fortunately, for more than a year, due to our discretion and
precision, the U.S. government has not found credible evidence of collateral
deaths resulting from U.S. counterterrorism operations outside of Afghanistan or
Iraq.” We later learned why Brennan’s count was so low: the administration had
come up with a semantic solution of simply counting all military-age males in a
strike zone as combatants.
The UK-based
Bureau of Investigative Journalism has documented over 350 drones strikes in
Pakistan that have killed 2,600-3,400 people since 2004. Drone strikes in Yemen
have been on the rise, with at least 42 strikes carried out in 2012, including
one just hours after President Obama’s reelection. The first strike in 2013 took
place just four days into the new year.
A May 29, 2011
New York Times expose showed John Brennan as President Obama’s top advisor in
formulating a “kill list” for drone strikes. The people Brennan recommends for
the hit list are given no chance to surrender, and certainly no chance to be
tried in a court of law. The kind of intelligence Brennan uses to put people on
drone hit lists is the same kind of intelligence that put people in Guantanamo.
Remember how the American public was assured that the prisoners locked up in
Guantanamo were the “worst of the worst,” only to find out that hundreds were
innocent people who had been sold to the U.S. military by bounty
hunters?
In addition to
kill lists, Brennan pushed for the CIA to have the authority to kill with even
greater ease using “signature strikes,” also known as “crowd killing,” which are
strikes based solely on suspicious behavior.
When President
Obama announced his nomination of John Brennan, he talked about Brennan’s
integrity and commitment to the values that define us as Americans. He said Brennan has worked to “embed our
efforts in a strong legal framework” and that he “understands we are a nation of
laws.”
A nation of
laws? Really? Going around the world killing anyone we want, whenever we want,
based on secret information? Just think of the precedent John Brennan is setting
for a world of lawlessness and chaos, now that 76 countries have drones-mostly
surveillance drones but many in the process of weaponizing them. Why shouldn’t
China declare an ethnic Uighur activist living in New York City as an “enemy
combatant” and send a missile into Manhattan, or Russia launch a drone attack
against a Chechen living in London? Or why shouldn’t a relative of a drone
victim retaliate against us here at home? It’s not so far-fetched. In 2011,
26-year-old Rezwan Ferdaus, a Massachusetts-based graduate with a degree in
physics, was recently sentenced to 17 years in prison for plotting to attack the
Pentagon and U.S. Capitol with small drones filled with
explosives.
In his search
for a new CIA chief, Obama said he looked at who is going to do the best job in
securing America. Yet the blowback from Brennan’s drone attacks is creating
enemies far faster than we can kill them. Three out of four Pakistanis now see
the U.S. as their enemy-that’s about 133 million people, which certainly can’t
be good for U.S. security. When Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was
asked the source of U.S. enmity, she had a one word answer:
drones.
In Yemen,
escalating U.S. drones strikes are radicalizing the local population and
stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants. Since the January 4,
2013 attack in Yemen, militants in the tribal areas have gained more recruits
and supporters in their war against the Yemeni government and its key backer,
the United States. According to Abduh Rahman Berman, executive director of a
Yemeni National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms, the drone war is
failing. “If the Americans kill 10, al-Qaeda will recruit 100,” he
said.
Around the
world, the drone program constructed by John Brennan has become a provocative
symbol of American hubris, showing contempt for national sovereignty and
innocent lives.
If Obama thinks
John Brennan is a good choice to head the CIA and secure America, he should
contemplate the tragic deaths of victims like 16-year-old Tariq Aziz, and think
again.
ISH/ARA
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