MIT
professor and activist Noam Chomsky slammed U.S. President Barack Obama for
using aerial drones to kill suspected terrorists.
In
a video published by Al Jazeera English on Saturday, Chomsky said that a black
activist had recounted a story in which a group of African American women
visited the president following his inauguration in 2009. After the meeting, the
disappointed women told the black activist, “this man has no moral
center.”
“I
think they’re right,” Chomsky said. “If you look at his policies, I think that
is what they reveal. Just some nice rhetoric here and there. If you look at the
actual policies, they’re pretty shocking. The drone assassination campaign is a
perfectly good example. I mean, that’s just a global assassination
campaign.”
Critics
of the use of drone strikes against suspected terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen
worry the practice violates international law and kills
civilians.
The
well-known leftist activist also downplayed Obama’s efforts to block Israel
settlements into Palestinian territory. Though the Obama administration has
repeatedly criticized Israel’s settlement activity, they had not imposed any
actual penalties, unlike previous presidents, Chomsky
said.
“In
fact, Obama is actually the first president who hasn’t really imposed
restrictions on Israel,” he added. Raw Story
The
Obama administration has aggressively employed a fleet of drone aircraft to kill
what Washington considers “suspected militants” in other countries, namely
Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan. In
Pakistan, U.S. drone strikes have killed more than 2,800 civilians since 2004,
according to Pakistani sources. In
Afghanistan, the U.S. has carried out more drone strikes in 2012 than it has
during its eight-year-long air war in Pakistan, launching nearly 450 strikes and
killing thousands while also reducing its air surveillance, according to
RT. Figures
compiled by a Washington think tank show a drastic increase in the number of
secret U.S. drone attacks in Yemen. Based on its compilation of reports in
international media, the New America Foundation reported that U.S. drone strikes
in Yemen rose from 18 in 2011 to 53 in 2012. In
what should come as no surprise to anyone following the unconscionable chronicle
of the never-ending drone war, there is no word as to the identity of either the
targets or the victims. The New American "The
number of 'high-level' militants killed as a percentage of total casualties is
extremely low -- estimated at just 2% [of deaths]", according to a Stanford/NYU
report. In
interviews with CNN and Fox, President Obama has consistently defended the fact
that he orders drone strikes to assassinate people based on nothing more than
his suspicion that they threaten U.S. national security. The New
American
AGB/HJ
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