August 14, 2012

Today or maybe tomorrow someone deemed undesirable by the United States will be assassinated by a Predator or Reaper drone operated by either the CIA or the Pentagon. While most Americans might agree that those targeted are despicable, assassinating them instead of killing them in combat flies in the face of both international and United States law.

Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan each issued executive orders banning assassination. But by calling these drone kills "targeted killings" from military actions rather than assassinations, the Obama administration (and previously the Bush administration) circumvents these executive orders.

War is generally waged under international rules of conduct. Battles are fought to control terrain or infrastructure and not for the sake of killing. For that reason, war is associated with honor. Soldiers return home decorated and lauded as heroes.

Where is the heroism with drone assassinations? We target whom we fear or don’t like, spy on them, and then blow them to bits. Too bad if the family and neighbors also are killed or maimed. And too bad that the village square is now a pile of rubble. That’s collateral damage — damage and carnage that the United States never officially acknowledges.

According to articles in the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, drones are directed from the comfort of facilities in the United States, thousands of miles from the targeted regions. "Pilots" dressed in flight uniforms holding a joystick and staring at colorful video monitors fly the drones. At the close of each day after making kills in perhaps Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan, the "pilots" go home to dinner, the kids and TV.

Curiously, these "pilots" have black tape covering their name tags. Where’s the honor in that? Where’s the heroism? Are they ashamed of what they are doing?

Historically, the United States has been recognized as a champion of decency and the rights of man, while assassination was a brutal tool for evil empires. Yet today we, too, engage in assassination and thereby demolish our right to stand proud as paragons of human rights.

Ask yourself, are drone assassinations a civilized way to settle political strife? Is this an acceptable part of the code of morals we want to teach our children? It is time the general public demands a halt to these so-called targeted killings.

Ray Edinger is an Irondequoit resident.


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