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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Speaking of Children Killed With No Accountability

Speaking of Children Killed With No Accountability

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senseless

Every time we drop a bomb or launch a drone strike to achieve our big win in the war on terror du jour, we create more terrorists and lose our way as a nation just a bit more:

A group of Pakistani artists are hoping to generate “empathy” among US drone operators by placing giant posters of children meant to be seen from the air in the country’s troubled tribal regions.

The project, titled #NotABugSplat, has released a photograph, itself taken from the air with the use of a mini-helicopter drone, of a poster laid out in a field that shows the face of a girl who lost both her parents in one of the controversial strikes in the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

“Bug splat” is said to be a term used by drone pilots based in the US to refer to how victims look when seen through video cameras.

“We tried to replicate as much as we could what a camera from above will see looking down,” said one of the artists of the collective, who did not wish to be named individually.

“You will see how tiny people are and they look like little bugs, we wanted to highlight the distance between what a human being looks like when they are just a little dot versus a big face.

“One hope is that it will create some empathy and introspection.”

And these kids weren’t even in a park with a toy gun, which would make them an actual legitimate target for use of force.

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  4. 4.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @wmd: “as bad a war criminal”, perhaps? Missed keystroke?

    Keep in mind that the previous war criminal went full scale Justice at Nürnberg indictable with launching a naked war of aggression.

  5. 5.

    Corner Stone

    They’re cockroaches, ala Radio Rwanda. None of it matters. We’re going to continue killing all the brown people we want to, international and domestic. To protect the state.

  8. 8.

    VFX Lurker

    What’s the alternative to drones? Are manned air strikes or ground forces kinder to civilians than drones?

    Or should we just leave?

    Is there a reason we need to stay?

  10. 10.

    redshirt

    @VFX Lurker: This is my question too: Would Cole be less upset if these were pilots dropping bombs? Is there something especially pernicious about the use of drones?

    Are dumb bombs better than smart bombs?

  11. 11.

    Goblue72

    @VFX Lurker: Leaving would mean admitting the War on Terror was a complete fraud and vast waste of human life and economic resources.

    We have to “win” you see. Until Terror surrenders.

  12. 12.

    srv

    @Corner Stone: the baby-killer-in-chief

    USAF has decided to start using enlisted ranks for drone pilots. Kids used to want to grow up and be fighter pilots. I’ve met two in three months who want to be drone pilots.

    Those brown people are so screwed.

  14. 14.

    Suzanne

    @srv: I dated an airman for a little while. My cousin was also a first lieutenant in the USAF. I wouldn’t trust either of them around my kitchen knives, never mind aircraft.

  17. 17.

    Ohio Mom

    As someone who was an art major eons ago, let me say that is a powerful and sophisticated work. I’m not sure I can describe this properly, but all good art has in it references to art that has come before it. Every artist is carrying on a conversation in the larger conversation of Art History, and this piece surely does.

  18. 18.

    redshirt

    @Goblue72: We have left for the most part. There are very few troops left in Afghanistan and Iraq as compared to 2009.

    But guess what? America has troops almost everywhere in this world. But I suppose they should all leave too, right?

  23. 23.

    Ruckus

    John, how can one humanize warfare? And that’s what this is, warfare. It isn’t against a state, which we’ve declared war against, which may or may not be fighting the US of course but it is warfare. It’s like the guys flying B-52s at 20,000 ft and dropping bombs. They never see the people they are dropping bombs on. It’s fly for a while, drop bombs, go home for dinner and fresh socks in the morning. Drones are in the end, very little different. If they were more discriminatory we shouldn’t have so many civilian casualties.

  24. 24.

    Goblue72

    @redshirt: In some parts of the world, yes.

    And this isn’t about top presence somewhere – this is about us still dropping bombs in Afghanustan and northern Pakistan because “terror”.

    It’s bullshit. Simple as that.

    I stopped pissing the bed when I was 2. It’s time the rest of this country learned to stop pissing the bed as well.

  25. 25.

    redshirt

    @JPL: There’s fewer consequences using a drone. Just as there’s greater consequences in sending in a strike team to hostile territory to take out the world’s biggest terrorist. Every situation requires its own approach.

  27. 27.

    Ohio Mom

    @redshirt: I’d like to think the military guys and gals seeing these portraits will be moved but I wouldn’t bet on it. You have to be open to receiving a message.

    But maybe the potraits are good reminders to the rest of us about what is being done in our name. My kid is 18. This crap has been going since he was four. Just about his whole life. Why don’t we just leave?

  29. 29.

    srv

    It’s not a question of bombing, it’s what we bomb with.

    Once we can take the human out of the loop completely, our conscience will be much clearer.

  33. 33.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:
    They aren’t eviler. They are the same. OK you don’t kill as many with drones as you do with carpet bombing. But I fail to see how the results are any different. Civilian casualties.
    This whole thing is civil war(s) brought about by financial inequality/poverty and religious extremists who are taking advantage of the situation. And we got involved for far less reasons than that. We got involved because. And the middle east has been a grab bag of outside meddling for a very long time. And the best reason I’ve heard is because. And that ain’t a reason. Not in any universe/language.
    Should we leave? Well as other have said we mostly have. Of course not without doing a huge amount of damage first, that will be around with us for decades (at least) to come. How to fix it? I’m not sure there is a good answer, every one I’ve heard has issues, mostly because it’s a cluster fuck from every angle.

    ETA I do know this though, staying hasn’t done any good, drones are safer for us but not for the civilians in the way and long term that makes it far less safe for us.

  34. 34.

    redshirt

    @Ohio Mom: It’s not as if a drone pilot will ignore an order to shoot if it’s given. But maybe this will cause more deliberation.

    War is necessary. It should be fought as cleanly as possible, minimizing the damage done to civilians. But a war against terrorist groups is bound to be messy. Perhaps if the Pakistan government took more efforts to ensure terrorists are not operating within their borders, we could leave.

    But let’s be realistic. We’re the global hegemon. This is America’s world, and as such, it requires the military to operate world wide until there are no more threats. When will that be, do you think?

  35. 35.

    Goblue72

    @redshirt: Seriously? There’s no proof that these ongoing drone bombings have any connection with current activities of Al Qaeda.

    One needs to be a lot less credulous about that kind of bullshit. I’m sorry, but you are coming off as far to accepting of the completely unsubstantiated rationales offered by the national-security state.

    The last thing any progressive should be doing us taking the national security state at face value.

    Just look at turd Professor Silverman dropped last week. Dreams of grand strategies and national themes. All the same utter bullshit the oligarchs and military apparatus always offers up as “reasons” for destroying our blood and gold in military adventurism abroad.

    Remember the Maine, my left nut.

  37. 37.

    Goblue72

    @redshirt: Oh fuck that noise. If you’ve actually bought into this tale that we need to go to war against “terrorism” and play world’s policeman, then you are dumber than I thought.

  40. 40.

    Corner Stone

    Move out the way when I’m passing through.
    I got heads to the front and the back of you.
    I got the world in my hands you can have it, too.
    I got two middle fingers and they’re pointing at you.

  41. 41.

    redshirt

    @Goblue72: Bush’s war against terrorism was mostly a joke. Obama’s has not been, and has been lethally effective, though of course he’ll never be given any credit for it.

    I trust Obama.

  43. 43.

    Ruckus

    @Goblue72:
    You know I’m pretty much a peacenik myself but there are times that war is the last recourse. WWI was bullshit that what a million people died for. WWII was necessary. Korea, maybe. Vietnam, no that was also bullshit that 53,000 of us died for. And on and on and on. But there are people who don’t see the world with sunshine and flowers. When they get power hungry others suffer, usually many, many others. As of this time the US is responsible for a lot of the world misery from our meddling, trying to bend the curve in supposedly our direction. And it’s worked for shit. But you have to understand the world and what is going on in other places and have real ideas about what possibly is or isn’t a plan to follow if x happens. Or how to find peace among people who have only known war. You don’t do that pontificating about it on blogs. You do like Adam and others of his ilk do, you study the whys, the hows, the wherefores, you strategize what ifs so that you can give advice about how to possibly turn a shitty situation into something not quite so fucked up. That was a major flaw with Bush the smart son, he just ignored all of that advice. All of it. Sure if they hadn’t gone to Iraq in the first place but they did and they did it so badly that the world will be fucked for a very long time.

  47. 47.

    srv

    @efgoldman: I’m more like a lawyer, I just filter my morality on a case-by-case basis.

    Rub-roh:

    The Reverend Al Sharpton called for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down because of his poor management of race and policing in his city

  48. 48.

    redshirt

    @efgoldman: Well said.

    I have a wonderful book called “The Atlas of World History” – I recommend everyone buy it.
    It’s the history of the world, told in maps. So many wonderful, detailed maps.

    The sum of the book is this: The history of the world is the history of war. War after war after war from the beginning of history to today. War is our reality.

    As such, it’s better to win than lose, I think. And since WW2, war has changed completely. I wonder if all the war deaths in the western world (sorry, Africa) since WW2 add up to even 1 year of WW2.

  51. 51.

    Ramiah Ariya

    First, the answer to “drones are killing people” is NOT “how else can we kill people?” Pakistan is supposed to be your ally, for god’s sake. If you are intent in violating sovereignty of countries which are populated by “lesser” people, then people tend to look at it for what it is.
    Second, if the answer to “drones are killing people” is “are bombers fine?”, then you should probably not argue about how terrorist tactics are somehow evil. If you use robotic warriors on civilian populations then they use suicide bombers. Stop hand-wringing about “stateless” actors.
    Thirdly, for the “are bombers fine?” question, I hope you apply the same logic when faced with police violence within the United States.

  53. 53.

    mclaren

    Pshaw! Stuff and nonsense!

    Burning brown babies forms the very core of American foreign policy. We’ve been doing it since the 1780s, when George Washington was known in the Iroquois language as “burner of villages.”

    Take it away, General Jacob Smith:

    Waller testified that he had been under orders from the volatile, aging Brigadier General Jacob Smith (“Hell-Roaring Jake,” to his comrades) to transform the island into a “howling wilderness,” to “kill and burn” to the greatest degree possible—“The more you kill and burn, the better it will please me”—and to shoot anyone “capable of bearing arms.” According to Waller, when he asked Smith what this last stipulation meant in practical terms, Smith had clarified that he thought that ten-year-old Filipino boys were capable of bearing arms.

    Source: “The Water Cure,” The New Yorker, 25 February 2008.

    America boasts by far the biggest brown-baby-burning budget in the world: more than a trillion dollars, when you add up all the guns and tanks and planes and surveillance satellites and hellfire missile drones and cruise missiles and police actions and JSOC death squads. Your Americano considers burning brown babies a basic heritage. Europeans may prefer effete pastimes like soccer or wine-tasting, but your Americano prefers the simpler pleasures of life: unloading napalm on brown children at 30,000 feet, dumping Agent Orange on jungles full of pregnant women, and nuclear-bombing civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

  54. 54.

    VFX Lurker

    @Ramiah Ariya:

    I’m open to withdrawing all US military presence from Pakistan. That’s one alternative to drones.

    Can you think of a reason we should stay?

  56. 56.

    mclaren

    @VFX Lurker:

    Can you think of a reason we should stay?

    “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” — Madeleine Albright, Madam Secretary, (2003), pg. 182

  57. 57.

    heckblazer

    @Ramiah Ariya: Pakistan is indeed our ally, which is why we’re doing them a solid by dropping bombs for them in the tribal areas. That way militants get taken care of and if the general public starts to object the Pakistani government gets to blame America.

  58. 58.

    Zinsky

    There was an article bouncing around the Internet recently about the psychological damage being inflicted on drone pilots or operators (link here). Of course, the mainstream media didn’t pick it up because it conflicts with the macho narrative that war and killing makes us stronger and that all U.S. soldiers and airmen are invincible supermen who never experience remorse over the wanton killing of innocent civilians. The truth is that most human beings cannot kill another human being, especially an unarmed one, without suffering a great deal of psychological damage themselves. Studies after WWII showed that as many as 25% of combatants refused to shoot an enemy soldier when the opportunity arose or deliberately missed or fired into the ground. Humans are not innately capable of cold-blooded murder, which is what we are doing with these drones.

  59. 59.

    Matt McIrvin

    This is the one thing that can make me go full purity pony, and consider not voting and just letting the whole country burn. It’s all dirty, just wash your hands and walk away from Omelas.

    The problem is that that way leads to even more suffering.

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