At his funeral, attended by 5,000 people, another drone fired missiles into the crowd in an attempt to kill Baitullah Mehsud, the founder of the Pakistani wing of the Taliban. Six months later, a US drone strike took out a mid-ranking Taliban commander in Pakistan. I had all the hopes and potential and now I am doing nothing.” More than a decade later, Faheem has still not been given an explanation for what happened to his family, even though the president was told almost immediately that a mistake had been made and innocent civilians had been killed. As Faheem Qureshi, a teenager who barely survived the attack, told The Guardian, “I am the living example of what drones are.… They have affected Waziristan as they have affected my personal life.
On January 23, 2009, for instance, just three days after Obama’s inauguration, a CIA drone strike in Pakistan ripped through a house filled with friends and family sitting down to dinner. Nor did he mention that those strikes had already killed dozens, if not hundreds, of civilians in countries ranging from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Yemen and Somalia. Bush, approved during his entire presidency. Unsurprisingly, nowhere in Obama’s 36-minute speech did he mention that he had already authorized more drone strikes than his predecessor, George W. Instead of preserving the peace, he quickly embraced the latest instruments of war, like drones, and so helped usher in a new era of warfare that, as the latest drone strike in Baghdad makes clear, is likely to haunt us for decades to come.Ī large part of Obama’s speech was dedicated to America’s adherence to the laws of war and the importance of protecting civilians when using force. Unfortunately-for him, for me, and for the world-he didn’t take his own advice. Looking back, there’s no doubt about the eloquence of his words, which fit well with the dreams of my 16-year-old self. At the same time, he defended his continued use of military force in the Middle East, arguing that “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace,” even if we “must also think clearly about how we fight” war.
TRUMP DRONE STRIKES HOW TO
Noting the absurdity of receiving the prize while still “the commander-in-chief of a nation in the midst of two wars,” he laid out his ideas on how to build a just and lasting world of peace. While accepting the award, he made a moving speech about war and peace. If you remember, as 2009 ended, President Barack Obama went to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. With the world veering into unprecedented territory, I realized that it was time for me to take off those rose-colored glasses, reflect on what our world really looked like 10 years ago and how oblivious I was to so many of the darker parts of it. I wrote about my desire not only to see the world but to help make it a better place. In 2010, when I was still an idealistic high school student in Tennessee, I wrote about the democracy movement I saw rising in the Middle East (what we came to know as “the Arab Spring”) and how hopeful it made me that global peace might be achieved in my lifetime. One entry in particular caught my attention. So I decided to indulge myself by looking through old journals of mine. In fact, over the holiday season, I found myself with time on my hands and that same sort of sentimentality creeping up on me. It’s the beginning of a new decade and nostalgia is in the air. Until that strike in Iraq occurred, it seemed like every time I opened Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram in the new year, I was inundated with sentimental reflections about how far we’ve come in the last 10 years and where we’re going next. New decades afford us a chance to take a good, hard look at what transpired in the years past. But when this world-altering news broke, I immediately started thinking about how I got here, as well as how my country could continue to recklessly breed chaos and destruction throughout the Greater Middle East.
When I first started writing this piece, I was simply reflecting on a decade of US drone warfare and the problems it had spawned. Everything we thought we knew about drone warfare-and America’s wars more broadly-is about to be thrown out the window. Even though there is still so much we don’t know, one thing is for sure. In the wake of the assassination, we’ve seen: The Iraqi parliament vote to expel American forces from their country all the Democratic presidential candidates make statements condemning the strike thousands of protesters around the world take to the streets and both chambers of Congress introduce resolutions aimed at curbing the president’s expanding war powers. Among the thousands of ignored American drone strikes since the 9/11 attacks, this was not one of them.
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