We droned the shit out of Yemen. No one talks about it here. But everyone's talking bout it in Yemen
By Joshua Hersh
Yemen Drone Strikes Bring New Round Of Terror To Embattled Country
Posted: 08/10/2013 11:10 pm EDT
...
Over the previous week, the United States and other Western nations ramped up terror alerts about Yemen, a small nation on the tip of the Arabian peninsula that attracts a disproportionate amount of American attention. A recent terrorism alert prompting the closures of nearly two dozen American embassies around the Arab world was "emanating from Yemen," the U.S. said, and earlier in the week American citizens were urged to flee Yemen. The staff of the U.S. embassy there was spirited to Germany on a military cargo plane.
However, as the week progressed, signs of terror did not take the form of an attack by al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, an increasingly powerful franchise of the feared terrorist organization, but instead, as Haykal Bafana, a Sanaa-based Yemeni lawyer, put it recently, of an "orgy of drones."
Over the past 10 days, at least nine American drone strikes have been conducted across the country's remote provinces, most recently on Saturday evening. At least 36 people, all of them immediately deemed "suspected militants" by the Yemeni government, were killed, according to wire service counts. On Thursday alone, there were three drone attacks, an unprecedented rate; Saturday's was the fifth in 72 hours.
For those left in Yemen, it has been like living in a universe parallel to the one described in American terror alerts, Bafana said on Saturday. "It's like there are two different Yemens," he said. "The one the U.S. and Yemeni government claims is always under a terrorist threat, and the one we actually live in, with drones. It's like they stepped through the looking glass."
...
Earlier in the week, he said, when an American P-3 Orion spy plane circled over Sanaa for nearly 10 hours, loudly buzzing as residents tried to celebrate the start of Eid, residents stopped in their tracks to protest. "People were standing in the street and screaming at it," he said.
...
"When there is a normal war, people can hide, or they can stay away from the military -- they can make choices and be careful," al-Muslimi said. "But when drones come, you just don't know when you'll be next. The fear is incredible."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/yemen-drone-strikes_n_3737554.html
[hr]
Saturday, 10 August 2013 KSA 08:15 - GMT 05:15
Drowning out the drones in Yemen?
The past few days, drones had been hovering over Yemen and killing innocent people and militant suspects. And then this Thursday President Obama sent a greeting to the Muslim world on the occasion of the Eid. He sent 'warmest' greetings. The message contained other things which I won’t mention because it does not matter. Why would a 'warm' greeting of an American president matter to me to someone living in an Arab country? Why should I care about the positive gestures he offers. Moreover why would he even bother to send his greetings? What does he feel when he signs the greetings with the same pen which signs the command to use drones?
I cannot answer that, but when I read his greetings, I was also reading news of drones flying over Yemeni cities and villages. And the greeting tasted bitter. I felt that his greeting was charged with double standards, hypocrisy, and disregard for our lives. For a moment I felt that as far as Obama was concerned, the lives of foreign citizens do not matter. It crossed my mind that we are bugs. I asked myself if or not he sincerely believe that we are entitled to live safely. Do we matter?
Drone injustice
I am a realist and a pragmatist. So I tried to justify it. I sincerely did. I said there are terrorists. They threaten us. They kill us. They also threaten the United States and they kill American citizens. So why should I be angry at killing them? I went online. I read the justifications presented by those who support it. But no matter how much I thought or read, I could not overcome the fact that such an act is illegal, immoral, unjust, counterproductive and racist.
What we have here is a pure act of murder cloaked in words like: self-defense, last resort, proportional, and just. But the naked truth is that those being killed are suspects. Any sensible law would not allow the execution of a human being without a process of proving that they are guilty of the crimes attributed to them. Terrorist or not, they have rights as humans. Or maybe Obama and his administration think not. They are after all Arabs and Muslims. So maybe they are fair game. What makes it worse it that absolutely innocent individuals are also killed in the process. And the drones still continue. It is as if it does not matter for Obama that a few children are killed as long as he is ‘protecting’ the American people. So what? They are Arab children. And we have many of them. So what if one or two fall down while the killing of American enemies goes on. Collateral damage is the technical word they use.
But the damage does not stop. Not only is Obama illegally executing suspects and murdering innocent people. In the process he terrorizes a whole nation. Yemenis are constantly looking up the sky. Faces become white from fear with the sound of the hum of the drone far away. Obama wants to kill 6 people and in the process terrorizes more than 20 million and to put a cherry on top, kills a ‘few’ more who were not on the list. Sometimes he does not even get the ones he was after. So he takes another shot. But so what. It is only Yemen. And I can say the same for Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those nations do not need to feel safe. Only Americans should feel safe. Everyone else can lie down and die. What adds insult to injury is that Obama actually considers it a just war. He actually considers that terrorizing a whole nation is proportional. The only way that this war is just or proportional is to consider that the lives, security and wellbeing of Twenty million+ Yemenis are worthless.
...
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2013/08/10/Drone-attacks-in-Yemen-can-t-be-drowned-out.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Indeed they must have been. 
One wonders.......
I had a very busy week but that's no excuse. I just rec'd them all for what little good that will do. I think Skinner mentioned we'd soon have a way to subscribe to people's threads. I can't wait because this place is moving almost too fast now and those shouldn't have sunk.
Good morning Cali 
. Not that it really is. My day started with After Guantánamo, Another Injustice. There's nothing like that, drones, Wall Street, silent screams and more lies all over the place to sour your Sunday real quick. But good morning to you my dear 
I'm really puzzled over what's going on in Yemen, Catherina. And very disturbed.
good afternoon, darlin'.
I can't abide abject cynicism.
wasn't it, oh Sockpuppets of DU? Chime in here...help me out. 
Dear President Obama and President Hadi
My name is Faisal bin Ali Jaber. I am a Yemeni engineer from Hadramout, employed by Yemen's equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency. I am writing today because I read in the news that you will be meeting in the White House on Thursday, August 1, to discuss the "counter-terrorism partnership" between the US and Yemen.
My family has personally experienced this partnership. A year ago this August, a drone strike in my ancestral village killed my brother-in-law, Salem bin Ali Jaber, and my twenty-one-year-old nephew, Waleed.
President Obama, you said in a recent speech that the United States is "at war with an organisation that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first." This war against al-Qa'ida, you added, "is a just war - a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense."
President Hadi, on a trip to the United States last September, you claimed that "every operation , before taking place, permission from the president." You also asserted that "the drone technologically is more advanced than the human brain".
Why, then, last August, did you both send drones to attack my innocent brother-in-law and nephew? Our family are not your enemy. In fact, the people you killed had strongly and publicly opposed al-Qa'ida. Salem was an imam. The Friday before his death, he gave a guest sermon in the Khashamir mosque denouncing al-Qa'ida's hateful ideology. It was not the first of these sermons, but regrettably, it was his last.
In months of grieving, my family have received no acknowledgement or apology from the U.S. or Yemen. We've struggled to square our tragedy with the words in your speeches.
How was this "self-defense"? My family worried that militants would target Salem for his sermons. We never anticipated his death would come from above, at the hands of the United States. In his death you lost a potential ally – in fact, because word of the killing spread immediately through the region, I fear you have lost thousands.
How was this "in last resort"? Our town was no battlefield. We had no warning – our local police were never asked to make any arrest. My young nephew Waleed was a policeman, before the strike cut short his life.
How was this "proportionate"? The strike devastated our community. The day before the strike, Khashamir buzzed with celebrations for my eldest son's wedding. Our wedding videos show Salem and young Waleed in a crowd of dancing revellers, joining the celebration. Traditionally, this revelry would have gone on for days – but for the attack. Afterwards, it was days before I could persuade my eldest daughter to leave the house, such was her terror of fire from the skies.
The strike left a stark lesson in its wake – not just in my village, but across Hadramout and wider Yemen. The lesson, I am afraid, is that neither the current U.S. or Yemeni administrations bother to distinguish friend from foe. In speech after speech after the attack, community leaders stood and said: if Salem was not safe, none of us are.
Your silence in the face of these injustices only makes matters worse. If the strike was a mistake, the family – like all wrongly bereaved families of this secret air war – deserve a formal apology.
To this day I wish no vengeance against the United States or Yemeni governments. But not everyone in Yemen feels the same. Every dead innocent swells the ranks of those you are fighting.
All Yemen has begun to take notice of drones – and they object. Only this month, Yemen's National Dialogue Conference, a quasi-Constitutional Convention which I understand the U.S. underwrites, almost unanimously voted to prohibit the unregulated use of drones in our country.
With respect, you cannot continue to behave as if innocent deaths like those in my family are irrelevant. If the Yemeni and American Presidents refuse to engage with overwhelming popular sentiment in Yemen, you will defeat your own counter-terrorism aims.
Thank you for your consideration. I would appreciate the courtesy of a reply.
Yours Sincerely,
Faisal bin Ali Jaber
Sana'a, Yemen
Link: http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/americas/6770-letter-to-obama-and-hadi-on-yemeni-drones
There is no comparison. I don't support all US policy in the region, but the targeted killings of suspected terrorists, even when those targeted strikes also happen to kill civilians, is not the same as the kind of indiscriminate killing of civilians AQ engages in to make political points.
Keep up the good work. 
I delibertly took my time to find such an image, only to have it censored, and then have me abused without any chance to respond.
it was creepy, to say the least.
But I will take your generous advice, and say thank you, wtmusic, for your kind words as well.
Also, it's easy to see how lame it was to censor those posts, but that is the nature of today's playground I suppose.
