How America's Killer Drone Strikes Undermine Yemeni Democracy

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http://www.alternet.org/world/americas-killer-drone-strikes-undermine-yemeni-democracy



“Blowback" is a lesson the United States government should have learned in the mountains of Afghanistan, the streets of Iraq and the wild territories of Pakistan: Be careful what you sow, because you will reap it tomorrow.

A small delegation of CODEPINK peace activists travelled to the beautiful country of Yemen in June (and yes, despite the images in Western media of a dangerous country overrun by terrorists, it is a country rich with culture and a welcoming population).

We were greeted with some wise words from Abdul-Ghani Al Iryani, a political analyst and founder of Tawq, Yemen's Democratic Awakening Movement: "In the fight against al-Qaeda and the extremism it represents, we can do it the easy way, by killing, and thus have to do it again and again, or the hard way and really solve the problem. To truly fight al-Qaeda and similar groups, we must deal with the root causes of its growth - poverty, injustice, lack of rule of law…and drone strikes."

That last part - Iryani's inclusion of drone strikes as a root cause of extremism -seems to be lost on the Obama administration (as it was with the George W. Bush team). In what has come to be a trademark "kill-first-analyse-later- only-if-challenged" intervention style, Obama has authorised nine drone strikes in Yemeni territory since July 28, in a kneejerk response to intercepted Internet "chatter" suggesting an imminent terrorist attack against Western targets somewhere in the world.


***i'm concerned how extrajudicial killings undermines our democracy...but still -- point taken.