Children of a lesser God

Double standards of US lawmakers

Drones have become the weapon of choice for the US to take out Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders without the loss of US troops. After having been tried and tested in populated areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan they are being employed in two other countries also. With the assassination of the US enemies employed as a state policy, those included in the target list can be killed without sufficient evidence. Obama administration has thus simultaneously assumed the role of the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner. According to London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism the unmanned assassination machines have killed between 2,496 and 3,202 people in Pakistan since 2004 including 482-832 civilians, 175 of them children. This has led to protests by Pakistan’s government and the Parliament and public demonstrations in numerous cities by a number of political parties. A minority of US citizens that include activists of American anti-war coalition Code Pink and the Occupy Wall Street movement have protested against the civilian casualties. But the US public opinion has by and large remained unaffected.

Drones, however, created a little stir when three American citizens including radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki and his US born son died in a drone attack in Yemen. Civil libertarian groups suddenly remembered that their constitutional rights to due process had been violated. The White House invoked state secrets privilege to have the case dismissed from court. With Obama’s decision to appoint John Brennan as the new CIA chief, the issue of drone attacks has suddenly assumed importance in the US. Brennan has been a strong advocate of the drone attacks which has caused fears that any further killings of American citizens in the attacks might lead to a backlash among the general public. The issue took a serious turn when a number of senators wrote to Obama earlier this week demanding he shared the legal rationale for the killings or risk seeing Brennan’s confirmation blocked. Obama finally bowed to pressure to hand over a 50-page classified opinion providing the legal basis for the killings of US citizens by drones.

That the entire debate in Washington is centred around the killing of US citizens sends the message that American blood matters more to the US politicians than that of the citizens of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. While they failed to take any notice when thousands died in these countries, they now demand that a special court should review cases of American citizens before the administration orders their elimination. People in these countries are bound to ask if they are children of a lesser God.