Category Archives: News

Ground Zero, Syria [PHOTOS]

“It is well that war is so terrible otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”
Robert E. Lee

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower

My son Timothy alerted me last week to this blog, the LiveJournal of Ilya Plekhanov, editor of military and literary almanac, The Art of War. These sites are in Russian some of which Chrome will translate into English. (See also Plekhanov on the Russian edition of Forbes.) All of the photos below are from the collection on the LiveJournal blog.

While viewing the photos I was reminded of the hell of war. I also question why so many who follow Christ seem given over to it, at times with virtual bloodlust. For people who follow the Prince of Peace, who often made fun of the “peace-niks” of the 60s, we should be reminded yet again that Jesus words, “There will be wars and rumors of wars,” was not intended to be a foreign policy statement.

What questions should Kingdom residents ask? Is the violence in Syria merely a civil war? How are we involved behind the scenes? Is this all about installing a democracy friendly to U.S. interests? Passive toward Israel?

How many of the people in the pictures below do not or did not know Christ? How many have never or had never heard a clear presentation of the gospel? How many are now or soon will be in a Christ-less eternity?

In the below photo gallery, compiled during October and the first of November 2012, the struggles of Syria are chronicled. There is a warning before the more graphic ones. But I encourage you to look unless you absolutely cannot. Be reminded. War is hell. People die. Eternity never ends.

When is it worth it? When is it not?

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS INCLUDE SCENES OF INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE, BLOOD AND SOME GORE

Two men with guns accost an apparently unarmed man.

The unarmed man appears to be attempting evasive action.

The unarmed man lies dead from a bullet to the head.

A man appears to be running for cover.

Apparently the man has been wounded.

As someone extends help to the man in the street, I wondered if the man laying wounded or dead on the sidewalk is the man who was in the foreground in the first picture of this series.

People are people. Nobody wants their child to die.

Friedersdorf on the abject failure of conservative media

Conservative radio theater host, Rush Limbaugh [Image credit]

Over the last few weeks I have come to appreciate the writings of Conor Friedersdorf, columnist for The Atlantic. Following last night’s election results he addressed the failure of the conservative media to see the big pre-election stories, opting instead for conspiracy theories, and faux news.

The losers, according to Friedersdorf, were the “rank-and-file” conservatives who took Limbaugh, Hannity, et al, as authoritative and truthful casting a wary eye at all other outlets.

From the article:

Barack Obama just trounced a Republican opponent for the second time. But unlike 4 years ago, when most conservatives saw it coming, Tuesday’s result was, for them, an unpleasant surprise. So many on the right had predicted a Mitt Romney victory, or even a blowout — Dick Morris, George Will, and Michael Barone all predicted the GOP would break 300 electoral votes. Joe Scarborough scoffed at the notion that the election was anything other than a toss-up. Peggy Noonan insisted that those predicting an Obama victory were ignoring the world around them. Even Karl Rove, supposed political genius, missed the bulls-eye. These voices drove the coverage on Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge Report, and conservative blogs.

Those audiences were misinformed.

Outside the conservative media, the narrative was completely different. Its driving force was Nate Silver, whose performance forecasting Election ’08 gave him credibility as he daily explained why his model showed President Obama enjoyed a very good chance of being reelected. Other experts echoed his findings. Readers of The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other “mainstream media” sites besides knew the expert predictions, which have been largely born out. The conclusions of experts are not sacrosanct. But Silver’s expertise was always a better bet than relying on ideological hacks like Morris or the anecdotal impressions of Noonan. Sure, Silver could’ve wound up wrong, but people who rejected the possibility of his being right?

They were operating at a self-imposed information disadvantage.

[…]

You haven’t just been misinformed about the horse race. Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven’t tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they’ve done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.

Why do you keep putting up with it?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because Romney supporters like Jennifer Rubin and Hugh Hewitt saw it as their duty to spin constantly for their favored candidate rather than being frank about his strengths and weaknesses. What conservative Washington Post readers got, when they traded in Dave Weigel for Rubin, was a lot more hackery and a lot less informed about the presidential election.

Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. World Net Daily brought you Birtherism. Forbes brought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemy in a “Grand Jihad” against America. Seriously?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pander in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they’re plausible presidents, rather than national jokes who’d lose worse than George McGovern.

I encourage you to read the entire piece.

I’m sure some will say, “But what about Benghazi? What about Fast and Furious? What about socialism? What about Obamacare?”

To which I answer, “What about the boy who cried wolf?” As conservative media beats the birther drum, the Obama 2016 drum, and every other drum of suspiciousness, why should conservatives be surprised to find the wolf soundly dismissed even when loudly announced?

Conservative media, like liberal media, does not exist to tell the truth. It exists to relate a narrative. Each narrative fulfills–they hope–two functions: to sell ads and to make money. I really do not see this as cynicism. This is just reality.

The air inside any bubble eventually becomes toxic.

As long as Americans–conservative and liberal, Right and Left–eat pablum like it is a 5-star breakfast and drink muddy water like Italian roast, media sources will be content to serve it up as a never ending feast.

The real issue with abortion and the DNC

The closer the presidential election draws the more attentions return to the issue of abortion. Those on the left cry “women’s rights” while those on the right plead “right to life.” Both sides are passionate, and often enflamed in their attempts to solidify or overturn–respectively–Roe v Wade.

In early September 2012 the Democratic National Convention met in North Carolina. Amidst the debacle over “God” and “Jerusalem” the Democratic Party passed as strong a pro-abortion plank as has been ever hammered into a platform.

In the days following the DNC meeting ABC’s Cokie Roberts said

I think this Democratic Convention was really over-the-top in terms of abortion. Every single speaker talked about abortion. At some point, you start to alienate people. Thirty percent of Democrats are pro-life.

On the same program Roberts challenged Newark, New Jersey mayor Cory Booker

on why the platform committee removed the phrase saying that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” which had been in the platform since Bill Clinton ran on that platform in 1992.

Below is the abortion plank from the 2012 Democratic National Platform called Moving America Forward. Read it carefully.

Protecting A
[Image credit]
Woman’s Right to Choose. The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way. We also recognize that health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. We strongly and unequivocally support a woman’s decision to have a child by providing affordable health care and ensuring the availability of and access to programs that help women during pregnancy and after the birth of a child, including caring adoption programs. (2012 DNC Platform, pg. 18)

Here is the thing implicit in the DNC platform: abortion and adoption are moral equivalents. This is the real issue with abortion and the Democratic National Convention.

That Democrats affirm the legality of abortion from conception to birth for any reason or no reason is self-evident and has been for decades. But it is startling they cannot even bring themselves to recommend adoption over abortion. This is slavish adherence to ideology at the expense of civilized thinking.

Perhaps pro-life Democrats should be added to the endangered species list.

The moral and ethical position of the DNC is abortion = birth = adoption. Whether a woman aborts a child, keeps a child, or gives the child to adoptive parents it is a morally equivalent decision. No recommendation is made for a preferred end. They “strongly and unequivocally support” all options. Dismembering a child in the womb is given no moral difference from one delivered healthy into the arms of its mother.

Author Steven Waldman noticed this very thing,

[T]he 2004 platform said abortion “should be safe, legal and rare” – language that’s [sic] casts abortion reduction as morally preferable, something this platform does not. [Emphasis added.]

Unfortunately, the DNC does seem to have a moral preference in the matter though unstated. This can be derived from the statistics of the DNC’s preferred provider of abortion, pre-natal care and adoption referrals, Planned Parenthood. In 2010 Planned Parenthood (who, as seen above in the Booker link, was a prominent player at the 2012 DNC) reported the following:

Planned Parenthood did 329,445 abortions while it provided prenatal care to 31,098 women (90% less) and referred only 841 women to adoption agencies.

The number of women receiving prenatal care dropped significantly from 2009 to 2010, as the abortion business helped 40,489 women in 2009 — meaning almost 10,000 fewer women received prenatal support from Planned Parenthood last year than the year prior, or a drop of almost 25 percent.

The number of women getting adoption referrals also declined — from a low 977 in 2009 to 841 last year, or a decline of 14 percent.

Examined another way Planned Parenthood does 391 abortions for every adoption referral it makes and almost 11 abortions for every woman it helps with prenatal care.

The direction the DNC has taken this year is indeed tragic. They have increased their strident support for Roe v Wade to a philosophical landfill in which good and evil are comparable. To quote Javert, “The world is inside out. The world is upside down.”

Live chat the Obama-Romney foreign policy debate, October 22, 2012

Welcome to the Kingdom in the Midst chat of the Obama-Romney foreign policy debate. As with the previous debates, we are given the illusion of fairness. All third party candidates–even those with a mathematical possibility of winning, on the ballots in 47 or more states–are banned from the Democratic/Republican party controlled spectacle.

Tonight’s debate, moderated by Bob Schieffer, will be held at Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL. The format calls for six 15-minute time segments, each of which will focus on one of the topics listed below. The moderator will open each segment with a question. Each candidate will have two minutes to respond. Following the candidates’ responses, the moderator will use the balance of the 15-minute segment to facilitate a discussion on the topic.

(Seriously? The leader of the free world is being chosen based on two minute answers?? Good grief. No wonder people want to know who Honey Boo Boo endorsed.)

One of the subjects that has not been covered and will not be covered tonight is human trafficking.

Tentatively the topics as scheduled are:

America’s role in the world
Our longest war – Afghanistan and Pakistan
Red Lines – Israel and Iran
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – I
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – II
The Rise of China and Tomorrow’s World

The debate will begin at around 9:00pm Eastern Time (8:00CT) and last until around 10:30ET. For a refreshing change, watch the debate on C-Span which seems to be much less shrill than Fox and MSNBC.

RULES FOR THE CHAT
1. Be clear.
2. Stay on topic. Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden, their policies and performances are inbounds. Their families are not.
3. Try to be concise. If you try to write a novel the comment to which you are responding will be gone.
4. When appropriate use the name of the person to whom you are responding. For instance, “Terminator1: I think you are misinformed.”
5. NO SWEARING. If you cannot express yourself without stooping to gutter language go back to the SPIKE movie you were watching.
6. Please share the post via social sharing buttons at the top. The more the merrier.
7. Have fun!

You can login below under a username and your Facebook or Twitter accounts. The latter two will use your avatar; comments will not post to your timeline or Twitter feed.

Chat is now closed.

U.S. drone use challenged in court

On March 17, 2011 at least 42 people were killed by a United States drone strike in northwestern Pakistan. Four have been confirmed as Taliban members, while the others were civilians, including tribal elders who had gathered for an administrative meeting. Reports the Global Post on October 10, 2012:

Opponents take the stance that these strikes are not part of an armed conflict and the rules of war, thus, do not apply. The armed conflict claim is a legal fiction and the United States is cherry picking the legal framework that protects its conduct under the rules of war, thus doing indirectly what they cannot do directly under international human rights laws. Shamsi contends, “I think the key issue here is that the US is claiming that the laws of war apply in places where they absolutely do not apply.”

Contrary to the US stance, this interpretation holds that, regarding Anderson’s explanation, “There is no war going on in a legal sense, and if there is, it is strictly limited to hot battlefields of Afghanistan. [Drone strikes are] governed by standards of international human rights and domestic law, and therefore any killings that take place under the circumstances are not protected by the law of war and instead are just extrajudicial executions, and frankly murder.”

Meanwhile, the CIA wants to up the number of drones that it denies having. Reports Policymic.com:

While the 2012 presidential election racket focuses on gaffes, Romney’s binders, and Big Bird, the CIA and the Pentagon are currently busy finding ways to increase their military power and influence around the globe. According to the Washington Post, CIA Director David Petraeus wants an increased drone fleet to “bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging Al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots.”

In case you miss the significance here, the CIA is running a covert war using a kill list known to exist but which the president denies. Our “intelligence agency” requests even more drones at a time when the international community is already questioning the legality of how we are using them. In America there is little argument that “intelligence agency” = “paramilitary organization.”

Finally, the Daily Mail reports that two specific Americans could be investigated for murder related to their roles in drone strikes.

A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into the strikes’ targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones’ dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes.

The dossier has been assembled by human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who works for Pakistan’s Foundation for Fundamental Rights and the British human rights charity Reprieve.

CIA attorney John A. Rizzo [Image credit]
Filed in two separate court cases, it is set to trigger a formal murder investigation by police into the roles of two US officials said to have ordered the strikes. They are Jonathan Banks, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Islamabad station, and John A. Rizzo, the CIA’s former chief lawyer.

[…]

The plaintiff in the Islamabad case is Karim Khan, 45, a journalist and translator with two masters’ degrees, whose family comes from the village of Machi Khel in the tribal region of North Waziristan.

His eldest son, Zahinullah, 18, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, 35, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone that struck the family’s guest dining room at about 9.30pm on New Year’s Eve, 2009.

Asif had changed his surname because he loved to recite Iqbal, Pakistan’s national poet, and Mr Khan said: ‘We are an educated family. My uncle is a hospital doctor in Islamabad, and we all work in professions such as teaching.

‘We have never had anything to do with militants or terrorists, and for that reason I always assumed we would be safe.’

History may ultimately adjudge our current drone war on the same level as the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam war.

I’ve also written about America’s drone war in these posts:
The Drone War and the kingdom of God

One former British soldier talks about drone warfare

Live chat the Obama-Romney town hall debate, October 16, 2012

Welcome to the Kingdom in the Midst chat room for tonight’s town hall-style debate at Hofstra University between president Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney.

In true two-party dominance and pansy Presidential Debate Commission style, no third party candidates will be allowed. This ensures most actual ideas will remain sidelined. Despite this sad occurrence the Democratic and Republican contenders will have an audience of about 80 undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization. CNN’s “Complaining Candy Crowley” will select from among questions on foreign and domestic policy submitted by the audience, and most likely try to insinuate herself into the debate as well. As she is on the record for hating Mr. Romney, it is unlikely she will issue any substantive challenges to the president.

The debate will begin at around 9:00pm Eastern Time (8:00CT) and last until around 10:30ET. For a refreshing change, watch the debate on C-Span which seems to be much less shrill than Fox and MSNBC.

RULES
1. Be clear.
2. Stay on topic. Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden, their policies and performances are inbounds. Their families are not.
3. Try to be concise. If you try to write a novel the comment to which you are responding will be gone.
4. When appropriate use the name of the person to whom you are responding. For instance, “Terminator1: I think you are misinformed.”
5. NO SWEARING. If you cannot express yourself without stooping to gutter language go back to the SPIKE movie you were watching.
6. Please share the post via social sharing buttons at the top. The more the merrier.
7. Have fun!

You can login below under a username and your Facebook or Twitter accounts. The latter two will use your avatar; comments will not post to your timeline or Twitter feed.

The chat is now closed.

Live Chat the Biden-Ryan Vice-presidential debate (VP debate)

Welcome to the Kingdom in the Midst Live Chat for the Joe Biden-Paul Ryan vice-presidential debate. Vice President Biden and the man on the Republican ticket, Paul Ryan, will be debating the issues in a 90-minute session at Centre College in Danville, Ky. The event begins at 9:00ET.

Below you can login with either your Facebook or Twitter accounts, or simply choose a “Guest” username and login to participate.

Vice-president Joe Biden (l) and Vp candidate Paul Ryan [Image credit]

Chat is closed.

Who are America’s poor?

An October 7, 2012 cover story in the Christian Science Monitor explores the issue of America’s poor. The provocative article is entitled “Below the line: Poverty in America.”

Correspondent Jina Moore explores via narrative, history and facts what it means to be poor in America. Or at least what some people claim about poverty, and a few who reject the term. She writes:

[Who is poor] turns out to be a very difficult question to answer. How you answer may depend as much on who you are – liberal or conservative, city-dweller or rural homesteader, low-wage laborer or salaried middle class – as on any single set of criteria. Even the government isn’t sure how to think about the question: In some states, making $1,000 a month might qualify you for food stamps but could be too much income to qualify for Medicaid.

A presidential election year only makes the issue of the haves and have-nots more divisive. President Obama took heat for admonishing entrepreneurs that their businesses relied on tax-supported infrastructure and that “You didn’t build that.” Republican candidate Mitt Romney has been caught up in controversy over his statements at a fundraiser that nearly half of Americans don’t pay income tax and “feel entitled” to government “handouts.”

Americans know poverty exists and may agree on its broadest outlines, but when it gets down to the specifics, they often can’t agree on exactly who “the poor” are.

Among the stories she tells is one of Linda, who

steals her fruit.

No one at King’s Daughters Day Care, where she works, would begrudge her an orange or an apple, of course. This isn’t that kind of workplace. When she grabs a piece of whatever the kids are having that day, she’s welcome to it. But the simple staple is also something she can’t buy on her own.

“I can’t afford fresh fruit or low-fat meat. I can’t get cauliflower or green peppers,” she says. When she does buy food, “I buy things that stretch longer.” She opts for whole roasted chickens that she spins into four or five meals. She can stretch a tomato, grown in her home garden, across an afternoon salad and an evening BLT sandwich. Until the first frosts come, and the plants die, that is. Then she waits until summer to eat tomatoes again.

Ms. Criswell’s stoic self-sufficiency isn’t always enough to get her through. “I’ve eaten food that’s seven, 10 days old.” She gestures toward a reporter’s notebook. “You can [write] that down.”

Criswell works full time, with no benefits, and she hasn’t had a raise in three years. After taxes, she brings home $1,030 a month – enough, if she’s careful, to meet her expenses, with little wiggle room. “What I feel,” she says, “is anxiety. I felt it just this morning. It’s constantly in the back of my mind: ‘Am I going to have enough to pay the bills?'”

The “poor” in America are not stereotypical no matter what stereo one might wish to type. The inhabitants of poverty are as deep and wide as the stories that comprise the government’s numbers.

An enormous number of those in poverty work. Many of them work full time. Many others want to work, but cannot find the jobs. And, new estimates tell us, the high paying jobs are not coming back any time soon. This means, to paraphrase one Jesus Christ, “The poor will be with us always.”

Moore’s article continues:

Peter Edelman, a former Clinton administration official and now director of the Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., agrees: “There are literally millions of people … out there working … not getting out of poverty.”

He says the numbers show that there are “people who are in low-wage jobs and get some income supplement. Nobody wants to really admit that’s going on.”

In fact, most of the new jobs seen since the economic crisis – and most of what will come in the next decade – are low-wage, according to the National Employment Law Project. More than 40 percent of the jobs added to the economy between 2008 and 2010 – the first two years of the recession – were low-wage jobs, the project reported in August. Six of the 10 jobs projected to see the most growth by 2020 are also low-wage jobs.

Most people outside of Washington, DC, realize the current “recovery” is itself on life support. We are currently financing not only our own faux-recovery, but helping float the world’s economy. Likely this attempt will continue suppressing our own economy.

John Shmitt and Janelle Jones of the Economic Policy and Research Center found in their September 2012 paper, “Bad Jobs on the Rise,”

[W]e define a bad job as one that pays less than $37,000 per year (in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars); lacks employer-provided health insurance; and has no employer-sponsored retirement plan. By our calculations, about 24 percent of U.S. workers were in a bad job in 2010 (the most recently available data). The share of bad jobs in the economy is substantially higher than it was in 1979, when 18 percent of workers were in a bad job by the same definition.

In other words, if you are a single-income family of four with $37,000 per year salary, paid health insurance and some kind of 401(k) or other retirement, you are considered by Shmitt and Jones to have a good job.

Personally when I think of that scenario, I think of “working poor.”

Remember Linda? Jina Moore asks whether she is poor:

The government says no, because she makes “too much” money [$12,000/yr/net]. Yet if she needs to go to the mall or the grocery store, she hitches rides with her 35-year-old daughter, to save gas. When her brother gives her a gift card to Big Lots, a discount store, for her birthday, she buys towels and toilet paper.

While other Americans watch the stock market, she watches the grain prices. Grain feeds livestock, and Criswell stretches meat across multiple meals. She’s worried. “Grain is going up,” she says. “I don’t know how much longer I will be able to afford my roast chicken.”

Georgia restaurant owner Charles Sheehan-Miles has witnessed the same thing. On his blog in May 2012 he relates these observations:

Imagine a typical waitress. She works 35-40 hours per week. If she’s lucky, here in Georgia, here hourly wages will be between 2.50 and 3.50 per hour. Yes, you read that correctly. So, after, a weekly paycheck at the very best might be $80 or so dollars. Figure in another $200 in tips, which is pretty typical for a casual restaurant. That works out to about 280 per week.

Imagine a cook, a job which generally pays minimum wage or slightly higher. Maybe 8 buck per hour for a really experienced cook, or even 9 in some cases. Again, for a 40-hour work week, after taxes you’re looking at less than $250 per week.

Imagine supporting a family on that kind of money.

These are folks who are on their feet 8 hours a day, running back and forth, delivering food, taking orders, scrubbing and cleaning, and sometimes putting up with the worst indignities from customers who think it’s funny to be nasty to waitresses, who think it is generous to leave a 50 cent tip after typing up a table for two hours. And yes, some of them are young, and it is their first job. Some of them are there because they didn’t finish college, or they made some choice earlier in life that led to this kind of work. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that they work harder than anyone sitting in an office, any day of the week. That doesn’t take away from their humanity. And personally, I’m sick of seeing the working poor portrayed by politicians and pundits as the dregs of our society. Because they are more honest and hard-working that most anyone else I know.

What is really and truly galling, aside from so many being in the same boat as these, is the calloused indifference–or blind ignorance–of those who think the Linda Criswells of America should not even be able to vote simply because they make too little to pay federal income tax.

Your guide for tonight’s debate

Tonight the major networks will host a debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. (Third party candidates have been asked to stay home. Upsetting the accepted narrative is frowned upon by the Presidential Debate Commission.)

Of these few things you can be sure:
1. Both men will say something good.
2. Both men will make gaffes.
3. Even if Barack Obama falls off the stage, drops an F-bomb, and lights up a Marlboro while talking about healthcare, Democrats will proclaim him the winner within a nanosecond of the host’s “Goodnight and thanks for watching.”
4. Even if Mitt Romney breaks out a roll of thousand dollar bills as thick as Andre the Giant’s fist, introduces his two other wives to America, and calls for dispersing the Social Security Trust Fund among the Forbes 400, Republicans will shout down the Democrats in proclaiming a win.
5. Both men will be unswervingly bold in their promises and incomprehensibly vague in their substance.
6. Mitt Romney will say Obama has gotten almost nothing right.
7. Barack Obama will say Romney would get almost nothing right.
8. Obama will say “47%” enough times for an entire frat house to be drunk from beer pong.
9. Romney will mention “unemployment” enough times for Joe Biden to realize his four year burden comment was actually a slam on his boss.
10. No Democrats will change their minds.
11. No Republicans will change their minds.
12. Anyone who decides to vote based on a debate should probably have their voter registration card revoked.

Good night, and good luck.

The drone war and the kingdom of God

A week or so ago results from a recent in-depth investigative report on America’s drone war were released. Despite horrid reviews for President Obama’s involvement in it, several “mainstream” news outlets reported the findings.

A CNN report entitled Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians, U.S. study says states

The report accuses Washington of misrepresenting drone strikes as “a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the U.S. safer,” saying that in reality, “there is significant evidence that U.S. drone strikes have injured and killed civilians.”

It also casts doubts on Washington’s claims that drone strikes produce zero to few civilian casualties and alleges that the United States makes “efforts to shield the drone program from democratic accountability.”

When I wrote about drones in September (“One former British soldier talks about drone warfare”) a linked Washington Post story revealed 92 U.S. drone attacks from January 2011-June 2012 resulted in only five Al Queda leaders being killed. That is 87 misses out of 92 tries.

“Misses” being qualified by saying many people have been killed or injured, just not so much the actual enemy. The surgical precision about which our government likes to brag is akin to using a chainsaw to take out an appendix. The scars being about equal.

In the second of his two broadsides on why he will not vote for either major party candidate, Atlantic staff writer, Conor Friedersdorf, notes this about drone warfare:

Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn’t “precise” or “surgical” as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels.

Forgive me, but the word “terrorizes” is tellingly ironic.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, can be expected to dial up the hubris meter during the election approach. He may even hit 11. To fire up his base he must demonstrate he is even tougher on terrorism than Obama, which, following the most recent 9/11, should not be difficult. But Romney has offered no indication he would scale back the targeted killing program Predators provides.

Just yesterday, October 1, 2012, a Washington, DC, CBC affiliate reported drones will soon be able to seek and destroy on the battlefield without human input.

Ronald Arkin, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that drones will soon be able to kill enemies on their own independently.

“It is not my belief that an unmanned system will be able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield, but I am convinced that they can perform more ethically than human soldiers are capable of,” Arkin told AFP.

Arkin added that robotic weapons should be designed as “ethical” warriors and that these type of robots could wage war in a more “humane” way.

And we thought Skynet was so far in the future.

A Predator drone fires two Hellfire missiles

Dutifully the military asserts humans will remain involved in drone manipulation, that they will not be autonomous. And we are expected to to believe the military without question. Because the military never lies and the government never participates in cover-ups.

Right.

This post, however, is not primarily concerned with the politics involved with the drone war. My concern is the relationship of its effects to the kingdom of God.

We have been told that drone warfare provides safety to American troops and provides for less collateral damage than other types bombing. Drones are able to provide visuals clearer than a set of latitude and longitude coordinates, I suppose. A Hellfire missile launched from a drone should cause fewer casualties than a Tomahawk fired from a ship. Cleaner shots, better identification, direct hits. All of this adds up to more dead terrorists and a better protected homeland.

Except it doesn’t.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, reports,

from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individuals. Where media accounts do report civilian casualties, rarely is any information provided about the victims or the communities they leave behind. This report includes the harrowing narratives of many survivors, witnesses, and family members who provided evidence of civilian injuries and deaths in drone strikes to our research team. It also presents detailed accounts of three separate strikes, for which there is evidence of civilian deaths and injuries, including a March 2011 strike on a meeting of tribal elders that killed some 40 individuals.

Also noted in the report is whenever men of fighting age are killed, even if they are completely unknown, and even if their activity is undefined, they are classified as combatants. That is, if a Hellfire missile lands in the middle of 20 sixteen to eighteen year olds playing soccer, they are classified as enemy combatants. Why? Because we killed them in the course of prosecuting a war. Not because they have been or are in a training camp or have plans to join Al Queda.

A quick review: How do we know they were enemy combatants? Because the government said so. How does the government know they were enemy combatants? Because we killed them.

They might as well be since, as the NYT reports, “some in the Obama administration joke that when the CIA sees ‘three guys doing jumping jacks,’ they think it is a terrorist training camp.” Very funny.

The drone war in Asia and the Middle East has become the “War on Terror” equivalent of the bombing of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

As if this were not enough our drone strategy includes the very behaviors for which we would condemn terrorists: double strikes.

Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. These fears have affected behavior. The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may attract the attention of drone operators. Some parents choose to keep their children home, and children injured or traumatized by strikes have dropped out of school. Waziris told our researchers that the strikes have undermined cultural and religious practices related to burial, and made family members afraid to attend funerals. In addition, families who lost loved ones or their homes in drone strikes now struggle to support themselves. Emphasis mine

One report has a drone striking a funeral where mourners had gathered to remember the victims of a previous drone strike.

Additionally the

FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Area] suffers from one of highest poverty rates in the world. The per capita income is approximately US$250 per year, with 60 percent of the population living below the national poverty line. Undeveloped infrastructure and low per capita public development expenditure have resulted in an overall literacy rate of only 17 percent. Most of the population depends on subsistence agriculture, manual labor, small-scale local business, or remittances from relatives working abroad or in other regions of Pakistan for survival. In North Waziristan, chromite mining operations also provide limited contract jobs near the Afghan border. There are only 41 hospitals in the region, and an estimated one doctor for every 6,762 residents.

Who lives there?

FATA is inhabited almost entirely by Pashtuns, a group of tribes that first settled in the area more than 1,000 years ago. The various Pashtun tribes live not only in FATA, but also in large parts of south and east Afghanistan. Altogether, there are some 25 million Pashtuns worldwide, making it one of the largest tribal groups in the world.

Who are the Pashtuns? They are virtually all Muslims who span the border between Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. This means they are not followers of Christ. This means they are being bombed into a Christless eternity.

As a follower of Christ it disturbs me to know my government is randomly, regularly, inefficiently, deceptively, and erroneously killing people with whom we are not at war; targeting first responders and mourners for missile strikes; creating an ongoing situation where bearers of the gospel cannot enter with eternal good news. Why do we who give money for missions, pray for the fulfillment of the Great Commission, long for the day when some from every nation tribe and tongue sing praises to our great God seem so content to have one of those tribes bombed into oblivion? Have we bought so thoroughly into a kingdom of this world it has priority over the kingdom of God? Are we so fearful of what might happen to us we are willing to overlook anything that is happening to people around the world?

My friend Emily said today in a Facebook conversation, “I think we should do our best not to have these conversations in a theoretical moral and ethical sphere that is separate from the Christian narrative. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ should be the basis for thinking through all of these things, IMHO.” If we are to call ourselves “followers of the Way,” then, I believe, it must thus be.

You can read or download the entire report pdf from Stanford-NYU here.

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