THE EMPEROR’S LOVE FOR THE PROPHET
Pg2
BUILDING A MOSQUE VERSUS BUILDING A COMMUNITY
DISMANTILING ISLAMAPHOBIA IN THE MEDIA
Pg2
BIRTHING COMPANIONS
Pg6
Pg8
US President Obama guided his wife’s hand as she maneuvered a Predator drone control to acquire a high-value overseas target for a White House photo-op. (Photo: The Onion)
DRONE WARS & PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE
“
Until America sees your children as they see my children, we will never get justice in the world.
S
even years ago this month after Barack Obama assumed the presidency on January 20, 2009, the first drone strike of his administration took place–in a small village in the region of Pakistan known as North Waziristan. It targeted the family compound of Faheem Qureshi, fracturing the young teen’s skull and destroying one of his eyes, while killing, among others, two of his uncles and a 21-year-old cousin. The White House’s intended target, it was later revealed, was not, nor had he ever been, present at the site. About ten months later, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its decision to award Obama the annual Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” In his speech at
“
the Oslo City Hall upon accepting the prize on December 10, 2009, Obama insisted that “the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war,” suggesting that U.S. warwaging is somehow superior, more ethical, than those of the country’s adversaries. “That is what makes us different from those whom we fight,” he proclaimed. “That is a source of our strength.” No doubt there are many things that distinguish the United States—not least the enormity of its military budget, and its global network of military bases. But as the documentary Drone (which premièred in the United States and Canada in late November and which includes footage from Obama’s speech) makes painfully clear, it is the U.S. government’s ability to kill at a distance—with impunity and with widespread
support, or at least resignation, of the citizenry—that also “makes us different.” Remotely piloted aircraft, what are popularly known as drones, allow the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence apparatus to track and monitor individuals from afar with little risk. According to Brandon Bryant, a former drone operator interviewed in the film states, “We’re the ultimate voyeurs, the ultimate peeping toms. No one is going to catch us.” It also allows the Pentagon to engage in what is effectively a global assassination program with
little domestic cost. “It’s never been easier for an American president to carry out a killing operation at the ends of the earth at any time in American history,” explains Mark Mazzetti, a reporter with The New York Times. “And when you define the world as a battlefield, that’s a very broad range of operations you can carry out.”
A
n explosive series of articles published in October by The Intercept shows just how far-reaching— and, perhaps most damningly, indiscriminate—these operations are. Based on classified documents leaked to the online magazine by
an unnamed whistle-blower within the U.S. intelligence apparatus, the series exposes the falsehoods underlying official Washington’s spin on drone strikes. While Obama administration officials claim that civilian casualties are not common in drone strikes, the documents make clear that the Pentagon typically does not know who it has killed. U.S. air-strikes carried out in northeastern Afghanistan between January 2012 and February 2013 (as part of Operation Haymaker), ...Continued on Page 4
A man walks past graffiti denouncing strikes by U.S. drones in Yemen, painted on a wall in Sanaa, Nov. 13. (Photo: Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi)