U.S. Drone War: Clear and Troubling

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer U.S. President Barack Obama has said that he "takes full responsibility" for the killing of one American and one Italian hostage held by Al-Qaeda in a drone attack by the CIA in Pakistan earlier this year.

Date: 25 April 2015 - 21:32

News ID: ۱۳۱۸۵

In the wake of the new revelation, however, don’t expect any renewed debate on the so-called "kill list" or assassination campaign to break into the mainstream anytime soon.

This is because analysis of thousands of other available information has led the international community to judge with high confidence that the U.S. drone strikes have "accidentally” killed thousands of innocent civilians in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

As is, the international community has been criticizing for years the U.S. drone war and the existence of a presidential "kill list". They have been issuing objections for years over the legality of the program and the number of innocent people who have been killed, maimed or left traumatized by these bombings. But apparently, when it comes to the Western media, it is the death of two Western hostages that should only catch the attention of the White House and the broader public.

Washington might claim otherwise, that its drone war has had a stellar record of accuracy. But watching the news coverage of so many tragic deaths in the war-torn countries, the impression is totally different. In fact, killing innocent people - to whom no wrongdoing can be even tangentially attributed - has been a central part of the drone program from the very beginning, and is in many ways an inescapable consequence.

What’s clear and troubling is that many of these innocent victims have died amid media silence too. They have never ended up meriting a special press conference and investigation into what went wrong – let alone a formal apology from the White House AND "taking full responsibility".

Under the White House doctrine though, apology and redress is not available for Muslim civilians killed in drone strikes. Thanks to the United Nations silence and complicity, the U.S. government has never been transparent about the thousands of other deadly drone strikes it has conducted in the Middle East and Northern Africa either.

The U.S. government has proven time and again that it can kill civilians overseas without trial and accountability. To this end, the U.S. government is conducting an "internal review” to see if they could improve their deadly drone program in future. So expect no apology from President Obama for the next civilian victims of the CIA drone strikes anytime soon.