The Garden

On Friday, Jan. 23, President Obama approved an air strike inside the border of Pakistan, which, according to guardian.co.uk, killed at least 18 people. Obama’s policy on this issue is incidentally a continuation of the Bush administration’s, as this attack was one of about 30 unmanned air strikes carried out by the U.S. within the Pakistani border since September 2008 which were reportedly aimed at suspected Al-Qaeda targets. According to numbers reported by Reuters, these 30 U.S. air strikes have killed some 250 people. All of these air strikes have apparently been carried out with drone aircraft controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency from locations within the U.S.

The fact that Obama approved these air strikes raises some concern amongst individuals who were hoping for a break from Bush’s policies—especially those involving the bombing and killing of people. Although I interpret the killing of people to be bad policy, I understand that others do not see it that way. For example, according to a January 24 article in guardian.co.uk, “The strikes will help Obama portray himself as a leader who, though ready to shift the balance of American power towards diplomacy, is not afraid of military action.” Following this writer’s thinking, the act of killing people can be seen as character building. Now that a few dozen people have been killed, we now know that President Obama is not “afraid” of doing such.

Aside from the problems I have with killing people in general, there is something particularly irksome about those who do their killing from miles away in the comfort of their control rooms, or, in President Obama’s case, his office. It is odd that anyone would consider the use of military drones as an indication that one lacks fear regarding military action. In my mind, rather than demonstrating courage or bravery with respect to the use of military force from afar, I would think that bombing by remote control would be the epitome of cowardice. If it isn’t cowardly enough already to bomb people from the safety of a jet hundreds of feet in the air, how much courage does it take to push a few buttons from a control room across the ocean to drop a bomb?

Most importantly though, I have to take issue with the idea that a reluctance to use military violence indicates that a person is “afraid.” In our society, it appears as though there is something “tough” or “courageous” about using violence to solve problems. I don’t understand why that is. Perhaps I would understand it in an old fashioned sense if the fighting were done hand-to-hand, up close and personal. But when the violence is waged from afar with superior firepower and technology, the element of courage dissolves into cowardice. Especially when it is “popular” to support military violence, as it is in the U.S., it is far more courageous to oppose military violence in the face of this majority. Therefore, just as President Obama might not be afraid of military action, he likely is afraid to abandon the use of it.

As if the use of remote controlled bombing machines weren’t cowardly enough, members of the Obama administration didn’t even have the wherewithal to discuss the killings. Both Vice President Joseph Biden and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs refused to answer questions from reporters about the air strikes. In a January 25 interview on CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, Bob asked Biden a question about the drone attacks, to which Biden replied, “Bob, as you know, I can’t speak to any particular attack. I can’t speak to any particular action. It’s not appropriate for me to do that…I always try to be completely candid with you, but I can’t respond to that question. I’m not going to respond to that question.” Likewise, in a January 29 press briefing, Robert Gibbs evaded questions about the air strikes from reporters by persistently replying, “I’m not going to get into these matters.”

Apparently, in addition to keeping a “safe” distance between themselves and the victims of their remote controlled bombs, the Obama administration is also interested in keeping a “safe” distance between themselves and the American public. Who’s afraid of what again?

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 17:31 and is filed under Ranger News Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.