Bombing the Competition

Originally published at naaxiom.wordpress.com on May 28, 2013.

The U.S. Department of Defense, CIA and the rest of the Obama Administration have come under severe scrutiny recently about drone strikes around the world, regarding their goals, procedures and results. The U.S. has killed an estimated 3,300 people in the seemingly unending War on Terror, including “combatants,” propagandists and many many civilians.

The Obama Administration’s procedure in determining whether a target is worthy of the judge-jury-executioner treatment of a Predator Drone has been heavily concealed, especially targeting the so-called “propagandists.” One such propagandist was Samir Khan, an American-born publisher of Inspire, a pro-Al Qaeda magazine, who was killed in a drone strike along with Anwar al-Awlaki, another “lecturer,” in 2011.

The case of Samir Khan is one that blurs the lines between violence and information. Since authorities could not formally charge him while he was living in the U.S. because, “he was not inciting violence, he was simply putting out information,” they apparently decided to strike and kill Khan while he was abroad. This raises a serious question as to how far U.S. Authorities will go if they do not agree with information that is published online regardless of its lack of violence. Khan’s publications are not what one would call peaceful, and such cases leads one to question the procedure of rating what kind of information and publications the U.S. regards as threatening enough to carry out a drone strike on.

If the U.S. Government is accusing online resources (specifically Khan’s Inspire Magazine) for providing instructions and materials on how to make bombs as a justification for targeted killings of U.S. Citizens abroad, then how do they justify the bomb-making online resources the U.S. Department of Defense directly on Amazon.com?

Without even purchasing the Improvised Munitions Handbook, anybody can learn all sorts of ways to cheaply and easily create havoc, such as makeshift rifles, gunpowder, and explosives made from household materials. It would be unprofessional of me to not credit the authors:

Pentagon U.S. Military (Author), Special Operations (Author), U.S. Government (Author), DOD U.S. Department of Defense (Author), U.S. Military (Author), Delene Kvasnicka of Survivalebooks (Author), U.S. Army (Author)

By raining missiles on Samir Kahn, perhaps it was the intention of the U.S. authorities to limit the amount of dangerous information. Or it was copyright infringement that hurt the sales of the Pentagon’s catalog.