Drones for Babies=Babies for Drones
When I first realized how many U.S. drone strikes had been made, and that my tax dollars were paying for them, it stunned me. Before this realization, I was like many other Americans. I assumed that all military actions our country might take were for the benefit of American citizens, freedom and democracy around the world. We were fighting bad people who sought to kill us and harm people in their own countries. War was bad — but in this case, I accepted the commonly-held wisdom that drone strikes were a necessary action to protect more people from being harmed in the future. I suppose I even thought that it was better that these machines could make “surgical strikes” and kill only a terrorist without involving U.S. or other troops who might have been hurt or killed.
I won’t say I was utterly a “baby” about the situation. I, like many other Americans, never gave drones, other countries, or U.S. policy regarding potential terrorism much thought. The proper description of my pre-drone awareness might be fool in a false paradise.
I can’t point to any one factor that made me more aware of these drone strikes and their true meaning. One day, I read an article in Time by a Pakistani teacher who witnessed his mother killed by a drone.
Rafeequl Rehman wrote,
My children — Mamana’s grandchildren — watched it…
