War is cruelty
- By Zhao Jinglun
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E-mail China.org.cn, December 2, 2014
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Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama is stepping up targeted assassination drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen. |
General William T. Sherman, the Union Army commander during the American Civil War remarked more than a century ago that "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it."
Nevertheless, the Obama administration tried hard to refine its drone war. An Air Force recruiter told Brandon Bryant that as a drone operator, he would be "like the smart guys in the control room in a James Bond movie."
But Bryant, 27, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after five years as a drone operator and has been feeling paranoid over killing innocent people, proved the recruiter totally wrong.
Bryant, who has tallied more than 1600 kills, described a gruesome scene of how three of his victims suffered as he watched thermal images on a computer: "The guy that was running forward, he's missing his right leg. And I watched this guy bleed and the blood is hot. As the man died, his body grew cold until he became the same color as the ground," he recalled, seeing the three victims' bodies grow smaller.
Bryant said scenes like that made him feel like a sociopath who "lost respect for life."
He told the German newspaper Der Spiegel that he was sure one of his strikes had accidentally killed a child. But his superiors insisted it was a dog.
According to classified intelligence reports from the CIA, the spy agency did not always know who it was targeting and killing. Human Rights Watch said 70 percent of drone strike victims in Yemen were civilians. Yet Wall Street Journal and NBC News poll found that 66 percent of Americans are in favor of the targeted strikes!
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