Why a former Obama administration official was talking about her own fear was not explored. But something else al-Muslimi said helped put the lawyer's fears in fuller perspective:
"The drone strikes are
the face of America to many Yemenis. I have spoken to many victims of U.S.
drone strikes, like a mother in Jaar who had to identify her innocent
18-year-old son's body through a video in a stranger's cellphone, or the father
in Shaqra who held his four- and six-year-old children as they died in his
arms.
"Recently in Aden, I
spoke with one of the tribal leaders present in 2009 at the place where the
U.S. cruise missiles targeted the village of al-Majalah in Lawdar, Abyan. More
than 40 civilians were killed, including four pregnant women.
"The tribal leader and others tried to rescue the victims, but the bodies were so decimated that it was impossible to differentiate between those of children, women and their animals. Some of these innocent people were buried in the same grave as their animals."
Who Cares What Blows
You Up, Once You're Blown Up?
But wait, some might say, cruise missiles are different from missiles from drones, and technically that's correct. It's also morally meaningless. The remote killing of civilians remains an act of terror, and a war crime, and it really doesn't matter if drone missile s have less explosive power and therefore kill innocent people at a slower rate.
These days, in America, drone wars are not part of a moral debate. Discussion of anonymous killing from the air has raised a debate about technicalities, sometimes important technicalities of ordnance, tactics, law, and constitutionality.
If the debate were about morality, we'd admit that our country commits terrorist acts with relative impunity -- and then we'd consider whether that's the country we want to go on being.
Terrorism is generally thought to be a weapon of the weak, but there's no inherent reason it can't work even more effectively for the strong, at least in the short term. Especially when the strong have the media ability to redefine their terrorist acts as "targeted killings" or, better, "signature strikes."
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