Lest anyone thinks that when the US and Britain withdraw troops from Afghanistan ,
that will end their military involvement, think again. The United States
has a new doctrine of permanent war, using hi-tech remote weaponry like the
dreaded drone.
The Obama administration has institutionalised the use of
targeted killing by armed drones. In fact, the drone is Obama’s weapon of
choice. Under his presidency, drones are killing people at seven times the rate
under the previous Bush administration.
In the Matrix films, humans struggled against the machine.
In the Disposition Matrix, the US
government deploys machines to assassinate people on a hit list that is added
to daily. And, deciding who will live and die is the man in the Oval Office
himself, president Obama.
Except for those on the hit list in Pakistan . Here,
life-and-death decisions are taken by the Central Intelligence Agency, which
has abandoned spying to become a subsidiary of Murder Inc, whose headquarters
is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Northwest , Washington , DC 20500
The Disposition Matrix is a
database that officials describe as a "next-generation capture/kill
list". But it is more than that, creating a blueprint for tracking, capturing, rendering and
especially killing terrorism suspects. Thus the use of the term “disposition”.
Paul R. Pillar, the former deputy director of the CIA’s
counter-terrorism centre, has stated that "we are looking at something
that is potentially indefinite". And certainly illegal, within the
framework of both the US
constitution and
international law.
There is no “due process”, no opportunity to answer charges.
The last thing a victim hears is the sound of a missile arriving, shortly after
being fired by an unmanned drone. The trigger is pulled in a US military base somewhere else.
A computer game this is not, however. Some estimates suggest
that more people have been killed by US drones than the 3,000 plus who perished
when the Twin Towers
According to Daniel Klaidman in his book, Kill or Capture, “the inability to
detain terror suspects was creating perverse incentives that favoured killing
or releasing suspected terrorists over capturing them." That is why Osama bin Laden was executed as he
was.
At the heart of the Disposition Matrix is Obama adviser John
Brennan, who came to the job from the CIA. He is, the New York Times reported, the "priest whose blessing has become
indispensable" to Obama. Last April, he publicly
defended the policy of targeted killing.
Under George W.Bush, Brennan served as top aide to CIA director George
Tenet, where he defended the administration's use of extraordinary
rendition and “enhanced interrogation”, aka torture.
Brennan is said to wield enormous power in shaping decisions
on “kill” lists and the allocation of armed drones. The review process also
allows the killing of individuals whose identities are unknown. Americans may also
be listed as targets Indeed, one of the victims was US
citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi.
The American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) has condemned the Disposition Matrix database, stating
that "anyone who thought US
targeted killing outside of armed conflict was a narrow, emergency-based
exception to the requirement of due process before a death sentence is being
proven conclusively wrong.” It has launched a legal challenge, claiming that
the policy is unconstitutional.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and
counter terrorism, Ben Emmerson and Christof Heyns, UN Special Rapporteur
on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, have described some American
drone attacks as "war crimes".
That they certainly are. Calling
for an end to policy of permanent war, Washington
Post columnist Fareed
Zakaria cited a warning from James Madison, father of the US constitution:
“Of all the enemies
to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises
and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these
proceed debts and taxes. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom
in the midst of continual warfare.”
Over two centuries years
later, Madison ’s words should come home to haunt
Obama as he presides over the death of the very same US constitution.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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