By
Matt Agorist
“With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we’re taking out their leadership,
their oil, their training camps, their weapons,” Obama stated during his
farewell State of the Union address earlier this month. Conveniently,
in those 10,000 air strikes, he failed to include the bombings of
hospitals, weddings, tribal council meetings, and, at least,
eight U.S. citizens, with no concern for due process or a constitutionally mandated fair trial.
The Obama administration is also responsible for allowing the CIA to deploy drone strikes against a
Yemeni wedding and a
Pakistani tribal council meeting with total impunity.
On October 3, 2015, a
U.S. airstrike
killed at least 20 patients and MSF staff at a hospital in Kunduz,
Afghanistan, occupied by the group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the
French charitable organization, “Doctors Without Borders.”
There is no question that the United States, in its carrying out of
drone strikes and bombing campaigns throughout the Middle East, has
killed thousands. However, the last thing the warmongers ever do is
admit to these killings.
On Friday, that changed as the US Central Command admitted that they
killed and injured multiple civilians in the ‘vicinity’ of a drone
strike meant for Junaid Hussain, on August 13, 2015.
Sadly, it’s not surprising to those who pay attention to the
atrocities carried out by the military-industrial complex, but what
makes this case unique is that not only did the US admit to killing
civilians, they also admitted to missing their target.
According to
The Guardian,
born in Birmingham, Hussain, 21, joined Isis’s “cyber caliphate” after a
stint as part of the UK hacker group Team Poison. Known by the handle
Trick and later Abu Hussain al-Britani, Hussain served six months in
jail in 2012 for publishing details from an illegally obtained address
book belonging to former prime minister Tony Blair.
For his alleged role in other high-profile hacking incidents, and in
spite of his British citizenship, Hussain became the target of a US
drone strike last year. But, instead of killing their target, the US
government blew up noncombatants said to be “in the vicinity” of the
strike, near IS’s Syrian capital of Raqqa.
Eleven days after killing innocent civilians, the US launched another
strike on the British hacker on August 24. With the UK playing a
“consulting” role, Hussain was actually confirmed killed this time.
However, it is unknown how many civilians were killed in this strike.
Since the inception of the war on terror, US drone strikes have
killed thousands of innocent civilians, including hundreds of children throughout Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria.
Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland and Stephen Lewis, who served as drone operators in the US Air Force,
have
gone public with detailed accounts of the widespread corruption and
institutionalized indifference to civilian casualties that characterize
the program.
After the U.S. Government failed to deter them
through threats of criminal prosecution, and
clumsy attempts to intimidate their families, these four former Air Force drone operators-turned-whistleblowers
had their credit cards and bank accounts frozen.
There is no question — those who expose the crimes of the US government become enemies of the state.
For more than a decade, this reckless US policy of “surgical” drone
strikes has done nothing to stave off terrorism and only served to
foster it by turning the families of the innocent victims into sworn
enemies of America.
The reality is that since 9-11, the US and their NATO allies have
fostered a breeding ground for extremist and fundamentalist groups. As
Americans sat back on their couches and watched the
“Shock and Awe” on CNN, the US was sowing the seeds for perpetual war.
They were planting a garden in which a million Bin Ladens would later bloom.
This policy played right into the hands of the, then, tiny and
insignificant fundamentalist groups. However, every time a US bomb
dropped into a village, this was a recruiting haven for the
fundamentalists. Now, a group who was never heard of 3 years ago is
recruiting people on a global scale and
growing their ranks daily.
As drone whistleblower Staff Sgt. Brandon Bryant said in his open
letter to Barack Obama, “We kill four and create 10. If you kill
someone’s father, uncle or brother who had nothing to do with anything,
their families are going to want revenge.”
It’s time to stop this cycle.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and
former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior
experience gives him unique insight into the world of government
corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an
independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on
mainstream networks around the world.
Avella / Noticias UNO
