Obama fake out: Obama drones kill 7, wound 4 in "ally" Pakistan days after media said he was 'scaling back' his drone program that only radicalizes survivors and presents a weak and distracted US in the process of decline

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5/29/13, "UPDATE 1-U.S. launches first drone strike in Pakistan since [May 11] election," Reuters

"A U.S. drone strike killed seven people in Pakistan's volatile North Waziristan tribal region on Wednesday, security officials said, the first drone attack since a May 11 election in which the use of the unmanned aircraft was a major issue.

U.S. President Barack Obama recently indicated he was scaling back the drone strike programme, winning cautious approval from Pakistan.

Pakistani security officials and tribesmen said the drone fired two missiles that struck a mud-built house at Chashma village, 3 km (2 miles) east of Miranshah, the administrative town of North Waziristan.

They said seven people were killed and four wounded. It was not immediately clear if the victims were the intended targets.

Prime Minister-elect Nawaz Sharif said this month that drone strikes were a "challenge" to Pakistan's sovereignty. "We will sit with our American friends and talk to them about this issue," he said.

Obama's announcement of scaling back drone strikes was widely welcomed by the tribespeople of North Waziristan, where drones armed with missiles have carried out the most strikes against militants over the past seven years, sometimes with heavy civilian casualties.

Pakistan is a key ally in the U.S. war on terror but, while combating militancy is still a high priority, polls show Americans' main concerns are the economy and other domestic issues such as healthcare. (Reporting by Jibran Ahmad; Editing by Nick Macfie and Paul Tait)"

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So much for the experts at The Hill and the Brookings Institution:

5/27/13, "Fewer drone strikes likely result of new Obama policy, analysts say," The Hill Defense blog, Jeremy Herb

 "Michael O’Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the use of drones in the Middle East is already on the decline, thanks to earlier administration policy decisions, a lowered threat and the damage the strikes have caused to relations with Pakistan."...

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7/18/2011, "The War on Terror, now starring Yemen and Somalia," Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com 

"The U.S. continues to spawn the very Terrorism problem it claims to combat, with the media helpfully in tow."

"That the U.S. is creating the very Terrorism problem it claims to be combating is one of the most crucial points in discussions of American Terrorism policy...but it barely is heard in American political discourse.  Further bolstering that fact is the work of Noor Berham, who has spent three years systematically documenting the results of American drone attacks in Pakistan with on-the-scene photojournalism: Noor Behram says his painstaking work has uncovered an important — and unreported — truth about the US drone campaign in Pakistan’s tribal region: that far more civilians are being injured or dying than the Americans and Pakistanis admit....

“For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant,” he said. “I don’t go to count how many Taliban are killed. I go to count how many children, women, innocent people, are killed”...
According to Noor Behram, the strikes not only kill the innocent but injure untold numbers and radicalise the population.

“There are just pieces of flesh lying around after a strike. You can’t find bodies. So the locals pick up the flesh and curse America. They say that America is killing us inside our own country, inside our own homes, and only because we are Muslims."...

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Obama has "provided the image of a distracted superpower in the process of decline.... This image of weakness is being exploited"....

9/14/12, "The World from Berlin: 'Obama's Middle East Policy Is in Ruins'," Der Spiegel

"Obama was naive to believe that one only needed to adopt a new tone and show more respect in order to dispel deep-seated reservations about the free world....But Washington has provided the image of a distracted superpower in the process of decline to the societies there. This image of weakness is being exploited by Salafists and al-Qaida, who are active in North Africa from Somalia to Mali."

"One thing is clear: If jihadists believe they can attack American installations and kill an ambassador on the anniversary of Sept. 11, then America's deterrent power has declined considerably. For a superpower, it is not enough just to want to be loved. You have to scare the bad guys to keep them in check.""



 

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