Friedersdorf pulls no punches

when he says: “Obama chose to allow
the CIA, a secretive entity with a long
history of unjust killings, to carry out
strikes; he chose to keep the very fact

of drone killings classified, deliberately
invoking the state-secrets privilege in

a way guaranteed to stymie oversight,
public debate, and legal accountability...”
Friedersdorf cuts Obama no slack

for letting the CIA run loose and
unrestricted; he sees the propensity

for easy kills in the name of vengeance
for the ultimate evil that it really is. Ina
sense, that makes the circumstances
and result of the “final” drone strike of the
war all the more macabre.

As detailed by the New York Times,
Zemari Ahmadi rose on the final day of his
life completely unaware of the tragedy that

would strike him and decimate his family.
Through numerous interviews
and reviewing both drone

 

Illustration by Athena Little

and security footage, reporters were able
to piece together a day without any violent
intent. Ahmadi left his house, picked up
coworkers, delivered food and water to the
poor, and returned home with water for

his family. Yet it is the final moments of his
life that must bear the most weight: “As he
pulled into the narrow street where he lived
with his three brothers and their families,
many of their children, seeing his white
Toyota Corolla, rushed out to greet him...
Some clambered onto the car in the street,
one jumped in while others gathered in the
narrow courtyard of the compound as he
pulled in.” It was at that moment that the
$100,000 Hellfire missile struck.

Ten people died that day, seven of them
were children. The youngest casualty was
a two-year-old named Hayat. There were
two three-year-old girls named Malika and
Somaya, six-year-old Benyamin, seven-
year-old Arwin, ten-year-old Farzad, and
16-year-old Faisal rounded out the children.

When the government announced
the strike, they were triumphant. Words
like “retribution” and “reprisal” littered the
newspapers. The killings were packaged
as if they single handily stopped another
terrorist bombing or saved an American
life. Maybe, if they hadn’t highlighted this
one so brazenly it would have slipped
away into statistics the way the thousands
before it had. In a sense, it's only because
of hubris that we would eventually know
these names.

Yet it should be of high importance
that we start to Know the names of
these faraway victims; after all, it's hard
to imagine how their deaths would not
serve to fuel terrorism. | can’t imagine
how two decades of warfare could not
drive thousands to arms. Why wouldn't
someone who had known Ahmadi to be a
good man all his life not hate the people
who killed him so callously? Why wouldn't
the anguished and terrified screams of
the survivors and left behind not pollinate
ceaseless rage for the country that caused
it? Is not vengeance a human emotion?

But maybe there is little to worry about
now that the Taliban has taken over and

Tt §

   
 

the troops have returned home. Instead
of drone strikes, the fear of the land has
centred on women’s freedoms and the
impending humanitarian crisis. In fact,
the two are so closely linked that a recent
Business Insider article quotes Zahra
Mohammadi who says of the Taliban
leaders: “They spend so much of their
time worrying about us women when
they could be helping the millions in
need." Unfortunately, the preoccupation
with women and the lack of focus on

the crisis has led to fears from UNICEF.
According to a UN News report, an
estimated 3.2 million children are acutely
malnourished while 1.1 million children
risk dying due to severe malnutrition.

Then again, one of the first diplomatic
meeting the Taliban held was with China
and initially, they vowed to be better on
the issues of human rights. It might just
work out that as the crises deepens, and
Afghanistan desperately requires more
and more aid, the Taliban will be forced to
slide in a more moderate and accepting
direction. Provided that China is not able
to capitalize on the anger undoubtedly
grown over the past two decades, western
countries may be able to pull the Taliban
away from their more negative teachings.

As | was writing this a line from “War
Pigs” by Black Sabbath kept running
through my mind: “Evil minds that
plot destruction/Sorcerers of death's
construction/In the fields, the bodies
burning/As the war machine keeps turning/
Death and hatred to mankind/Poisoning
their brainwashed minds.”

The war on terror that hasn't touched
North American shores in two decades,
has become the deliverance of terror to the
Middles East for the same period. It’s not
easy to tell whether the issue has reached
its zenith and will slowly subside into a scar
of the past or if it will just transform into
a different and easier to conceal atrocity.
We can only hope that it is the former, not
the latter, but who knows what the war
machine is chewing up at this moment.

| can’t imagine how two decades of warfare
could not drive thousands to arms. Why

wouldn’t someone who had known Ahmadi to
be a good man all his life not hate the people
who killed him so callously?