Sunday, July 08, 2012

Editorial: If he wore a hoodie would you care about his death?

Tareq Aziz (pictured below) was murdered.  He was 16-years-old.

tareq aziz


In the US, it is often fashionable to become outraged over the death of a teenager or to pretend to be.  But Al Sharpton and the MSNBC No-Stars, like so much of the American press, haven't given a dam about Tareq Aziz.


Pratap Chatterjee (Bureau of Investigative Journalism) reported on Tareq:

Like so many teenagers in remote parts of the globe, Tariq though not legally old enough to drive, nonetheless had often taken out the family car. Around noon on October 31 he had been driving to pick up an aunt after her wedding. A slightly younger cousin, Waheed Rehman, was with him. Earlier that day, drones had been patrolling the skies for hours, but had become such a familiar sight in the area, that they were ignored. A few hundred yards from his aunt’s house one honed in and struck Aziz’s car. The two boys died instantly. Aziz’s uncle said their bodies were badly burned and mutilated, when people arrived from the village. The rescue party had held back at first, as drones frequently strike again, sometimes hitting those recovering the bodies.


The Drone War was started by Bully Boy Bush.  And, on the left, we were outraged and voiced our disgust.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2010s, the White House flipped political parties and, in 2009, Democrat or 'Democrat' Barack Obama was sworn in.

Quicker than Samantha Stevens could twitch her nose, the Drone War was no longer a concern for most of the left.

Not because it stopped.  It didn't stop.  The Bureau of Investigative Journalism explains in this video how, in fact, Barack's increased attacks by eightfold.  At least 320 innocent civilians have been killed in Barack's ongoing Drone War.

The Drone War isn't a war Congress has declared.  It's an illegal war.  Again, Bully Boy Bush started it but, like so many other wars, Barack made the decision to continue it -- in fact to amplify it.


Former US President  Jimmy Carter (in The New York Times) pointed out,  "We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times."

If Carter's speaking out, there's a reason.  He sees the anger at the US in the MidEast over the Drone War, he grasps where that anger can mean.  The Drone War isn't making anyone safer.

Barack Obama wants four more years in the White House.  For his Drone War alone, he should be serving a 20-year prison term minimum.  Once upon a time, on the left, we could speak in unison against the Drone War.  These days, not even the innocent victims of an illegal war can prompt the bulk of the left to speak out.


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