Obama’s joke about Predator drones backfires
World Sunday, May 9th, 2010Obama’s ‘joke’ at the White House correspondents’ dinner was no laughing matter to the relatives of the hundreds of people killed in Pakistan by drones
At the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner, President Bush joked about searching for WMDs under Oval Office furniture. The joke backfired when parents who had lost their children fighting in Iraq said they found the joke offensive and tasteless. Senator John Kerry said Bush displayed a “stunningly cavalier” attitude toward the war and those serving in Iraq.
So it’s odd that President Obama would make a crude joke about deaths that he is responsible for. But that’s just what he did at the May 1 White House Correspondents Dinner. “Jonas Brothers are here, they’re out there somewhere,” President Obama quipped as he looked out at the packed room. Then he furrowed his brow, pretending to send a stern message to the pop band. “Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You’ll never see it coming.”
For people in Pakistan, where most of the drones are being used, the joke lost something in translation. According to Pakistani journalist Khawar Rizvi, few Pakistanis have ever heard of the Jonas Brothers or understood the reference to the President’s daughters. “But one thing we do know: There’s nothing funny about predator drones,” said Rizvi. “They’ve killed hundreds of civilians and caused so much suffering in Pakistan. And that’s no laughing matter.”
The point of using attack drones, which are piloted from 6,000 miles away in the Nevada desert, is to guarantee no U.S. casualties. But the increased use of unmanned aerial vehicles has led to an increase in the killing and maiming of innocents, often while they are sleeping in their beds.
You won’t get much of a chuckle by reading The New America Foundation’s 2009 report “Revenge of the Drones.” It shows that Obama, far from curtailing the drone program he inherited from President Bush, dramatically increased the number of U.S. drone strikes.
The report says that roughly 252 to 315 Pakistani civilians were killed by Predator and Reaper drone strikes between 2006 and 2009. Other reports place the figure much higher. Pakistani authorities released statistics indicating that over 700 civilians were killed by drones in 2009 alone, the year Obama took office. The running tally on the website PakistanBodyCount.Org is even more shocking: 1,226 civilians killed and 427 injured as of March 2010!
Equally shocking is the ratio of civilians to militants killed, which Middle East scholar Daniel Byman estimates at ten to one. It is a cruel joke indeed for the people of Pakistan that the U.S. military finds it acceptable to murder 10 innocent people for every Al Qaeda or Taliban operative killed.
The use of the drones has also expanded in Afghanistan. Every day, the Air Force now flies at least 20 Predator drones — twice as many as a year ago. They are mostly used for surveillance, but have also carried out more than 200 strikes over the last year. “Since the start of 2009, the Predators and their larger cousins, the Reapers, have fired at least 184 missiles and 66 laser-guided bombs at militant suspects in Afghanistan,” reported Christopher Drew of the New York Times.
We will never know the true number of civilians killed by our drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Our military “doesn’t do body counts,” as General Tommy Franks famously said when questioned about Iraqi casualties. But each bomb that misses its target leaves a trail of unacceptable human suffering–young lives snuffed out, lifetime disabilities, grieving widows, orphaned children.
Like a bad joke that backfires, these cruel “mistakes” anger the local population, stoke anti-American feelings and prompt violent acts of revenge. As Pakistani-American attorney Rafia Zakaria wrote, “Somewhere in the United States, a drone operator sits in a booth with a joystick and commandeers a pilot-less aircraft armed with deadly bombs. Much like in a video game, he aims, shoots and fires at targets he sees on a satellite map….Sometimes the target is killed and sometimes the intelligence is faulty and a sleeping family or a wedding party bears the brunt of the miscalculation. At all times, however, the Taliban capitalize on the ensuing mayhem and gain new recruits and re-energize old ones. Terror thus spreads not simply in the village where the drone attack has taken place but far and wide in the bazaars of Peshawar and the streets of Lahore and the offices of Islamabad where these recruits avenge their anger against the drone attacks.
While Pakistanis and Afghans find nothing humorous about drone jokes, American businessmen like Neal Blue and Wesley Bush, the CEOs of General Atomics and Northrop Grumman, have been laughing all the way to the bank. Their companies have made a fortune producing the killer drones. General Atomics is a private company and refuses to disclose its revenue or profits, but it has sold more than $2.4 billion worth of drones and other equipment to the U.S. military in the past decade.
With the financial crisis, Obama has called for a three-year freeze on domestic spending, leading to cuts in everything from nutrition programs to national parks. But the Defense Department is exempt from the freeze and in the case of drones, the money is pouring in. The U.S. Defense Appropriations FY2011 doubles the outlay for drones. The U.S. taxpayer will now spend a mind-boggling $2.2 billion for the procurement of Predator-class aircraft, thus guaranteeing the slaughter of innocents for many years to come.
Whoever said laughter was the best medicine was never attacked by a predator drone. President Obama, just like George Bush before him, should not be allowed to get away with telling tasteless war jokes. But more important, he should not be allowed to keep employing weapons that, as in the case of landmines and cluster bombs, disproportionately kill civilians. Did You Hear The Joke About The Predator Drone That Bombed?
Short URL: http://www.daily.pk/?p=17245
on May 9 2010. Filed under
How would mr. obama feel if a member of his family in Africa,because he is not an American and i really don’t know where he is from but i know he is not an American,became a target for one of the drones or if his wife or one of his daughters were in another country on one of there many trips and became a target for one of the drones?
The author really seems to want to rant on how terrible drones are and how they are killing so many civilians with them. Predator and Reaper drones use the same types of targeting systems as most other U.S. military aircraft. The accuracy of these weapon systems is not the problem. The intel is the problem. Those civilians would have been killed drone or no drone, if no drone had been available the targets would have been hit by a bomber or a long range missle. The problem is not what is shooting at these civilians, its that they are being targeted due to bad intel.
Guess what? If the taliban wasn’t hiding out there, using the “civilians” as human shields, then we wouldn’t have to kill them all now and sort out the innocents later.
How many jokes in pakistan are there about Americans killed on 9-11? As I recall, you were all dancing in the streets when your tribesmen flew planes into our buildings. Well, now you’re wading in the water, and that’s what you deserve. Allah gave you a sign that you’re on the wrong side of the war, and you will suffer the fate you’ve brought upon yourselves and your homeland.
Terry you are a fool, Obama was born and raised in Hawaii and is an active Christian and U.S. Citizen, so shut the fuck up. Learn to shut up ignorant mouth.
thanks Todd
@terry
Obama is an American , he was born on Hawaii 2 years after it acquired statehood.
This whole article is comple garbage.
You’re just using an offhand incident, in this case a joke about predator droids, to lead you into a rant about a completely unrelated political agenda. Not very ethical journalism I would say……
Pleas find somthing more relevent to bitch about.
Terry, you are a comedian and should take your act on the road. Kenyan or African he is the president. You on the other hand is what we term a fool. You think the United States of America, the only Super Power left on the Globe would allow a foreigner to be it’s leader? Please don’t answer because you do not understand the real politics of this country and you will not. In the meantime, frolic in oblivion.
Hey, not cool.
Terry, your an idiot. Obama is American; he was born in Hawaii. Its amazing that you friggin people still argue that.
“i know he is not an American” and how exactly do you know? If you have anything to back yourself up on that I’ll gladly listen.
@terry: he’s Hawaiian, please try to hate him for a good reason next time and not for your own ignorance.
as for the articile, it is extremely biased, but based only on the facts actually stated in the article I still don’t blame the use of drones for the deaths of innocents. they died because of faulty intel and/or poor targeting, which means they would have died even if it had been a land based missile delivery system or a manned aircraft. all the inclusion of drones has done is what it was supposed to do, eliminate the risk of American casualties during these strikes.
Obama not being an American is news to me. Any evidence to support this claim? It’s been confirmed by many who have personally viewed his birth certificate that he was born in Hawaii. The doctor that delivered him has also said he was practicing medicine in Hawaii when he was born. With all that evidence, where else would he have been born?
I just find it funny, how a joke can raise so much outrage.
Every joke ever made, is tasteless to someone. Sure, people somewhere else, in a war riddled country, are taking offence because Obama made a joke about the Jonas brothers. Are fans of the Jonas brothers offended, because Obama more or less threatend to have them killed? Doesn’t look like it. Every movie, every joke, even TV shows and News Articles say tasteless things all the time. So what if the US President said something a little off color. These things happen. If people don’t like what’s going on, then they need to pick up, and move on. People are mad that the US is killing “innocents” in Pakistan? Well maybe if their people hadn’t killed countless Innocents in our country, we wouldn’t be over there. That’s a thought that should occur to people. The last people that attacked our Innocents, wiping out countless lives, got a damned atomic bomb dropped on them. That’s something they should consider. We could have retaliated with Nuculear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction, but we didn’t. Instead, we try to help those people, try to restore order, but they’re outraged because someone made a tasteless joke. I’m sure they have militants, and other people in political power making jokes about the US, and you don’t see us posting about how outraged we are.
Jokes happen. Either accept it and laugh, or get the hell over it and go whine to someone who might do something about it.
Also, @Terry, he is an American. You HAVE to be American to be the president of the United States of America. It’s very ignorant of you to assume he’s not American just because he’s Black, or whatever foolhardy reason you have for “knowing” he’s not American.
terry, read the constitution, and youll find that even though he was born in Hawaii (which is a state last time i checked), he is still fully eligible to run for president. in fact, hes eligible no matter where he was born. i myself was born in switzerland, and i could run for pres if i wanted to. check the requirements.
furthermore, would you rather we be sending up young american pilots in jets to perform these same strikes, putting them at serious risk of surface to air weaponry? there are lots of shoulder-mounted SAMs available, that are very capable of eliminating our jets. by sending up unmanned aircraft, we take our soldiers out of harm’s way, and im sure that you would feel far less comfortable knowing that it is our soldiers, our family members etc, who are risking their lives for the freedom you hold so dear.
and finally, regardless of whether you like him or not, hes president at least until 2012, and hopefully until 2016. youre gonna have to live with that, so just stop complaining, and if you feel so strongly, vote for someone else.
If you live in the same village as a terrorist don’t be surprised when bad things happen to your village. If the folks from Afghanistan and Pakistan had just stayed in their borders, the U.S. wouldn’t be there. They attacked the U.S., they attacked India, Spain, England, and others. If those people don’t want to be attacked then they need to reject and push out Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders and operatives. If you invite a criminal in to your home you should not be surprised when bad things happen to you or your loved ones.
Abit barbaric dont yah think…?