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MANGAWHAI'S NO.1 NEWSPAPER
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Worzels World - Death by DroneMy mother once advised me to be careful of the company I keep and as anyone who has had a mother comes to realise, mother knows best. The concept of remote controlled robots policing the global village was once the scary stuff of science fiction novels. It is fiction no longer. The latest Kiwi victim of the US ‘war on terror’ was blown to smithereens in Yemen by a hellfire missile launched from a remote controlled robot known as a drone. The US, who owns the killer machine, described his death and that of Australian Christopher Harvard as ‘collateral damage’. The news reports suggested links to al-Qaeda. He was, it seems, guilty of keeping the wrong company. My mother could be a fiery woman and dangerous when roused but she would not, even at her fiercest, have advocated the death penalty for such an offence. Prime Minister John Key has been dismissive of the latest Kiwi’s death saying ‘he was looking for a fight and found one’. Being summarily erased by remote control while driving down the road is hardly much of a fight is it, especially if you’re in a country that isn't at war. The news item faded quickly from the nations media spotlight, due perhaps to the paucity of information supplied through official channels. Even in these days of leakers and whistle-blowers the veil of secrecy surrounding these assassinations impressively stayed intact from November till April. Our countryman's name has only just been released, at first tagged with a pseudo Arabic nom-de-plum. The Kiwi’s real name of Daryl Jones may, I suspect, have sounded a bit too much like a bloke from down the road for Kiwi's to feel comfortable with. There has been no information forthcoming with regard to what, if anything, the targets of this drone strike were guilty of doing. Did they do anything at all? Were they simply suspects? Or were they killed just in case they might do something sometime? It is unlikely we will ever know who it was that, sitting before a computer screen half the world away, lined up the cross-hairs on a bunch of people in Yemen and clicked delete. If we did know it would not help us. Whoever he or she is, they are just another government functionary doing their job. It is even less likely that we will ever find out who made the decision to kill these people and what, if any, right they had and probably still have to act as police, judge, jury and executioner. He probably had never seen or met those whose death warrants he signed. Can we allow these decisions to be made outside of agreed and transparent processes? It seems absurd to assume that this New Zealander or his alleged al-Qaeda linked associates could pose a threat to the US or any of her allies, especially New Zealand, from Yemen. Unlike the US, Yemen is a poor country with no long-range missiles, it is not a nuclear power, possesses no drones, nor any other means of attacking either the US or New Zealand. What, if anything, had these people done to deserve summary execution by a foreign government and its agencies who we do not know, without accountability, recourse to law, or even the decency of a fair contest for those whom we cannot vote and who are not obliged either to consider our interests or tell us anything to decide who should live and who should die. We cannot be certain of what, if anything, these alleged al-Qaeda operatives are guilty of but we have certain proof that the US are willing to cross national boundaries and kill people. The modern world, it seems, abounds with those who insist they know what is best for everyone and is willing to kill us if we don't agree. State sponsored assassination without benefit of due process or any requirement to present evidence of wrongdoing smacks of imperialist global dictatorship. That our own government supports such action is shameful and makes me embarrassed to be a New Zealander. Every Anzac day, we honour the memory of our fallen soldiers, lest we forget. The freedom from tyranny that so many died to preserve is in danger of being lost – not to cunning generals, brave men and resolute wills but to tyrants in ties and suit-clad snake oil statesmen. Mothers make mistakes, the perfect mother there has never been. But mothers love their children and do their best to care for them. It makes all the difference. This is why mothers know best even when they are wrong. Was it a person or group who decided to assassinate some people in Yemen? The action of the computer geek drone pilot was signed off by somebody somewhere in the US administration, and was approved by the president. I wonder – did anybody bother to apologise to Daryl Jones’ mother for the mission's collateral damage. ■ prof_worzel@hotmail.com |
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