Obama stares at dangerous drone legacy

But regardless of the growing concern over drones, it is a pity that most Americans seem to care only about the legality of drones killing Americans and not people in other countries.

US leaders have always claimed that drones save lives, but they save the lives of only American pilots, who now drop bombs on other countries using remote control, say, in Langley, Virginia. Drone attacks killed 2,562 to 3,325 people in Pakistan from June 2004 to mid-September 2012, including 474 to 881 civilians, out of whom 176 were children, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

A field study, "Living under drones", conducted by researchers from Stanford Law School and New York University Law School, concluded that drones terrorize entire populations of the countries under attack and cause a range of mental problems among them. People in such countries didn't know what the US was before the drone attacks but now they know it is drones, death and terror, the researchers said.

What's troubling is that of all the countries under drone attack, the US has declared war only on Afghanistan.

Fortunately, a United Nations team led by Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur for human rights and counter-terrorism, has started looking into Obama's obsession with drones since January. There is no doubt that Obama has failed to win support for his drone policy, a killing tactic which he has used with dramatic frequency in the last few years only to radicalize the populations under attack and help terrorist organizations recruit more people.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is the Golden Rule. But I hope it doesn't take a Predator drone launching a Hellfire missile at a "terrorist suspect" in Dupont Circle in Washington or Central Park in New York to wake up more Americans to force their commander in chief to stop the drone attacks.

And it is not too late for Obama yet to stop making drones the legacy of a Nobel Peace Prize-winning president.

The author, based in Washington, is deputy editor of China Daily USA. E-mail: chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily 03/09/2013 page5)