My New Year’s Proposal for Peace

Dear Mr. President,

Al Jazeera reported a drone strike in south-central Yemen today that killed a senior Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader, Moqbel Ebad Al Zawbah, and his two companions. It was the 5^th attack in 10 days in this impoverished country where AQAP operates. The U.S. considers AQAP the most active and dangerous wing of Al Qaeda’s global network. In Radaa, where Al Zawbah and his companions were assassinated today, 10 civilians were killed last September, including a 10-year old girl, when the “precision” missile missed its intended target. Yesterday, 2 separate drone strikes in Waziristan, Pakistan, killed at least 9 people, including a senior tribal leader “known to have ties to the Afghan Taliban.” The identities of most of the other casualties were unknown. In the accounts of the 9 attacks I counted at least a dozen Hellfire missiles launched, all dealing death, destruction and mayhem, part of your terrorist drone war. With each missile costing the U.S. taxpayer between $60,000 and $68,000, that’s a total of between $720,000 and $816,000. In an article in the Winter 2013 issue of War Crimes Times, a Pakistani schoolteacher in Darpa Khel, Waziristan, Mohammed Iqbalt, is quoted as saying that the cost of a single Hellfire missile would build a new 8-classroom school with a fully equipped playground, buy 20 computers for each classroom and pay the salaries of all 8 teachers for 3 years. Just imagine the benefit of a U.S.-funded school that teaches kids instead of terrorizing them with drones and Hellfire missiles. Imagine the difference in world view of those kids in Waziristan and Yemen and Somalia and all the other places we wage wars of terror. No need for SEAL Teams. No need for drones, kill lists, targeted assassinations, secret memos justifying extrajudicial execution of American citizens. No need for Guantanamos, indefinite detentions and torture. No need for airport security lines and all the other paraphernalia of a security state. And the trickle-down effect would be huge. We could free up hundreds of billions from the bloated Defense budget to repair our own infrastructure, fund our own schools, rescue municipalities in distress, shift from fossil fuel to renewable energy… You get my drift, Mr. President? Let’s focus on real problems and solutions instead of phantom ones like the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling and austerity budgets. Let’s replace murder with nurture and terror with trust. My New Year’s proposal for peace.