You have professed your faith in Christ. As a brother in Christ, I have to question to your leadership on our country's assassination by drone program. Such callous policies cover your hands in blood and splash it all over mine as a citizen of this country because it is supposedly done to protect me.
It is the height of arrogance to give ourselves the right to execute citizens of other countries based on some enemies list. Yes, I know you promise that the drones only incinerate people that are a “continuing and imminent threat to the American people.” However, this enemies list is created in secret and based more on rumor and innuendo than painstakingly gathered evidence. Without judicial oversight or accountability, there is too much room for mistakes.
You know all too well that the intelligence "tips" often come from individuals who have personal or ethnic grudges to settle, often with the added inducement of a bounty paid for information. It is a system ripe for abuse. Those abuses have been all often documented as we have annihilated people gathering for weddings or funerals. When people are murdered over petty jealousies or grievances in this country, the full weight of our criminal justice system comes crashing down on the heads of perpetrators. Yet if I live in some remote area of Pakistan, I can report my neighbor as a terrorist, collect a reward, and take advantage of his subsequent death to lay claim to his assets.
Other governments are also using our trigger happiness to have us kill their enemies. A story in the New York Times about drone strikes in Yemen called attention to the role of the Yemeni and Saudi governments in developing our hit lists.
Over the past two years, the Saudi government — which for decades has used cash to maintain a network of influence in Yemen — has increased its payments to tribal figures in Bayda to recruit informers and deter militants, according to several tribal leaders in the area. This shadowy system appears to contribute to the secretive process of information-gathering that determines targets for drone strikes, a process in which Saudi and Yemeni officials cooperate with Americans.If we are killing people that other governments want dead, then your claim that the strikes are only done to protect America is not true. Such lies demand repentance.
Consider the death of Christ. The religious authorities in Judea did not like what Jesus was saying about them and decided to report him to the Romans as a terrorist. Thanks to the shouts of an unruly mob, the Roman prelate washed his hands of the decision and allowed Jesus to be crucified. In our drone program, you are sentencing people to death at the behest of our supposed "allies," making you no better than Pontius Pilate in this sad saga.
The lies that form the basis for our hit lists are further compounded with each strike where everyone killed is automatically labeled a terrorist until the weight of evidence proves otherwise. We have quietly paid millions of dollars in reparations to families of victims mistaken for terrorists even though official statements after the strike claim all killed were legitimate targets. This is true for the latest strike in Yemen according to the Times story:
At first, the Yemeni government, a close partner with the Obama administration on counterterrorism matters, said that all the dead were militants. But Yemeni officials conceded soon afterward that some civilians had been killed, and they gave 101 Kalashnikov rifles and about 24 million Yemeni riyals (about $110,000) to relatives of the victims as part of a traditional compensation process, a local tribal leader said.
Yemeni government officials and several local tribal leaders said that the dead included several militants with ties to Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, but no one has been able to identify them. Some witnesses who have interviewed victims’ families say they believe no militants were killed at all.Pardon me, Mr. President, if I am nonplused by not only the lies and taking of innocent lives but also the sheer insanity of arming families victimized by our drone strikes. It makes my head spin.
Raining death on people in Pakistan or Yemen sets a poor example for the rest of the world. Others will point to our behavior as justification for their own blood-thirsty behavior.
We would all be outraged if some foreign power decided it had the right to kill people at will in America. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure it would be considered an act of aggression. Then why do you and other members of our government do to others what would never be tolerated if done to us?
In fact, I cannot find a single thing about the targeted assassination program that is remotely consistent with the teachings of Christ. Not one single thing. Yet you personally have embraced and expanded these murderous policies. I find that hard to understand, especially from someone who believes in the deity and substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus.
I beg of you, in the name of Christ, to stop this madness.
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