GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – PLEASE, NO MORE WAR

ByThe Daily Blog

Around the end of January this year,  a US  Navy SEAL team , using armed Reaper drones for cover, carried out a commando raid in Yemen,   attacking  what the Americans  said, was a compound harbouring officials of Al Qaeda . The raid had been planned well in advance, under President Obama and then finally approved by President Trump. The US reported the raid was successful , no civilians were killed although regrettably one American lost his life. The word of American officials re civilian deaths, was accepted and reported by CNN.

Yet other reports leaked out telling a different story. Investigative journalist  Jeremy Scagill who has contacts in Yemen, having  researched and written Dirty Wars, was able to find out that around 30 civilians were killed, including 8 year old Nawar

Al-Awlaki, who was shot in the neck.

 

Al-Awalaki, does that name ring a bell? It should. 

In 2010, constitutional lawyer President Obama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate,  ordered the  assassination of an American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki by the way  had never been charged with any crime. The assassination was carried out in 2011, by a drone strike. 

Two weeks after the killing of Awlaki, a separate CIA drone strike in Yemen killed his 16 year old American born son Abdulrahman, along with the boy’s 17-year-old cousin and several other innocent Yemenis. The U.S. eventually claimed that the boy was not their target but merely “collateral damage.” 

Anwar al-Awlaki, his son Abdulrahman and now his daughter Nawar. All killed in one of the poorest countries in the world, a country the US is not officially at war with , under orders from US Presidents.

Last year peace activists protested against international military corporations holding an Arms Fair in Auckland. Just recently peace activists have protested at the Waihopai spy base, near Blenheim.

Many around the world are outraged about Trump’s refugee bans. Yes they are abhorrent. But even more abhorrent are the wars that have led to  and continue to led to, such shocking numbers of desperate people . 

This is where outraged citizens should especially focus their energy. There must be no more bombing, no more drones, no more wars, no more electronic spying, no more profiteering military corporations, not because Trump is President but because wars are immoral no matter who is President. Modern technology is so advanced that powerful countries can kill others, on the other side of the planet.  Reparations must be paid to those countries devastated by warfare. 

New Zealand could provide the moral and sane  leadership that millions of people around the world are longing for. 

 

Lois Griffiths is a Palestinian Rights Activist and Human Rights advocate

Similar Posts

13 Comments

  1. Spot on.

    I’m shocked at how many drones have been dropped, how many people assassinated and how little media or debate is said about it.

    What beautiful looking children that were killed by the USA soldiers. Very sad.

  2. What sort of ‘animals’ would send a soldier to shoot a child in the neck then leave her to slowly and painfully bleed to death on the basis of her father’s dissent?

  3. Thank goodness we got rid of the warmonger Hillary. She was itching to get her finger on the trigger.

  5. +100 Lois Griffiths…”This is where outraged citizens should especially focus their energy. There must be no more bombing, no more drones, no more wars, no more electronic spying, no more profiteering military corporations, not because Trump is President but because wars are immoral no matter who is President.”

    …Trump should not slide his feet into the warmongering shoes that Obama and Clinton left him…and the Bushes

  6. However this was not reported in the mainstream media…the other side of the story? :

    [Interview with Graham Moore]

    ….”For example, the first day that Trump was in power, he launched an attack on Yemen to take back the port from Al-Qaeda. In that attack, a Navy Seal lost his life, but they’ve opened the port again for aid to get to the refugees.

    What they are not telling you is that Trump has already been on the phone to Saudi Arabia and said: “Let me tell you something, you are going to allow safe zones, or else.” So, Trump is doing a lot of things in the background you’re not seeing. My view is that the media and the elites are absolutely terrified. The more that the media turn on President Trump – you know he is doing the right things.

    https://www.rt.com/op-edge/376074-trump-germany-eu-threat-us/

    1. Tell us, Chooky, are all NZF supporters such slavish followers of Trump? As some else spotted, you and some of your fellow NZ Firsters seem very devoted to the Bloated One.

  7. This article’s original seems to have disappeared from The Information Clearing House.
    D J S

  8. Thank goodness. Someone on here who knows what they are talking about re American wrong doing.

  9. Does the fact Trump was responsible for a death squad which killed an 8 year old girl ……

    Make him twice as bad as Obama ? ….. who killed a a 16 year old boy … who was the 8 year old girls older brother.

    Over 25 years ago a wise and honest man was issuing dire warnings of laws granting u.s.a Govts and Presidents power to compose kill lists and assassinate people around the world with impunity ….

    We have arrived and been at this point for years now ………. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN4Sn5u_pK0

    In the evolving next stage ….. I predict these operations and summary executions will end up be carried out on home soil ( u.s.a ) ….. during this first Trump term …. or sometime in the next 15 years

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpzk7OdbjBw

Comments are closed.