Yumpen Yemeni- Here We Go Again

In rapid fire succession the government has aided and assisted the bombing of suspected al Qaeda terrorist strongholds in Yemen, and of course made a big deal of linkage both to the Ft Hood shootings by a mentally ill Army major and the airline fiasco in Detroit- I suppose to bring a measure of credibility to the actions. It doesn’t bother me that we are diligent about seeking out people who might do harm to us, we should do that, but to confront our adversaries via a process of assassination does bother me.

What ever happened to the top secret rendition we’ve been doing for the last eight years? Why can’t we round these people up and put them on trial? I have a guess as to why. They haven’t really done anything yet. It would be like arresting someone for speeding because they hung around with people who have speeded. So instead we kill them. That bothers me.

Also, there have been reports out of Yemen of many civilian casualties associated with these attacks, but not one word about civilian losses has come from our press or our government. If they’ve been able to conduct surgical raids against suspected terrorists and not injure any innocent people in the process, I would think that would be newsworthy. Americans would feel relieved if they knew we are capable of killing people we think are bad and not kill a single innocent person in the process. However, I don’t think that happens. We kill innocent people every time we bomb suspected terrorist facilities. We justify their sacrifice as collateral damage in the cause of a greater good.

We should at least have the decency to report on the innocent people we kill and show some formal contrition toward their loss, but we don’t seem to do that either. We don’t even mention the fact that they were killed by us. They aren’t even called collateral damage anymore. They’re just ignored as if they never existed.

Maybe we should start measuring the effectiveness of our fighting forces with an effectiveness ratio of bad guys killed divided by innocent people killed. Maybe if we kept an eye on the innocent lives being lost we’d be a little more careful about what we do. Maybe the public that funds these surgical assassinations would want a say in what we do as a government. You know, the democracy thing.

If we’re going to kill people for speeding before they speed we should at least keep score of who and how many people are killed- the women, the children, the elders and the suspected terrorists.