Jemima Pierre: Black Ethics and Drone Politics

Aside from a few notable exceptions, it’s been all crickets in the US Black community when it comes to talking about Obama’s criminal actions in office. And for some Black preachers, gay marriage is obviously more of an abomination than endless war and wanton murder. Others in the Black community have even participated in the morbid celebrations over the killing of Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi – killings that occurred without so much as evidence of guilt or even the pretense of due process. Barack Obama is leading a multi-country gangster-style drone war that kills people whose identities aren’t known, and that has left more than 3000 dead, including 176 children. Some of the victims have been U.S. citizens. His administration’s actions are immoral, indefensible, and cruel. They are also shortsighted. And they are done in our names, and our children’s names.

As Obama has spearheaded this dangerous new world of drones, we have to believe that this new war will come with the inevitable blowback. CNN reports that more than 70 countries now own some type of drone. And even though only the US, UK, and Israel have used weaponized drones against adversaries, it’s only a matter of time before we see their proliferation (and we can bet that they will be turned on us domestically).

It remains to be seen how many will stand by silently and allow this slide down the steep slope of moral depravity. For Black folk to remain silent – or even ambivalent – in the face of such overwhelming death, despair, and destruction done on our behalf by our Black president is, at best, indefensible. At worse, we’re just as criminally responsible as that drone pilot in Nevada who presses the red button on his joystick extinguishing human life as though he were playing a video game.

No man, no political party, and no amount of racial allegiance should demand of us that we give up our humanity in the name of murder. It’s time we raise our voices against drone killings.

Read the entire article here.

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Comment: For any right thinking American to support Obama is an abomination at this point.  It is even worse if you not white given the history of the US and the people this murderer is killing.

I made these points recently at a predominantly black gathering in the US and the response was as hostile as it was ignorant.

The time is past due for black folks in the US to hear what Jemima Pierre is saying above and to stop following the crap spewed by the likes of Obomber huckster Dr Eric Dyson and the like.

Obomber represents everything the Civil Rights Movement was not about.

If Dr King was around today he would be marching against Obomber's drone murders and not supporting this fool for another four more years of killing.

Onward!

Ps. See this excellent argument by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic entitled "Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama" (September 26).