My heart is so heavy... I have yet to read the essay this fight was over, but the article itself is wetting my eyes. Ill start by saying I am deeply torn... but one thing I do know, being military myself, is that the current lay of the land is not working. Read the following excerpt, then maybe read the article if you like, then the essay. Id love to hear our thoughts... I have a lot of military brothers and sisters that are directly at the center of this. The following story could have been any one of us: For his work, he would receive high military honors (a Firewall 5) normally not given to young A1Cs. He was able to repair the Joint Special Operations Command computer for monitoring drone strikes. When his improvements were complete, the military sharply escalated its drone strike program in 2010. The strikes in Pakistan, for example, increased from 25 to 150 a month, after Benson’s reworking of the computer. He wrote home explaining how he loved the leadership and wanted to extend his tour. Communications stopped for two weeks in April 2010. Benson’s mother, Joie Gates, emailed Austin, saying, “No news is good news, but what’s up?” Austin wrote, “We have been real busy with this roll up. I’ll call today.” When the call came, Joie had just seen a report on the BBC about a drone strike in Pakistan that killed 79 innocent civilians. She asked her son if the report was accurate. Benson said that he could not discuss it because it was classified, but whispered, “Funny they are only reporting one.” Many civilians had died in drone strikes. The firsthand knowledge and experience of Benson reinforces the New York University Law School and Stanford Law School joint study finding that in Pakistan, drone strikes have ended the lives of 471 to 881 civilians, including 176 children. Benson said goodbye to his mother, and that afternoon his parents received an email from him stating, “Due to recent events, including those that kept me from communicating with you, I have cemented my decision, I will not spend one second in Afghanistan longer than I have to. Don’t worry I’ll be home on time.” Two weeks later, he shot himself in the head. In his suicide note, he wrote that he “felt like a monster only a mother could love.”
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 18:16:48 +0000
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