A repost: OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA FROM PEOPLE OF FAITH AND CONSCIENCE Mr. President, Stop using killer drones in violation of international law. Mr. President, four years ago, when you accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, you declared that all nations “must adhere to standards that govern the use of force” and that America cannot “insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves.” You assured the world that “the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend.” You applauded the “drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human rights after the Second World War” because they “recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.” But as you spoke those very words, little did the world now that secretly you had already signed a Presidential finding re-authorizing killer drones and were personally selecting targets for summary execution, in violation o f the right of the accused to a fair trial before a punishment of death, guaranteed by the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which declares that “no man shall be deprived of his life arbitrarily” and that “the death penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgment rendered by a competent court.” You express grief that in “today’s wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, children scarred.” But from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism we have learned that from 2002, when President Bush began using them, to 2013, in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, CIA drones killed between 556 and 1,128 civilians, including as many as 216 children, and deliberately targeted people showing up after the attacks, including rescuers and mourners at funerals. While you were condemning the inexhaustible “capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another,” you secretly used the new technology of killer drones in five times as many attacks as President Bush. With the blood of those children on your hands, you claimed you were seeking “a better future for our children and grandchildren” because “their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.” Knowing full well that you were authorizing drone operators sitting safely in US facilities thousands of miles from their unsuspecting targets to unleash their devastating attacks, you lectured the world that “terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.” You told the world that “Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.” Your systematic targeting and summary killing individuals by drones is an unspeakable violation of the constitution, international law and human rights. President Obama, we appeal to your better angels – the angels that led you to work for international bridge building, to prohibit torture, to call for closing Guantanamo, and to end the war in Iraq. Your legacy will forever be tarnished, and our constitutional system forever diminished, unless you immediately stop targeted drone killings and subject the entire program to open, transparent and independent review.
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 17:57:34 +0000
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