I realize that Memorial Day is a day typically reserved for honoring those Americans who have physically died in battle, and yet there is another death that takes place in combat that doesn’t require that one’s heart stop beating … Yes, my Friends, there is an emotional death that occurs in battle — a psychological scarring that often warps the rest of one’s life whether one physically perishes in battle or not. And it is THIS greater “death” that hundreds — and possibly thousands (no one knows for sure) — of United States drone pilots endure almost every day; a spiritual pain that slowly but surely sears their Souls and slowly but surely melts their minds both during and after every single mission.

And oh how many “glorious” missions there have been! How many catastrophic deeds of cowardice have been sent from on high — sometimes “eliminating” the guilty, often murdering the innocent, and always — ALWAYS — entrenching, nay — intensifying, the very hatred for their own country that started those current wars in the first place.

Yes, American drone pilots not only have to sit and steep in the knowledge that they are regularly murdering innocent men, women & children (CHILDREN, for God’s sakes!), they also are forced to subconsciously (and sometimes knowingly) bask in the rancid truth that their actions are actually making the world a far more violent and a far less safe place for all of us in which to live (their own friends and family included).

And it is this knowledge that are those pilots’ ultimate downfall — it is this truth that brings their ultimate emotional & psychological and spiritual demise.

They are fighting an evil cause and they are using an evil means and they are thereby doing evil … and they know it. They are patently Good men & women being asked to do horrible deeds — deeds that not only fail in their stated objective, but deeds that are actually make matters far worse. These innately Good men & women know these Truths, and yet they “do their job” anyway … and in the process of doing so, they die long before their death.

I have immense Compassion for each & every one of them, just as much Compassion as I send to the families of all those they regularly murder from afar … May they all know Peace one day; the Peace that can only come to those who have the courage to stand up & walk away from the evils that they do — those who then have the integrity & the fortitude to dedicate their lives to being productive agents for Peace.

Amen … Let it be so.

“We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes!” ~ Princeton University professor Cornel West (quoted in February of 2013 — the children kill count is much higher now)

“To the United States, a drone strike seems to have very little risk and very little pain. At the receiving end, it feels like war. Americans have got to understand that. If we were to use our technological capabilities carelessly … then we should not be upset when someone responds with their equivalent, which is a suicide bomb in Central Park.” ~ retired General Stanley McChrystal

“Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours? That President Obama can sign off on a decision to kill us with less worry about judicial scrutiny than if the target is an American? Would your Supreme Court really want to tell humankind that we, like the slave Dred Scott in the 19th century, are not as human as you are? … I used to say of apartheid that it dehumanized its perpetrators as much as, if not more than, its victims.” ~ Desmond Tutu

P.S. …

Filed under: The War on WAR by Scaughdt