Community | February 10, 2013 | 84 comments

How do you explain drone killings? -With post-Orwellian “Newspeak”

source: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/09/how_do_you_explain_drone_killings_with_post_orwellian_newspeak/

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BRAVATRAVELS

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/09/how_do_you_explain_drone_killings_wit...

John Brennan’s confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee struck many observers as a small but significant step in the direction of openness, a chink in the armor of secrecy that the last two presidential administrations have erected around the “war on terror.” Maybe that will turn out to be correct, and the incoming CIA director – the principal architect of President Obama’s drone war, and until recently a defender of rendition and “enhanced interrogation” – will launch a new era of transparency in Langley. While we wait for that, would you like to see this bridge I've got for sale in Brooklyn?

Indeed, watching the Brennan hearing, and then struggling through the troubling Justice Department “white paper” spelling out the legal justification for the drone killings of American citizens (which was recently acquired and released by NBC News), left me with quite a different feeling. In large part, this was the feeling that our government’s imperial creep continues uninterrupted, that most people simply don’t care (irrespective of their supposed political views) and that almost everyone involved in this charade, especially those of us in the media who are supposed to serve as the watchdogs, has agreed to ignore the most obvious and glaring questions.

Beyond all that, and to a large extent underlying it, there is also the post-Orwellian creep of our language, and of all public discourse, towards emptiness. What Orwell described was a phenomenon distinct to the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, the abrupt replacement of ordinary language with a propagandistic and bureaucratic Newspeak designed to make ideological resistance impossible. In the electoral dictatorship now developing in the United States – and no, that isn't a contradiction in terms – you can find sterling examples of such Newspeak and doublethink. But the most prominent American version, which I’m calling post-Orwellian, is subtler: Ordinary words whose meanings seem clear enough on the surface, such as “war” or “enemy” or “self-defense” or “imminent” (not to mention the ever-fraught “terrorism”) turn out not to mean anything at all, or to be legalistic terms of art with endlessly expansive frames of reference.

If this is starting to sound too much like a graduate seminar in literary theory, let’s remember that the real subject here is an amorphous 12-year war conducted largely in secret by two presidential administrations from opposing parties. Its result, if not its true purpose, has been the creation of an invisible and unaccountable national-security state apparatus and the consolidation of immense and unprecedented power in the executive branch. If the Bush administration claimed the right to detain and torture anyone it wanted to at “black sites” in insalubrious parts of the world, the Obama administration has arguably gone even further, claiming the right to kill anyone anywhere whom it deems to be an enemy combatant, including United States citizens like Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son, with long-range drone strikes piloted from afar.

Historians, political scientists and policy analysts will be hashing out the rights and wrongs of these issues for years to come, and there’s no denying that one reason we elect presidents is to entrust them with decisions that cannot realistically be made in public. But the combination of imperial creep and linguistic creep, and the reflexive America-first jingoism of almost all public discourse, even among so-called liberals, makes it difficult even to ask certain kinds of questions without seeming dim or embarrassing. Why, for instance, does the United States, and only the United States, possess the authority to treat the entire developing world as a war zone and rain high-tech death from above on villages in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and other places so classified we don’t know about them yet? (Some sources suggest that upwards of 3,000 alleged al-Qaeda militants have been killed by drone strikes in those places during Obama’s presidency, along with several hundred civilians.)

I suppose to some people the answer seems self-evident, and I don’t want to sound hopelessly naive: Yes, the U.S. is the world’s only military superpower at the moment, yada yada. But, seriously, try to imagine what would happen if the Chinese or the Iranians started routinely blowing up people they didn’t like in countries thousands of miles away, randomly killing civilians by the dozens along the way. Every senator on that committee would give birth to multiple litters of kittens, call for the launching of World War III, and immediately pass laws granting the president unlimited war powers into the indefinite future. (OK, they already did that, pretty much.) The rhetoric of American exceptionalism, and in particular the idea that American military force is indispensable to world order and no longer needs to respect old-fashioned ideas about national sovereignty or what a war is or how we define the enemy – none of that is ever questioned, or even comes up.

A long time ago in a different context, Joan Didion observed that the reporter’s job was to “observe the observable.” What I observed on Thursday was that Brennan’s appearance before the committee, and his garrulous New Jerseyite act, made for effective political theater, but that its effectiveness had more to do with the semiotics of the event than with what was actually said. (I’m definitely never playing cards for money with that guy.) Specifically, the hearing was a show of faux-deference to legislative authority by an emissary from the imperial palace, which left the senators almost cravenly grateful for a few scraps of information and noncommittal promises of future cooperation. (I didn't register which Republican senator used up his time by chatting about Chris Christie and complimenting Brennan’s wife.) Sure, a few of them complained, but everybody in that room understood that once Brennan is confirmed, the committee will be lucky to get a Hallmark card out of him next Christmas.

Brennan gave a cool performance, in both the ordinary sense and the Marshall McLuhan sense, and remained unflappable in the face of “hot” Code Pink protesters who disrupted the proceedings, calling him a war criminal and listing the names of children killed by drones. While the protesters rapidly became part of the spectacle’s colorful background, Brennan stuck to the leading role of a grownup who understands the nature of reality when others do not. You could even say he was there to define reality, an ultimate exercise in imperial power. Sounding eerily like Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara circa 1969, Brennan calmly explained that many of us misunderstood the CIA’s good intentions, and failed to appreciate “the care we take, the agony we go through, to make sure we do not have any collateral injuries and deaths.”

In fairness, we heard a few extraordinary things said about topics that are almost never discussed in open congressional session. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., almost the only Senate Democrat willing to criticize President Obama on civil liberties, told Brennan, “Every American has the right to know when their government believes it’s allowed to kill them.” (The director-designate did not respond directly.) Newly elected Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, suggested that the CIA’s drone-targeting decisions should be subject to judicial review, as espionage warrants are. King’s Maine colleague Susan Collins, arguably the Senate’s last moderate Republican, actually challenged the effectiveness, if not the underlying morality, of the drone war: “If the cancer of al-Qaeda is metastasizing, do we need a new treatment?”

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-BY ANDREW O'HEHIR
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84 comments // How do you explain drone killings? -With post-Orwellian “Newspeak”

  • johnnyTremaine
    • +5
      johnnyTremaine  

    • Great post. Brennan gets a thumb in the eye from me. I have no fear of Al Quaida or Iran. I fear the NWO 9-11 conspirators in our government and the war profiteers that spin all the domestic terror hoopla.They will unleash the drones on us before you know it.

    • 3 months ago
  • johnnyTremaine
  • Vortices
    • +2
      Vortices [removed]  

    • It's crimethink to ducktype the Party would do such. Drone kill is doubleplusgood.

      BB will Unperson ALL OF YOU!!!

      Oh you Proletariats and your prolefeed...

      Upsub to BB and he might spare you with just a trip to the joycamp.

    • 3 months ago
  • treewolf39
    • +3
      treewolf39  

    • If you think this story is the worst check this out. It deserves its own post but I am just not up to it. Either we care for each other as humans or money powers will destroy all we hold dear. Drones are a really bad plan but I am getting the feeling the people at the top could give a shit. Good post! Hard to stomach. Peace all.

    • 3 months ago
  • mrpuma2u
  • simplecj
  • MSII
    • +4
      MSII  
    • simplecj:

      More right-wing-propaganda!, err... "messaging", yes! luntz would make herr goebbels proud! He is their new propaganda savior! here in their time of need, "save us" cry the lunatic-right!

    • 3 months ago
  • TanzaniteDiamonds
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • johnnyTremaine
    • +2
      johnnyTremaine  
    • BRAVATRAVELS:

      1947 was the beginning of the end for America. She was sold into the arena as the mercenary killer for the global corporate mafia.We need a superman spartacus to challenge the imperial colonial circus of death.

    • 3 months ago
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • johnnyTremaine
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • H3ADLINE
    • +5
      H3ADLINE  

    • If you suspect that many self-described liberals or progressives are largely reflexive cheerleaders for their team like conservatives are for theirs, you need not look any further than their feverish apologetics and mental acrobatics justifying the murder of Americans without trial, oversight, or transparency.

      "Drones are better than the alternatives!" No. They are politically easy to deploy because no one will miss them when they die, which allows the empire to use murder more often than before and continue with their constant war machine. Drones mean no one/few on the ground accurately parsing rumors and lies from facts, and many people killed by the drones are sentenced to death in secret by "evidence" gathered by paid informants who often use our government as personal hit men to settle their personal scores and get rich.

      Then there's the murder of civilians, which happens with disturbing regulatory and has created very deep hated for our country in both Pakistan and Yemen. You kill one alleged terrorist, and you create more from the bodies of the innocent.

      The drones have another problem, which is that we're using them to kill in countries that we never declared war on and that want us to stop bombing them (since vast majorities rightly see it as an invasion of national sovereignty). Again, this invites more blowback violence against the US. Mission accomplished?

      Finally, there is the most galling and obvious problem: killing Americans without trial because the president (or some of his advisers) say so. This is directly outlawed in the Constitution. There is absolutely no precedent or legal justification for this, even if you swallow the Orwellian expansion of the phrase "imminent threat" to mean someone who we think might be working with or knows other people we don't like. Oh, and we'll just have to trust in the wholesome goodness of or politicians to decide who dies in secret without trial and for what reason. Whatever the rationalization to the pubic about which "bad guys" the state claims to be targeting, the fact is that this is illegal, unverifiable in its efficacy, and too much power to invest in one person without any oversight (this is write literally none). This is precisely what "innocent until proven guilty" and "a speedy trial by peers" are safeguards against. This drone program will be used to kill Americans that you may not think deserved to die. They may not have broken any laws, or if they did, why no trial? But you will not get a say. You are not allowed to know. It's for your safety. They super promise! No go consume things and get back to work.

    • 3 months ago
  • Vic_Romano
  • wolfess
    • +3
      wolfess  
    • H3ADLINE:

      This is how Tom Engelhardt described the protections for Obama's second inauguration:

      [T]he airspace above Washington… [will be] a virtual no-fly zone for 30 miles in all directions from the US capital. Six miles of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers will be shut down, with 150 blocks of downtown Washington closed to traffic, partly out of concern for car or truck bombs… with counter-snipers on top of buildings around the capital and along the parade route… [and] detectors monitoring the air for toxins… At the ready near the capital, thousands of doses of antidotes in case of a chemical or biological attack… All this security will cost about $120m dollars for hundreds of federal agents, thousands of local police, and national guardsmen from 25 states.

      All this says to me is that he's afraid of reprisal over something that he realizes he's doing wrong ... could it be his predator drone warfare? But even worse in my estimation is what it's costing we peons for all of these totally unnecessary programs -- the war on terror is actually the war on the middle and lower classes here in 'amerika' b/c we are the ones that are being drained of all our money and possessions and hope!

      Pwr 2 the AMERICAN peons!
      GUILLOTINE DRONES AND THOSE WHO USE THEM!

    • 3 months ago
  • thedirtman
  • matka
  • MSII
    • +5
      MSII  

    • Hmm drones, lets see... better then carpet-bombing, yes... better then (more) indiscriminate invasions, yes... Certainly not perfect, no (not that anything here in the REAL-world is)... Lacking in transparency, and civilian over-site, yes...

    • 3 months ago
  • Toughth
    • +3
      Toughth  
    • MSII:

      Within the next year we will probably need to gbe usingb armed drons on our southern gborder with the deterioration of the Mexican government, and the rise of drugb overlords. maybe we need to think about annexing Mexico

    • 3 months ago
  • MSII
    • +5
      MSII  
    • Toughth:

      Wouldn't have issues with drug-lords in Mexico if we didn't have our right-wingers insani-tea "war on drugs" b.s. I have no doubt the lunatic right-wing chicken-hawks would luv to make more (holy)war for the empire and attack yet another country for god and holy empire.

    • 3 months ago
  • Toughth
    • +2
      Toughth  
    • MSII:

      When you consider that the government south of the border hasn't much more time left to survive. Then you have to consider that our entire southern border will be open to drug warlords. Even as far back as the end Mexican American War there was a debate on weather or not to annex the entirity of Mexico into the U.S.

    • 3 months ago
  • Vic_Romano
  • matka
  • mrpuma2u
  • Vic_Romano
  • matka
  • MarshainFlorida
    • +5
      MarshainFlorida  

    • John Brennan's disgustingly insufficient answers to senators' questions was only surpassed by the senators absurd acceptance of those answers. I should have kept a record of how many times he stated he would comply with their requests "if he could" and "if his nomination was approved." Another statement he relied upon as answers was "well senator, I'm not a lawyer......."

      After either or any of these answers proferred by Brennan there was very, very little followup questions by his answers, so really, what was accomplished? Nothing. That means this sadistic murder has already gotten the approval. So sad for the American public who wants to see an end to our war mongering and lack of humanity in the worldwide forum.

    • 3 months ago
  • wolfess
    • +4
      wolfess  
    • MarshainFlorida:

      Well when Brennan is approved (and he will be), I know that I will feel much safer knowing that he and President Obadrone are keeping us safe :-)!

      Pwr 2 the DRONED-OUT peons!
      GUILLOTINE DRONES AND THOSE WHO USE THEM!

    • 3 months ago
  • Leen61
  • JanforGore
    • +9
      JanforGore  

    • "Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., almost the only Senate Democrat willing to criticize President Obama on civil liberties"

      At least there is one among Senate Democrats who puts principle before politics. And to see polls here where 79% of the respondants in this country actually approve of targeting American citizens for killing based on no evidence but the word of a government only out to protect its own interests while totally disegarding due process is disgusting. Let's just hope that as other countries get this technology (50 already) that we don't wind up seeing attacks by them on our soil, because at this point it would be absolutely justified to those doing it based on the American people now being fearmongered and brainwashed enough to jump at their own shadows as to throw all reason out the window. But of course, here this discussion is a waste of time as honest dialogue is attacked as "extremist", delusional or some other vulgarity while attacking the poster and calling them mentally ill. I can however through all this fully understand now how Hitler could have gone as far as he did in Germany, and that is a frightening concept.

    • 3 months ago
  • MarshainFlorida
    • +5
      MarshainFlorida  
    • JanforGore:

      2 thumbs up. I'm amazed that such a great number of Americans feel this country is justified in these drone strikes on foreign soil. What til our country starts using drone strikes here (which I believe IS the next atrocity), and see what they say then. They've been so brainwashed into believing our country stands for "truth, justice, and the American way" that they can't even consider asking why we are doing this, or even looking for answers themselves.

    • 3 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +6
      JanforGore  
    • MarshainFlorida:

      From the moment we awaken until the moment we fall asleep our movements (physical and on the Internet,) our buying habits, our communications, etc. are now all known. What we buy at the supermarket, what we read, where we go, who we e-mail, etc. People have been so dazzled by technology being sold to us as either being more convenient (how many people do you even know now who would pick reading a map over having a GPS?)
      for us and so functional or there to make us safer so of course, that means it is easier to spy on us as well. And when you now state you want your privacy people ask you...Why? Are you hiding something? We have gone through the looking glass in this country and for the most part don't even know it or are too comfortable to care.

    • 3 months ago
  • TanzaniteDiamonds
  • matka
  • artemis6
  • artemis6
  • MarshainFlorida
    • +3
      MarshainFlorida  
    • JanforGore:

      I know. It's so sad - and scary. I half-expect the CIA to come pounding on my door any day now because of some of the things I've written to my representatives and the president, and the things I've posted here. What a way to live!

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
  • Saskatchewan
    • +2
      Saskatchewan [removed]  

    • I would be interested in offering some of my own thoughts,
      but the level of discussion prevents that through vulgarities
      and lack of verifiable conclusions.

      Words such as "kool aid", "taking a crap on", "alpha geek"
      "Obummer" , "Zap", F#ck, "Newspeak", and even the
      resort to George Orwell are such obstacles to political debate
      that they are beneath me.

      I wonder if persons commenting here have any knowledge
      of what is recognized as legitimate discussion at even an
      elementary college level of debate?

    • 3 months ago
  • onemale
    • +3
      onemale  
    • Saskatchewan:

      Nope.
      But i have been exasperated into throwing a few F#*ks of my own. Nothing but trolls and conspiracy theorists mostly anymore. Sad. it has always been passionate but now it has devolved into a partisan sandbox of bickering and name calling. Not to take sides but with the conservative trolls descending upon the site it all went downhill. I just stop responding to them.

    • 3 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • mrpuma2u
  • artemis6
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • Keyser_Soze
  • mrpuma2u
    • +4
      mrpuma2u  

    • Drones kill civilians. Most US citizens are drinking that tasty kool-aid, it is smooth and non-caloric with no bitter after taste.

      How long will it be, does everyone/anyone think, before one of numerous countries we are taking a crap on with drone strikes get tired of that, and figure out how to get one here, to strike at a US target? 5 years from now? Less? It's not like the tech is all crazy hard to copy. There is probably some alpha geek in Pakistan with a relative killed by a drone strike, hacking a TOM TOM or other GPS to configure it for drone use as we speak.

      We'll see how cool everyone thinks it is when we get hit back.

    • 3 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • mrpuma2u
    • +5
      mrpuma2u  
    • JanforGore:

      I was more referring to copy-cat or DIY type tech, but you raise an interesting possibility. The Iranians have allegedly shot down a drone, are they hard at work hacking it's "black box" or guidance tech? Quite possibly going on right now.

    • 3 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +5
      JanforGore  
    • mrpuma2u:

      An article I posted in another thread actually speculated on hacking to change coordinates to send a drone met for one target to another. In other words, intercepting the GPS. Now I would think there are plenty of safeguards to prevent that, but let's face it, anything can be hacked if the person doing it has expertise and is getting paid enough. Imagine the corporate espionage surrounding this. Sounds like something out of a James Bond movie, only it's real.

    • 3 months ago
  • onemale
  • onemale
  • matka
  • matka
  • JanforGore
  • onemale
  • matka
  • mrpuma2u
  • mrpuma2u
  • matka
  • matka
    • 0
      matka  
    • onemale:

      P.S> Sorry to hear of yer eye problems. Astigmatism? Amblyopia? Near or far

      sighted? < I forgot terminologies. I used to work for an optician.
      Sometimes, he made spectacle of self. lol

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
  • artemis6
  • Mishima
    • -10
      Mishima [removed]  

    • Didn't he defend Obummer's orders to execute an American who deliberately joined an avowed enemy of our nation, a person who was planning the bombing and destruction of our cities?

      If this is the one, Obama is right on this: Send in the drone. No matter where he is. No wasting the taxpayers' money on trials, and no audience and Left-winger media for a platform for such a person. ZAP!

    • 3 months ago
  • Gordon_Shumway
    • +11
      Gordon_Shumway  
    • Mishima:

      "No wasting the taxpayers' money on trials, and no audience and Left-winger media for a platform"

      No doubt EXACTLY what the Founders had in mind!

      As Jefferson famously said, "F#ck due process!"

      Again, you expose yourself.

    • 3 months ago
  • Mishima
  • mrpuma2u
    • +8
      mrpuma2u  
    • Mishima:

      An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition

      . Argument is an intellectual process ... contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.

    • 3 months ago
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • onemale
  • Gordon_Shumway
    • +6
      Gordon_Shumway  
    • Mishima:

      {invalid}

      In valid how? To repeat:

      Mishima: "No wasting the taxpayers' money on trials, and no audience and Left-winger media for a platform"

      ALF: No doubt EXACTLY what the Founders had in mind! As Jefferson famously said, "F#ck due process!" - Again, you expose yourself.

      So I say, 100% valid!

    • 3 months ago
  • Gordon_Shumway
    • +6
      Gordon_Shumway  
    • mrpuma2u:

      "An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition. Argument is an intellectual process ... contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says."

      No it isn't!

      And if you want to go on arguing about it, you'll have to pay for another 5 minutes ...

    • 3 months ago
  • MSII
  • mrpuma2u
  • Varex_Sythe
  • mrpuma2u
    • +4
      mrpuma2u  
    • Gordon_Shumway:

      Oh good, I was worried that no one got the reference. It is a good response to trolls, it just happens to come from those delightfully over-educated geniuses that changed modern comedy for the better.

    • 3 months ago
  • MSII
    • +5
      MSII  
    • Varex_Sythe:

      I have a large-breed dog who very rarely barks, and always find it funny how when walking and we encounter very tiny dogs they always are the ones that yap with such fervor (little ones that I-kid-you-not weigh about as much in their totality as my dogs head), my dog always just looks at them with curiosity almost as if to say "seriously?"...

    • 3 months ago
  • Gordon_Shumway
  • mrpuma2u
  • Mishima
  • Mishima
  • Gordon_Shumway
    • +1
      Gordon_Shumway  
    • Mishima:

      "Our Constitution is for Americans. And not for Americans who have joined the enemy and are determined to destroy our country."

      You are ABSOLUTELY WRONG! Because it is the constitutional process that is what determines just who is guilty of "joining the enemy"! Yes, once you KNOW who the enemy is, you may have a point. The issue is WHO gets to decide that and how.

      You have lost the plot Mishima. I am not arguing here against the use of drones for combat killings of enemies of our country. I am arguing against a secret process for determining just who gets targeted.

      Most committed Libertarians agree with me on this. You distrust Obama on so many things. Are you really comfortable that he has the power to kill an American citizen, by drone strike or otherwise, pretty much on his own say so?

      I parry your ZAP and double ZAP you back!

    • 3 months ago
  • Mishima
  • BRAVATRAVELS
    • +7
      BRAVATRAVELS  
    • Image

    • "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."
      - George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5

    • 3 months ago
  • johnnyTremaine

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