Bomb, drone attack kill 17 people in Pakistan
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A bomb targeting paramilitary soldiers killed 12 people in southwest Pakistan on Thursday, while five suspected militants died in a U.S. drone strike in the country’s northwest, officials said.
Separately, an explosion ripped through a crowded mosque in the northwest city of Mingora, killing 21 people and injuring more than 70 others, said hospital official Mian Gul Aleem. The blast was caused by a gas cylinder that exploded, said senior police official Gul Afzal Khan.
The drone strike was the seventh in two weeks, one of the most intense series of attacks in the past two years. During that period, political tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan led to a reduced number of strikes compared to 2010, when they were at their highest.
Many Pakistanis oppose the attacks because they believe they mostly kill civilians, an allegation denied by the U.S. Independent research indicates that a majority of those killed are militants, but civilian casualties also occur.
It is said that when Barrack Obama took office in 2009, he strongly supported these drone attacks. At first I also thought it was a great idea, being able to take down high valued targets without risking any soldier's life, it seemed great. I now feel that these drone attacks are getting out of hand. There have been more drone bombings in the year 2009, there had been 58 attacks that year, more than the previous 5 years combined. The issue I find here is that sure these take out targets but the civilian casualties the bombs bring could cause greater tensions between these two countries. Do you think the military targets have a greater value than innocent civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time?
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/2013/01/10/bomb-drone-attack-kill-people-pakistan/JCgDkhC35W9TT0GqdENF4M/story.html
I often wonder how large the number is when it comes to civilian deaths when it comes to drone attacks in Pakistan, as the "terrorists" cannot be distinguished from the common civilians, not from uniform, looks, language differences or anything else.
ReplyDeleteAnd when the power to kill resides in a person who is literally untraceable when it comes to the public eye, and does not need to fear retribution, we can expect thousands of innocent people to die without a person having to take responsibility. The people whom we trust in protecting us could be mentally ill and we would never know it. If in fact most of the drone attacks result in innocent deaths, which is highly likely, then opposition should be expected understood. A possibly related link is Collateral murder which can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
This is a really interesting subject to me. The possibility of killing a relevant threat to the US or other countries seems relatively small to me, but then again, I don't know very much about the systems that they use to identify possible targets, but I would hope that they have substantial data before they strike. Anyways, from a moral viewpoint, I feel that no matter how dangerous the "terrorists" might be, there is never a justification for killing innocent civilians. Retaliation against the civilians of a country will never lead to peace, only to war and more death, which is obviously something that should be avoided. Also, I'm not sure I agree with the idea that American lives are more important than the lives of Pakistanis. Overall, this is a confusing moral issue that I don't think there is a clear answer to.
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