Jack Hunter writes:
My pro-life position is simple: Life is sacred.
Life is so sacred that for it to be taken there must be an extremely good
reason—and there are few good reasons. Convenience is certainly not a good
reason. This innate sanctity of human life is something virtually all civilized
people recognize despite one’s politics. Even those who identify as pro-choice
are only comfortable with abortion to the degree that they can downplay or
dismiss the humanity of the subject at hand.
Barack Obama has never claimed to be pro-life. As
the Washington Examiner’s
Tim Carney writes: “President Obama has killed hundreds of civilians, including
women and children, in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia through a drone war aimed at
exterminating the suspected terrorists on his unprecedented and ever-expanding
‘kill list.’”
The drone strike program that was controversial
during the Bush administration has grown dramatically under President Obama.
The logic behind drone strikes is plain—the ability to eliminate terrorist
targets with unmanned aircraft means we don’t have to endanger U.S. military
personnel. But the grim reality of these strikes drastically undermines any
good intentions. The method has quickly become an everyday nightmare for
average Pakistanis. In September CNN
reported that a recent study showed that drone strikes “are too
harmful to civilians, too sloppy, legally questionable and do more harm to U.S.
interests than good.”
Indeed. For every terrorist killed, the number of
civilians killed continues to mount—and the question of who is actually a
“terrorist” has become even more vague.
This week, MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe
Scarborough explained
that America’s drone policy basically says that: “if you’re between 17 and 30,
and within a half-mile of a suspect, we can blow you up … They are focused on
killing the bad guys, but it is indiscriminate as to other people who are
around them at the same time.” Scarborough continued: “Instead of trying to go
in and take the risk and get the terrorists out of hiding in a Karachi suburb,
we’re just going to blow up everyone around them.”
When Scarborough brought up how drones have
indiscriminately killed many innocent children, Time columnist Joe
Klein replied: “The bottom line in the end is—whose 4-year-old get killed? What
we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed
by indiscriminate acts of terror.”
As the UK Guardian’s
Glenn Greenwald noted: “Klein’s justification–we have to kill their
children in order to protect our children--is the exact mentality of every
person deemed in U.S. discourse to be a ‘terrorist.’ Almost every single person
arrested and prosecuted over the last decade on terrorism charges, when asked
why they were willing to kill innocent Americans including children, offered
some version of Joe Klein’s mindset.”
Last year, the parody website The Onion
ran the headline: “Could
The Use Of Flying Death Robots Be Hurting America’s Reputation Worldwide?” while
also asking in a correlating video “Should We Stop Using Robots That Randomly
Kill Children?” The faux “news” panel in the video dispassionately debated
whether or not killing kids with drones was wise U.S. policy. It was a funny
video that emphasized the horrors of our nonchalant regard for the death
of innocent children.
But this is exactly what Klein did. This is exact
what President Obama does. When moderator Bob Schieffer asked both Mitt Romney
and Obama about the use of drones during the last presidential debate, Romney
confirmed that he would continue the program. Obama ignored the question. Many
Americans, from government officials down to the average citizen, ignore the
question. Many Americans are unaware that there is even a question—thanks to a
liberal media that continues to kowtow for Obama and a rightwing media that
still defends Bush’s legacy.
But for pro-lifers, there must be a question: If
life is sacred, how can we justify killing so many innocent children? Some
might say, “Well, that’s just war. We make mistakes.”
Yet, I don’t know a single pro-lifer who would
agree with rectifying the mistake of an unplanned pregnancy by making yet
another mistake in terminating that pregnancy. If we justify the killing of
innocent children abroad because their lives are somehow worth less, how is
this different from liberals who dehumanize the personhood of a fetus? How does
arguing, as Klein does, that killing their kids is OK somehow because
it allegedly protects us?
I believe that sometimes war–and the collateral
damage it brings–is justified. What the United States is currently saying to
the world is that war is always justified if America is doing it. We are saying
that our policy is now permanent war, which means constant collateral damage
and the continued death of random innocents.
As an American, I’m outraged. As a pro-lifer, our
policy of drone strikes is something I cannot abide.
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