Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

10 October 2012

BUGSPLAT

Bugsplat: that is the quaint terminology reportedly used by US troops to designate Pakistanis killed by bombs or rockets fired by unmanned remoted-controlled CIA drones at computer-identified heat-emitting targets (ie human beings) in South Waziristan in the country’s northwestern tribal belt. According to western media reports, all military-age males killed by the drones are simply assumed to be enemy combatants, while the women and children killed in the attacks are, well, just “collateral damage”. Pakistan denies giving the US permission to use the drones on its territory, but the US uses them anyway. That’s what you can do if you are the world’s sole superpower. Normally, you need a country’s permission if you go in and bomb part of its territory. Otherwise, well, you’re kind of invading that country. Normally, too, under the rule of law you’re supposed to give suspects a fair trial and only if they’re found guilty can they legitimately be punished. But why bother about legal niceties like that if you’ve infringed the country’s sovereignty anyway? After the atrocious and indefensible slaughter at the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001, for a trillionth of a second bemused Americans asked themselves, “Why do they hate us?” Unfortunately, they didn’t wait to figure out an answer before, shooting from the hip, they invaded the Middle East and Central Asia. And now it’s Pakistan’s turn to be in the firing-line. If they had waited first and sought an answer to that question, they could have saved themselves a lot of money and trouble – and hundreds of thousands of people now dead, including American soldiers, would still be alive. You see, it all comes down to bugsplat, really.  Bugsplat. That’s why they hate you.

Editorial note: Don’t know what bugsplat is? Then you’ve never driven a car.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012)

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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