Immorality of drone warfare
Indeed all sorts of war are horrifying and dreadful. Yet we see in today’s world the dirtiest kind of war that causes Muslims to break with one another and brings perpetual disaster to the Muslim world. The rules for this kind of war include destroying a city of people with poisonous gas, randomly killing people with drones without caring who is being killed and destroying targets using remote controls. What is more shocking is the fact that the whole world deems this quite ordinary.
Turkey has been the talk of many people including those who feel it necessary for Turkey to be expelled from NATO for not giving access to the Incirlik Airbase for unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, with the capacity to carry out bomb attacks. What they meant in fact was that “either you are our ally in the war we wage against Muslims and kill innumerable innocent Muslims, or you're unwanted”.
Recently some media outlets asserted that Turkey brought two Predator UAVs carrying two Hellfire missiles each and stationed them at the Incirlik Airbase and that it would be involved in operations in Mosul with these drones. There are also some people in Turkey who are more than enthusiastic in their pro-western stance by wishing to kill Muslims.
We have previously mentioned that Turkey’s actual role in the Middle East is uniting the Muslim world based on love and understanding and spreading this loving atmosphere throughout the entire world.
The words of drone pilot American Lt. Chad, situated in Nevada Creech Airbase, “We will be in Las Vegas an hour after the bombing” are maybe the most unequivocal words that state the horrifying nature of this unethical war. Soldiers who bomb a wedding procession and turn to amusing themselves and gambling without feeling any guilt are merely actors that fulfill the commands of the drone wars. Just like controlling a computer game, bombing the streets of Pakistan with remote controls in their hands from their air-conditioned rooms in the middle of a desert in the US is no difficult task; in fact, the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” puts the situation into context clearly enough.
As a matter of fact, the statistics regarding drones clarify the situation. A report issued by Human Rights Watch stated that 57 civilians, including women and children, were among 82 people who died in five drone strikes. The reason for us to give these numbers is to show how cheap is the life of an innocent person living in those lands. About 50-60 percent of the people who died in drone strikes in Pakistan were civilians. The targets are generally spots belonging to civilians. Many innocent people were targeted in attacks on 460 schools while 62,000 students were displaced.
To better understand the drone nightmare, it would be enlightening to understand how some countries started the year 2015. Two separate drone strikes in Somalia on Jan. 31 targeted the training camps of Al-Shabaab. The target was a few people and the number of deaths were 40.
In the meantime, nothing has changed in Pakistan. Various targets were hit in five heavy attacks starting from the beginning of this year. Many people who died had nothing whatsoever to do with the targeted people. At this point we have to remind readers that in recent years the international trade in supplying drones has doubled.
Even though the US and the UK state that they work in collaboration with the governments of the countries that are under drone attack, they cannot avoid the rage directed at them by the public. The horrifying noise of the approaching drones in the sky has impaired their psychology. They have no idea when they will be targeted, either during a family picnic or a wedding while having fun. What they know is that, in any case, the soldier who will pull the trigger will continue to have fun in Las Vegas not long after, the world will not care one whit.
While the guns of the world are pointed toward Muslims, special desert prisons are build for Muslims and orange jumpsuits are produced in order to clothe Muslims; as a Muslim country, Turkey will not fall into this error and will not direct its guns to Muslims. If Turkey becomes a part of this horrible mindset, it would be opening the door to enormous calamities, both for itself and for the region. Yet what is more important is the fact that the sin of pointing a gun at an innocent person is bigger than all of this.
—
The writer has authored more than 300 books translated into 73 languages on politics, religion and science. He tweets @harun_yahya
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point of view