Press TV
November 5, 2013
US drone strikes ‘outrage to global morality’
Audio
US drone attacks in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan are “an outrage to global morality” and international law, says Rick Rozoff, manager of the organization Stop NATO International.
Rozoff says popular opposition is growing against drone attacks in those countries. “What we’ve seen is a popular opposition rising amongst particularly in those areas of Pakistan and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan affected by the drone strikes,” he told Press TV on Tuesday.
In these areas, “popular organizations, political parties, community groups, religious leaders and others have united to demand an end to deadly US drone attacks,” he added.
Rozoff said that drones “by their very nature result in so-called collateral damage that is killing, the murder indeed, of innocent civilians on both sides of the border.”
“The US which is perpetrating these crimes is of course accountable to no one but itself,” he noted.
“Somebody at a base, in say the state of Nevada, that pushes a button and launches a missile that strikes a village and results in the killing and maiming of dozens or scores of innocent Pakistani and Afghan civilians is of course never held accountable for that.”
Rozoff described this as “an act of political expediency and cowardice on behalf of the United States, to appear to be addressing the so-called global war on terrorism by firing missiles into villages and rural Pakistan as opposed to really addressing the real issues.”
The US says the CIA-run drone strikes primarily kill Taliban militants who threaten the US-led international forces in neighboring Afghanistan, although casualty figures show that civilians including women and children are often the victims of the attacks.
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