Imran Khan opens the bowling attack against the American drones

A couple of years after 9/11, when I visited Dubai for a a few days, I got a sense of the anti-American sentiments there, which were presented to me in a very unexpected manner.  A young man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, who was a Dubai native, asked me whether I was an American, to which, I replied with a vigorous yes.

"So, you are a terrorist" he said.

I was shocked.  I was caught off-guard.  I had no idea how to respond to that characterization. I mean, where would I begin?  That I hate violence?  That I have never touched a gun?  How could I ever be a terrorist?

He noticed my puzzled expressions, and explained his logic.  "You are from America.  Wherever America goes, there is violence. So, you are a terrorist."

The academic in me appreciated the logic, to some extent.  But, it scared the daylights off the regular guy in me, and for the rest of the stay, I tried to hide as much as possible the Americanisms that I might carry with me.

The US does have a long track record of being the arrogant superpower, which has run many a covert and overt operations that have been violent.  The massively expanded use of unmanned drones in many parts of the world, especially in Pakistan, is consistent with that long trend, even though reports, like this one, question how productive those violent exercises are:

Families are afraid to attend weddings or funerals, it says, in case US ground operators guiding drones misinterpret them as gatherings of Taliban or al-Qaida militants.
"The dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling 'targeted killings' of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false," the report, entitled Living Under Drones, states.
The authors admit it is difficult to obtain accurate data on casualties "because of US efforts to shield the drone programme from democratic accountability, compounded by obstacles to independent investigation of strikes in North Waziristan".
The "best available information", they say, is that between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed in Pakistan between June 2004 and mid-September this year – of whom between 474 and 881 were civilians, including 176 children. 

The Pakistani government certainly appears to be tacitly supporting the US drone attacks, while mouthing off anti-American rhetoric every once in a while.  Doesn't help build up the American brand, does it?  And people like me shouldn't be surprised when we are, in turn, labeled as terrorists, right?

The cricket phenom turned politician, Imran Khan, has seized on this as a political issue that can help differentiate him from the rest of the politicians and, thereby, win it big in the upcoming elections.  He is leading a caravan of protesters:

Mr Khan, who formed a political party 16 years ago after retiring from cricket, has emerged as an outspoken critic of drones.
Before leaving on Saturday, he told The Sunday Telegraph that drone attacks were providing a potent cause for the recruitment of militants.
"The people of the tribal areas are the ones who will bring us peace," he said. "It is not going to be the Pakistani military, it is not going to be drones.
"We have drone attacks for eight years and it has just made peace more difficult." 

But, even this peace march can easily become the target of violence--from the Taliban:

The caravan had more than 100 vans and cars when it left Islamabad, the capital, Saturday morning, and steadily grew in size as it made its way across western Punjab province toward South Waziristan, where demonstrators were scheduled to stage a rally in the village of Kotkai on Sunday.
The Pakistani army has control over large sections of South Waziristan after carrying out a major offensive against militant strongholds there in 2009. However, pockets of Pakistani Taliban militants continue to exist in parts of South Waziristan, and it remains a region extremely dangerous for Pakistanis to venture into and off-limits to foreigners....
Factions of the Pakistani Taliban, the country’s homegrown insurgency, have warned that rally participants could be targeted with suicide bombings and other attacks if they proceed to South Waziristan.     
Speaking in Mianwali, a small city 120 miles southwest of Islamabad, Khan told thousands of caravan participants that his “Peace March” will “create a new Pakistan. We are going to tell the people of Waziristan that we did not forget them. We stand with the people of Waziristan as they endure these brutalities by America.”

If Imran Khan is able to get some momentum from this, then it is very easy for his political message to become more and more anti-America itself, which will be a huge tragedy.  What a shame that we have let the drones tell the Pakistanis and the world about ourselves!

As much as I hate violence and wish for peace, I am not sure whether the CODEPINK approach is the best one either:

The American activists — around three dozen representatives of the U.S.-based activist group CODEPINK — along with Clive Stafford Smith, founder of the London-based legal advocacy organization Reprieve, want to march with Khan and publicize the plight of communities affected by the U.S. drones.
Ahead of the march, local media carried reports Friday of alleged suicide bombings planned against the demonstration and a pamphlet distributed in a town along the march route warned participants they would face danger. The main Pakistani Taliban faction issued a statement criticizing the event.
The foreign activists, meanwhile, met with relatives of people said to have been killed in drone attacks. The group also marched in the capital’s Jinnah Supermarket, chanting “Stop, stop drone attacks!” and singing “We are marching to Waziristan.”
One placard said: “Drones fly, Children die.”

We need the protests here in the US in order to try to force a change in our government policies, especially when the drone attacks have been ramped up by a Democratic president.  I don't see how productive and influential it will be for Americans to go marching in Waziristan.

Let us see if drones get any attention at all at the next Presidential debates, which will be about foreign policy.  I am guessing they won't.

I can only imagine that as long as the US engages in such violent acts, and continues to prop up regimes that are brutal to their peoples, we will provide enough and more reasons for them to hate us. 

PS: here is the HW Longfellow poem that the editorial cartoonist is playing with:

The Arrow and the Song
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.