Do you believe that our drone strikes are an ethical–or at least viable–way to eliminate terrorists that seek to harm by killing them faster than they can multiply?

If so, ok–I’ll respect that based upon an apparently objective process of arithmetic.

Terrorists – Dead Terrorists = Less Terrorists.

May I offer some other objective data points?

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently concluded that from June 2004 to September 2012, between 2562 and 3325 people were killed by drone strikes in Pakistan.

Of those, The BIJ estimates that 474-881 were civilians, and 176 were children; however given ease with which we can classify someone as a “militant” I am very skeptical of the low number of civilians in that quote.

What would you do if your friends, family members or loved ones were wrongly killed in a terrorist attack?  Would you retaliate?

General David Petraeus’ former advisor describes the tendency of Muslims to do exactly that.

“Every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement…” -David Kilcullen, fomer advisor to Gen David Petreaus.

Just how insane have we become?!  What kind of propaganda have we fallen for?  Why have we accepted it so WILLINGLY?!

Our military is destroying lives, ruining our credibility and stoking the fires of war relentlessly around the world by killing these innocent people and all we can think to say in response is, “Well, they shouldn’t be hangin’ around with no damn terrorists then!”

The number of high-level targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low—estimated at just 2%.  - Peter Bergen & Megan Braun, CNN

The below mini-documentary Living Under Drones is a superb and heart-rendering piece of journalism from Professor James Cavallaro of Stanford Law School’s International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, and Professor Sarah Knuckey of the Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law.

Their recently released report with the same title is available for free download here; it is shocking and an absolute must-read, must-spread far and wide piece of journalism.

This disaster of humanity is ours to end.