The Nomad

Hand outstretched somewhere on the side of the road in southern Kyrgyzstan, I was on my way to Osh. Osh was a city that was known for being a major trading post along the silkroad, but it was also the site of a bloody massacre of Uzbeks just a few months prior. It was said by locals that there were over 2000 people killed over the span of a couple of weeks there, and over 100,000 people displaced. Official estimates only say there were around 420 deaths, but those were just in hospitals. This event was mostly overshadowed by other news, partially due to the US and Russian air bases that sit in Bishkek, so not many of my loved ones were aware of the fact that I was on my way to a city full of potential genocidaires. They most certainly had no idea that my plan was to re-enter Afghanistan through Tajikistan and travel to Kandahar, just as one of my personal heroes Rory Stewart had chronicled in his book “The Places in Between” on his journey from Herat to Kabul. I had an English- Dari dictionary that I picked up in Bishkek, and a list of phrases. Against the advice of a former Russian soldier I had met in Karaganda, who fought in the Russian- Afghan war, I was still going to brave it. I was under the naïve impression that all my fears I had of people were unfounded, and to reaffirm my beliefs that most people were essentially good. My journey thus far was living proof of this. After months of testing this by riding with complete strangers across countries I had been told were dangerous and that I would surely be knifed down, I was treated mostly with respect except for a few corrupt policemen trying to get money out of me. But I didn’t carry it to give. While I cannot speak for the general nature of humankind, I can speak for my experience.

My experience was… that I had been to Kandahar before, in the United States Air Force. I was with a squadron whose main purpose was to set up a site that would designate all communication between aircraft in Afghanistan to their respective parties around the globe to be directed and controlled. We had a hand to play in everything from medivac to the Beast of Kandahar, a formerly classified surveillance aircraft that made international headlines when it was grounded over Iran. Initially, I proudly worked on what I knew to be something that was going to save lives by making communications more reliable for people in danger. It was the first time in US history that a system had been set up of this sort to allow for warfare to be directed over a network in the way we did it. We had worked tirelessly to get this system up and running, and with each rocket attack, it re-confirmed to me the value of this mission, a part of me was worried that it would never work… Then one day it did… and I will never forget when my boss proudly announced the fact that we were now killing bad guys.

Truthfully, I was not prepared for those words… I wanted to believe that we were so far removed from what was happening there, that it was not my fault for what happened on the other end. But I couldn’t help imagining airstrikes as they went down in my head. Transfixed, I must have stared at those radios for over an hour, just staring. What was connected to those green blinking lights, I knew were the electrical extension of whatever happened on the ground.

Moreover, I had no idea what the Battlefield Airborne Communication Node (BACN) did, or who they worked with. They had connected with us, and we were not allowed to touch their equipment. As far as we were told, they flew an unmarked private jet with equipment that served as a signal amplifier and universal translator for radio and data frequencies over remote areas. It relayed its messages through us so that we could transmit it long haul to places such as, but not limited to the Combined Air Operations Center in Al Udeid Air Base. What I found troubling was the priority these people had. I would only later learn why.

After everything was set up, we had very little to do except for maintenance checks, our programs, and building up the work tents. Each time a soldier would die in Southern Afghanistan, we would go to the flight line and salute their caskets as they were carried away to the C-130. Soldiers, airmen, and marines from around the world would drop what they were doing if it wasn’t critical and we would show our respect. The first one was… emotional. I stood in the front row, and I watched grown men carrying caskets trying their best to hold back their bitter tears. I’d see men standing across from me with tears in their eyes while we all saluted and the bagpipes played. When the Chaplain read the eulogy, a more detached part of me felt like I was experiencing history. It was an honor I thought to die for your country. As days and weeks went by, I realized that there is no honor to be had. Honor was just a way to help people cope. What I was watching was broken families… I was seeing the preview to the worst phone call a mother could receive… It was a father regretting his decision to support his son becoming a soldier. It was a son or daughter who wouldn’t have a parent anymore. I was watching soldiers who would one day put rifles in their mouths, and blow their brains out. There were over fifty coffins taken away that I stood and saluted. Whatever my system did, I was not seeing less people getting taken to those airplanes. It was a time of a 30,000 man troop build-up, so people were pushing further out…  Then I thought about the unseen… I was not seeing the families ruined by the machine I helped build. I was not seeing the child crying over the bodies of her family. I was not seeing the father and husband who lost his wife and child, embittered by what we called a miscalculation or a mistake due to faulty information.

These realizations were more than a source of anxiety for me. I’d watch my radios and imagine all the suffering they caused. The single significant act of my life was this system. It was something to help pilots and operators drop bombs on people. Each time a mortar dropped, I thought about the fear it must create when we blew up their houses. In bathrooms around base back in Germany, we had posters with statistics on the capabilities of aircraft. Some like the Global Hawk were able to fly so high, a person would not even be able to see them. While I have long abandoned the thought of a Christian God as we knew him in the church I used to frequent back home, in my dreams, it was like he was showing me the killer that I was.

When we returned home, we all received an Enlisted Performance Report dictating the impact of our work in Afghanistan. Everyone received a line saying that we supported 200+ enemy kills in our time there. Most of the time, EPR reports are usually fluffed up, but this was true. I was meant to be proud of this… What it didn’t say was that we also supported over 400 civilian deaths since it was installed according to the United Nations. It didn’t say anything about the specifications for what classifies as an enemy in this statistic. Neither did it say anything about the fact that BACN was being used to fly over Pakistan, and that it was using our systems to route UAV traffic. I remember sitting in our office in Germany and watching everyone jump when we heard a car backfire outside. We laughed… But I never talked about my dreams of bombed villages or the people who would never let me sleep. It’s usually seen as a career ender to seek psychological help, so I didn’t. I just put my thoughts into escaping, of travelling the world.

When I quit the military, I burned my uniform in my bosses grill at my going away party. It was as if to say that I am no longer part of this. But it was always a part of me, I could never shake it.

All people I’ve met who travel a long time go either to escape something or to find something. I needed answers. I needed to know why I had blood on my hands, and why I can never forgive myself. In the time I travelled, I only learned of our common humanity through a myriad of different cultural representations. I talked about my life to everyone who would listen, even the unsavory parts. I always expected a conflict, but I think they understood me better than I did myself. When I went to Osh, I had the full expectations of going back to Afghanistan. But as I entered the city, I saw burned out buildings with melted televisions and rain damaged teddy bears inside. I saw the same thousand yards stares I had seen before while I was deployed, and the agitation. I met an owner of a guesthouse who was keeping some Peace Corps volunteers that stopped some men with axes from killing the Uzbeks he was hiding in his house. They came to the door and said if there were any Uzbeks in there, to tell them, or they would go in and kill everyone inside. He told them they weren’t from there and they had no right to come in. They went away. In this action, I saw true honor.

By then my decision to go back to Afghanistan was overshadowed by the Russian veteran I had met a month earlier, who I had shared a beer with in a BBQ stall in the middle of an open market. He spoke for hours about his experiences of gunning down a family because he was ordered to. After I told him what I did and what I planned to do, he took off his sunglasses and looked at me in the eyes.  His words probably saved my life, he said: “I know the Americans gave weapons to fight us. I saw many friends die, and we killed a lot of people. There are things I will unfortunately never forget. But we were just soldiers, just as you were. I don’t hate you, because I am you. That’s what happens when you’ve had time to reflect… I see you in myself, and I’m telling you, you will never be able to come to terms with the knowledge of what you did, it will always be with you. You will just go there and get yourself killed, and then what good are you? You’ll be just one more death, a statistic. In America, people listen to the little man. Go back, get an education, and try to change things, just don’t be evil” It shook me to hear a Russian veteran say this to me. Because I knew that for the longest time they were as afraid of us, as we were of them.

The situation in Osh was said to be a product of instability bleeding over from Afghanistan. Some suggested the Mayor was seeking a reason to create an autonomous zone so that they could traffic weapons and drugs in and out of Afghanistan from Tajikistan. In the man I met there, I saw someone who under threat of being killed by axes, stood up for what was right in that moment. A trip into Afghanistan no longer felt like the only course of action. Instead I went into Xinjiang China. The first thing I saw in Kashgar was a group of Chinese soldiers late at night, taking positions and breaking down a door down in an alleyway, out of the window of the car I was in. This was something I was unprepared for, but under the same auspices of eradicating terrorism from their borders, the first event I experienced in China was their troops exerting their power to take control of a region that technically belonged to them, but they never controlled until they decided to develop it for mineral extraction. I was told by a local tour guide who picked me up on the side of the road that right after 9-11, nine hundred political prisoners disappeared from Urumchi. And on my journey throughout China, nobody was aware of this, nor did they think that the Uygher people were anything more than bloodthirsty killers. Their attitude was all too familiar.

It made me think of our own media, of fear caused by ignorance and transmitted to the people of America. I saw a state run media that prohibited social networking sites outside of the state sanctioned Chinese ones. They couldn’t know, unless they were awake to what else was out there. Their minds were programmed that way. But I never judged them, because in many similar ways, we have been becoming them. At current, we have four companies that control 90% media in the United States. Most Americans currently get their information from these four. While espousing different views on cultural and social issues, on matters of foreign policy, they bandwagon behind views that are the most hard lined whenever there is a moment of shock. When there are only a handful of companies competing for the attention of the majority of people, they tend to adopt whatever is the most attention grabbing topic is and run with it. This is what happened during 9-11 and the invasion of Iraq. The net effect was the same. It still produced a xenophobic reaction toward Islamic people, which in turn was used as recruiting material for extremists. It was fuel to be exploited by those who sought to profit on the pain of others.

When we see other countries on the television, we often wonder why people don’t just do what we would do. Why are they so prone to violence, why do they support evil people in power, and how could they be so ignorant of the goodness our way of life has to offer? We see our own soldiers fighting just wars in movies and assume we are the good guys. As access to the internet proliferates we are beginning to see other, more confusing realities that contain a long list of truths we are often too proud to acknowledge and digest. These other truths are revealing. The nationalism and our insular sense of reality, that protected us from the wickedness of life on earth, flew in our face and exposed our ignorance and our pettiness.. This inward- out perspective on politics insulates us from the truth that there is in fact only you and me sitting here. There is no “other”. Bear with me, and try to imagine that instead of killing Afghans, we were killing Americans. Once you can do that you know how I feel. I’ve travelled to over forty countries and there is nothing that makes an American more superior than anyone else. We are all just people trying to make it on this earth. In war, there are only people killing people for reasons neither side fully understands, and those who profit from it. There are defensive wars, but Afghanistan was not one of them, and neither was Iraq. It was a reaction, but it was not the right one. By the time we are set to leave Afghanistan, we will have occupied it longer than some empires owned colonies. It will be the most expensive war in our history, and it will not make our world any safer. Empires controlled territories in the middle-east much longer and still people fought. As most colonial powers have in the past, we are making the same mistake of believing we are liberators from backwards and brutal cultures. But as they have compelled us to become what we most feared – a country resembling an Orwellian state through superior technology – they have formed their own, and a religion of peace grew gnarled fangs. But in the end, we are merely people belonging to a civilization who wish to defend what is most dear to us. Our losses will burn in our memories and our transgressions will be mere statistics, a means to an end.

Statistics however are representative, they are symbols for people, events, and actions so vast and incomprehensible that we would not have the time in our lives to think about in any sufficient detail. Evil hides behind statistics. But I will not, my hands touched the lives of thousands of people. Many say that if it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else. That is just a way to cope, it’s a lie we tell ourselves. The fact is that there is only one reality and there is no what ifs. There is only us and what we choose to do in our short time we have here. We could be the man in the guesthouse, or we can be the man who killed a whole family out of fear for what authority might do to him if he didn’t. This was the decision I had to make in my life, I am not alone, but I chose fear and white lies to protect myself from the awful truth of my life’s work. White lies like I saved lives with what I did when I know good and well that these were lives that wouldn’t need saving, if we never reacted like a giant who had his eye poked out…  But it was also my choice to sit at this computer, to take this position, and hope someone out there understands.

In my life, I have always been a traveler. For a time, I joined a military that relies on this sense that there are other people out there that would do us harm. But this is true and this is not true. The truth is that there is someone out there that is being told the same thing about us, and up till now, we have done more harm than good. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

From someone who’s lived there for awhile, this is my warning, my plea, and this is the only advice I can give to you as a person. Travel. Learn how to think critically. Experience life as if it was the first day you stepped foot on this Earth and have patience for what is different. When the day comes when I belong to a nation that chooses to understand rather than hate that which harms us, I will come home for good. Until that day, I will make no ties, and I will only stay for a while.

Written by Cian Westmoreland , The Nomad

Geronimo

A veteran’s cemetery outside of New Mexico

I remember the time I began to question what we are really doing overseas. It was September 2009. Let me start from the beginning. I fix things. It’s my nature. At this particular time I was a C-130 maintainer. I was tasked for my first deployment to Afghanistan. In fact, I was a week out from leaving. Then, the next day I came in I found out I was leaving in eight hours. Our deployment manager sent the wrong personnel to replace someone from a different base and so they decided to yank me that night.

The problem was I had already had my deployment readiness training scheduled for the entire next week. Everything from self aid & buddy care to CPR to M-16 qualification and Afghanistan cultural awareness training which is a really dry computer based training requirement. Then, during this training my flight chief was trying to get everything I needed for my deployment bags. He was constantly calling me asking my sizes for extra uniforms and such. My commander was upset because our deployment manager dropped the ball and the other base didn’t care, I had to pay the price. This meant training for 9 hours, head home for a quick shower, pack, and a quick goodbye to my wife and son (I only had one at this time).

I remember it being sort of emotionally upsetting as I’m sure it would be for anyone rushing for their first deployment because I couldn’t even have dinner with my family. I spent 9 hours running around then hurry up and hop on a plane. I do have to say though that my shop and commander did do everything they could to help me out and make sure I had what I needed. This deployment wasn’t like most where you have a few months notice. It went from being a week notice to I was being told the next day I was leaving that night. To skip forward I bit, we flew to the next base and picked up more personnel and flew for what seemed like days. I didn’t see a bed for the next 24 hours. By this point I caught a small nap on the plane.

We eventually arrived in Qatar. I just remember stepping off the 747 into blistering heat. We were rushed to a sort of in-processing. There was a lieutenant going over some briefings while we were in an air conditioned tent. I had no idea what to do at this point. The co-worker I arrived with got put into another group and I didn’t see her the rest of the time we were in Qatar. No one seemed to really be able to tell me where to go, I had to figure everything out and eventually located the lieutenant that had been giving the briefings. I explained to him I was last minute, my name wasn’t on any paperwork at any place I needed to go to in order to properly in-processed and we eventually got everything straightened out.

About two days later took a C-17 into Afghanistan. This was really where my life changed. We worked 7 days a week, 12 hour shifts. Once I arrived I barely had enough time to unpack in the hut my room was in, grab some food, and be rushed off to work. I remember sitting at the meeting place where the buses would come to shuffle us to and from work that first night when a mortar attack happened. I remember my heart racing but not so much out of fear, but not knowing what was going on and just seeing a bright explosion in the distance. Within seconds the sirens were blaring and then it was over. We didn’t even have time to get in the bunkers known as C-bunkers. These are basically cement arch bunkers surrounded by sandbags. When we arrived at our hangar, it was explained to us what had happened. In fact, we received weekly intel briefings about the attacks on our base.

As the weeks went by, we had a fair amount of attacks on our base from rockets to mortars to even “Taliban” members, or whatever they were being referred to at the time, storming the front gate with guns. We had to carry our weapons with us wherever we went with the exception of our compound. We’d leave our weapons in our rooms. If we wanted to visit the Base Exchange, or grab chow, we had to take our M-16’s with us. Everywhere we went, when we stored our guns, we had to clear them using the clearing chambers located at areas to include the dining facilities and even the hangar at work. This just sort of became your everyday normal. Come in to work, clear my gun, check out tools, and go to work out on the flight line.

We did have local nationals that worked on base. They did everything from construction around base to working at the dining facilities and even on each of the compounds collecting garbage. We had what was referred to as LN duty where people would be scheduled to chaperon them around making sure they weren’t doing things they weren’t supposed to. Shortly before I arrived we did have an incident where one was suspected of relaying coordinates to some off base for a pinpoint strike where unfortunately two people died. They suggested we didn’t interact with the local nationals. They never gave an actual reason, they just suggested we didn’t. I’d see people go out of their way to purposely plow through them and cuss them out for no reason. Whether or not they could understand me, I’d walk over and apologize for their actions. It’s easy to discard a person when you know nothing about them and fighting them. These people, however, were only there for a paycheck. They have families to support and aren’t necessarily involved in the war.

I remember one night waking up about an hour or so before I had to start getting ready for work. I had to relieve myself badly due to the amount of water I had drank. In my half awake stumble out to the bathroom trailers I heard this loud rushing noise. I looked up to notice rockets flying overhead and hitting maybe 100 yards away. It certainly woke me up. There was another night a plane was bringing back some alleged enemy combatants. I remember stepping up into the plane not even knowing they were coming back. I began going about my business and happened to turn back and look at the cargo compartment. I noticed dozens of, what I would assume were, Afghani fighters with their hands zip-tied behind their back sitting Indian style on the floor chained to the cargo floor with blindfolds on and vomit bags around their neck. We weren’t ever told who they were or what they had supposedly done. See that, that right there. We weren’t even allowed to know. Why not? What did they do? I thought to myself, did these guys even do anything? Were they running away from people in the woods? Were they even armed?

I get it, I do. There are enemy combatants, but do they actually threaten our way of life all the way over in the U.S.? Why were we over there making these people our enemies? Because here’s a little fact, actually it’s quite big rather, I did not learn until years later. Not one person involved in the Attacks of 9/11 were even Afghani…not. a. single. one. Mohammad Atta – Egypt, Ahmed al Ghamdi, Hamza al Ghamdi, Saeed al Ghamdi, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al Hamzi, Salem al Hazmi, Ahmad al Nami, Khalid al Mihdhar, Majed Moqed, Abdul Aziz al Omari, Mohand al Shehri, Wail al Shehri, Waleed al Shehri, and Satam al Suqami – Saudi Arabia, Fayez Banihammad, and Marwan al Shehhi – United Arab Emirates, and lastly Ziad Jarrah – Lebanon. Don’t believe me? I’m not a huge fan of CNN, but here:  http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11th-hijackers-fast-facts/ . I learned of this information during Airman Leadership School. Maybe it’s something I should have dug into earlier but you don’t think about these things. When leaders give speeches, they immediately make everyone not us to be the bad guy and we need to go over there and blow shit up! I found out later Bin Laden had actually been advised by his Al Qaeda brethren not to attack the U.S. but he did anyways. I believe I picked up that tidbit of information in a PBS documentary I watched online years ago. It was a Pakistani journalist embedded with the Taliban. They were discussing IED’s and just kept saying they want to be left alone. They just want us to leave Afghanistan. They have no desire to come over and attack us. They don’t want to be a part of our western culture. So why were we in Afghanistan? To this day I’m still confused. Did it start because the Taliban refused to turn over Bin Laden without actual proof linking him to 9/11? Could it be to the vast amount of Lithium deposits? Or, is it simply the big money behind war and the military-industrial complex?

After months of attacks and no days off and tense relationships with other personnel, it was finally time to come home. I decided to do more research on Afghanistan. I looked at some of their cultural beliefs and did a lot of photo searching through Flickr. I’m a visual person and wanted to see more of the country. This is how I learned about how long Afghanistan had been at war. I also learned just how beautiful Afghanistan is. I simply pulled up the site and typed in Afghanistan and browsed through the thousands upon thousands of photos.

Sometime later I decided I wanted to begin my bachelor’s program. I chose to get a degree in social and criminal justice with the idea of possibly running for a local government position one day. I got so tired of seeing people’s rights stepped on and the direction our government was going. I ended up discovering Ron Paul and, while some of his ideas like getting rid of the 3 letter agencies and getting rid of the Department of Education are way out there, he made a lot of good points about our foreign policy and discussed 9/11 being blow back for things we’ve done to other countries.
I stopped really keeping up with world events and focused on schoolwork. I didn’t complete my degree until this past June and have been contemplating what my next move will be. That’s when Brandon approached me about Project RED HAND. We discussed the mission of the group and I was introduced to those he wanted to bring on board. I’ve never worked with activists and knew I wanted to help people. I had a desire to find a way to hold or government accountable for not just it’s misuse of drones but everything including it’s overreach into our personal lives with the NSA and the like. I decided to hop on board. So here I am. I hope to help make a difference.

Written by The Doctor

When Children Are The Enemy: The Drone Program & Children’s Rights

Pakistani tribesmen protest against US drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal region. © AFP/Getty Images

In this article:
– A recap on the transparency record of the US drone program
– Revelation about the true age of “military-age males”
– Where does international law come into play?
– What can can be done?
– Resources hyperlinked throughout for further insight

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
– Nelson Mandela

Denial From The Start

It’s been a struggle to receive any information on missile-bearing drones currently used in American foreign policy. Robert Gibbs’ revelation on MSNBC last year symbolized the administration’s views on transparency from the start, and why it was like pulling teeth for investigative journalists. As the former Press Secretary to President Obama, he stated that one of the first things he was told when sworn in to office was to treat the drone program as if it “didn’t exist”. Not to say the usual, “well I can’t get into that as it would threaten our national security endeavours.”, but to treat a reality as if it wasn’t occurring at all.

Jedi mind tricks didn’t work against the internet. Although the administration has referred to these strikes as “surgical” and like a “scalpel”, this rhetoric has crumbled. Multiple claims in 2011 and 2012 by the administration on civilian casualties we’re shown by ProPublica to not add up. In 2013 McClatchy reported that in a 12 month period of strikes in Afghanistan, only six out of 482 people killed were leading figures of al Qaida . A recent report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism showed that in Pakistan alone, out of the 400+ strikes that have occurred, only 4% of drone strike victims we’re named simply members of al Qaida.

It has also been a struggle for investigative journalists, UN committees, and NGO’s to demand transparency on how the United States justifies their drone strikes. Take “signature strikes”, a practice that fires missiles on an unidentified man based on his pattern of life. It was revealed thanks to the first Intercept article that the intelligence needed to authorize a strike can be minimal, targets sometimes are reduced to a known sim card location, and the life pattern under suspect can be based on their electronic metadata. Focussing in Pakistan, Amnesty International’s own report Will I Be Next outlines nine strikes, one that dropped a missile on a grandmother picking okra in a field alone, with her granddaughter and grandson close by. This report also tackles another practice known as “double tapping”, when a strike happens and unidentified people rush in to the area (perhaps to help medically or search for survivors), a second missile is then fired on them. In the report it is well articulated that this practice alone could surmount to war crimes.

With signature strikes and doubling tapping alone, the level of “threat” by these targets have been put in question. Although there may be self-defence claims made by the US, it was revealed through orwellian Department of Justice leaked documents (which I challenge everyone to read) the policy “does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”

Does any of this so far sound “precise”? Or use of “necessary force”?

It also became known that “military aged males” in the area of a drone strike are considered immediately “enemy-combatants”. Rightfully so, this has been lamented by many as a way to reduce the number of reported civilian casualties, and that it is also ethnocentric and I will add sexist.

Regarding this particular policy and the media’s portrayal of drone strikes in this “war” (some would say acts of aggression), Glenn Greenwald wrote it well back in May of 2012:

“ For now, consider what this means for American media outlets. Any of them which use the term “militants” to describe those killed by U.S. strikes are knowingly disseminating a false and misleading term of propaganda. By “militant,” the Obama administration literally means nothing more than: any military-age male whom we kill, even when we know nothing else about them. They have no idea whether the person killed is really a militant: if they’re male and of a certain age they just call them one in order to whitewash their behaviour and propagandize the citizenry (unless conclusive evidence somehow later emerges proving their innocence).”

And let us not forget that all of these policies apply to strikes happening in now undesignated warzones as well, such as Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria.

In knowing all this, I didn’t think the policies could get much worse. In March of this year I befriended my Project Red Hand colleague Brandon Bryant, a US Air Force veteran and former drone operator. We took a trip to the Iraq Veteran’s Against the War 10th Anniversary Conference, and during a twelve hour drive from Montana to Colorado I learned that I was wrong. And there was one thing that he revealed to me so outrageous that it stayed burned in the back of my head for months. I have scoured the internet to see if what I am about to state is widely known, to find that I do not believe it is.

So here goes.

Bombing Children as Accepted Policy

During the twelve hour drive in August of this year, Brandon completed a part of the missing chunk of public knowledge on the drone program. In the years of binging on any information that I could find, one thing that I had never been exposed to was what drone operators go through on the inside. As the only previous drone operator to publicly speak out, many of the interviewers focused on the sensational things he had witnessed or the fact that he now suffers from PTSD. In some cases I’d argue this was used to discredit any relevant commentary he might have on the program itself, very similar to tactics used on other whistleblowers. There were never direct question about the policies, what his instructions were like, or the conditioning that he went through inside the program.

He was shuffled into the drone program at 20 years old, which was roughly the average age. He was told that his new job was “to kill people and break things” . These young operators are not told much, if anything, about the people they are striking, just that they are the enemy and are dangerous to the United States. The database that is used to store technical data about drones is called “Skynet”, yes, the same name as the fictional company that makes Terminators. Every operator would receive a list of “achievements” which stated the number of kills by strikes. Brandon stated that sometimes these numbers were used for promotion, just like you would in a sales job. Brandon and the other operators were not allowed to speak to a psychiatrist because they would lose their clearance. They were allowed to speak to a Chaplain, which Brandon did. When he expressed his concerns about not understanding who they were killing and if it was right, the Chaplain stated, “Did you ever think that it was God’s will for these people to die?”

To add, the news site The Guardian was banned on US military bases abroad in the summer of 2013. In August of this year The Intercept became banned reading for all Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corp employees, even those with top security clearances.

These operators are the same age as recent high school graduates or college freshman. All of these inside tactics: kill-lists like a video game, the oddly referenced “Skynet”, the radical religiously pacifying Chaplain, and news censorship, can and should be called out for what they are: dehumanizing conditioning on behalf of the US Military on these young soldiers which could result in dire psychological effects.

For Brandon it continued to the labels that are used to describe the people on the screens that find themselves in a strike zone. During his time flying for JSOC, women were known as “ravens” , while children were “crows” , two birds that are most known for being symbols of death. Everyone else in the area we’re known as “MAMs” or “military aged males” .

Now the idea that a military aged male can be assassinated with no consequence, trial, or even recognition does need to be  addressed alone. Is no man considered a civilian then? The presumption of inherent guilt punishable by immediate execution is a known unjust judgement for any institution to cast, hence the evolved constitutional and internationally regarded right to due process. Hauntingly ironic as it seems now, the presumption of innocent until proven guilty was an American legacy born during the Nuremberg Trials after World War II.

However, from what I had understood, the “military age” to be considered an enemy combatant was eighteen years old and up. Or perhaps at worse, it may be sixteen years old and up. This is not the case. Revealed by Brandon, and seconded by other military sources, to be considered a “military aged male” one must only be twelve years old. So, if there is a twelve year old boy in the town square where a drone strike occurs and is blown up, we are to disregard his young life and assume he was likely an enemy. A little boy. A preteen.

And how far does this go down the rabbit hole? If they are considered enemies immediately, are 12 year olds being tortured in US-backed black sites? These questions must be asked. We already have a case of a child in the American detention center in Guantanamo Bay. The heart-raging case of Omar Khadr, detained when he was fifteen years old and held for eleven years of his life.

In opposition to investigative journalists who bring the civilian casualties and loss of children under drone strikes to light, many TV news personalities loyal to US foreign policy say, “well there are always casualties in war, its never perfect ect.” That’s disingenuous to what’s actually being laid bare here. The point is not only that the US is firing missiles in areas and there are casualties, but that the administration by policy claims the international authority that all the male children 12 years old and up in a strike zone most likely deserve to die. Is that not the logic behind presumed guilt and assassination?

President Obama has continued the tradition of preaching American exceptionalism in his speeches, from the articulate metaphors of being a beacon of human rights on the hill to recently when he patronizingly appealed to the youth by stating that being the worlds protectors was “how we roll”.

If there was anything to challenge American exceptionalism should it not be the bombing of children as a matter of accepted policy?

Let’s pause. I will do separate articles on a piece of legislation known as the AUMF, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, but to those unfamiliar think about what the Patriot Act did to civil liberties, the AUMF did for foreign policy. Congress was rushed to sign this floodgate in scope for the American warmachine and executive branch overreach only three days after 9/11. This is while the country was at it’s height of fear, remorse, rage, and utter panic. In the House of Representatives, out of the 431 voting members, there was one representative who had the foresight and courage to vote against the AUMF. This was Congresswoman Barbara Lee. By herself on the floor, with her voice shaking, she stated,

“ Some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say let’s step back for a moment, let’s pause for just a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control. Now I have agonized over this vote. But I came to grips with it today. And I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful yet very beautiful memorial services. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, ‘as we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.’”

Are we there yet?

What About International Law?

It’s no secret that the US has avoided becoming a member of the International Criminal Court, and that it may sign on to international conventions but never ratify them (which means become obligated to follow it). One can take a tour of the of lip-service to UN conventions here.

Most startlingly however is that of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Next year it will be twenty years since the US has signed this convention but not ratified it. It was internationally recognized that children did not have enough specific protection under international law, and all member states of the UN have signed and ratified this convention, except two. Somalia and the United States of America. Somalia’s President pledged to ratify last year, so soon the US may be the only country in the entire UN Assembly to not ratify the only international convention dedicated children’s rights.

As the shining light of human rights on the hill, why?

Well there is false rhetoric that is being spread about UN conventions and that they are some threat to national sovereignty. This is a misunderstanding of jurisdiction and purpose. Amnesty International’s and UNICEF’s official response to this:

“ Does the Convention threaten our national sovereignty? Will the United Nations control our laws and children?

A: No. The Convention contains no controlling language or mandates. Moreover, under the supremacy clause of our Constitution, no treaty can “override” our Constitution. The United States has historically regarded treaties such as this Convention to be non-self-executing, which means the Convention can only be implemented through domestic legislation enacted by Congress or state legislatures, in a manner and time-frame determined by our own legislative process. Moreover, the United States can reject or attach clarifying language to any specific provision of the Convention.
Therefore, neither the United Nations nor the Committee on the Rights of the Child would have dominion, power, or enforcement authority over the United States or its citizens. Ultimately, the Convention obligates the Federal Government to make sure that the provisions of the treaty are fulfilled.”

Since we now know that the current administration’s view is a child aged 12-15 in the areas that are being bombed is presumed guilty and can be assassinated without due process, this is obviously a clear violation of Article 6 Section 1 of the convention which reads: State parties recognize that every child has an inherent right to life. Beyond that, and like in such cases as Omar Khadr, the United States would also be violation of Article 37, 38, and 40.

And what about inland? In a report published in October of this year, child poverty in United States is at it’s highest it’s ever been in twenty years, with a quarter of American children living food insecure. There could be an entirely separate article that laments on the state of children’s development in the United States. This could be about the education system, social programs, safety, discrimination, the list goes on. Perhaps one of the most antithetical to the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child would be the practice of youth incarcerated adult sentences of life without parole. So can we really say that the current United States administration is upholding the values of this convention even at home?

The growing pile of international conventions left unratified aside, here is one example of a law that can and is being used to challenge current US foreign policies, especially in the case of the drone program. In 1993, the 4th Geneva Convention officially became customary international law. This means that they are binding to not only signatories, but also to non-signatories who are engaging in armed conflict.

So keeping in mind the fact that yes, the US is obliged to abide, I direct your attention to Article 3 Section 1:

“ Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

President Obama campaigned on human rights and respect for international law. He won the American vote by promising CHANGE and HOPE from Bush warfare, yet for six years we have seen every element of that article continue to be violated. Under Obama these actions have expanded into undesignated war zones, tactics lamented under Bush have been codified legally by the National Defense Authorization Act and the renewal of the AUMF, and the idea of using the US military for resource extraction (oil) was touted charismatically on the UN floor last year as if it was always perfectly acceptable. And now we learn that when the US government tells us a “militant” has been killed, it may have been a thirteen year old on his way to soccer practice who took a wrong turn.

Let’s go back to Robert Gibbs one more time. There was a young journalist from the group We Are Change who confronted him about Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the sixteen year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki. Anwar was one of the first Americans assassinated by a drone strike, and teenage Abdulrahman was killed by a drone strike two weeks after his father’s death. Robert Gibbs, the same man who’s sole job was to convey information to the press on behalf of the United States government, and while at the same time treated the drone program as if it didn’t exist, looked at this young journalist and could only justify Abdulrahman’s death by claiming he should have had a better father.

After years of public censorship, stonewalling, and false rhetoric, perhaps the reason why growing questions in specific cases like Abdulrahman or any other aspect of the drone program are going unanswered is simple: the administration simply feels they don’t have to. It is up to the public to prove them wrong. The aggressive actions the US administration conducts overseas is also how the American citizenry as whole is represented, and therefore they must know what is happening in their name.

So What’s to be Done?

The point of this article is not to just state that things are bad. Just like in the movie Network, we all know things are bad. The standards and practices of international law is always evolving, especially in times of need such as in times of war and aggressive state actions. And what is regarded as cynicism and apathy in the American populace I would argue is actually the result of being misinformed or not informed at all due to the lack of transparency and illusive rhetoric. This is much easier to engage with, empower, and organize than if everyone had the facts and still didn’t care. And I would also argue, as Amy Goodman does, that there is a silenced majority of the populace that is paying attention and very much so cares.

To summarize the points in this article and lay out a few courses of actions one can take part in:

– Make it known the age of “military aged males” considered immediate “enemy combatants” under current legislation include boys aged 12+ . You can share this article, contact relevant NGO’s and institutions, your own local representatives, write about it on your own, or engage in discussions. The current US administration needs to be put on point to justify this. Because really, how can they?
– Circulate information about the drone program as widely as possible. The rhetoric is still pervasive, but shown immediately false with the facts.
– Engage with returning veterans. We must work together. We must not abandoned those who return, and make no assumption that we understand exactly what they went through or how they feel about it now if they haven’t opened up about it. And keep in mind that again many news outlets like The Guardian and The Intercept are banned on military bases, so either by witness, action, or when they return they can be faced with intense moments of realization. Learn about PTSD and Moral Injury and reach out.
– Challenge “they hate us because of their religion”. Just like “they hate us for our freedom” sounds ridiculous now, so too will this. One can combat this with the actual facts of current American foreign policy. Also to be taken under consideration, just like a large portion of the American public was radicalized into supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq after 9/11, one can make the claim that in a climate of constant terror inflicted by the US some of these areas are being more easily radicalized into anti-West militant groups. Jeremy Scahill articulates an example of this effect specifically pertaining to tribal areas in Yemen in this article for The Nation and speaks about it on this segment of Democracy Now.
– Organize around the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Twenty years it will be in 2015, since the US has signed but not ratified. Shouldn’t the country who perpetuates the most war, selling of arms, and destruction around the world be the same country that should be obligated the most to the only convention on children’s rights? Once again, the United States may soon become the ONLY UN member state to not ratify this convention, so it will be glaringly obvious once this is known to the greater American populace.
– Challenge the US administration’s refusal to join the International Criminal Court. People sometimes talk about the ICC like it’s been around since the birth of the United Nations. It has not. It has actually only been around for roughly a decade. This may be a longer struggle, but first the US government needs a constant and growing pressure to justify why they haven’t yet, combined with fighting the “the UN is a threat to our national sovereignty” false rhetoric.

There are organizations out there that are already involved in most these efforts. One can join and support them, or go rogue and produce projects on their own that fosters engagement in these ideas. The point is to act now. If we don’t, if all of this continues to go unchecked, what future are we making inevitable for generations to come?

“Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.”
– Nelson Mandela

Written by Michelle Segal , Kraken

The True Source

As I’m writing this piece, it has been two weeks since I left Norway and the Bergen International Film Festival filled with the euphoric sense that I’m actually on the right path.  Four days ago I got back from talking about the Future of the Military at Chicago Ideas Week.  Both extreme surprises in terms of responses, outcomes, and purposes. Cumulating the end of a horrible, horrible summer.

The flight over to Europe consisted of me sitting next to a seemingly hairless Scotsman while the man to my right across the aisle watched me sob heartbroken tears as Gwen Stacy, played by the lovely Emma Stone, Peter Parker’s first love is murdered in front of his eyes and he couldn’t rescue her.  I’m pretty sure he was surprised that a grown man can have an emotional reaction from a comic book movie.  The instance where the kid dressed in a Spider-Man costume faces off alone against the Rhino… I lost it, again, and had to take a moment in the washroom.

In my head I felt like that kid.  I was standing up to the baddie that was bigger than me, stronger than me, and way better equipped than me.  I was only mimicking what my heroes would do without actually being able to do what they do. And unlike that little kid, my hero didn’t tag me out and thank me for holding on until he arrived.  I was alone and that was that.  The only thing protecting me is that I’m sincere with my words and I already have nothing to lose.

After my moment, I sat back down to watch X-Men: Days of Future Past.  And it was a totally different experience.  It was as if  somebody was using heroes that I grew up with to lay a point home.  Both movies talked about giving hope.  They talked about what it means to just keep fighting.  Something that I had not been sure of in a long time.  At the end of one movie, the hero steps back up to the plate after having lost his world.  The end of another, the heroes find that they can actually make a better future for themselves and others.

I don’t know about you but I love that type of thing.  It sustained, though blinded, me during my military stint.  I felt that it had betrayed me as I was leaving.  Come to find out, it was just in the hospital recovering from a grievous beating.  Lately, it has been allowed to be released on the condition that it take it easy for a while until the bones are fully mended.  I had no idea what I was in store this time around.  For all I knew, I was just going to further be somebody’s prop then forgotten when my uses were gone.  I didn’t believe anything good was going to come out of this trip for me.

On my way to the moment where I fell in love with Norway and the people that I met, I had another Gaiden in Amsterdam, meeting up with Noel Sharkey and talking more in depth about the meanings behind our usages in drone technology and what that means for our futures during the PAX for Peace conference.  Fifteen minutes before going on to stage I got a book, signed by the author, and told that it was a Doctoral Thesis in which I had been quoted multiple times and to take special note of Chapter Six.  It was the first time since speaking about my dealings and troubles with the US Air Force that I had felt any sort of validation.  The fact that I had felt anything at all was a testament to how far I had come in bearing my guilt.  It was only a fraction of what I was to feel later.

Noel and I finished out the night by partying with our flower vases that held the shape of a standard 9mm GLOCK holding fake flowers shooting out of the barrel.  I didn’t get it through security at the airport, unfortunately.  It was a good ending to the event, a great beginning to my lonely trip, and a completely better situation than the last time I was in Europe.  The whole trip reflected that last part..

Leaving the next morning I was taken to the airport by a Palestinian man my own age and we talked about the political situation around the world.  He was concerned, not only with his own State, but with the happenings in Syria and the World’s dealings with America in general.  Intelligent man, and I hope to one day see that he has gone as far as he can go in life. I agreed with many things that he had said and I got him to consider a few things as well.  Like not hating, completely, on American Military Members.  I told him about the 22+ reported Veteran Suicides a day.  We already know what we’ve been a part of.  I’m just lucky I got an outlet to talk about my experiences.  I was, at one point, one of those possible statistics.  I hope, at some point, to be somebody that helps others to not be as well.

He was astonished that America wasn’t taking care of the men and women that it sends to murder for capital gain.  He was also astonished that we let our leadership get away with it.  After that I explained the destruction of the Warrior Ethos and Spirit.  When he dropped me off he told me that we had a fortunate meeting.  I nodded, wished him well, and got onto my plane to Oslo.

Keep in mind that at this point I was still in (positive) shock of the whole PAX episode. I was still dealing with a massive depressive episode that started in April on top of all the shit that I had been dealing with in the last 9 years.  I was not in a good place at all.

Oslo was strikingly familiar when I got off the airport train into the main city terminal.  I caught a taxi to the Norwegian Parliament, on almost no sleep, met up with my great friends Jonathan and Tonje, then was part of a parliamentary discussion where I talked to a few people who were making informed decisions about the future of Norway and their involvement with the whole drone structure.  I told them what I always do.  This is a technology that few people have considered the consequence of before using.  That while I do have many misgivings about my service and the job that I had done, it is extremely easy to pull the trigger to kill.  What shocked me, was how truly easy it was.  Nearly no effort and lives are snuffed out.  And that terrified me.

I mentioned that while it was easy to misuse the technology, it was even easier to use it positively.  With the way that the Free and Open Internet should work, we could find the way to make the necessary adaptations for more transparency as well as a continual responsible use.  But that means giving the people more power and those in charge will have nothing of that if they can help it.

Halfway through I realized that Tonje had told me they had watched the DRONE documentary before I showed up.  I had no real idea what they were responding to because I had not seen it yet.  So I misinterpreted what I had seen in their faces as a mix between pity and fear.  Broken minds see everything around them broken as well.  Memories included.  I wonder what exactly they thought about me now. I have maybe an idea from the festival in Bergen.

I spent a short few hours in Oslo before heading off to Bergen.  I read chapter three of Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior on the plane, reflected further on what I had just experienced then realized I had no idea where I was going as I was walking off the boarding ramp.  There was no one waiting for me with a sign that said my name.  All I knew was that my hotel was in the downtown area.  So I got on the bus and headed to the only thing that I remembered from downtown: the fountains.

I ended up having to charge my phone at the local TGIFriday’s (I know, right?) in order to message Tonje over social media about my predicament.  Five minutes later I ran into my keeper, Kari.  It was her job to make sure that I was where I needed to be when I needed to be there to answer questions about a movie that I had not seen.  The First World Anarchist in me rebelled at such a notion.  That she was the first of many lovely Norwegians I met that week, notwithstanding.  The Norwegians are a beautiful people, with an amazing history and culture.  Anyways, I digress.  Her, as well as a few others in the BIFF crew, and I became pretty good friends.

As we walked next door to my hotel (I know…) to drop off my things in my room, we ran into Bronx Obama, Louis Ortiz, himself.  It was a magical meeting that ended with the final result of us being friends.  The whole trip is like this.  Fair warning.  And, I shit you not, every time I stopped to look around outside there were two Ravens staring at me.

Ten minutes later we are rushing off to my first Question & Answer session following a showing of the DRONE film.  I awaited in the shadows with Shahzad Akbar, the heroic Pakistani lawyer who is fighting for justice in world legal affairs regarding unlawful drone strikes by representing the civilian victims and their families in the court of law.  Amazing man.  He’s the Yin to my Yang in the film.  Really, a good man.  I can’t stress that enough.

I saw, or rather heard, the ending of the film.  Powerful stuff.  With my final scene coupled with the ending sequence, Flimmer created something that both terrified and fascinated me.  Since the film isn’t out yet I’ll offer no spoilers.  Let’s just say that I was extremely confused why a bunch of people were clapping while I was on stage.  They must be cheering for Shahzad.  People were staring at me in wide eyed wonder and I was thinking they were fearful of me.  The hushed voices and obvious speaking of the home turf’s tongue sent me off into paranoia.

The first thing that somebody said directly to me was this, “thank you for doing what you’ve done.  We need more people in this world like you.”  I was astounded.  You’d have to ask people that were there what my facial expression was.  My response was along the lines of, “I’m not a hero and you should know that.  I’m a murderer and an international war criminal.  I’m a stormtrooper who actually realized that I had been working for the Empire with the full realization of what that means. This is my redemption.”

That was the first of many compliments like that. People were pointing me out in the street and asking to take pictures with me.  They wanted to ask questions.  They wanted to give me hugs. People were telling me, “hey man, you’re doing good.”  Not one person said anything negative towards me.  Except for my former peers, I might add.  They always seem to have nothing relevant to say other than call me names.  But they are not the subject of this.  The trip is.

I saw the film the second day I was there.  I cried halfway through.  Kari thought I was having a bad reaction and patted my back a bit awkwardly.  But it was a cleansing thing.  Like all the negative energy that I had been holding on to evaporated.  That was when I recognized I was doing a good thing.  That all the shit had been fertilizing my lotus. I lost my fear and gained myself back.  The fire that had been gone, my soul, made its triumphant return.  I hope to someday be better able to explain that feeling.  It had been like all the negative emotions that I had been feeling for nearly a decade, the ones that had been hammering my soul, finally relented and I saw that they had forged a hammer.  I was completely connected to the True Source.

I did a total of 18 Q&A sessions that week. Everyone of them, outstanding. Not from my part but from the questions that were asked and the thoughts that were behind the minds of those people.  Didn’t sleep either because jetlag and adrenaline. It was an amazing adventure.  The highlight of my trip was being invited to a friend’s home, meeting his daughter and wife, hiking around Gullfjellet for five hours, eating a traditional Norwegian dinner, and leaving with a pair of Swiss hiking pants.  The kindness and honesty, care and giving of everyone that I met overthere was incredibly overwhelming.  And it just kept getting better.

The next day I spoke in front of a second year cadet class at the Norwegian Naval Academy.  They gave me their leadership handbook because it was in line with everything that I talked about.  One former officer and former instructor told me that I was the bravest soldier that he had ever met.  The feels were like a typhoon.

The following day to that, a young woman brought her mother to see the film for her second time, and they invited me to dinner and adopted me into their family.   I feel that if I keep talking about all the stuff that happened I would end up just writing a book.  I left Norway feeling deeply honored and humbled.  I felt powerful and hopeful.

It has not faded, either.

I want to use this opportunity to thank everyone.  I want to thank my Grandfather and my mother for raising me well.  I want to thank all the creators of my heroes growing up.  I want to thank all the people that believe in me.  The fantastic people at PAX for Peace, the Bergen International Film Festival, Flimmer Film…  Everyone. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.  You all gave me hope and helped me find my strength.  Thank you.

Conversely, I want to thank my former colleagues and critics.  Nothing too much, for now, but if it wasn’t for the reaction that I got for simply telling the truth I probably wouldn’t have been as forthcoming about everything because I would have held out hope one of them would come around to do a better job than me.  I was a wounded dog that had suffered beatings at your words.  I’m sorry that it has come to this but I will no longer defend you to anyone.  I was not one of you, I am not one of you, and I will never be one of you.  Now you have to decide if you’re going to be one of my people.

Thus ends this chapter. Now the real work begins. Welcome to Project Red Hand.

Written by Brandon Bryant