Obama Killed a 16-Year-Old American in Yemen. Trump Just Killed His 8-Year-Old Sister.
Quote:
In a hideous symbol of the bipartisan continuity of U.S. barbarism, Nasser al-Awlaki just lost another one of his young grandchildren to U.S. violence. On Sunday, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, using armed Reaper drones for cover, carried out a commando raid on what it said was a compound harboring officials of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
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But reports from Yemen quickly surfaced that 30 people were killed, including 10 women and children. Among the dead: the 8-year-old granddaughter of Nasser al-Awlaki, Nawar, who was also the daughter of Anwar Awlaki.
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As noted by my colleague Jeremy Scahill — who extensively interviewed the grandparents in Yemen for his book and film on Obama’s “Dirty Wars” — the girl “was shot in the neck and killed,” bleeding to death over the course of two hours. “Why kill children?” the grandfather asked. “This is the new (U.S.) administration — it’s very sad, a big crime.”
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They claim that the “main target” of the raid “was computer materials inside the house that could contain clues about future terrorist plots.”
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Perhaps most tragic of all is that — just as was true in Iraq — al Qaeda had very little presence in Yemen before the Obama administration began bombing and droning it and killing civilians, thus driving people into the arms of the militant group.
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Hope it was worth it.
Another story mentioned a brother-in-law, as well.
This has got to be one of the unluckiest families on the planet.
I would remind you that Anwar was "the moderate imam" in the wake of 9/11 that Americans could look to as a conciliatory voice from the Muslim community. He would point out that Muslims felt the same as all of us, sympathy for the victims families, a call for justice, etc. He vociferously denounced using U.S. violence in the ME to justify retribution to his millions of followers in the English-speaking Muslim world. A constant presence of sneering suspicion, animosity, harassment, narrowly avoiding prosecution over a minor bureaucratic clerical error in some of his documents, and his children coming home having endured their classmates telling them their daddy is a terrorist will turn even the softest heart cold, though.
I do not excuse his embrace of violent advocacy in any way shape or form, mind you.
But the story of this family is basically a dark tale weaving together half a dozen illustrative narratives about how we're conducting this global struggle in all the wrong ways.
Think anyone (left) in this family might be easy to radicalize by this point?
ETA: Also just occurred to me that Trump's statement about going after terrorist's families is relevant. So there's yet another powerful recruitment narrative. Just put a picture of this little girl on a video with a loop of Trump making that statement, that'll fill a few camps up with fresh young recruits.
Also: trying to pin down her citizenship, there's conflicting reports on it.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2jU8tDx
