John Oliver takes the joy right out of the drone program for fans of the stealth weapons of indiscriminate destruction. Oddly, many Americans are widely accepting of drone strikes – on other countries, although we know very little about the program or what it actually does…A case of absence and ignorance making the heart a bit too fond.
It’s not far-fetched to claim that the rules for drone strikes are very much like actor Harvey Keitel’s balls. John explains, “We’ve all seen them,(Keitel’s balls) and from distance you think you understand the contours, but if you really examined them, you’d realize they’re lost in a haze of fuzziness and gray areas.” . Looking closely at our rules of engagement, one learns some disturbing facts. Technically, we need to be in ‘imminent danger.’ It turns out those are just words. They might as well state, ‘we simply have a whim,’
Ever since the inception of the drone program in 2002, we have been able to kill anyone at any time for any suspicion – or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we don’t even have to know who they are. In fact, we generally don’t know who – or how many we’ve killed. Turning the tables, with Americans as targets is unthinkable!
Thanks to us, people in Pakistan and elsewhere have come to dread blue skies and sunshine, and pray for rain – because the drones don’t fly on cloudy days.
If there is a bright side, it is a small one, but the wedding video John shows, which was shot by a photographer drone is totally worth the price of admission! Likewise, President Obama – in protective father mode, has made it known to heartthrobs like the Jonas Brothers that he has drone capability. We can always pray that Sasha and Malia’s next big crush is on Justin Beiber and/or Justin Timberlake. The former is obvious, the latter recently affected a weak falsetto, and launched a karaoke-like attack on the great Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give it Up’ for which he will be damned to hell – or drones.