Drones Part of Current U.S. Air War Atrocity Born in the 1920s

Taken from KnowDrones article July 5, 2017

In the 1920s Winston Churchill bombed Iraqis who were resisting British rule.  The issue was oil. This established a policy that would lead to massive World War II bombing campaigns and now the vast aerial attack by the U.S. and its colonially-minded partners that is devastating the lives of millions of people across swaths of the Middle East and Afghanistan, and to a lesser degree Libya and Somalia. 

This linked article provides an extremely important analysis of the thinking behind the racist, 1920s British air war and how this thinking lives today in drone war as well as the overall U.S. aerial killing policy. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29441383

In these remarkable - must watch - linked videos it is hard to see any difference between the ideas expressed by RAF pilots who bombed Iraqis in the 1920s and U.S. policy now.  The reports of the Iraqi witnesses to the RAF attacks are almost identical to the comments of victims of drone attacks now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rrSaFvRBFU&t=76s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx-QgSa6cLA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKePRwarlXQ

It is impossible to know the full human and environmental cost of what can only be described as an atrocity of historic proportions, which includes bombing by B-52s, but information from Air Wars.org, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and other sources suggest that the U.S.-led air aerial assault campaign across Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and Libya, including assisting Saudi Arabia’s air attacks in Yemen, has caused:

• At least 20,000 civilian deaths and tens of thousands more wounded.  (My estimate based on information in the above sources; I think this is very conservative.)
• Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of refugees.
• Famine and cholera threatening more than 17 million in Yemen alone.
• Massive destruction of homes, communities and infrastructure.   These photos of Mosul in Iraq can be taken in many, many places that are being subjected to “coalition” air attack.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/world/middleeast/mosul-civilians-escape-isis.html

U.S. drone operators have been a key part of this campaign, apparently involved in identifying targets for conventional bombers as well as undertaking their own attacks.  This extremely informative linked article speaks of drone operators working to minimize civilian casualties, but given what is happening, one can only wonder at this kind of commentary.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/10/03/air-force-seeks-to-change-how-drone-pilots-train-fly.html

Informative links

Airwars.org maintains an extensive all-source database of known allegations in which civilians and friendly forces have been reported killed by the Coalition or Russia in Iraq and Syria. Airwars individual case studies include photographs, videos, names of the dead, and links to all known sources. These reports represent our best current understanding of events and are updated as new information becomes available. 

Military.com  from June 2017
by Oriana Pawlyk

Older U.S. Air Force jets -- including the A-10 Thunderbolt II, eyed in recent years for retirement, and the F-15E Strike Eagle -- are leading the air war against the Islamic State, statistics show.
U.S. military fighter-attack jets, bombers and drones have dropped more than 67,000 bombs since the 2014 start of Operation Inherent Resolve, the Defense Department's mission against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, according to information provided by Air Forces Central Command.
Notably, fighter-attack aircraft released more than three times as many weapons as bombers did, the figures show. Drones dropped the least of any category of aircraft.

Military.com has the figures for the 10 types of U.S. aircraft flying combat sorties: F-15E Strike Eagle, 14,995 weapons released; A-10 Thunderbolt II, 13,856; B-1 Lancer, 9,195; F/A-18 Super Hornets, 8,920; F-16 Fighting Falcon, 7,679; B-52 Stratofortress, 5,041; MQ-1 Predator drone, 2,274; MQ-9 Reaper, 2,188; AV-8B, 1,650; and F-22, 1,535.
Broken down by aircraft type, fighter and attack planes dropped a total of 48,635 weapons, or 72 percent of the total; bombers released 14,236, or 21 percent; and drones dropped 4,462, or 7 percent, according to the statistics.