To the editor:
“Real violence has real consequences,” I heard a mother of a Newtown, Conn., child-victim tell a radio interviewer. As others have, I’ve heard President Obama’s cracking voice lament the loss of the 20 children in Connecticut. But what about the as many as 168 children who have been killed by our drone strikes in Pakistan in the last seven years?
A news report as recent as last week, buried late in the pages of The New York Times, was about an alleged al-Qaida leader whose wife and daughter were injured when he was killed by one of our drones. The mother then died. The daughter is now an orphan, as well as injured. That doesn’t matter? Family life here is one sacred situation, but in another country where the names are foreign and the customs foreign and the skins are brown, indiscriminate death by our drones that destroy a family is OK?
“Real violence has real consequences,” and one of them is our leadership caught in hypocrisy, our leadership having to do the screwy thing of caring about the deaths of some children but brushing off others as “OK” policy.
Lord, give us change that matters. Please. End our drone use that falls outside the law, targeting some and killing “extra” others, even children.
Lynn Rudmin Chong
Sanbornton, N.H.
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