Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Be outside Meyerhoff at 7 PM on Dec. 2/Drone Warriors Another Threshold Crossed

Join Take Back YPR outside the Meyerhoff from 7 to 7:45 PM on Tuesday December 2.  We will be urging attendess of the talk by GARRISON KEILLOR, Humorist and Radio Host of A Prairie Home Companion, to refuse to contribute to WYPR until there are changes in management.

 

Desert Voices is Nevada Desert Experience's quarterly newsletter. (8 pages, 750kb)

On line now at http://NevadaDesertExperience.org.

 

Nevada Desert Experience has been organizing persistent nonviolent resistance to nuclear weapons since it was formed by a Franciscan community in the 1980s. As you can see from the contents of our

current newsletter, our range of concerns connects nuclear weapons testing with other political and spiritual issues.

 

Desert Voices Vol 21, Number 4 December 2008

 

Drone Warriors

Another Threshold Crossed

by Louis Vitale, OFM

 

In a recent article in the Las Vegas Review Journal,

military and environment writer Keith Rogers quotes

Colonel Christopher Chambliss, commander of the U.S.’s

432nd Wing, in heralding the new MQ3 Reaper, big

brother to the MQ1 Predator, the latest in the U.S. fleet

of “Unmanned Airborne Vehicles.” The colonel reflects

on the time nine decades ago when military leaders were

beginning to grasp the value of piloted aircraft that led

the U.S. to domination of airspace and ultimately the

intimidation of the world through the dropping of two

atomic bombs on Japan.

 

Jonathan Schell’s latest book The Seventh Decade updates

us on where we have come with the “atomic bomb”

since that time. We have become the “Superpower” who

holds the world in check through global domination with

the fear of nuclear annihilation through our 12,000+

nuclear weapons available from air, land sites and sea.

Noted psychiatrist and author Dr. Robert Jay Lifton

has further illustrated the debilitation of the one dropping

the bombs. He speaks to a severe “numbing” of the

psyche that happens through the size of the weapons and

the distance from the victims on the ground.

 

The new drones that are flown from Creech Air Force

Base near Las Vegas (in the fashion of a video game) 7,000

miles from the target extend the numbing even further.

Here young enlisted men in the Air Force sitting side by

side with more experienced pilots guide missiles to their

targets as in a video game. But these are real missiles and

even 500 pound bombs on the Reaper. Our daily newspapers

and TV broadcasts show us the impact on dwellings,

schools, and hospitals. These bring the fleeting sense of

dropping a bomb from 35,000 feet to an immediate sight

of bodies in plain view. Commanders report the impact

on some crews, especially the sensors who control the

cameras and use laser beams to guide the missiles to their

targets. Chambliss speaks of the difficulty some of the

younger crew members have when they return home to

their families after the bombing runs and that they need

to hire more chaplains and psychologists for their aid.

 

Long time observers of the impact of the Afghanistan/

Iraq war, such as humanitarian/activist Kathy Kelly, who

have experienced firsthand the enormous sufferings of

the 2,000,000+ victims are eager to travel to Waziristan

and other frontiers between Afghanistan and Pakistan

to see up close what the Predator and Reaper crews see

on their screens. BBC viewers worldwide were treated to

this dramatization of a British Reaper crew, U.S. coalition

partners, actively engaging in attacks.

 

Here in Nevada, with the Creech headquarters of the

UAV 432nd Wing nearby, part of the same land space

shared with the Nevada Test Site, the bombing range

operated by Nellis Air Force Base, and other sites of new

and lethal weapons, the scandal of Creech’s remote and

earth-shattering war, we cannot dare fail to address the

damage and destruction both on the Middle East battlefield

and on its own crews.

 

With other Nevada partners we have begun vigils at

the gate to the Drone base. We have carried out signs of

concern, taken a letter to the base commander Colonel

Chambliss and heard their ownership of “causing groans”

and making “kills.” We pray and we weep. As with recent

developments of torture, this is a frontier we did not want

to pass. They intimidate the world and leave us all in fear

and trembling. We are pledged to call attention to the

truth of these atrocities and take active measures to put

an end to their existence.

 

Nevada Desert Experience: Our Mission:

 

To stop nuclear weapons testing through a campaign of prayer,

education, dialogue, and nonviolent direct action.

To mobilize people of all faiths to work toward nuclear abolition and

nonviolent social change.

To support personal renewal in the desert tradition, reconnecting with

each other and the earth.

To end subcritical tests and other warmaking preparations at the

Nevada Test Site and preventing the return of full scale nuclear testing.

 

Nevada Desert Experience

1420 W. Bartlett Ave.

Las Vegas, NV 89106

702.646.4814

jim@nevadadesertexperience.org

 

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