Fifty Years of US Targeted ‘Kill Lists’: From the Phoenix Program in Vietnam to Predator Drones
By Doug Noble
"This spring the US drone
killing program has come out of the closet...In fact, US
assassination and targeted killing, with presidential
approval, has been going on covertly for at least half a
century...
Those who are
mortified by the latest revelations of Obama’s kill list
have much to learn from a more comprehensive, historical
perspective on US killing around the globe.
Who knows:
Perhaps someone in Congress might even be prodded to do what
Senators Fulbright and Church did in years past: hold
hearings on this continuing execration taking place in our
name. Until then, what follows is an introduction to this
ongoing horror story.
Section 1 of
this article briefly reviews the lethal history of the US
Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the original source of
subsequent US counter terrorist tactics and strategies.
Section 2 revisits briefly the well-worn history of US kill
lists and assassinations in Latin American countries,
followed by the somewhat less-well-known history of US kill
lists and assassinations in countries on other continents.
Section 3 traces the direct legacy of Phoenix, even its
explicit resurrection by the key architects of the US
targeted killing programs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a
growing number of “countries we are not at war with.”...
The heightened
public attention paid to drone killing might very well, in
time, lead to some welcome success in curtailing their use.
But too narrow a focus on the US deployment of Predator and
Reaper drones might also distract us from other forms of
Phoenix-derived targeted killing still being perpetrated
globally – and covertly – by our Assassination Nation."
Doug Noble is an activist with Occupy Rochester NY
and Rochester Against War.
[It is true that the USA has been an 'Assassination Nation' for much more than 50 years; in fact, since the very beginning. - Bruce]
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