Post-Election Violence In Venezuela Was Hatched In Pre-Election Days

Mainstream media focused on the post-election violence in Venezuela. But perpetrators of this violence, the gang members of the right wing candidate Capriles, were not identified.

With the death of seven persons and injury of more than 61 the post-election right wing violence turned fatal. The right wing groups burned homes of United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leaders, community hospitals, and mercales, subsidized grocery stores, attacked Cuban doctors, state and community media stations, and threatened National Electoral Council (CNE) president Lucena and other officials. Maduro and senior government officials have warned that the opposition is attempting a coup d'etat. PSUV legislators have suggested they may pursue legal action against Capriles for promoting instability. (Dan Beeton, “Deadly opposition violence in Venezuela: The first major destabilization attempt since 2002-03”, Americas Blog, April 16, 2013)

Violence by the right wingers was planned in pre-election period. Citing Nicolas Maduro, vice-president Arreaza, defense minister Bellavia and internal affairs and justice minister Reverol, Ryan Mallett-Outtrim in “Venezuelan Government Foils Destabilisation Plans” (April 12, 2013) presented a few facts, which are mentioned below:

1. A plot to violently destabilize Venezuela during election and post-election period has been foiled by the Venezuelan security forces. The plot involved Salvadorian mercenaries’ plan to intervene and disrupt the country.

2. Two groups of Salvadoran mercenaries operating in Venezuela is funded by drug trafficking with links to far right terrorists including Luis Posada Carriles. Now stationed in Miami Luis Posada Carriles has been convicted in Panama of a number of terrorist attacks including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airline that claimed 73 lives.

3. A group of students were arrested after attempting to “storm” the Generalisimo Francisco de Miranda Airbase in Caracas. The group also tried to enter the National Guard headquarters near the capital.

4. Arrest of Colombian paramilitaries operating in Venezuela. The paramilitaries had in their possession Venezuelan military uniforms, explosives and other military materiel including high capacity assault rifle magazines. The paramilitaries “came to kill”.

5. An employee of the state run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) was shot outside a PDVSA office. Workers there were engaged in a pro-Maduro program. The employee later died.

Mining and oil minister Ramirez warned the oil sector is a potential target for destabilizing forces.

In “Venezuelan Government Releases ‘Evidence’ that Opposition is Planning to not Recognise Election Results” (April 10, 2013) Tamara Pearson presented the following information:

1. On April 10, 2013, PSUV leader Cabello presented evidence including phone recordings, documents, and emails proving that the opposition planned to not recognize the presidential election results. Cabello played an audio recording of a phone conversation in which Joao Nunes, Capriles’ bodyguard and driver said that Capriles won’t recognize results if he loses.

In the recorded conversation, which lasts just over a minute, Nunes talks with another person, “Michell”, who says “It’s looking to be full on, man”. Nunes responds, “Man, they’re going to rob it from them in the streets...” Michell then says, “Looking at it from here, here what they are saying is that he’s not going to recognize [the elections] if he loses... there’s going to be problems, full on problems”.

2. Cabello showed an email sent from Amando Briquet, of Capriles’ campaign team, to Guillermo Salas, member of the organization Esdata, which has reported on Venezuela’s electoral process since Chavez was elected in 1998.

In the email, dated April 6, 2013, Briquet wrote, “...we need everything set out in Washington for checking over by the [Capriles campaign]. It's necessary that all documentation is presented internationally if we decide to take the road of not recognizing the results."

Opposition umbrella group MUD’s secretary, Aveledo had requested documentation from Salas “in order to be able to support their decision not to recognize the results”.

3. Cabello mentioned an alleged meeting between the head of private, opposition supporting newspaper, El Nacional, Miguel Otero, with Capriles and Briquet. Cabello accused the three men of meeting in order to “discuss not recognizing the elections”.

4. Cabello said an organization called Patriotic Board (Junta Patrotica), which includes Guillermo Salas, signed a document which they sent on April 7 to Vicente Diaz. Diaz is a CNE director known to side more with the opposition. In the document the Patriotic Board allegedly expressed its decision to not recognize the CNE’s reports.

Cabello told press he’d made the information public in “order to guarantee peace; this is a ...warning so that they know we know what they are planning to do”.

5. Public prosecutor Ortega and head of strategic command of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces Barrientos informed that 17 persons were “caught red-handed” sabotaging electricity facilities in Sucre, Monagas, and Aragua states. Blackouts have been more common over the last two weeks across Venezuela.

6. In Merida, opposition supporters, after a rally where Capriles spoke, attacked the offices of the government youth, INJUVEM, of public radio YVKE Mundial, the state government building and its workers, and privately owned shops. Some of the perpetrators were drunk, and some wore balaclavas, making it likely they were part of the violent Movement 13 group based on Merida's University of Los Andes.

7. In a suburb of Caracas, Maduro supporters were attacked by the opposition group JAVU, which then went to the press and blamed “Castro-communists” for the violence.

8. A conversation, recorded by Venezuela’s intelligence organizations and released by government, revealed the use of “mercenaries” by the Venezuelan opposition to create chaos in the lead up to the elections. The “mercenaries” already in Venezuela and being coordinated by the Central American right wing with some sectors of the opposition had three objectives: to sabotage electrical grid, increase number of murders, and assassinate Maduro. Foreign minister Jaua claimed the “mercenaries” are led by a retired colonel of the Salvadoran armed forces, David Koch, and coordinated by Salvadoran right-wing politician Áubuisson.

Beeton, International Communications Director of the Washington DC based Center for Economic and Policy Research, in the article cited above said: “The campaign of violent protest, in conjunction with opposition candidate Henrique Capriles' refusal to recognize the election results, represents the first major extra-legal destabilization attempt by Venezuela's opposition since the failed coup in 2002 and oil strike in 2003. It is also significant in that the US is backing Capriles' position, thereby helping to provoke conflict in Venezuela -- even though most Latin American nations and many other governments around the world have congratulated Maduro on his victory and called for the results to be respected.”

External interference provoking internal conflict in Venezuela is not new. However, the opposition is still weak.

“Some in the opposition”, as Beeton said, “have hinted that Capriles' cries of ‘fraud’ are not credible. Opposition-aligned CNE rector Vicente Diaz has said that he has no doubt in that the results given by the CNE are correct. Diaz made comments to this effect on opposition station Globovision on April 15, 2013; the TV hosts then quickly concluded the interview. Opposition blogger Francisco Toro has criticized the opposition strategy of crying fraud.... Three opposition legislators, Ricardo Sanchez, Carlos Vargas, and Andres Avelino, publicly broke with Capriles last month, decrying what they described as a plan to stoke instability by refusing to accept the election results, and use students as ‘cannon fodder’ in a violent protest campaign. The incident was ignored by major foreign media outlets.”

Results the snap election helps continue the transformation process initiated by Hugo Chávez. It’s the society’s journey with democracy. Maduro, the candidate of the Bolivarian revolution, stands for implementing the Socialist Plan of the Nation 2013-2019. The plan was formulated by Chávez.

In an election rally in Caracas, Maduro told “imperialism and the decadent and parasitic bourgeoisie” thought that “the revolution was over” following death of Chávez. But, he said, there will be Chávez in this free and independent nation. Maduro said: “I’ll be the president of the poor, the humble, of those in need, of the children.” Maduro roared: If they try to stage a coup, we’ll make an even deeper revolution.

Determination expressed in Maduro’s pronouncements – reflection of a deep rooted line of conflict drawn long ago – is not taken easily by the opponents of the Venezuelan people. The determination creates problem in the “mind” of the rich. There is “democracy” program initiated by the rich and their institutions. The program is designed to safeguard property and privileges of the rich. But the poor deny going under the umbrella of the program.

Now, in Venezuela, none can deny working people’s interests. At least, lip service to the working souls has to be provided. Even, the person always harboring a dream in the deep of heart to safeguard interests of the rich is compelled to say something favoring the poor, the working people.

So, as Chris Carlson informed in “Both Candidates Promise to Raise Venezuela’s Minimum Wage”, Capriles had to promise a one-time 40 percent general raise in wages, “not just of the minimum wage,” in response to government’s three-stage wage increase. He promised to sign the wage increase into law on his first day in power.

How many times the rich uttered such promise – “a general raise of 40 percent in all the wages” and “signing the wage increase into law on the first day of power” – in Venezuela or in other countries? It’s very difficult to find out. It’s working people-power, it’s the space created by the working people through their awareness and mobilization under the leadership of Chávez that has done it.

This reality, the gradual awakening of the masses of people, “allures” imperialism and its mercenaries to intervene – a bloody path – in Venezuela.

Capriles, in an election rally, said, there will be a new Venezuela.

A new Venezuela is there, where Chávez is not present physically, but Chávez is present with his spirit and dreams, with his call to war against enemies of the poor. Chávez initiated a journey with dignity, a journey for creating space for participatory democratic practice by the people. It’s a journey of the people for getting aware and mobilized. The election is a reaffirmation to continue the journey, to keep on the work of widening and consolidating the space created under the leadership of Chávez.

Tomb Of Indifference To Worker's Life

It’s death, death only. It’s death of about 200 garments workers and others as a building collapsed in Savar, a Dhaka suburb. It’s exposure of nourishing indifference to life; it’s revelation of nurturing greed at the cost of life. So death dominates the Bangladesh April-days of 2013.

Media report: Workers were compelled to enter the building to resume production in the 4-5 garments factories that the multi-storied building housed although the building was identified unsafe and risky a day ago. The unfortunate workers were unwilling to enter the building. But supervisors forced them with sticks. The building’s upward raising was unauthorized. Now, it’s “difficult” to find the party responsible for the incident.

After going through media reports one can’t escape the feeling of witnessing hapless animals being pushed to a slaughter house, a feeling of being controlled simply for profit. And, one can’t escape an image of a cruel, corrupt system.

Media reports unveil a lot: reluctance to consider human life, zeal for uninterrupted production, patronization of a system molded for profit, flaunt power that tramples law, corrupt connection that disregards human life. And, the scene says a reality of greed driven dominance. And, the scene says helplessness of a broader society in front of a juggernaut.

Following the incident common people, the silent majority shall mourn; the dead unfortunates’ relatives shall weep silently; sane souls shall search psychology of property owning classes.

Then, a silence shall shroud sad memories. And, moments shall continue ticking until another similar incident resurrects publicly. This is the prevailing pattern. It’s a pattern of unnatural death of the weak, of the workers.

One can look at history as one move from these issues. Pertinently one can search the number of collapse of buildings constructed by the British raj and the Mughals. One can compare technology and technical knowledge between the three: the Mughals, the colonialists, the Savar and similar cases. Even, one can compare the enforcement of relevant law, styles and levels of monitoring/supervision of these three. One can ask: Were they, the colonial masters and the Mughal emperors, less greedy than today’s masters of capital? Were they more efficient in areas of construction, supervision, enforcement and governance than the propertied classes of today? What’s and where does lie the root of better construction, supervision, enforcement of law? Is it simply reluctance, indifference, inefficiency and corruption that played role in the collapse of the building? Even, are not there roots of indifference, inefficiency and corruption if these are the causes behind the collapse incident? Do these show a segment’s “mental” capability or incapability?

Answers to these questions will help identify the problem and rectify measures being followed. Even connections and actors can be identified. A graver picture can emerge.

A sociologist or a political scientist shall put a number of questions, and, those are related to people: How long shall the commoners silently tolerate these collapses and deaths? Is their no limit to tolerance? What waits if mass tolerance is not unlimited? Is there any possibility of political expression if the limit of tolerance is crossed?

Working hands and brains that produce for owners of capital shall not remain inactive and silent forever. Not only political and economic misdoings, deaths can also devour a system’s acceptability. It does not happen instantly. It happens slowly and silently. But it happens. This pushes mature systems to practice rules of necessary measures: accountability, enforcement of pronounced measures. This pushes mature systems even to impose fine on a head constable or on a member of a royal family for violation of traffic rule. Only immature systems dream of hiding skeletons in cupboards.

The commoners shall question: Is this the way of payment for producing surplus value? Have deaths of workers turned the norm? And, the commoners shall not accept the payment, shall not accept the norm.

The commoners shall compare the number of unnatural deaths of commoners and capital owners over the years and shall try to find out the causes active with the incidents as in their humble life they also yearn for natural death.

Propaganda tries to manipulate people-mind. But ultimately it’s reality that teaches, that helps summarize experiences gathered over a long period. This makes propagandists ultimately fail.

Even charity ultimately does not work. It slows down expression of discontent for a temporary period. But it has limit. Otherwise emperors could have escaped rebellions by resorting to charities. And, death is more powerful than charity.

Working people, how much wretched they may be, don’t long for unnatural death. Don’t they deserve a natural death? This question shall haunt all working people as they experience repeated unnatural deaths of their class members. They shall question the amount of profit capital requires to survive? And, they shall search answers to the questions as they find their deaths are repeatedly neither natural nor dignified.

It’s difficult to ignore working people power. It’s so difficult that anti-worker forces are compelled to propagate pro-worker claims.

The Savar worker-deaths shall live as capital’s tomb of indifference to worker-life and shall remind workers of all generations the cruel character of capital. It shall remind workers the state of workers’ life in a society. It’s not a happy situation for capital as capital can’t escape wrath of labor.

The Frontier That Drones Can Never Cross

Waging war without any declaration is now facilitated by drones. But there are limits that drones can never cross as machines can never handle sociopolitical contradictions. Initiating counter-moves against political maneuvers are beyond capacity of machines.

Drones, to a section of politicians unerringly safe and deadly, are being used as a foreign policy tool. A section of politicians tout these as an arm of ideological crusade. The reality, implementing foreign policy or waging an ideological Armageddon, is relative. It’s relative to the laws of nature and to the laws of social contradictions. This relativity imposes limits on the fly paths drones follow.

Impulses and compulsions of geostrategy and geotactics are proliferating the aerial robotic technology at bewildering speed. Armed drones flying from bases in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Seychelles and Yemen, and dominating skies of many countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen is now regular news. Some more countries including Libya are also in the list of sky dominance. With escalation of conflicts and intensification of competition among contending capitals more countries will be included in the drone strike list.

Drone is claimed as a precise and effective weapon. Its “ability to compute and then act at digital speed,” as Brookings Institution analyst Peter Singer writes in Wired for War, his book on robot warfare, provides it a “robotic advantage”. But, it’s only tactical advantage. Wars are not won only by tactical moves. Waging war with a drone strike force in noncombatant countries and killing citizens with supposedly precision weaponry is a tactical edge, and sometimes, a tactical weakness; and this doesn’t provide strategic advantage.

Today, military drones are operated by Israel, Italy, the UK and the US. Many states possess unarmed flying robots. China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia and Sweden are developing weapons-carrying models. (David Axe, “Deadlier drones are coming”, Global Post, Sept. 23, 2012)

An average UAV costs a mere 10 percent of an F-16 fighter jet. With these flying machines, writes Jason Berry, author of Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church, there is no risk to the pilot in case the machine is intercepted. (“Inside America's drone war, a moral black box”, Global Post, Sept. 26, 2012) John O. Brennan, former Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Assistant to the US President, claimed: Drones “can be a wise choice” as drones “dramatically reduce the danger to US personnel, even eliminating the danger altogether.” (“The Efficacy and Ethics of US Counterterrorism Strategy”, remarks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, Apr. 30, 2012)

“Billions upon billions of dollars”, Medea Benjamin, antiwar activist, writes in Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, “have been spent from America to Asia on machinery, software and workers whose only purpose is building a better flying death robot.” The Pentagon allocated $95 billion for drone purchases last year. Israel is the number two exporter of drones, and selling lots of those to Russia. (Jason Berry, op. cit.) Citing estimate of the Teal Group, an aerospace research firm, David informed that worldwide military UAV spending could almost double over the next decade from $6.6 billion in 2012 to $11.4 billion in 2022, in constant dollars. Referring to a US Air Force planning document from 2011 he also informed the current force of around 250 armed drones would be more than doubled in the next decade.

Equipped with higher level of technology future drones will be faster, smarter, bloodier, more “intelligent” and autonomous, more powerful and heavily armed, and their operators, human indeed, will be, as is being claimed, less involved. These will possess the capacity of “reasoning”, the capacity to draw conclusions on the basis of data. This improved capacity will allow future drones to “plan and execute attacks with less human participation”, and “[g]reater robot autonomy could herald a major expansion of the drone war.” (David Axe, op. cit.)

David cited a 30-year drone development plan of the US Air Force: “Advances in AI (artificial intelligence) will enable systems to make combat decisions and act within legal and policy constraints without necessarily requiring human input.” The Air Force, according to David, “is already working to loosen those policy constraints, clearing a path for smarter, more dangerous drones.”

The robotic drones, military analysts and experts on the future of warfare apprehend, could raise “the specter of a whole new kind of conflict which would essentially remove the human element – and human decision-making – from the theater of war.” (ibid.)

Now, none contends to the claim that drone attacks aren't flawless. The Stanford Report says: “This narrative”, drones are effective and precise, “is false.” Operators’ repeated mistakes in targeting their enemies, the mistake for which civilians paid with blood, are also much recognized facts. “Today roughly a quarter of all the people killed in […] drone strikes are innocent bystanders.” (David Axe, op. cit.) From June 2004 through mid-September 2012, reports the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent journalist organization, drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 persons including 176 children in Pakistan. (Covert War on Terror) Other countries count respective casualty figures.

Drones with sensitive sensors, computers, bombs and missiles have generated two sets of questions: technical and sociopolitical. Questions related to technology locomote around efficiency, reliability, etc. while sociopolitical questions, as there is political force, revolve around ethics, human rights, fundamental freedoms, legitimacy, sovereignty of country and people, morality/moral standards of war, theories of war, etc.

Technical throttle

David refers to experts’ opinions that tell technical limits of drones. The technical limits, however, turn deadly. Cummings, an MIT professor, says: “In the future we’re going to see a lot more reasoning put on all these vehicles.” Ryan Calo, a Stanford University researcher, foresees: “There’s no plan for humans to be totally out of the loop.” Patrick Lin, another Stanford researcher opines: “Military robots are potentially indiscriminate.” Robots “aren’t going to replace the need for a thinking human being to make decisions that are influenced by experience in a wide range of situational considerations that you just can’t program into a machine,” Carl Johnson, a Northrop vice president, told Global Post in 2011. “Even though it’s possible for a [UAV] to find a target, identify it and give those coordinates electronically to a weapon, it won't do that unless it’s told to,” Johnson said. “The technology is there, but there is still a need for a human in the loop.” “Humans contribute the things humans are good at, and robots contribute what robots are good at,” is the way MIT’s Seth Teller describes the dynamic to Global Post. Highly autonomous robots could pose big problems, and not just legally, Calo and Lin warn. While remote, there is a chance that a highly sophisticated drone could go rogue in combat. “Autonomous robots are likely to be learning robots, too,” Lin says. “We can’t always predict what they will learn and what conclusions they might draw on how to behave.” “We’re reasonably confident that a human can act ethically, to distinguish right from wrong, but we have no basis yet for this confidence about robots,” Lin cautions.

There will be a machine-“reasoning”, programmed with “genetic algorithms”, a capacity build up by human operator/programmer, that’s inserting a huge volume of command based on only a fraction of human reasoning. The machine can turn mad if the flying machine is fed with disinformation, confusing data and data unknown to the machine, if its “reasoning” is distorted with misperception, wrongly summed experience, disturbed sight. The airborne killer can turn deviant, even can degenerate into suicidal.

It can’t be expected that armed airborne robot of the future can handle all possible problems encountered during a combat mission. The problems include changes in terrain, weather and camouflage, and appearance of counter-technology to combat the drone. With the development of technology drones’ efficacy to detect targets will increasingly turn limited. Doesn’t the history of arms development, the development of bayonet, rifle, artillery, tanks, and all their later cousins in the breed, development of tactics and strategies over centuries confirm this?

A machine, even if it uses software algorithms, because of its basic nature, can never handle sociopolitical reality, can never take into consideration “surprises” and incidents that demand to be flexible and compromising in decision making, and possible and probable impacts and implications that may follow a tactical or strategic hit. This reality brings down drones’ decision making capacity to zero. Decision to hit a target is basically part of political including diplomatic and legal, and even economic, decision, and it’s a process at socio-economic-political level.

By authorizing a machine to take decision, obviously partially, to kill, to trigger weapons release process, human being takes the sole responsibility of the killing. A machine can be authorized to make combat decisions, mechanically, but the burden of implication of the decision is borne by political and military leadership with legal, ethical, social and political consequences.

Efficiency of not only drones, but also of no machine can never be translated into tool or mechanism for handling social contradictions that breed forces considered antagonistic to drone owners.

Trammel of sociopolitics

The flying kill-machine encounters an array of moral, ethical, legal, sociopolitical issues that it can’t ignore, can’t face, can’t handle.

In mid-July, 2012, The New York Times in a story, “The Moral Case for Drones”, argued that the airborne weapon system “offer marked moral advantages over almost any tool of warfare”.

John Brennan in his April 2012-speech defended use of drones as legal under domestic and international law, ethical according to the standards of war, wise as it limits risk to US personnel and foreign civilians, and subject to a complex and thorough review process. He identified the advantages of drones as helping the US to satisfy the “principle of humanity”.

Other arguments favoring drone include (1) drone provides scope for “more humane type of war”, (2) “a last resort after exhausting all feasible alternatives”, (3) “reasonable necessity”, (4) “resorting to justifiable force”. To a section of ideologues, use of drone “is a struggle to defeat an ideology.”

These arguments accompanied the concept of “just war” that Barak Obama outlined in his 2009 Nobel Prize speech.

However, these arguments are being debated and questioned. Legal experts challenge the legality of drone strike across sovereign borders and targeted killings although international law till now doesn’t set limit to drones’ area of operation. “Proportional response and the right to human life are cornerstones of just war theory and central to the debate over drones [...]” (Jason Berry, op. cit.) Inviolable sovereignty of people and people’s inviolable right to peace are fundamental issues that drone operations can never resolve.

According to Daniel R. Brunstetter, professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, the “2010 National Security Strategy – the document that outlines the foreign policy threats facing the US and the way the administration plans to deal with them – echoes [a] cautious war philosophy. The language of pre-emptive war that predominated Bush’s national Security Strategy of 2002 and 2006 was removed, and a more cautious language that echoed the notion of last resort was employed: ‘While the use of force is sometimes necessary, we will exhaust other options before war whenever we can, and carefully weigh the costs and risks of inaction.’ The document goes on to emphasize the importance of using force in ways that ‘reflects our values and strengthens our legitimacy’ and stresses the need for ‘broad international support.’” The document, as Brunstetter quoted, asserts: “The United States must reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend our nation and our interests, yet we will also seek to adhere to the standards that govern the use of force.” “This leads us”, Brunstetter observed, “to the dilemmas posed by drones.” (“Can We Wage a Just Drone War?”, The Atlantic, July 19, 2012)

On the opposite

The reality that comes out of the drone operations is opposite to the claims and expectations. Serious concerns about the counter-productive result of drone strikes are being raised. The Stanford Report found “evidence of the civilian harm and counter-productive impacts of US targeted killings and drone strikes in Pakistan.”

“Drones”, the New York Times reported, “have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants.” (Jo Becker and Scott Shane, Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will, May 29, 2012) A Pew Research Center study found 74 percent of Pakistanis consider the US an enemy.” (“Pakistani Public Opinion Ever More Critical of U.S.: …”, 2012)

The Stanford Report provides a broader reality. It said:

(1) “[N]egative impacts US policies [...] on the civilians living under drones.” (2) Presence of drones “terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. These fears have affected behavior. The US practice of striking one area multiple times […] makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may attract the attention of drone operators. Some parents choose to keep their children home, and children injured or traumatized by strikes have dropped out of school.” (3) Drone strikes “have undermined cultural and religious practices”, and “families who lost loved ones or their homes in drone strikes now struggle to support themselves.”

Daniel Brunstetter tells the hard fact: “[I]t takes only one civilian death to fuel negative perceptions of the US in some parts of the world and all but guarantee a steady flow of terrorist recruits. (op. cit.)

Efforts to hide the victims from the rest of the world, to operate with low-key posture tell a basic weakness: The operation is not acceptable to the wider world, is not acceptable even within acceptable norms interests of status quo propagate and practice, is devoid of legitimacy.

The air assault completely concentrates into inner: its, friend’s and foe’s strengths and weaknesses, interprets or misinterprets or circumvents laws and legal bindings, diplomatic tangles and international relations, etc. but fails to consider the objective social condition.

The flying machine exposes utter weaknesses of its owners whatever is the raison d’etre for waging a secret war, the secret killing of individuals, whether it’s an anticipatory war doctrine of the Bush era or a doctrine of anticipatory drone strike, whether it’s a pre-emptive war or a preventive war.

The weakness is exposed when drone strikes turn as the threshold of last resort and claim that it leads to peace. The absence of accountability, transparency, debate, and the legal basis for killing missions complete the exposure.

The situation turns complicated and grave if an ally doesn’t turn accomplice to the flying machine mission, if an ally appears unreliable, if it’s not possible to segregate an “ideological” foe from civilians, if an assault makes civilian population hostile as these mean failure in deeper zones of politics, diplomacy, inter-state relation. The failure has roots also. Machine can never overcome this failure or limit.

If

What can today’s drones or tomorrow’s super-drones do if a populace turns aware, gets organized, rises in peaceful defiance, disobedience and non-cooperation, doesn’t resort to arms, doesn’t step into provocations, doesn’t walk into a tactical trap? Can drones or some other machine sense/survey/map the inner dynamics of the defiant people, their alliance, leadership or management of the rising? It’s a disability machines bear as they are “born” out of human labor, as machines’ “labor” and human labor are not the same and the two don’t produce same result. Otherwise the history of machines’ development and the history of humanity’s journey that we find would have been different and highly efficient machines would have trespassed humanity. History presents opposite evidence, which is not loved by mechanical minds.

There is another important “if”. Thomas Powers, author of Intelligence Wars, is blunter. “Drones are an unreliable and conspicuous way of killing individuals,” he told Global Post. “What seems inevitable today is going to cause you trouble tomorrow. Ask yourself if [emphasis added] the United States would accept the right of another country to decide who among Americans they would kill. There are probably people in Arizona allied with drug cartels. Would we allow Mexican forces to use drones against them? Hell, no.”

This “if” pointed by Thomas Powers actually has no answer or has an answer, considered anomalous and despised by all rationale being.

To capital, war is justified as long as it appears necessary for its expansion and appropriation. Capital, having its own morality and ethics as feudal lords and slave owners had their, provides itself justification and rational to murder innocents, invade countries and demolish life of peace-loving people. Capital always finds use of force not only necessary, but also morally justified.

But capital’s morality and logic for justification is its limit, the limit that its machines, killing machine or ruling machine, can never cross as sociopolitical dynamics can never be dominated and manipulated by mechanical force. Capital thus manufactures its killing machines in its temple of absurdity with a hope of hollowness.