SARAH HARVARD
 This flawed logic, this flawed idea that the world wants not the republic that we were initially created upon, but the democracy in which we live and the so-called freedoms we foolishly believe we have is setting America backwards, setting America up for more attacks. We often wonder to ourselves the cause of the rise of anti-Western sentiments, but how can we be so imprudently naïve to the fact that the ills of our foreign policy and the continuous attacks on civilians - not terrorists- are the root of the hatred against the United States? No country will hate us because we are “free and prosperous”; 
they hate us because our government imposes our Western values on them, because our government creates covert operations to assassinate and prop up dictators to defend our own interests, because our government takes away their right to a normal life, because our government funds dictators with weapons used to kill civilians abroad, and because our government kills people. They hate us because our government makes them experience the hardship that Khairullah Jan had to go through. Jan had told the researchers from Stanford and NYU of his heart-wrenching life living under drones:
“One day, my brother was coming from college...dropping his friend to his house, which is located behind our house a few kilometres away. I was coming from Mir Ali Bazaar...going to my house. That’s when I heard a drone strike and I felt something in my heart. I thought something had happened, but we didn’t get to know until next day. That’s when all the villagers came and brought us news that my brother had been killed...I was drinking tea when I found out. My entire family was there. They were crying...To lose such a young one; everybody is sad and it also affects the tribe, our community, as well. My mother is really affected. She is sad all the time, and my father is also heavily affected. At times he used to go to Peshawar or Karachi, he was outgoing, but now he sits at home.”
“I have been affected. The love that I had for studies - that has finished. My determination to study - that is also gone...if, for instance, there is a drone strike and four or five of your villagers die and you feel sad for them and you feel like throwing everything away, because you feel death is near - death is so close, so why do you want to study?”
If the use of drones is to be used to assassinate low-ranking Taliban insurgents, it surely is isolating and infringing upon the 180 million Pakistani civilians. The United States refuses to acknowledge the use of drones on these civilians as an act of war. The logic is completely delusional. There is no difference between a looking a child in the eye before shooting them and dropping bombs on hundreds of children; both are an act of war. The Pakistani people live in a war zone; they live in a September 11 every single day.
I will admit to having been a loyal supporter of President Obama in 2008. I was anti-war then, and I am anti-war today. Today, my opinion of him has changed. While I once considered it my duty to support a president I believed in, I now consider it my duty to speak against a president who has failed his people. And I will continue to fight. I will continue to criticise the President regardless of his political party. I will speak up for the for the Khairullah Jans of the world so that no one will see their dreams crushed and their loved ones sacrificed to a government’s cruel thirst for dominance. I will speak up for the American people so that another attack on the United States will never be an issue. I will speak up for what America is essentially about - the concept of the rights of people to life, liberty, and property. The people of Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia have these same rights. I will speak up, because it’s not only the right thing to do, but it’s the only thing we can do.–
(End)
Courtesy of Column Antiwar