Hosted by: PEACE EDUCATION CENTER
Tuesday, Feb 22 at 7pm on Zoom
The more recent exposure of the U.S. killing of civilians in drone attacks has increased concerns about the underreported impact of the mostly secret wars for which we unleash these drones for attack.
Join us for a screening of UNMANNED: America’s Drone Wars by noted documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald!
This hour-long documentary will be followed by a discussion with Dr. Susan Waltz, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the Gerald Ford School at the University of Michigan and past Amnesty International board member, and long-time peace activist Kathy Kelly founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and campaigner with Ban Killer Drones.
The disastrous drone strike on an innocent Afghan family as the United States was leaving Afghanistan highlighted the little understood humanitarian and practical harm from the frequent use of drones in the so-called War on Terror. This documentary reveals the nature of and the human costs of this sudden-death-from-the-sky warfare.
In “Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars”, the eighth full-length feature documentary from Brave New Foundation, director Robert Greenwald investigates the impact of U.S. drone strikes at home and abroad through more than 70 separate interviews, including a former American drone operator who shares what he has witnessed in his own words, Pakistani families mourning loved ones and seeking legal redress, investigative journalists pursuing the truth, and top military officials warning against blowback from the loss of innocent life.
Since 2004 USAmerican drone strikes have killed 2,379 human beings. Of those thousands killed, only 12% could be positively identified as “militants”. Drone strike victims are overwhelmingly innocent civilians. Since 2004 only two men had the ultimate power to say STOP or to order GO AHEAD and KILL. Both decided to NOT STOP the killing and therefore are ultimately guilty and responsible for the 2,100 innocent lives taken.
If two men from anywhere in the world would come to the USA and take 2,100 innocent lives, they would be branded the No1 mass-murderers of all times, tortured in interrogations, run trough a speed-trial and quickly executed – and this is what many people feel should also be done with those two responsible for the mass-murders of innocent humans by U.S.American drones.
THE FILM WILL BE FOLLOWED BY A DISCUSSION
THE PRESENTERS:
Susan Waltz is Professor emerita at the Ford School of Public Policy at University of Michigan, where she taught courses on human rights and international relations for many years. She currently heads a coordination group on military, security and police transfers for Amnesty International-USA.
Kathy Kelly, a peace activist and author, made over two dozen trips to Afghanistan from 2010 – 2019, living with young Afghan Peace Volunteers in a working class neighborhood in Kabul. She learned about conditions in Afghanistan through encounters with mothers and children, many of whom were directly affected by war. Kathy and her companions in various peace team delegations have often said: “Where you stand determines what you see.”
They also lived with parents and children in Baghdad, in a small family-owned hotel, throughout the 2003 Shock and Awe invasion and during the first weeks of the U.S. occupation. Kathy is now campaigning for an international treaty to ban weaponized drones (www.bankillerdrones.org) and co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.