In 1935, retired Marine General Smedley Butler said of his military career: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.”
Today, if we look where US drones are attacking – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia – we find areas rich in oil, minerals, agricultural products and/or important to shipment of these commodities.
We also find that these are places where natural resources have been extracted by US and European corporations for decades, not to the benefit or under the control of the majority of people. US military power has been used repeatedly to protect and reinforce the global positions of multi-national corporations.
For the world, and particularly in the case of oil, this has meant an unrestrained squandering of resources and gross poisoning of the environment and accelerating global warming. Corporations after all have no legal obligation to do anything but increase profits for their shareholders.
We also can see that globally, as with the Arab Spring in the Middle East, people, especially young people, are demanding control over their homelands’ resources. US drone attacks are part of an attempt to ensure that corporations will continue to enjoy their advantages in this period of awakening and that their policies of extraction will continue as before.
In spite of the drone onslaught, we can see hope. For example the political/environmental movement of the Bolivian people, which has been opposed by the United States, may lead to an environmental revolution.
Bolivia is getting ready to pass what The Guardian newspaper describes as the world’s first law to grant Nature rights equal to those of humans. The Law of Mother Earth, The Guardian says, “redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as ‘blessings’ and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.”
Ending drone warfare and US and western military occupations will not only save lives but will speed the time when gross, wide-spread environmental destruction can be stopped by people around the world.
SEND THIS COMMENTARY TO YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS AND URGE AN END TO DRONE WAR AND DRONE SURVEILLANCE.
Read 
