Lisa Montanarelli

The Bill Moyers Journal episode from January 30 is worth watching. It covers the United States’ former and current policy on bombing–in the wake of Obama’s authorization of drone attacks on suspected terrorist compounds in Pakistan on January 23. Moyers’ two guests, historian Marilyn Young, author of the forthcoming Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History, and former Pentagon official Pierre Sprey, who developed military planes and helped found the military reform movement, discuss the drone attacks and argue that bombing doesn’t work as a deterrent or intimidation strategy. It invariably kills civilians, turns people against us, and thus produces more terrorists than it destroys. Also, by calling 9/11 an act of war rather than a lunatic criminal act and ascribing to the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” the Obama administration is glorifying al Qaeda and making their case for them.