Sunday, May 10, 2009

West Virginia LP Demands End to Drone Attacks in Pakistan

I wish the national LP was more libertarian on foreign policy, but until it is, it's up to the state LPs to issue libertarian foreign policy statements.

I was glad to see the West Virginia LP issue the below press release:

Over the past few months, the United States military has been operating remote-controlled drones to attack targets inside of Pakistan, a sovereign nation. President Obama virtually promised such attacks to supporters during his campaign, stating that "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

Now he appears to be keeping at least one campaign promise. According to one report, 700 Pakistani civilians have been killed by these attacks, leading to outcry in Pakistan against the use of these attacks and encroachment into sovereign Pakistani airspace to attack what the US military believes might be terrorist targets.

There’s a catch, though. While the US government has succeeded in killing 700 innocent civilians, only 14 actual terrorist operatives have been killed. That's right -- for every suspected terrorist that's been killed by these strikes, 50 innocent civilians have died. The Libertarian Party of West Virginia finds this wholly unacceptable. While we oppose foreign intervention entirely as a mis-use of our nation’s valuable resources, racking up these unacceptable levels of civilian deaths must be vehemently opposed by all libertarians as inhuman, immoral, and evil.

As such, the Libertarian Party of West Virginia demands an immediate end to these attacks, across a sovereign border, violating Pakistan’s sovereignty, and killing innocent civilians.

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