"Pakistan and the United States have a strong, ongoing counterterrorism cooperation. We have agreed to further strengthen this cooperation. I also brought up the issue of drones in our meeting, emphasizing the need for an end to such strikes." [emphasis added]
Obama doesn't talk about secret wars, even when everyone knows about them
President Obama did not show enough respect for Sharif even to acknowledge publicly that America's drone war might be an issue for those being attacked.
This was the same lack of response the president earlier gave another Pakistani emissary, Malala Yousafzai, the 16 year old Taliban shooting victim. Malala visited the White House October 11 for a chat with the president and a photo op with his daughters. The only public acknowledgement of the American drone war came in Malala's statement after the meeting:
"I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees. I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people."
The cover story for the president is that the CIA runs America's drone wars, so they're by definition secret, regardless of how many people know about them. This is a doublethink decision that was made by the Bush administration when the drone war began, which is thought to be 2004. Any self-respecting war crimes tribunal would explore this issue in detail and assign accountability accordingly. Until then, American drones can kill indiscriminately in a bombing campaign that officially doesn't exist, even though everyone knows it does and many officials talk about it publicly (but anonymously).
The result can sometimes be unintended hilarity, as when the president, in his unresponsive comments about Prime Minister Sharif, said that they had talked about "senseless violence, terrorism, and extremism," which is certainly a usefully euphemistic phrase that describes the U.S. drone wars, among other terrorist activities. The president compounded this dark joke by going on to say with a straight face that "we need to find constructive ways to" respect Pakistan's sovereignty."
Respecting other nations' sovereignty really isn't the American Way
The president wouldn't have to go whole hog into respecting Pakistani sovereignty, he could start with a gesture, a small offer of good faith, like forbidding the CIA to exercise the pure terrorism of the double tap technique. Pakistani doctors and nurses and good Samaritans might not be grateful, but they'd be alive.
Or the president could start even smaller, he could just forbid the CIA from blowing up the mourners at funerals of earlier missile attack victims. That would show respect at least on a traditional Mafia level.
The United States doesn't admit that it employs these terrorist tactics in its terror war on terrorism. But there's a sweet spot in that -- the president would not have to admit he's stopped them, either.
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