These are pretty serious charges.
The Killer Drones Get Upstaged
The non-violent activists went to the Air and Space Museum that day for a purpose: To address the Museum's exhibit on drones [7], for which it offers docent and high school tours. The protest involved the dropping of a large banner in the lobby intended to question the morally dubious, secret drone programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Drones are a burgeoning weapons system and a central component of the Pentagon's future war doctrine; soon they will be employed in secret potentially everywhere. Rick Perry wants to use them on the Texas-Mexican border for surveillance, but their use for lethal missions is always just around the corner.
And no one in the mainstream -- especially the US government -- wants to deal with the very sticky moral issues drones raise.
The behavior of Howley and others less forthcoming about their provocateur actions were successful in shifting the protest story from the moral questions about drones to a silly melee with guards and cops. Look at the expression and body language of the guard in the shot at the top where the beefy man in the black t-shirt, with Howley behind him, is shoving his way into this man's space. This guard is being pushed to his limit; he's becoming scared of losing control (and maybe his job) and he will begin to respond more violently than necessary, which will have a contagious effect on his comrades. A lobby melee has become the story.
It's a case of the people trying to call attention to an immoral US policy of remote killing machines being seen as more "criminal" than the secret lethal policy itself. In this respect, the actions of Patrick Howley and his comrades exacerbated the shift in culpability -- whether they were exploiting the guards' reactions or whether they were possibly working in cahoots with SWAT cops.
Howley should be banished from journalism until he appropriately atones for the actions he is apparently so proud of. Maybe standing for a while in an unemployment line might inject some desperately needed gravitas into his shallow soul. Based on his provocateur actions at the Air and Space Museum, it's clear he needs to better respect the humanity of others, even if he disagrees with them.
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