Peace activist Kathy Kelly is about to begin a three-month prison sentence for protesting the U.S. drone war at a military base in Missouri earlier this year. Kelly, along with another activist, was arrested after offering bread and an indictment against drone warfare. Kelly is the co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare.
Kathy Kelly talking:
I think it’s a good time to be very uncompromising with regard to the United States’ wars. These wars are murderous. The wars are killing civilians, as has been happening in the United States’ wars since World War II. Now 90 percent of the people killed in wars are civilians. And this is true certainly with the drone strikes. The Reprieve organization has said that for every one person who is selected as a target for assassination, 28 civilians are killed. And even just three nights ago, there was another targeted assassination in which they hit two homes in the Logar province, and six people were wounded, four people were killed, all of them civilians.
And so, I crossed a line at Whiteman Air Force Base. A squadron operates weaponized drones over Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been an epicenter of drone warfare. And a good symbol for people in Afghanistan is breaking bread. I carried a loaf of bread and a letter, wanting to talk to the commandant. We thought it was important to know how many people were killed by Whiteman Air Force Base on that day.
Whiteman is in Knob Noster, Missouri.
the weaponized drones are flown—once they’re airborne, they’re operated entirely by people in United States Air National Guard bases and air bases. And so, Whiteman Air Force Base won’t disclose, neither will the CIA disclose, information about the results of these killings, but this is what people in the United States need to know. We have a First Amendment right to seek redress of grievance. And having been in Afghanistan, living with young people who are too frightened to go back to visit their own relatives, who see for themselves a future that could be a prolonged, exacerbated warfare, there is a grievance, and we wanted to bring that to the commandant at that particular base.
in a drone protest I stepped one or two steps over a line Holding a loaf of bread and an indictment.
so the military prosecutor said, “Your Honor, Ms. Kelly is in grave need, great need, of rehabilitation.” But I think it’s a—this is an important time to connect these oppressive issues. You know, while we’re spending $1 trillion on warfare in Afghanistan and looking at another $120 billion that will be spent—the Pentagon wants $57 billion for this year alone—we’re squandering needed resources. We’re undermining the possibility of solving extremely serious problems that we’re moving into.
this will be my fourth time in a federal prison. And I’ve been jailed in various county jails and other kinds of lockups more times than I can count.
— source democracynow.org
Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. She just returned from Kabul, Afghanistan, last month. Her recent article is called “Obama Extends War in Afghanistan: The implications for U.S. democracy aren’t reassuring.”