Por exemplo, na última sexta-feira um ataque de drone [avião não tripulado] visando Hakimullah Mehsud, do Tehreek-e-Taliban Paquistão (TTP) teria acabado com a vida do alvo e de pelo menos outras 25 pessoas. Como se para fornecer prova adicional da condição do presidente de homicida bem-sucedido, o cômputo de mortes decorrentes daquela decisão poderá atingir muito mais do que os diretamente afetados. Isso porque referido ataque foi efetuado com violação direta de divulgada promessa a Shahbaz Sharif, ministro principal da Província de Punjab, no Paquistão, de que os Estados Unidos não efetuariam quaisquer ataques de drones durante suas conversações de paz com o TTP. Aparentemente essas conversações dependiam de tal promessa, e o TTP imediatamente retirou-se, dizendo que não deseja paz com “escravos dos Estados Unidos.”

A reação do Departamento de Estado dos Estados Unidos foi afirmar que as conversações de paz eram “assunto interno” do Paquistão. “Assunto interno” ou não, eram esperança de paz no Paquistão, e é preciso ser muito insensível para ordenar o ataque apesar disso.

Você talvez esteja dizendo para si próprio que, apesar desse programa em andamento de matança por meio de drones por todo o Oriente Médio, pelo menos Obama progrediu em ir mudando de ideia quanto ao envolvimento dos Estados Unidos no Iraque. Se você se disse isso, falou cedo demais. No mesmo dia em que fuzilou esperanças de paz no Paquistão, Obama reuniu-se com o primeiro-ministro iraquiano Nouri al-Maliki. O foco dessa conversa — curiosamente não impedida por ataque de drones dos aliados de nenhuma das partes — foi como o governo dos Estados Unidos poderia ajudar a “repelir” a al Qaeda no Iraq.

Juntamente com seus conhecimentos gerais de todos os tópicos relacionados com matar, Obama presenteou al-Maliki com ajuda militar adicional. Entre as contribuições de Obama para tal ciclo de violência estarão aviões de combate F-16 colocados nas mãos do primeiro-ministro.

Obviamente, com tudo isso foi feita a sugestão de Obama de que os mortos na guerra do Iraque seriam vistos com grande respeito se o Iraque se tornasse uma democracia plena. Presumivelmente, isso significa ser similar à democracia plena que deu início à guerra.

Pode ser que Obama esteja confiante em que al-Maliki usará essa dádiva de força militar para inaugurar nova era de paz e liberdade, mas os cidadãos do Iraque têm razões para sentir de modo diverso. Não parece improvável que a crescente desordem no Iraque deva-se em parte ao comportamente cleptocrático e autoritário do líder do país.

Dar a al-Maliki as armas de que ele precisa poderá ser uma forma de combater a al Qaeda, mas será também meio de assegurar a continuação da repressão violenta aos civis iraquianos.

Isto destaca uma das coisas que tornam Obama tão verdadeiramente excelente em matar pessoas: mesmo quando ele não pode promover o derramamento de sangue diretamente, pode pelo menos ajudar algum outro governo a fazê-lo à moda própria. Amiúde, há também mortes dominó resultantes de efeitos adversos imprevistos ou distúrbios sociais que o envolvimento mais direto dele causa, como no acima mencionado ataque à paz no Paquistão.

Entretanto, essa perícia técnica não é exclusiva dele. Não é só Obama que é “realmente eficaz em matar pessoas.” Hiroshima e Nagasaki sabem muito bem como Truman era bom nisso. É difícil, também, competir com as campanhas de Lyndon Johnson no Vietnã.

Além de apenas os dos Estados Unidos, outros chefes de estado (como o já mencionaldo al-Maliki) também não são muito incompetentes nisso. Há bastantes exemplos tão óbvios que nem preciso nomeá-los. E o mesmo se aplica a todo chefe de estado, especialmente no funcionamento de sua força policial, pelo tempo em que desejem continuar sendo chefes de estado.

Há muitas áreas de razoável debate acerca de se o governo é instituição eficaz ou ineficaz. Matança não é uma dessas áreas.

Se você gosta de ver pessoas morrendo em grande número sem qualquer fim à vista, manter os governos do mundo no poder é sua melhor opção. Se você gosta de ver pessoas não morrendo em grande número sem qualquer fim à vista, trabalhar contra o governo poderá não resolver o problema, mas provavelmente mal não fará.

Artigo original afixado por Jason Lee Byas em 4 de novembro de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

For example, last Friday a drone strike targeting Hakimullah Mehsud of the Tehreek-e- Taliban Pakistan (TTP) reportedly ended his life and at least 25 other lives. As if to provide further proof of the president’s status as a successful killer, the death toll from that decision might reach much higher than those directly affected. That’s because that strike was in direct violation of reported promises to Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, that the United States would not perform any drone strikes during their peace talks with the TTP. Apparently those talks hinged on this promise, and the TTP immediately withdrew, saying they want no peace with “US slaves.”

The United States State Department’s response was to claim that the peace talks were “an internal matter” for Pakistan. “Internal matter” or not, it was a hope for peace in Pakistan, and it takes quite a calloused soul to call in the strike in spite of that.

You might be saying to yourself that even with his ongoing program of drone killings across the Middle East, at least Obama has slowly moved away from United States involvement in Iraq. If you did, you spoke too soon. The same day that he gunned down hopes for peace in Pakistan, Obama met with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. The focus of these talks — curiously not prevented by a drone strike from either side’s allies — was on how the US government could help “push back” against al Qaeda in Iraq.

Along with his general wisdom about all topics related to killing, Obama gifted al-Maliki with additional military aid. Among Obama’s contributions to that cycle of violence will be F-16 fighter jets placed in the prime minister’s hands.

Of course, all of this came Obama’s suggestion that those dead from the Iraq War would be most honored if Iraq became more of a functioning democracy. Presumably, this means being like the functioning democracy that started the war.

Obama might rest assured that al-Maliki will use this gift of military strength to usher in a new era of peace and freedom, but the citizens of Iraq have reason to feel differently. It doesn’t seem unlikely that the growing disorder in Iraq is partially due to his own kleptocratic and authoritarian behavior.

To give al-Maliki the weapons he needs might be one way of combating al Qaeda, but it’s also one way to ensure the continued violent repression of Iraqi civilians.

This highlights one of those things that make Obama so truly excellent at killing people:  even when he can’t bring the bloodshed directly, he can at least help some other government do it their way. Often, there are also domino deaths resulting from the blowback or social unrest his more direct involvement causes, as in the earlier mentioned strike on Pakistani peace.

However, this technical prowess isn’t unique to him. It’s not just Obama who’s “really good at killing people.” Hiroshima and Nagasaki know all too well how good Truman was at it. Lyndon Johnson’s campaigns in Viet Nam, too, are hard to compete with.

Beyond just the United States, other heads of state (such as the aforementioned al-Maliki) aren’t too bad themselves. There are plenty of examples so obvious I don’t even need to name them. Yet it also applies to every head of state, especially in the operation of their police force, as long as they want to keep being a head of state.

There are plenty of areas of reasonable debate about whether government is effective or ineffective. Killing isn’t one of them.

If you value people dying in large numbers without any end in sight, keeping the governments of the world in power is your best bet. If you value people not dying in large numbers without any end in sight, working against government might not solve it, but it probably wouldn’t hurt.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Obama Prova Ser Realmente Eficaz em Matar Pessoas.

Hopefully CNN will try extra hard to sanitize the war footage from Syria once the bombing starts, now that we know how badly dead Syrian kids upset Kerry. Because you can be sure there are a lot more dead Syrian kids on the way.

Of course, Kerry’s sensitivity to dead children is a bit like Carter having a problem with liver pills. This is the same John Kerry who served in Vietnam, and who backed two attacks on Iraq and one on Afghanistan, is it not? One of the most iconic images in the history of journalism is a little girl, naked and burning, running down a Vietnamese road after a chemical weapons attack by the United States. And the US all but condemned Al-Jazeera as a terrorist organization for airing images of Iraqi children incinerated in the American attack in 2003.

For that matter, US “redlining” of a country for using chemical weapons is also a bit odd. In the same press conference, Kerry spoke of holding Iraq accountable for violating international, historically established norms. But the US itself has quite a history of violating such norms. In WWII, for instance, the U.S. holds pride of place not only for the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, but for being the first and only military power in history to burn hundreds of thousands of civilians alive with atomic weapons in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As for chemical weapons, aren’t Agent Orange and napalm — the liquid fire used on that screaming little girl mentioned above — supposed to count? The cumulative effect of US chemical weapons use in Indochina is millions dead during the war in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia — and millions more dead of cancer and genetic defects in the decades since.

While we’re on the subject of chemical weapons, the story just came out — at about the worst possible time for the US, as it’s rolling out its propaganda for another war — that the US actively aided Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in targeting Iranian troops with nerve gas. It was known for some time that the Reagan administration had shared intelligence with Iraq at the same time it was using chemical weapons in the Gulf War. But it turns out Washington was supplying intelligence in full knowledge that that intelligence would be used to identify Iranian troop concentrations for targeting with nerve agents. Iran was preparing for the strategic exploitation of a huge hole in Saddam’s defenses, which might well have turned the tide of the war and led to enormous Iranian gains at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates, increasing military pressure on Kuwait and other Arab Gulf states.

The overall American policy arc in Iraq from the ’80s on seems to be: 1) Help Saddam to make war on his neighbors; 2) help Saddam use weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors; 3) encourage Saddam to invade Kuwait; 4) bomb the hell out of Saddam in 1991 for invading Kuwait and making war against his neighbors; 5) bomb the hell out of Saddam in 2003 for possibly still having weapons of mass destruction.

In short, the United States simply does not give a rip about Saddam, Assad, or anyone else using chemical weapons or committing war crimes of any kind. The US routinely supports regimes that engage in war crimes — and then publicly condemns them for war crimes only when they stop taking orders from Washington or otherwise become a liability. War crimes by official enemies are just a propaganda point for selling wars to the public.

Consumer advisory: Don’t buy a used war from this man.