by Art Goodtimes
In 2013, Daniel Hale was at an antiwar conference in D.C. when a man recounted that two family members had been killed in a U.S. drone strike. The Yemeni man, through tears, said his relatives had been trying to encourage young men to leave al-Qaeda. Hale realized he had watched the fatal attack from a base in Afghanistan. At the time, he and his colleagues in Air Force intelligence viewed it as a success. Now he was horrified. It was such experiences, Hale told a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday, that led him to leak classified information about drone warfare to a reporter after leaving the military. “I believe that it is wrong to kill, but it is especially wrong to kill the defenseless,” he said in court. He said he shared what “was necessary to dispel the lie that drone warfare keeps us safe, that our lives are worth more than theirs.” U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady sentenced Hale, 33, of Nashville, to 45 months in prison for violating the Espionage Act, saying his disclosure of documents went beyond his “courageous and principled” stance on drones. —Washington Post, July 27, 2021
Ironically perverse, ’inn’it
that the whistleblower descendant
of our first patriot spy Nathan Hale
who blew up the U.S. drone program
goes to jail for four years
Convicted & sentenced for exposing
to the light of citizen discernment
our American guide to extrajudicial killings
& their collateral
extinguishment of innocents
While, feted followed & showered
with speaker fees
Bush Obama Trump Biden
go on being hailed as leaders
given awards
But we the people know whatever the hui
as they’d say on Kauai
with a hang-loose flash of the fist
whatever the name of the game
they gotta keep to the Free World's
bipartisan new normal
Mass murders on a scale outweighing all recent
incidents of personal gun violence
in the ol’ U.S. of A
So, on we go, in spite of lies
insurrections deceptions liberal
cant & fundraising junk mail
On & on. Targeting terrorists
in ever-widening circles of definition
Editor’s Note: For more on Daniel Hale, go to: the sparrow project, the intercept, and Stand With Daniel Hale.
Art Goodtimes is a Western Slope poet, former Green elected official, and constituent of Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado's Third Congressional.