This sounds like a bad movie…

A Yemen born, US educated journalist is testifying before the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. The subject: America’s ever expanding targeted killing program, through the use of drone strikes.

The journalist, Farea Al-Muslimi then was informed that while in the US his home village of Wessab, Yemen was recently destroyed by US drone strikes.

(Find his testimony here.)

This is just another sad chapter in an increasingly troublesome debate about the military use of drones.

Al-Muslimi’s take on the subject is of particular interest.

He was able to attend high school in the US through a State Department scholarship, and has since viewed himself as an unofficial American ambassador to Yemen.

He suggests America’s aforementioned actions make it extremely difficult for the people of Yemen to believe him when he describes the virtue and principles he knows the US to hold.  

As a journalist, Al-Muslimi has traveled to different areas affected by US drone strikes.  As he traveled to the Abyan Governorate in Yemen with Newsweek, Al-Muslimi spoke of one of the most devastating US drone strikes in Yemen, which was executed in the village of Al-Majalah:

In the poor village that day, more than 40 civilians were killed, including four pregnant women. Bin Fareed was one of the first people to the scene. He and others tried to rescue civilians. He told me their bodies were so decimated that it was impossible to differentiate between the children, the women, and their animals.  Some of these innocent people were buried in the same grave as animals.

There continues to be a lack of transparency about this specific attack from the Obama administration, as well as many other drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and Afghanistan.  

Is America’s continued and expanded use of drones counterproductive? Particularly in the Muslim-majority nations it seeks to rid of extremists?  Let us know in a comment below.