Green Party Of Pennsylvania Announces Opposition to Horsham Drone Base

Green Party opposes Horsham Drone Base

Attention: News Editor
For Immediate Release
April 1, 2013

Contact: 
Jay Sweeney, 570-587-3603, [email protected]
Carl Romanelli, 570-239-3914, [email protected]
Emily Cook, 609-947-5715, [email protected]

GREEN PARTY OF PENNSYLVANIA
http://www.gpofpa.org 

Horsham Air Guard Station to become Drone Command Center

Drones linked to many civilian deaths

The Green Party of Pennsylvania vehemently opposes the use of the Horsham Air Guard Station in Montgomery County as a drone command center. Beginning this fall, the military unit stationed at the base is to control remotely piloted aircraft known as drones. Drone attacks in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen have generated many civilian casualties, including at least 176 children killed since 2004, in Pakistan alone.

“Victims are like targets on a video screen,” said Green Party Steering Committee Chair Jay Sweeney. “The drone operator is desensitized to the real gore of war. There is no trial for a victim of a drone strike.”

The Green Party calls for officials to abandon plans to turn the Horsham Air Guard Station into a drone command operation since its function will be to perform illegal and immoral acts overseas.

The Green Party supports the United Nations declaration that the US drone war in Pakistan violates international law because it is being conducted without the consent of the elected representatives of the people, or the legitimate government of Pakistan. It involves the use of force in the territory of another state without its consent, and is therefore a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

“The military presumes the publics’ tacit consent to the use of taxpayer property in a way that is abhorrent to the citizens of Pennsylvania,” said Emily Cook, Chair of the Green Party of Montgomery County and member of the Green Party International Committee. “Drone warfare, in the absence of a formal declaration of war, is illegal, immoral and un-American.”

Pennsylvania leaders in both the Republican and Democratic parties support the Horsham Drone Base. They include Republicans such as Congressmen Mike Fitzpatrick and Pat Meehan and Democrats such as Senator Bob Casey and Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz.

The Green Party is an independent political party founded on the four pillars of nonviolence, grassroots democracy, ecology and social justice.

For more information, see:
Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Covert Drone War.
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/

United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – Statement of the Special Rapporteur following meetings in Pakistan
www.ohcr.org