Clinics at the law schools of Stanford and New York University released a ground-breaking report on September 25 that challenged the “dominant narrative” that United States drones in Pakistan are a “surgically precise and effective tool,” which “makes the US safer by enabling ‘targeted killings’ of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts.” The report, which included firsthand accounts from Pakistanis to bolster the study’s conclusions, called this narrative “false” and stated civilian casualties are “rarely acknowledged by the US government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and killed civilians.” And it stated publicly available evidence that strikes make the US safer is “ambiguous at best” and considers the legality of the strikes to be “doubtful.”

But, for some commentators and pundits the findings of the report, “Living Under Drones,” were frustrating.

Described by the New York Times as a “sloppy strike,” on December 17, 2009, a US drone launched a cruise missile carrying cluster bombs and hit al-Majalah in the Abyan province of southern Yemen. The attack targeted Saleh Mohammed al-Anbouri, who allegedly had been bringing people from different countries to train them to become members of al Qaeda. It did not only kill Anbouri but also forty-one civilians including twenty-two children and a dozen women (five who happened to be pregnant).

The attack left a “grisly scene.”

Selling guns to mass murderers. Selling loaded derivatives to Alabama counties. People who do things like that lack character.

John Dewey thinks that the power of unbridled wealth is that it crushes the individual. That happened under the military power of Kings and Emperors, and it happens in democratic societies when economic wealth dominates politics and ideology.

The authoritarian right has created a false image of frontier-style individualism, out of sync with the broad-mindedness of our country’s real frontiersmen. Can Disney’s Davy Crockett save us?