TRUMP DRONE STRIKES SERIES

And in what should be called a “triple tap,” they often target people at funerals mourning their loved ones killed in drone attacks. The CIA launches a “double tap,” deploying a drone to kill those trying to rescue the wounded. They know a drone could drop a bomb on them at any moment. Since the Trump administration was less than forthcoming with accurate civilian casualty figures, it is impossible to know how many civilians were killed on his watch.ĭrones hover above towns for hours, emitting a buzzing sound that terrorizes communities, especially children. During Trump’s first two years in office, he launched 2,243 drone strikes, compared to 1,878 in Obama’s two terms in office. Trump, who relaxed Obama’s targeting rules, bombed all the countries that Obama had, according to Micah Zenko, former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. During Obama’s two terms in office, he authorized 563 strikes - largely with drones - in Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen, killing between 384 and 807 civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The Obama administration conducted 10 times more drone strikes than his predecessor. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden all presided over drone strikes that killed countless civilians.īush authorized approximately 50 drone strikes that killed 296 people alleged to be “terrorists” and 195 civilians in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. military considers all people killed in those operations presumptive “enemies killed in action.” George W. These numbers are probably low because the U.S. Biden is following in the footsteps of his four predecessors, all of whom also conducted illegal drone strikes that killed myriad civilians. A study based on classified military data, conducted by Larry Lewis from the Center for Naval Analyses and Sarah Holewinski of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, found that the use of drones in Afghanistan caused 10 times more civilian deaths than piloted fighter aircraft. Drone Strikes Conducted by Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden Killed Countless Civiliansĭrones do not result in fewer civilian casualties than piloted bombers.

Daniel Hale, who revealed the documents that comprise the Drone Papers, is serving 45 months in prison for exposing evidence of U.S. The “intelligence” used to conduct drone strikes is notoriously unreliable.įor example, the Drone Papers disclosed that nearly 90 percent of those killed by drone strikes during one five-month period during January 2012 to February 2013 were not the intended targets. The Kabul drone strike “calls into question the reliability of the intelligence that will be used to conduct the operations,” the Times noted. This senseless killing of civilians was not a one-off event, although it received more publicity than most past drone strikes. Central Command, then called the strike “a tragic mistake.” aid worker, not an ISIS operative, and the “explosives” in the Toyota that the drone strike targeted were most likely water bottles.

Nearly three weeks later, however, an extensive investigation conducted by The New York Times revealed that Zemari Ahmadi was a U.S. Mark Milley immediately said it was a “ righteous strike” to protect U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. drone in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, and then lied about it. forces out of Afghanistan, his administration launched a hellfire missile from a U.S. “They are merely moving to other bases in the same region to conduct the same counterterrorism missions, including in Afghanistan.”Īs Biden pulled U.S. Tom Malinowski (D-New Jersey) said during congressional testimony by Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this month. troops from Afghanistan is substantially less meaningful when analyzed in light of his administration’s pledge to mount “ over-the-horizon” attacks in that country from afar even though we won’t have troops on the ground. And he promised to continue bombing Afghanistan from afar. forces are still fighting in at least six different countries, including Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Niger. The commander-in-chief also apparently forgot that U.S.

He proudly declared, “I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war.” The day before, his administration had launched a drone strike in Syria, and three weeks earlier, the U.S. Three weeks after his administration launched a drone attack that killed 10 civilians in Kabul, Afghanistan, President Joe Biden addressed the United Nations General Assembly.

TRUMP DRONE STRIKES SERIES

Part of the Series Human Rights and Global Wrongs

Trump drone strikes