But not.
Trump is inheriting an 16-year old,
multi-appendaged monster called the War on Terror. One of its favorite
hobbies during the past decade: drone strikes. The official (yet highly contested) number of drone strikes under the
Obama administration is 542. These strikes killed an estimated 3,797
people, including at least 324 civilians.
The election of Trump has many
people wondering how the drone program will change under the new
administration.
In a 2015 Fox and Friends interview,
Trump said, “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their
families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they
don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.” It would
apparently be wrong to hold people to what they say during a campaign, so
lets look at Trump's actions post-inauguration.
There is little reason to believe
Trump will meaningfully improve Obama's drone program. Many
predict a significant uptick in drone strikes. On the first, second, and
third days of his presidency, Trump ordered drone
strikes in Yemen. And though Obama earned a
negative reputation for his strikes, Trump is surpassing him in frequency.
According to AlJazeera, Obama conducted
one strike every 5.4 days; Trump has
thus far averaged one strike or raid every 1.25 days.
On his trip to Southeast Asia, Trump
vowed to loosen the restrictions on US soldiers to enable them to take
down terrorists, whom he called “thugs and criminals and predators,
and — that’s right — losers.”
What will changes look like? Trump’s national security
advisors have suggested three major changes in the drone program:
1) The targets of kill missions by the military and the
C.I.A. should be expanded to include foot-soldier jihadists with no special
skills or leadership roles
2) Drone attacks and raids should no longer undergo
high-level vetting
3) CIA should have more territory
access with overt strikes in Afghanistan (and possibly Yemen and Syria),
instead of just Pakistan
My thoughts:
1) Are these combatants? Is this ethical? In
adherence with jus in bello? This will surely lead to change the
way civilian casualties are counted. Obama-appointed NSC counterterrorism
expert Luke Hartig states, these targets "may be couriers, bodyguards, or
propagandists who, while lawful military targets under the laws of war, may not
pose a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons."
2) Why even suggest this publicly…?
This is likely to increase civilian casualty. Seems reckless.
3) Ok
Some are worried about the proposed increase of authority
for the Central Intelligence Agency. Human rights groups think the CIA is less
willing to honestly report civilian casualties than the military is.
Critics say the Obama administration’s transparency in
admitting causalities has actually led to negative foreign and domestic views
of the US drone program, creating red tape and making the job abroad harder.
Luke Hartig
says, “I don’t know what the Trump administration is specifically
considering in Afghanistan, but if their new plans for the war decrease any of
that transparency, that would be a big strategic and moral mistake.”
And in the grand scheme of
things, is the drone program even helping? Years of analysis indicate that drone strikes undermine the respect for international
law, serve to further radicalize opponents, and may be counterproductive to our
mission in the War on Terror. The film "Dirty Wars" (currently on
Netflix) is great in examining this debate.
Though the personnel conducting the
targeted killings characterize them as 'surgical' 'clinical' or 'precision' strikes,
they tend to yield extensive civilian casualty, ranging from 8 to 21% of total
killed. As one Atlantic op-ed writer states, “A surgeon as sloppy as that would be indicted."
I concur with a conclusion in the Atlantic: “Al-Qaeda and ISIS are dangerous abominations. Fighting
them is just, even if the fight involves the inadvertent killing of innocents,
but only if due care is taken to avoid those deaths whenever possible.” In
short, we need to tighten quality control (evidently lacking in the Obama-era
drone program), not loosen it. Trump’s proposals of broader authority,
potentially leading to enhanced secrecy do not do this.
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