The Biden administration released a document that outlines some Trump-era changes to US counterterrorism operations. The Trump administration loosened the rules of engagement for drone strikes and raids outside of what is considered active US war zones.
While it is partially redacted, the document shows commanders could carry out “direct action” without the approval of the White House as long as the action was within the “operating principles,” which say there should be “near certainty” that civilians “will not be injured or killed in the course of operations.”
However, the document leaves room for exceptions to these rules. The document reads: “Variations to the provisions in this section may be made where necessary in accordance with the proposal process.” Other exceptions could be outlined in the redacted portions.
Unnamed US officials told The New York Times that the Trump administration often made an exception when it came to “near certainty” that no civilians would be harmed. The administration kept the rule for women and children but downgraded it to “reasonable certainty” when it came to adult men.
Either way, there’s no way to be certain civilians would not be harmed in a drone strike. In Somalia, where Trump significantly escalated the drone war, US Africa Command would always claim no civilians were harmed in strikes. But whenever journalists or human rights groups made it to the scene, they would almost always report civilian casualties.
The Biden administration is reviewing these policies and currently has interim rules that require White House approval for drone strikes outside of Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.
WikiLeaks has just released
Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden Regime drone strike rules:Bomb them back to the Stone Age!
What is the difference between “near certainty” and “reasonable certainty”? Degree? So what. Either way the responsibility for killing civilians is gone with either. As if the operator of the drone is going to say they didn’t have either “near certainty” or “reasonable certainty” regardless of the number of civilians killed or the circumstances in which they were killed. So there is no real difference between killer Bush, killer Obama, killer Trump or killer Biden.
Read: f-ck civilians.
Real clean, our American war machine. Whether by drone, bomb, sanction, it is all war all of the time.
We kill young, old, babies, and say “oops”. But we got the bad guys, right?
How did we get this way?
I’d pinpoint it to Iraq 1. A clean war shown on television for all to see. Our bombs got smart and our people got dumb.
The big selling point from Iraq 1 was that the US went in, accomplished a specific mission, and seemingly (though not really) got out, with few immediately apparent casualties.
Between that and the Grenada and Panama invasions, they were able to re-package the idea of war as something without, unlike Vietnam, a big US body bag cost. And that made Afghanistan and Iraq 2 a much easier sale.