However, instead of this action by the president being one in a pursuit of peace and stability in the region, it only acted as an opportunity to drastically increase air warfare. Afghanistan had war rained upon them by U. In total that year, the Obama administration dropped 26, bombs drone or otherwise across seven countries: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. The U. In reality, he consciously and undemocratically decided the fates of thousands of lives, without due process.
With the exception of the wars themselves, the claim that former President Barack Obama is a war criminal also lies within the double-tap initiative. Double-tap drone strikes are as disturbing as they sound; these attacks are follow-up strikes on first responders as they rush to the bombed area trying to assist any survivors.
In , an attack on the Shawal Valley aimed at Taliban commander Sadiq Noor reportedly killed up to 14 people in a double-tap drone strike. These attacks are both morally and legally reprehensible, as they are conscious acts of murder against civilians. Tariq Aziz , a year-old anti-drone activist from North Waziristan who was killed while driving a car, was one. Instead, the former U.
Still, in the aggregate, at least, I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. Leading human rights organizations from all over the world regularly criticized the effects of drone strikes and the massive civilian casualties they caused. Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, the target of the very first drone strike in U. Many years later, in , he died of natural causes not too far from a U.
However, Biden should rethink the devastating counterterrorism policies of his predecessors. Extrajudicial drone strikes have also led to questioning of the rule of law itself and the notion of a presumption of innocence—something that did not exist for Kareem Aluzai and all the other countless drone victims.
The rule of law stands as a crowning achievement on which many Western societies pride themselves, but it is undermined by Western leaders championing the concept to justify their foreign misadventures. For those on the ground living beneath the drones, such lofty concepts provide little solace. To the Predators, they are visible only as targets—and invisible to the world once they die. Refreshingly, many mainstream outlets have been reporting on this escalation for months if not years.
Whether Americans care or not is another story. De-escalating our involvement — even shadow or unmanned — in overseas conflicts was something that many Trump critics and supporters were welcoming, especially abroad. Know about breaking news as it happens. We follow the stories and update you as they develop. Custodians says short-staffing, lack of supplies and mismanagement are to blame. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
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That more checks and balances were needed from day one was a no-brainer. Yet reporting by The New York Times suggests that Obama was directly complicit all along in efforts to obscure the true costs of drone strikes to innocents. As the newspaper put it on May 29, , in a major investigative article:.
Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent …. In a speech last year, Mr. Brennan, Mr. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. The absurdly low figures cited by Obama administration figures were lies.
In Pakistan, Mr. But some State Department officials have complained to the White House that the criteria used by the C. The joke was that when the C.
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