During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump advocated killing
innocent families of suspected terrorists. "When you get these
terrorists, you have to take out their families," he declared. Besides
the immorality of killing innocents, the targeting of civilians violates
the Geneva Conventions.
The George W. Bush administration unlawfully detained and tortured
suspected terrorists. Determined not to send more suspects to
Guantánamo, Barack Obama's administration illegally assassinated them
with drones and other methods, killing many civilians in the process.
Now the Trump administration is killing record numbers of civilians
and weakening the already-flimsy targeted killing rules Obama put in
place.
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In 2013, the Obama administration promulgated a set of requirements
regarding targeted killings "outside areas of active hostilities" in a
Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG).
The New York Times reported on September 21, 2017, that Trump's
national security advisers proposed watering down Obama's PPG. These
recommendations to Trump are called Principles, Standards and
Procedures, or PSP. On October 29, the Times reported, "Two government
officials said Mr. Trump had recently signed his new rules for such
kill-or-capture counterterrorism operations, without major changes" to
the PSP.
Obama mounted both "personality strikes" -- aimed at named suspected
terrorists -- and "signature strikes" -- in which all military-age men
in an area of suspicious activity could be killed. Signature strikes are
often called "crowd killings" because those perpetrating the attacks
don't even know whom they are killing. Trump has presumably continued
these two types of strikes.
The PPG required that
the target pose a continuing, imminent threat to US persons. There is
no indication that Trump's new rules have changed this requirement.
Moreover, even under Obama, a 2011 Department of Justice white paper
said that a US citizen could be killed even when there was no "clear
evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interests will take
place in the immediate future." Obama presumably set a lower bar for
killing non-citizens.
Obama's rules also mandated near certainty that an identified
"high-value terrorist" or other lawful terrorist target is present
before taking a strike. One official told the Times that the
administration "reduced the required level of confidence that the
intended target was present in a strike zone from 'near certainty' to
'reasonable certainty.'" Signature strikes don't target named
individuals. Under the new Trump rules, targets would no longer be
limited to high-value terrorists, but could also include foot soldiers
with no leadership roles.
During the Obama administration, targeting decisions were made at the
highest levels of government and the president reportedly had the final
say about who would be assassinated. Under the PSP, however, these
determinations would not require vetting by top administration
officials, and could be made by commanders in the field.
Trump advisers recommended maintaining the PPG's requirement of near
certainty that civilians would not be injured or killed, and the
administration agreed, according to the Times.
In spite of the PPG, the Obama administration killed many civilians.
Obama's Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reported
killing between 64 and 116 non-combatants "outside areas of active
hostilities" from January 2009 to December 2015. That encompassed
Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. Civilian deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq
and Syria were not included. And even for the included countries, the
ODNI figures could be low: The London-based Bureau of Investigative
Journalism estimated between 380 and 801 civilians killed outside areas
of active hostilities during the same period.
Even before relaxing the rules, drone strikes and other targeted
killings outside areas of active hostilities have already increased from
one every 5.4 days during the Obama administration, to one every 1.25
days under Trump, Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations
reported.
Trump granted increased authority to the CIA and the Pentagon to
conduct drone strikes. He also loosened the targeted killing rules in
large areas of Yemen and Somalia by designating them "areas of active
hostilities."
In March alone, the Trump administration killed 1,000 civilians in Iraq and Syria, according to
Airwars, a non-governmental organization that monitors civilian casualties from airstrikes.
We can expect to see increasing numbers of civilian deaths as Trump
continues the "war on terror" he inherited from his predecessors. Since
Bush launched this war after 9/11, we have become more vulnerable to
terrorism. Civilian killings heighten anger toward the United States and
lead to stepped-up recruitment of those who would do us harm.
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