Running Amok? Donald Trump Facilitates Civilian Drone Deaths,
Continues Attacks in Seven Countries ‘and Elsewhere’
Global Research, June
08, 2018
Drone Warfare 7
June 2018
The NGO CAGE, which campaigns against discriminatory state
policies and advocates observance of due process and the rule of law, reminds readers that
in October 2017, US President Donald Trump replaced the Obama rules pertaining
to drone strikes with his own ‘rules’ called the “Principles, Standards, and
Procedures,” or PSPs.
It reports that according to the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) these laws
“make it easier to kill more people in more places outside recognized
battlefields, posing grave risks of death and injury to civilians”:
“They do this by eliminating the requirement
that a person must present a “continuing, imminent” threat to the United States
before being targeted for killing. There is also no longer a high-level vetting
process required for each individual strike. This means strikes can be okayed
by other officials of lower rank. This means there are fewer lines of command
to follow in the event of deaths, less chance of objectivity, and less
likelihood of accountability”.
The current US administration has adopted a more secretive
approach to drone strikes
It has denied requests for information or, as in October 2017,
halted the reporting of strikes to the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and
other NGOs that document drone casualties. Last month, the US Air Force, according to the
Bureau, “ordered an overhaul of its public affairs
operations aimed at preventing the release of information deemed sensitive”.
This is all being done, naturally, for the sake of “practicing sound
operational security”.
Case histories
In August last year, a US drone strike near the Somalian town of
Jilib killed seven
civilians. They were all from the same family and
they included women and children. The family was not a prominent (read
‘wealthy’) one, so they had no recourse to justice.
Initially it made local newspapers and
pictures of the human remains were circulated on Somali media. Now this
information is unavailable.
A local online news report acknowledges
the civilian deaths but does not mention the cause as an American drone strike.
Rather the ‘planes’ were ‘unidentified’. CENTCOM, the central point for US
‘operations’ in Africa, released a PR, claiming – in contrast to the local media
reports – that those killed were al-Shabaab militants. Local officials echoed
their paymasters with slightly less severity and insisted those killed were
‘extremists’.
In the same month Reuters reported that
Somali government officials said 10 men and boys killed in a joint U.S.-Somali
raid were civilians and blood money will be paid to the families. U.S. Africa
Command confirmed the presence of U.S. troops in the raid, carried out under
the expanded powers that Donald Trump granted to U.S. troops in Somalia in
March.
“The 10 people were civilians. They were killed
accidentally… The government and relatives will discuss about compensation. We
send condolence to the families,” said lawmaker Mohamed
Ahmed Abtidon at a public funeral held for the 10, who were
killed in a raid in Bariire village on Friday.
Hina Shamsi (right), Director of the ACLU National Security Project,
writes:
“Now, the Trump administration is killing people
in multiple countries, with strikes taking place at a
virtually unprecedented rate—in some countries the number has doubled or
tripled in Trump’s first year in office.
The U.S. is conducting strikes in recognized wars in Iraq, Syria,
and Afghanistan, but also in operations governed by the secret rules whose
public release our new lawsuit demands — those conducted outside “areas of
active hostilities” in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and elsewhere.
Untold, officially unrecognized numbers of civilians have died
and continue to die at increasing rates.
Most strikes take place in majority-Muslim countries, and most of the civilians
killed are brown or Black.”
In such areas, people live in poverty, hunger and a state of
perpetual terror wrought by a US-led ‘war’. CAGE observes, “as a result, for
some, the lure of fighting back through violent groups (‘blowback’)will be too
strong to resist”.
The Washington Post agrees:
“Human rights
organizations and even some former U.S. military
commanders argue that drone strikes inadvertently increase
terrorism by exerting a “blowback” effect. Their logic is simple. Drone strikes
kill more innocent civilians than terrorists, which radicalizes affected
populations and motivates them to join terrorist groups to retaliate against
the United States”.
CAGE also believes that:
“Until we have a global acknowledgement at
government level that all lives are equal and precious, and all countries have
the right to govern themselves in a manner they see most fit for their people,
we – the population of the world – will continue to witness ongoing and
increasing cycles of violence”.
CAGE calls for an end to extrajudicial
killings by drone or otherwise, in favour of a dialogue-based approach to end
violence and full accountability for war crimes for all perpetrators of
civilian deaths and terror, adding:
“The people of Somalia and other countries
around the world deserve nothing less”.
*
All images in this article are from Drone Warfare.
The original source of this article is Drone Warfare
Copyright © Drone Warfare, Drone Warfare, 2018
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.
Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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