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posted by on Monday March 20 2017, @02:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the discuss dept.

When he was in office, former President Barack Obama earned the ire of anti-war activists for his expansion of Bush's drone wars. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning head of state ordered ten times more drone strikes than the previous president, and estimates late in Obama's presidency showed 49 out of 50 victims were civilians. In 2015, it was reported that up to 90% of drone casualties were not the intended targets.

Current President Donald Trump campaigned on a less interventionist foreign policy, claiming to be opposed to nation-building and misguided invasions. But less than two months into his presidency, Trump has expanded the drone strikes that plagued Obama's "peaceful" presidency.​

"During President Obama's two terms in office, he approved 542 such targeted strikes in 2,920 days—one every 5.4 days. From his inauguration through today, President Trump had approved at least 36 drone strikes or raids in 45 days—one every 1.25 days."

That's an increase of 432 [sic] percent.

Source: http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/us-drone-strikes-have-gone-up-432-since-trump-took-office


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Snospar on Monday March 20 2017, @05:42PM (2 children)

    by Snospar (5366) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @05:42PM (#481622)

    Perhaps it's just terminology but I definitely think these drone strikes represent "disproportionate civilian casualties". Remember, we are not at war with these countries and all those civilian casualties are non-combatants so your drone is murdering 49 innocents in the hope of hitting one bad guy. I don't think that's a reasonable ratio in anyone's book. The more I think about it the more it starts to sound like a war crime... except, again, we are not at war with these countries just with "terror" or whatever nonsense is currently being pedalled.

    Surely we could strap a sniper rifle to a drone and do a much more surgical strike - or come up with some other method of drastically reducing the civilian casualties.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @06:54PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @06:54PM (#481677)

    Not that I have any ethical issue with the current situation, but sniper drones are way more affordable.

    A gun the size of an M-16 mounted like the cannons on the AC-130 would be great. It could even be buried in the wing for aerodynamics.

    If we got it down to a 3-foot wingspan, it could be dirt cheap. We could have swarms of them that automatically shoot anything that moves. This could be as effective as carpet bombing and nukes, but way more environmentally friendly. We could obliterate whole countries this way.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:43AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:43AM (#481940) Journal

      I like your idea, but you'll never sell it to the military industrial complex. Everyone involved insists on having big booms and flashes, high body counts, and tons of money flowing. Killing one person, dirt cheap, in an unnoticeable way, is anathema to their way of business.