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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @08:59PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @08:59PM (#481769)

    Nuke the whole Middle-East!

    TFA is talking about drones here: little [wikipedia.org] go-karts [wikipedia.org] in the sky carrying a few missiles, each bearing a ~10kg conventional warhead [wikipedia.org].

    That said, to respond to your attempted reductio ad absurdum: if there is a group of people, largely concentrated in specific geographical areas, who adhere to written religious materials [prophetofdoom.net] that literally call for a world-wide war [quran.com] until "all religion is for [our god]", who consider lying to advance their case as moral [thereligionofpeace.com], whose religion could be thoroughly disproven by destruction of specific physical property on lands they inhabit, and whose members actively [wikipedia.org] engage [thereligionofpeace.com] in warfare [markhumphrys.com] or support those who do [wikipedia.org], yes, it does seem wise to take such peoples' claims and actions at face value and nuke them and their lands to glass. (That US soldiers kill such people in small numbers and for different reasons (oil/mercantilism) is nonetheless objectionable.)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:14AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:14AM (#482030)

    Leave Trump/Congress out of this.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:39PM (#482071)

      I see what you're trying to say, that "Trump/Congress" is trying to take over the world through war. So let's run with your assertion for the moment:

      Are you paying taxes ("zakat") to the US federal government? If so, it would seem that you are personally responsible for a measure of the warlike actions taken by said government's soldiers, and that while you personally may not be the most effective war target, you are nonetheless a valid war target for the enemies of the USA due to your direct financial support.

      "But but the Internal Revenue Service will steal my stuff and/or point guns at me!" Giving into criminal coercion doesn't make you a good guy, though it does make you a coward.