Trump Adm. Killing 450% More Civilians Than Obama Adm.

(The image above is from Waking Times.)

During the Obama administration, an average of 80 innocent civilians were killed each month by U.S. bombing. That's a terrible average, but compared to the Trump administration it seems small. The Trump administration is killing an average of 360 innocent civilians each month -- about 4.5 times the number killed during the term of President Obama.

Trump promised to bomb the s**t out of ISIS and he seems to be keeping that promises (one of the few promises he has kept), but that bombing is indiscriminate (and kills many more innocent civilians). He doesn't seem to realize that the bombing of civilians creates more terrorists than it kills.

ISIS is going to lose the territory it currently holds in Iraq and Syria. It was losing that territory under Obama, and Trump has continued that. But don't be fooled into thinking that will be the end of terrorist acts committed by ISIS, al-Queda, and others. Terrorists have never needed to hold territory to commit their atrocious acts. That will continue -- and the increased bombing of civilians just insures there will be more terrorists to carry out those acts.

Are We Winning The "War On Terror" ?

The chart above shows the public perception in the United States on who is winning the "war on terror" -- the United States and its allies or the terrorists. The polling is done by the Rasmussen Poll, and for each date 1,000 likely voters were questioned, with a margin of error of 3 points.

For the last couple of years, the public believed the terrorists were winning. That has now changed, and a plurality believes the U.S. and its allies are winning. Why the change? Is the public buoyed by the tough talk of our new president? Are we that easily fooled?

The only thing that has changed since Trump took office is that we are doing more bombing -- and that increase in bombing is killing significantly more innocent civilians. In just the last two weeks, at least 279 innocent civilians have been killed by U.S. bombing.

Is that really the path to victory over terrorism? Or is it just creating more terrorists? Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the latter is more likely.

More Bad News About Use Of Drones

I can understand why drones are used in a war zone. It protects the lives of pilots. Aircraft are in danger over a war zone of being shot down, so it makes sense to use a pilotless vehicle. But the thinking about using drones in other places, like in a country we are not at war with, is different. The government has told us that drones are used in those cases because they are more surgically-precise in their attacks than jets delivering bombs or missiles.

Unfortunately, that may just be a myth -- or a lie the government tells us to justify their use of drones. There is a new report, co-authored by Lawrence Lewis at the Center for Naval Analysis and Sarah Holewinski of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, which compares the effectiveness of both jets and drones -- and drones don't come out looking too good.

It turns out that drones are not the surgically-precise weapons that we have been told they are. Lewis, who has a top secret clearance, studied strikes done by both drones and jets between mid-2010 and mid-2011. He found that drones are 10 times more likely that the piloted jets to cause the deaths of innocent civilians -- exactly the opposite of what the government has claimed.

He has called for better training of the people who control drones (who don't get anywhere near the training of a jet pilot). I would go even further. While more training would be a good idea, an even better idea would be to stop the drone attacks conducted outside of a war zone. Too many innocent civilians are being killed, and in addition to being an immoral act, that creates more enemies than it kills.

CIA Attacking Unknown Targets With Drones

I have posted before about how the United States is misusing drones to attack people in countries we are not at war with -- and how many of the victims of these attacks turn out to be innocent women and children. But the true picture may be even worse than that.

Starting in September of 2010, the United States (mainly the CIA) directed 114 drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These attacks, according to the government, are only supposed to be directed at either Taliban insurgents or al-Queda operatives. But in more than 25% of those drone attacks, the government now admits it really didn't know who they were attacking -- and simply called those attacked as "foreign fighters" or "other militants".

That means they have repeatedly attacked individuals and groups that they did not know for sure were terrorists. They just thought they might be terrorists because they were acting suspiciously or had been in contact with suspicious persons. These people might not have been terrorists at all, and show just how badly our drone program is being run. It should be unacceptable to attack anyone when we are not sure who they are -- and even if we are sure about a terrorist, they should not be attacked if surrounded by innocent civilians (especially women and children).

Innocent civilians are not "collateral damage", but human beings that have been murdered by our government. I don't have a problem with using drones to attack enemy soldiers in a war zone, but they should not be used to indiscriminately attack unknown people or in a situation where civilians are known to be. Doing this is not just wrong, but it creates more enemies for this country than it kills.

Why are we still in Afghanistan anyway? We are not accomplishing anything except to prop up one of the most corrupt governments in the world, and to run up the death toll of both Americans and Afghanis. It is time to end this nonsense and bring ALL our soldiers back home. And it is time to prohibit the use of drones outside of a war zone -- and then only if we can be sure no innocent civilians are there.

Public Opposes Foreign Wars - But Say Drone Attacks Are OK

(This photo is from the British Newspaper The Guardian. It shows the aftermath of a U.S. drone attack in Yemen -- an attack that killed 13 innocent civilians.)

There is a new poll out, and that survey contains both good news and bad news. It is a CBS News/New York Times Poll (conducted between April 24th and 28th of 965 nationwide adults -- with a 3 point margin of error). The good news is that Americans don't want this country to get into any new foreign wars.

The United States has been at war for nearly 12 years now in Afghanistan, and there still seems to be no end in sight. President Obama has said he will withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 (another year and a half), but he's not talking about removing all troops. He wants to leave several thousand soldiers there for "training" and "terrorism" purposes, perhaps indefinitely.

I'm sure that's why the public is not ready for another, possibly endless, foreign entanglement. In light of the ongoing and bloody civil war (and possible use of chemical weapons) in Syria, and the threats recently made by North Korea (both to its Asian neighbors and the United States), the poll  asked respondents if the United States should intervene in these countries. Here are those numbers:

DOES THE U.S. HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY IN SYRIA?
yes...............24%
no...............62%

HOW GREAT A THREAT IS NORTH KOREA?
requires military action now...............15%
can be contained for now...............56%
not a threat at this time...............21%

That's the good news -- that neither the government nor the conservative neocons have been able to convince the American public that military action is necessary in Syria or in North Korea. But the poll also contained some bad news -- in the form of support for drone attacks in foreign countries (many of which we are not at war with). The respondents were asked if they supported or opposed drone attacks against terrorists in foreign countries.

DRONE ATTACKS AGAINST TERRORISTS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
favor...............70%
oppose...............20%

And that support crosses all political lines:

REPUBLICANS
favor...............79%
oppose...............14%

DEMOCRATS
favor...............64%
oppose...............26%

INDEPENDENTS
favor...............70%
oppose...............21%

These are very disturbing numbers. Especially considering that many more innocent civilians are killed in these drone attacks that terrorists. We are killing hundreds of innocent men, women, and children to get a few terrorists. I would like to think that the poll's respondents would have answered differently if told that innocent civilians would also be killed in these attacks against terrorists, but there is no evidence of that. The sad truth is that far too many Americans just don't value the lives of innocent people in foreign countries.

They are just "collateral damage" -- an acceptable thing in the "war on terror" (even though those same people would scream bloody murder if a terrorist was targeted in the U.S. by a drone and innocent people were killed). Why does the fact of being born in a different country make these innocent lives worth less than American lives? Isn't the life of every innocent person equally sacred?

Innocent Civilians

I have to agree with what the president said. It is an act of terror to attack civilians with a bomb. Unfortunately, he puts some restrictions on the civilians he's talking about. While he considers it terrorism to attack innocent civilians with a bomb if they are American, he's not as picky when it comes to innocent civilians in other countries (Yemen, Pakistan, etc.). He approves of using drones to drop bombs on innocent children and women in other countries (if there's someone this country doesn't like that may be in the crowd).

How is this any different than bombing innocent Americans? Are the innocent civilians in other countries less important? Do their lives just not matter as much as the lives of Americans?

There Is No Justification

The picture above is hard to look at, and I debated before posting it. But I think Americans need to understand what their government is doing. We are using drones to attack civilian areas and countries we are not at war with -- and too many times the victims of those attacks are children and other innocent civilians. I understand that the supposed justification for these attacks is to kill terrorists, but I still believe attacking civilian areas with drones is nothing short of murder.

The latest outrage on the internet is the fact that the Obama administration has found some dubious lawyers to write them a legal justification for the drone attacks (a justification that they have refused to make public or even show the elected members of Congress). Frankly that doesn't pass the smell test. It has the same stench that was evident when the Bush administration found its own dubious lawyers to justify their use of torture.

I'm not surprised that both the Obama and Bush administrations were able to find some ethically-challenged lawyers to justify their criminal behavior, but that doesn't make it right. I'll bet if you were rich or powerful enough, you could find some lawyers that would justify the eating of human  babies (because of the need for nutrition and population control). All the odious legal justifications for torture and murder prove is that Bush and Obama found some attorneys that should be disbarred on ethical grounds.

There is no moral or legal justification for torture or for drone attacks in civilian areas (and in countries we are not at war with) -- regardless of what any sycophant with a law degree says. We were established to be a nation of laws, governed by the Constitution. Our forefathers fought and died to establish that.

If the government has evidence that someone has broken the law by conspiring to kill American citizens, then they should be apprehended and brought to justice (with a fair trial and the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution). But killing someone by a drone attack just because a "high government official" suspects them of criminal behavior (even without the killing of innocent civilians) is nothing less than a trashing of the Constitution and the rule of law -- and it really doesn't matter whether those individuals are Americans or citizens of another country.

I am a supporter of President Obama, and I believe he is trying to accomplish a lot of good things for this country. But I cannot support his continuing of the useless Afghan War, or his use of drones to attack civilian areas or countries we are not at war with. It is just wrong, and using the fear of terrorism to justify it does not even begin to make it right. We are becoming the evil that we claim to be fighting against.

U.N. To Investigate Drone Murders

The idea of using drones (unmanned aircraft piloted from a distance) to attack an enemy is not a bad idea in theory. It can rain down destruction on an enemy without putting the lives of those making the attack in danger. That's something the military has always wanted -- the ability to attack the enemy without endangering their own soldiers. And I don't really have any problem with drones being used in a battlefield situation.

But that is not how they are being used in a lot of cases. Too many times they are used to attack places where it is obvious that innocent civilians (many times children) are likely to be. They are also used to attack across borders (when we are not even at war with that country and would never send a manned aircraft to do the attack). Knowingly attacking civilians (even if a terrorist is among them), and attacking people in another nation without that country's knowledge and permission, are both violations of international law and common decency -- and unworthy of any nation claiming to support human rights.

Our government does both. While they claim that the killing of innocent civilians ("collateral" damage) is accidental, the body count is getting high enough to call that excuse seriously into question. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism says that from 473 to 889 innocent civilians have been killed in drone strikes. That's an awful lot of accidental killings, and they could all have been prevented if the U.S. would just stop using drones to attack civilian areas.

That is why the United Nations is going to investigate the drone killings of innocent civilians. The U.N. Human Rights Council has asked for the investigation, and that investigation will be on drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and the Palestinian territories (by the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel). The results of the investigation will be presented to the U.N. General Assembly in October of this year.

Retired General Stanley McChrystal has warned recently about the overuse of drones. He has a point. Overuse and misuse of drones can cause a lot of justifiable ill-will toward this nation -- and may actually (because of the killing of innocent civilians) create more enemies than it disposes of.

There is no doubt that drones are here too stay. Their value in combat is undeniable. But we need to adopt and follow some rules regarding their use -- and those rules should follow international law. Using a drone to attack any area where civilians are likely to be is nothing short of murder, and it must be stopped. NOW! And it doesn't matter whether it is a Republican or a Democratic administration that orders the attack -- it is still wrong.

And The Killing Goes On

If there is one area that disturbs me the most about President Obama (who I sincerely hope gets re-elected), it is in his handling of the war in Afghanistan. I, like most of the people who voted for him, had hoped he would see the senseless slaughter going on there, and realizing that nothing was being accomplished (except to create new enemies of the U.S.), would put an end to it. Unfortunately, he just continued the failed Bush policy, and actually extended the war by several more years. The current ending date is the end of 2014, but there is no assurance that will not be extended again.

I know the lie that was told to get us into the war -- that we had to do it to get Osama bin Laden. I even fell for that lie myself back in 2001. But back then people didn't realize (and weren't told) that the Taliban government had actually offered to turn Osama over to Western authorities, as long as he was tried by an international court in the Hague (instead of given a kangaroo court in the United States). That was a reasonable offer, and should have been accepted. But that wasn't good enough for the Bush administration. They didn't want justice. They wanted revenge -- and they wanted it bloody.

And we learned recently that even bloody revenge didn't require an invasion and seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. Navy Seal Team Six showed us that a small team of properly trained professionals was all that was needed to get the job done. Osama is now dead. But the war and the killing goes on, and nothing seems to be getting accomplished. We should have looked at the Russian intervention in Afghanistan and learned from it, but we were blinded by our American exceptionalism -- sure in the knowledge that we could accomplish what no other country has been able to do.

Well, we haven't accomplished any more than the Russians (or numerous other invaders) did. But the killing goes on. Last Saturday, the death toll of United States soldiers reached 2,000. That's the official count of our own government. The independent organization, icasualities, puts the American death toll at 2,125. In addition, other coalition members have lost 1,066 of their soldiers (including 433 British soldiers). Also, 10,000 members of the Afghan security forces have died, and a minimum of 20,000 innocent civilians have died (although that figure is probably much higher).

Most of these deaths can be laid at the feet of George W. Bush, but President Obama must accept his share also -- since he should have ended this insanity soon after taking office. But the killing goes on. When will it be enough?

The Drone Attacks Should Be Stopped

There was a headline and story at msnbc.com World News today that bothered me quite a bit, and I'm convinced that more Americans should be bothered about it. It's not that it was an unusual event. In fact, it's far too common -- so common that most Americans will accept it without even thinking much about it. Here is the headline:

DRONE ATTACK KILLS SIX SUSPECTED MILITANTS IN PAKISTAN SCHOOL

It seems that either the military or the CIA decided that "suspected militants" were using part of a girl's high school in Miramshah (North Waziristan, Pakistan), so they fired missiles from a United States drone to kill them. There are several aspects to this that bother me a lot:

* Should we be firing missiles from a drone at any school? We know that missiles are not specific weapons and most of the time innocent civilians are killed -- and this time it is very likely that the "collateral damage" will be children. How many young high school age girls will never live to be adults because of this strike?

* The missiles fired at the school were meant to kill "suspected" militants. Should we really have the right to kill people because someone in our government "suspects" them of being an enemy? Isn't that a lot like carrying out the death penalty on someone because the police "suspects" them of criminal activity? In this country we require a jury to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of a person's guilt before any penalty is assessed or carried out. Why should it be any different before we kill people in another country, especially a country we are not at war with?

* Pakistan is supposed to be our friend, and they have asked us not to carry out drone attacks in their country. We wouldn't do this to most of our other friends, so why is it OK to kill "suspects" in Pakistan? Can you imagine the furor that would be caused if we did this in England, Germany, or Israel (or even Russia or China)? Aren't we just doing it to Pakistan because we know we can get away with it?

Sadly, I doubt if most Americans really care about this -- after all, they're just foreigners, and with our ethnocentric attitude no foreigner is very important. But we should care. This kind of thing is destroying this country's reputation around the world -- and it's killing innocent people. Do we really want to be thought of as a brutal and uncaring nation? That is the reputation we are creating.

The drone attacks should never be done outside of a war zone, and even then we need to be extra careful to make sure only enemy combatants are killed. "Collateral damage" is unacceptable.

Murder Is Murder - Even In A War Zone

Did you wonder why the U.S. government was so upset when WikiLeaks accessed and released some of their military and State Department cables. If you thought it was because it might endanger U.S. personnel or allies, then you were wrong. It's because they just didn't want to be embarrassed by the wrong things American personnel were doing -- and the information this cable contains is about as wrong as it gets.

A U.S. military cable recently released by WikiLeaks tells of the murder of civilians by U.S. soldiers. Back in 2006, U.S. soldiers were involved in a firefight in Ishaqi (about 80 miles northwest of Baghdad). After the firefight was over, some civilians were taken prisoner. They were:

The cable notes that "at least 10 persons, namely Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay'ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra'a (aged 5) Aisha (aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz's mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz's sister (name unknown), Faiz's nieces Asma'a Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid."


Now the soldiers had a choice. They could send these prisoners back to headquarters for questioning and possible detainment, or they could release them. They did neither. They shot all of them in the head after handcuffing them (and knowing they were unarmed and posed no danger). Then they called in an air strike to cover up the murders.

I don't know about you, but I don't think there's ever a justification for the intentional muder of a child. And look at the ages of these children -- two were 5 years-old, two were 3 years-old, and the other was a 5 month-old baby. I'm also having a bit of trouble believing it was necessary to kill a 74 year-old woman (who was unarmed and in handcuffs).

The soldiers (and their superiors) tried to cover this up by claiming the family died in an air strike. But an autopsy revealed that each person had been shot in the head before the building was bombed, including all of the children.

The United Nations tried to investigate these murders, but they were stonewalled by the Bush administration. The investigator, Philip Alston, who viewed pictures of the bodies in a Tikrit morgue and verified everyone had been shot in the head, wrote to the Bush administration but got no response, which he said "was the case with most of the letters to the U.S. in the 2006-2007 period." The U.S. government has still not responded.

The actions of the soldiers involved can't be justified, but neither can the actions of the government officials who placed them in an absurd war and nation-building effort with goals that couldn't be accomplished. This is nothing short of a war crime, and the people most responsible are George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld.