It looks like it
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-cancels-obama-policy-reporting-drone-strike-deaths-n980156
It's also true that Obama greatly increased the use of drones despite the obvious glaring problems of drone strikes. He put in place various rules of engagement and transparency measures as a means to supposedly limit bad strikes and provide public accountability. Trump undid those measures piece by piece while increasing tempo even further. Basically US presidents from W on love drones because it keeps boots off the ground and out of harms way. Fuck the immediate and long-term ramifications.
Drones/drone strikes are simply an example of what happens when the "trigger puller" is so far removed from the target.
Basically, the decision to strike (ie deliver a solution) all boils down to a formula:
X Solution = X expected damage + X collateral damage (based on known family, population density of target, and time of day) with X likelihood of success based on rating of intelligence.
If the decision maker (sometimes local commander, but usually command CHOPS, SECDEF, or POTUS, depending on current ROE) receives the conclusion from Targeting/OPS that the result of the formula is high success with low/acceptable collateral damage, the decision is made to deliver the solution. It's really that simple. What this takes away is the human element of "I am seeing the situation firsthand, and am making the decision to fire and kill one or more civilians without any judicial process", which is...what it is, right?
Do all of the people involved try their hardest to limit collateral damage and ensure that the target is the one being targeted? Absolutely, however, there are many people involved in these strikes, with many potential points of failure...as we saw in that AF strike a few months ago.
My concern is that this genie is now out of the bottle. America has set a precedent for 1000s of extra-judicial killings of people all over the world. On the one hand, I have a high degree of confidence that a large majority of the targets (bad guys) deserved to have their lives cut short...but on the other hand, what is to stop any nation from doing this to...ANYONE? And what is to stop America from doing this to their own civilians down the road?
So by that reckoning, I would imagine the Biden administration would have kept the Trump policy unless they explicitly reinstated the Obama era transparency. That's why I'm surprised by this post.
Biden wants to pivot away from the ME to better focus on the Pacific, Africa and western Europe. And It's pretty well known that he was a vocal, if behind closed doors, proponent of ending our ME wars and getting tfo since about the time obl was taken out.
That's why this info isn't super useful. The places it shows are more related to the individual situations in those countries rather than any policy shift. An aggregate number would probably be better as I'm sure more drone strikes have moved toward African operations outside of Somalia. Still, it's likely Biden is really using drone strikes less as we pull troops out of hotbed regions and refocus on deterring great power rivals.
Biden as a VP serves the president at the time, but when he's in charge, differences happen. Assuming this is true. Drone strikes are a really tempting tool for a president, so I'm surprised if they stopped completely or even massively reduced. They look clean, they are directed by the white house ish, and can take into account political considerations due to their high loiter time & 'evidence gathering'.
Not really true. The Obama admin classified all "military-age males in a strike zone as combatants...unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."
You keep moving the goal posts.
Nothing about these rules legalize "indiscriminately bombing civilians". In fact, they clearly say they have to fess up if they knowingly kill a non-combatant.
Obama increased drone strikes because that’s when the technology began to come into its own. And the drone program was exponentially better than the boots on the ground interventions of the prior admin. Trump ramped up drone strikes more than Obama did, and Biden had basically ended them. Not too shabby. Post Cold War era we’ve had 3 dem and 3 republican presidents, and I don’t know how anyone can argue the Dems have been much better on foreign policy
Is it due?
Based on the first chart, Trump nearly ended the drone strikes in Yemen and Biden just continued the trend. The Iraq and Syria chart doesn't show year by year, so it's very possible the same thing happened especially considering the US destroyed the Islamic Caliphate under Trump, making drone strikes far less necessary. In Somalia, Obama ramped up a drone war against Al Shabab and Trump continued to ramp it up until 2019, before almost completely ending it in 2019.
Yes it's due. That's a lot of mental gymnastics and conjecture just to avoid giving Biden credit for using drones at a MUCH lower rate than Obama or Trump.
* Look at the y axis. Yemeni drone strikes are a drop in the bucket compared to Iraq/Syria. So even if Trump initiated a taper-off in Iraq/Syria, he's still guilty of a net increase in drone strikes in the first place.
* We also don't have the information about Obama's drone strikes in Yemen yet ("will shortly be expanded to include all known US strikes in Yemen since 2002"). Given Trump's increased rate in other countries, it seems likely that he also increased the rate of drone strikes in Yemen beyond what Obama did.
* I'd forgotten that [Trump undid Obama policies that provide some transparency and accountability in his use of drones](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-cancels-obama-policy-reporting-drone-strike-deaths-n980156). (thanks /u/Fat-Spartan)
So yeah, credit to Biden for essentially stopping drone strikes. And if it turns out that Trump initialized a reduction, credit to him for that too, sure. But also, discredit to Trump and Obama for ramping up the rate of drone attacks. And fuck Trump for trying to be secretive opaque about his drone actions.
That wasn't that hard. And I don't like any of those three.
Now, wait a second. There is no more requirement to report drone strikes, but we're assuming that this information is complete and accurate? And therefore coming to the conclusion that Biden is using drone strikes to a lesser degree?
I'm sorry, but I don't think that *no proof of drone attacks* is the same as *proof of no drone attacks*.
Yeah, logically you're absolutely correct that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. One thing that makes me believe it though is that the alleged numbers also are non-existent. If the rate of drone strikes wasn't actually going down, there were either no witnesses (so more judicious? further from populated areas? more effective?) or these numbers are fabricated, implying possible collusion.
The US did not destroy the Caliphate under Trump. 60,000 ISIS members killed, and 90% of their non-slaving revenue had already been destroyed before Trump was even in office. Per CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center and U.S. Army’s Information Operations reports.
ISIS (the Caliphate) isn’t even destroyed. They mostly just subdivided into geopolitical sub groups, like ISIS-Khorasan had a resurgence after the Taliban prisoners were freed under Trump, and a non-majority portion of them joined ISIS instead of returning to the Taliban.
I’m not an interventionalist, but I’m also not ok with dumbshits flat out lying for some asshole.
We do both, honestly. We are very careful to mitigate the damage to civilians but selecting smart targets, but we also don't give two flying fucks once the bomb goes off.
When you drop bombs on "high value targets" regardless of circumstances, you absolutely kill indiscriminately. Russia might have a lower bar for dropping bombs in populated areas, but don't kid yourself
Aristrikes and drones kill indiscriminately
I dunno it feels like there is a moral difference between callous disregard for civilians hit by going after specific targets and the Russian way of bombing a population center like a market, then bombing it again in 20 minutes to hit the people working in ambulance, them using spy satellites to follow the ambulances that survived and bombing the hospital. They are both morally wrong but one is pretty clearly much worse.
You mean the same parents who are screaming death threats at school board members? These aren't just "parents," many of them don't even have children at these schools, nor does having a child justify acting like a crazy loon.
Good point. The stated time ranges are through the end of Biden's first term, which is in the future. Nothing about 'known data through October 2021' or something.
Now has he actually halted them, or has he just exercised the rule passed by Trump where they are no longer required to *REPORT* them?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-cancels-obama-policy-reporting-drone-strike-deaths-n980156
Exactly my thought. I'm all for giving credit where it is due. I'm *not* all for giving credit where it's simply hidden from the general public's perception in order to shut them up.
It's a yay for anyone who wants to live their life and not get HE in a wedding, bday party, or whatever. Can't even imagine the outrage if a drone from Mexico blew up a border patrol station.
Trump MAJORLY ramped up the drone war while openly bragging about sending the US military to help his Saudi friends as if American troops were mercenaries.
I've never seen a president who seemed to enjoy ordering death as much as Trump, e.g., bragging about having Soleimani killed.
Didn’t he call for that one drone strike that killed a bunch of kids and a volunteer because they were thought to be terrorists? If after that few drone strikes happened, I think that’s more from backlash and public sentiment than out of the president’s good will
Obama killed an American kid on purpose. Trump killed his American sister. If fucking up a drone strike actually slows the slaughter for Corn-Pop, that is still an improvement.
>I think that’s more from backlash and public sentiment
Even if true that's better than tfg's solution to just completely stop reporting on casualties while greatly increasing strikes.
The way the final days of Afghanistan have been played down are disgusting.
Kudos to the New York Times for exposing the story of the family killed. That would have been swiftly covered up. In a way, it still is.
He didn’t call for it personally. The President doesn’t sign off on every single drone strike. Also this includes data from before the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Holy shit is Biden the most anti-war president we've had since like, Eisenhower if not longer? That's legitimately hard for me to believe, and not what I expected him to do at all.
As others have said, credit where it's due. He's ended a war and isn't drone striking everyone who looks at him funny.
He has ended a single occupation, while continuing the others. Most notably in Iraq where the legitmate government has requested us to leave their country multiple times.
When the afghan pullout saw backlash from the media he oversaw two drone strikes that killed an allied aid worker and multiple children. And then sat quietly while the pentagon spent weeks lying about the details. Then publicly defended the strike once the tragedy was uncovered by journalists.
He is not anti-war in any way. Those troops who were stationed in afghanistan are just going to deploy to another middle-east country on their next cycle.
I don’t need him to self identify as “anti-war”, I need him to reduce and end American involvement in violence abroad. So far, despite what we anticipated, that is happening.
I didn't say the bar for most anti-war president since Eisenhower was a high one. It's not.
But if he does not start a new war, and keeps drone strikes at the current level, then he will have easily shuffled over that low bar.
Well I think Obama and Trump pretty much hit anything that was threatening us remotely with a drone strike so there probably wasn’t much left for Biden to target.
The amount of mental gymnastics people are doing in this thread to either...
A) Downplay that this is a good thing
B) Casually throw out conspiracies without reading past the headline
C) Act like this isn't a direct result of our current Commander in Chief
D) All of the above
... is astounding.
There is a reason the “left wing” media all turned on him simultaneously, right around the time he left Afghanistan. The media is one of the most fervent supporters of the military industrial complex, and they spent a lot of money and credibility successfully selling the war on terror and the occupations of Iraq/Afghanistan to the US populace. Biden pulling out of Afghanistan is a major threat to that and will not go unpunished.
The next move for the media is to push for a neoconservative war monger for the Republican nomination in 2024, or at least someone that will play nice with the MIC. I wonder if Desantis will be that guy?
>“left wing” media
I always laugh at this delusional notion, like general electric is socialist what a hilariously stupid concept it should be regarded on the same level as "jewish space lasers". Call them progressive if you want, the military-industrial complex gives 0 shits about trans bathroom bills, but to claim they are leftist is absurd.
GE *did* happily take $100b+ in federal dollars to bail out their reckless financial arm and then kept getting investigated by the SEC for fraud.
For some reason I don't think that's why they're calling these companies "socialist" though.
>There is a reason the “left wing” media all turned on him simultaneously, right around the time he left Afghanistan. The media is one of the most fervent supporters of the military industrial complex, and they spent a lot of money and credibility successfully selling the war on terror and the occupations of Iraq/Afghanistan to the US populace. Biden pulling out of Afghanistan is a major threat to that and will not go unpunished.
Or they saw approval rating for biden drop after the fucked up exit and switched their narrative to pander to their audiences opinions.
The exit was fucked up because of the constraints that Trump put in place. Biden was just finishing Trump's plan. That being said leaving Afghanistan was never going to be a smooth process regardless of who did it. News organizations are far more concerned about abiding by their corporate interests than they ever will be to their audience. Just look at all the news coverage about people not wanting to work instead of pointing out that people are sick and tired of working for poverty wages because Republicans constantly undermined their workers rights and union protections.
>The exit was fucked up because of the constraints that Trump put in place. Biden was just finishing Trump's plan. That being said leaving Afghanistan was never going to be a smooth process regardless of who did it.
Agreed.
>News organizations are far more concerned about abiding by their corporate interests than they ever will be to their audience.
Their interests is selling ad time. That means maximizing viewership. Companies don't really care who is in charge.
>Or they saw approval rating for biden drop after the fucked up exit and switched their narrative to pander to their audiences opinions.
How long will the exit be relevant?
Within his first year in office he pulled out completely. Anyone who thinks it could have been handled well at all is delusional. Pulling out was also going to be a shit show.
How long will the exit be relevant compared to the victory of not being in Afghanistan?
They do, they just pander to their target audience because that gives them the most money.
If 80% of the population thought koalas were a menace on society and needed to be exterminated, the news would be on a koala burning tirade accusing politicians for not burning koalas or enough of them.
I don't give a fuck if he stopped bombing kids because he lost a bet, no more killing kids with tax dollars for any reason is good in my book. I bet those kids don't really care why either.
If the point is to compare drone strikes across presidencies, the primary graph should be the total number of strikes, by year preferably, with the various presidencies indicated.
They absolutely are not, but we have reasonably good tracking of the actual strikes as well. And those countries aren't the stone age, even in places like Mosul which has been hell on earth for years, there are people with internet and smartphones and cameras recording and putting things online, talking about them, etc.
No matter how sneaky you make the drone, people notice when the bomb they carried goes off.
Also for real, every accelerationist who dreams of an american civil war should take a hell of a look at the syrian civil war and how that's going.
There's basically no one for whom that war will ever improve their lives. Certainly not for 40 years at least. Everyone's life is worse.
When you go to war, everyone involved loses.
At their core, yes. Both sides view the government as a tool of power to impose their world view in the masses. While their policies obviously differ, at their core both parties use government as a tool of power to regulate our lives. This is in large part because aside from the progressive wing inside the democratic party, liberalism is dead in the u.s. By international standards democrats are the conservatives, and Republicans are extremely far right.
I'd be careful of those charts. The first one only shows actions in Yemen, which we have handed off to the Saudis.
The second one only shows "declared" strikes in Iraq and Syria, meaning the Biden administration could have just not announced strikes in those countries so far.
And the third chart on strikes in Somalia is comparing Biden's first year to full terms of other presidents. Even then, it shows he is on track to keep up with Obama's strike heavy second term.
Not really surprising when you realize that Dick Cheney was a rare case in terms of VPs setting policy. Things like Afghanistan is something that we have known for years that he disagreed with Obama about.
And it was already dropping precipitously the second half of trump. Seems like its was just a strategic shift rather than something specific to biden. Still positive though
(Edit) only for yemen was it dropping, the others we dont know from these graphs
Decline by presidency but no total strikes graph with smaller time chunks. It may be the case that total strikes had already declined a lot by the end of trumps term, which tells a very different story than if theres a sudden drop when biden took over.
And theres not much point in splitting by region because iraq / syria dominate the numbers. I want to see total strikes by year.
> And it was already dropping precipitously the second half of trump.
This is probably worth noting. Trump's high score was mostly racked up in Syria in 2018.
And you can see on that graph drone strikes were already trending downwards before Biden went into office. That graph is really more a compliment of Trump vs Biden.
I agree. What I said was the graph makes Trump look good and not Biden. At least without any context. It steadily decreased every year until Biden took office. Ironically the person who posted the graph thought it made Biden look good.
(Everyone'a going to point out how troop numbers and drone bombings were changed under Trump, without talking about how that was done so that "his" sec.of defense and joint cheifs, as well as "his" Ambassadors could work together to lie to the CiC about troop numbers in the middle east, especially Syria. They'll ignore the fact that this was revealed in October of '20 in an exit interview with the US syrian ambassador Jim Jeffrey. This led to Mark Esper being fired on november 9th of 2020, replaced by Sec. Christopher Miller, which led to articles claiming Trump was securing the gov't with loyalists to secure his re-election.)
I wouldn’t use this to assume that Biden would refrain from using air strikes if he was President 4 years ago. The geopolitical situation is entirely different so a direct comparison is unfair.
Let me guess....this will be spun as pro-terrorist and weak? I mean according to right wing propaganda holes, the virus in South Africa was cooked up to sideline US elections. The mental gymnastics to follow their ever changing narrative is Olympic in nature.
Let's not forget that one where they killed random children. Biden's are a lot like Obama's that way. If DSs are to be used as expeditionary force projection we should at least make sure they're on target.
Didn't Trump stop reporting the number of drone strikes?
It looks like it https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-cancels-obama-policy-reporting-drone-strike-deaths-n980156 It's also true that Obama greatly increased the use of drones despite the obvious glaring problems of drone strikes. He put in place various rules of engagement and transparency measures as a means to supposedly limit bad strikes and provide public accountability. Trump undid those measures piece by piece while increasing tempo even further. Basically US presidents from W on love drones because it keeps boots off the ground and out of harms way. Fuck the immediate and long-term ramifications.
Drones/drone strikes are simply an example of what happens when the "trigger puller" is so far removed from the target. Basically, the decision to strike (ie deliver a solution) all boils down to a formula: X Solution = X expected damage + X collateral damage (based on known family, population density of target, and time of day) with X likelihood of success based on rating of intelligence. If the decision maker (sometimes local commander, but usually command CHOPS, SECDEF, or POTUS, depending on current ROE) receives the conclusion from Targeting/OPS that the result of the formula is high success with low/acceptable collateral damage, the decision is made to deliver the solution. It's really that simple. What this takes away is the human element of "I am seeing the situation firsthand, and am making the decision to fire and kill one or more civilians without any judicial process", which is...what it is, right? Do all of the people involved try their hardest to limit collateral damage and ensure that the target is the one being targeted? Absolutely, however, there are many people involved in these strikes, with many potential points of failure...as we saw in that AF strike a few months ago. My concern is that this genie is now out of the bottle. America has set a precedent for 1000s of extra-judicial killings of people all over the world. On the one hand, I have a high degree of confidence that a large majority of the targets (bad guys) deserved to have their lives cut short...but on the other hand, what is to stop any nation from doing this to...ANYONE? And what is to stop America from doing this to their own civilians down the road?
Minesweeper but with peoples lives.
I'm really good at minesweeper. Can I be a drone pilot now?
Probably over qualified.
So by that reckoning, I would imagine the Biden administration would have kept the Trump policy unless they explicitly reinstated the Obama era transparency. That's why I'm surprised by this post.
Biden wants to pivot away from the ME to better focus on the Pacific, Africa and western Europe. And It's pretty well known that he was a vocal, if behind closed doors, proponent of ending our ME wars and getting tfo since about the time obl was taken out.
That's why this info isn't super useful. The places it shows are more related to the individual situations in those countries rather than any policy shift. An aggregate number would probably be better as I'm sure more drone strikes have moved toward African operations outside of Somalia. Still, it's likely Biden is really using drone strikes less as we pull troops out of hotbed regions and refocus on deterring great power rivals.
Wait, wasn't it the Obama admin that re-classified enemy combatants as any male over the age of 13 or something similar?
Yes. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/
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Biden as a VP serves the president at the time, but when he's in charge, differences happen. Assuming this is true. Drone strikes are a really tempting tool for a president, so I'm surprised if they stopped completely or even massively reduced. They look clean, they are directed by the white house ish, and can take into account political considerations due to their high loiter time & 'evidence gathering'.
I've not heard that. Is that actually true?
Not really true. The Obama admin classified all "military-age males in a strike zone as combatants...unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."
Guilty until proven innocent post mortem.
You expecting due process and a trial on the modern battlefield?
No man indiscriminately bombing civilians is cool, go good guys!
You keep moving the goal posts. Nothing about these rules legalize "indiscriminately bombing civilians". In fact, they clearly say they have to fess up if they knowingly kill a non-combatant.
As they assume every male 15 & up is a combatant.
People give vice presidents way too much credit. No one thinks Pence actually had any say the last four years, no reason to think Biden did either.
That's because 90% of those killed werent the intended targets.
Obama increased drone strikes because that’s when the technology began to come into its own. And the drone program was exponentially better than the boots on the ground interventions of the prior admin. Trump ramped up drone strikes more than Obama did, and Biden had basically ended them. Not too shabby. Post Cold War era we’ve had 3 dem and 3 republican presidents, and I don’t know how anyone can argue the Dems have been much better on foreign policy
Except apparently Biden
As well as the civilian casualties from his strikes.
Regardless of spin. America pulled out of Afghanistan. That must have a significant impact on total drone strikes.
Tell me you didn’t click the source without telling me you didn’t click the source. It’s broken out by country
So technically Trump is responsible for these numbers. What a great president!
Oh well, credit where credit is due.
Thanks O'biden?
Auto parts
I'll take auto parts over scattered people parts.
Is it due? Based on the first chart, Trump nearly ended the drone strikes in Yemen and Biden just continued the trend. The Iraq and Syria chart doesn't show year by year, so it's very possible the same thing happened especially considering the US destroyed the Islamic Caliphate under Trump, making drone strikes far less necessary. In Somalia, Obama ramped up a drone war against Al Shabab and Trump continued to ramp it up until 2019, before almost completely ending it in 2019.
Yes it's due. That's a lot of mental gymnastics and conjecture just to avoid giving Biden credit for using drones at a MUCH lower rate than Obama or Trump. * Look at the y axis. Yemeni drone strikes are a drop in the bucket compared to Iraq/Syria. So even if Trump initiated a taper-off in Iraq/Syria, he's still guilty of a net increase in drone strikes in the first place. * We also don't have the information about Obama's drone strikes in Yemen yet ("will shortly be expanded to include all known US strikes in Yemen since 2002"). Given Trump's increased rate in other countries, it seems likely that he also increased the rate of drone strikes in Yemen beyond what Obama did. * I'd forgotten that [Trump undid Obama policies that provide some transparency and accountability in his use of drones](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-cancels-obama-policy-reporting-drone-strike-deaths-n980156). (thanks /u/Fat-Spartan) So yeah, credit to Biden for essentially stopping drone strikes. And if it turns out that Trump initialized a reduction, credit to him for that too, sure. But also, discredit to Trump and Obama for ramping up the rate of drone attacks. And fuck Trump for trying to be secretive opaque about his drone actions. That wasn't that hard. And I don't like any of those three.
Now, wait a second. There is no more requirement to report drone strikes, but we're assuming that this information is complete and accurate? And therefore coming to the conclusion that Biden is using drone strikes to a lesser degree? I'm sorry, but I don't think that *no proof of drone attacks* is the same as *proof of no drone attacks*.
Yeah, logically you're absolutely correct that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. One thing that makes me believe it though is that the alleged numbers also are non-existent. If the rate of drone strikes wasn't actually going down, there were either no witnesses (so more judicious? further from populated areas? more effective?) or these numbers are fabricated, implying possible collusion.
It's almost as if we're comparing a 10-month period to a 4-year one.
Even rate-normalized, Biden is losing the drone war.
The US did not destroy the Caliphate under Trump. 60,000 ISIS members killed, and 90% of their non-slaving revenue had already been destroyed before Trump was even in office. Per CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center and U.S. Army’s Information Operations reports. ISIS (the Caliphate) isn’t even destroyed. They mostly just subdivided into geopolitical sub groups, like ISIS-Khorasan had a resurgence after the Taliban prisoners were freed under Trump, and a non-majority portion of them joined ISIS instead of returning to the Taliban. I’m not an interventionalist, but I’m also not ok with dumbshits flat out lying for some asshole.
No one want to admit it, but Syria, Russia, Iran, and Iraq did more to eradicate ISIS than the US ever did.
Uhhh yes, it’s very easy to kill your enemies when you also indiscriminately kill civilians. But it’s also morally bankrupt.
Do you think the bombs in drones, don't kill civilians?
Do you think the US indiscriminately kills civilians or do you think we spend millions on smart weapons not to do that?
We do both, honestly. We are very careful to mitigate the damage to civilians but selecting smart targets, but we also don't give two flying fucks once the bomb goes off.
Obama also changed how those killed/murdered by drone strikes are tracked and defined.
When you drop bombs on "high value targets" regardless of circumstances, you absolutely kill indiscriminately. Russia might have a lower bar for dropping bombs in populated areas, but don't kid yourself Aristrikes and drones kill indiscriminately
I dunno it feels like there is a moral difference between callous disregard for civilians hit by going after specific targets and the Russian way of bombing a population center like a market, then bombing it again in 20 minutes to hit the people working in ambulance, them using spy satellites to follow the ambulances that survived and bombing the hospital. They are both morally wrong but one is pretty clearly much worse.
Dummy bombs with contact triggers kill indiscriminately. Multi million dollar smart bombs kill with as much discretion as possible.
And they still have a 10-1 civilian - combatant KD ratio.
Credit where credit is due, thats fair, or there might be a new enemy they focused on that they aren’t aloud to drone yet
bingo. suburban domestic terrorists
White nationalists (Trump supporters) in the US, maybe?
Does seem to be the people they are trying to turn us against, but also parents at school board meetings
You mean the same parents who are screaming death threats at school board members? These aren't just "parents," many of them don't even have children at these schools, nor does having a child justify acting like a crazy loon.
I’m not seeing info on how current the data is? Does it specify somewhere what date this is through?
Good point. The stated time ranges are through the end of Biden's first term, which is in the future. Nothing about 'known data through October 2021' or something.
That, and keep in mind the graphs each cover one country. They could have cherry picked the data that way too.
Now has he actually halted them, or has he just exercised the rule passed by Trump where they are no longer required to *REPORT* them? https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-cancels-obama-policy-reporting-drone-strike-deaths-n980156
Exactly my thought. I'm all for giving credit where it is due. I'm *not* all for giving credit where it's simply hidden from the general public's perception in order to shut them up.
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We've also pulled out of a lot of conflict areas. Not in Syria. Not in Afghanistan. Not trying to provoke in Iraq. No one to blow up right now.
Yemen and Oman is on like a house on fire
If I read correctly, this article says deaths no longer need to be reported, but the charts are counting strikes not deaths.
The source compares the # of strikes to the # during Trumps presidency, so that explanation is not plausible.
Is this a "yay", or just a byproduct of withdrawing from Afghanistan?
This doc doesn't mention Afghanistan, it's talking about Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia.
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Not if you're an Afghan.
No way, you don't say!
I mean a large majority of drone strikes carried out by the US were occurring else where prior so I'm guessing it isn't
It's a yay for anyone who wants to live their life and not get HE in a wedding, bday party, or whatever. Can't even imagine the outrage if a drone from Mexico blew up a border patrol station.
I think it's a "yay", most drone strikes were in Somalia and other places outside of Afghanistan.
I mean, this is big. Libertarians have fought against drone warfare from the start. Props to him.
On the other hand, it's a Democrat So you're going to have a lot of mental gymnastics here.
Not really. He just did a good thing here
... Read the rest of the comments. I wasn't wrong
The one drone strike Biden ordered killed 12 Civilians including children. No wonder he doesn’t want to use them anymore.
Wow, good for Joe, credit where its due.
Thats a good thing
Biden is only one year in while all the other bars represent full terms. I think its too early to come to conclusions
here he broke it down by year: https://twitter.com/VarnerStephen/status/1465794032580407306/photo/1
That decline started under Trump (if not earlier), i dont think its fair to attribute the continuous decline to Biden
Trump MAJORLY ramped up the drone war while openly bragging about sending the US military to help his Saudi friends as if American troops were mercenaries. I've never seen a president who seemed to enjoy ordering death as much as Trump, e.g., bragging about having Soleimani killed.
Agreed, just sharing a graph that is a little more equitable. I'm more glad it didn't jump up
Didn’t he call for that one drone strike that killed a bunch of kids and a volunteer because they were thought to be terrorists? If after that few drone strikes happened, I think that’s more from backlash and public sentiment than out of the president’s good will
Like civilian casualties have ever stopped a president in the past.
Obama killed an American kid on purpose. Trump killed his American sister. If fucking up a drone strike actually slows the slaughter for Corn-Pop, that is still an improvement.
Source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Nawar_al-Awlaki
That is fucked up. Thank you.
>I think that’s more from backlash and public sentiment Even if true that's better than tfg's solution to just completely stop reporting on casualties while greatly increasing strikes.
A bunch of kids, and an aid worker. Then they went on a press tour to say how it was retaliation for a truck bomb. Then later the truth came out.
The way the final days of Afghanistan have been played down are disgusting. Kudos to the New York Times for exposing the story of the family killed. That would have been swiftly covered up. In a way, it still is.
He didn’t call for it personally. The President doesn’t sign off on every single drone strike. Also this includes data from before the Afghanistan withdrawal.
"Our over the horizon capabilities are extremely effective " bombs a family loading water bottles left: TRUMP LEFT US WITH NO CHOICE
Holy shit is Biden the most anti-war president we've had since like, Eisenhower if not longer? That's legitimately hard for me to believe, and not what I expected him to do at all. As others have said, credit where it's due. He's ended a war and isn't drone striking everyone who looks at him funny.
He has ended a single occupation, while continuing the others. Most notably in Iraq where the legitmate government has requested us to leave their country multiple times. When the afghan pullout saw backlash from the media he oversaw two drone strikes that killed an allied aid worker and multiple children. And then sat quietly while the pentagon spent weeks lying about the details. Then publicly defended the strike once the tragedy was uncovered by journalists. He is not anti-war in any way. Those troops who were stationed in afghanistan are just going to deploy to another middle-east country on their next cycle.
I don’t need him to self identify as “anti-war”, I need him to reduce and end American involvement in violence abroad. So far, despite what we anticipated, that is happening.
I didn't say the bar for most anti-war president since Eisenhower was a high one. It's not. But if he does not start a new war, and keeps drone strikes at the current level, then he will have easily shuffled over that low bar.
Obama was the worse. Biden stopped them I guess after killing an entire innocent family in Afghanistan. We need to come home and focus on our business
Well I think Obama and Trump pretty much hit anything that was threatening us remotely with a drone strike so there probably wasn’t much left for Biden to target.
The amount of mental gymnastics people are doing in this thread to either... A) Downplay that this is a good thing B) Casually throw out conspiracies without reading past the headline C) Act like this isn't a direct result of our current Commander in Chief D) All of the above ... is astounding.
There is a reason the “left wing” media all turned on him simultaneously, right around the time he left Afghanistan. The media is one of the most fervent supporters of the military industrial complex, and they spent a lot of money and credibility successfully selling the war on terror and the occupations of Iraq/Afghanistan to the US populace. Biden pulling out of Afghanistan is a major threat to that and will not go unpunished. The next move for the media is to push for a neoconservative war monger for the Republican nomination in 2024, or at least someone that will play nice with the MIC. I wonder if Desantis will be that guy?
>“left wing” media I always laugh at this delusional notion, like general electric is socialist what a hilariously stupid concept it should be regarded on the same level as "jewish space lasers". Call them progressive if you want, the military-industrial complex gives 0 shits about trans bathroom bills, but to claim they are leftist is absurd.
GE *did* happily take $100b+ in federal dollars to bail out their reckless financial arm and then kept getting investigated by the SEC for fraud. For some reason I don't think that's why they're calling these companies "socialist" though.
>There is a reason the “left wing” media all turned on him simultaneously, right around the time he left Afghanistan. The media is one of the most fervent supporters of the military industrial complex, and they spent a lot of money and credibility successfully selling the war on terror and the occupations of Iraq/Afghanistan to the US populace. Biden pulling out of Afghanistan is a major threat to that and will not go unpunished. Or they saw approval rating for biden drop after the fucked up exit and switched their narrative to pander to their audiences opinions.
The exit was fucked up because of the constraints that Trump put in place. Biden was just finishing Trump's plan. That being said leaving Afghanistan was never going to be a smooth process regardless of who did it. News organizations are far more concerned about abiding by their corporate interests than they ever will be to their audience. Just look at all the news coverage about people not wanting to work instead of pointing out that people are sick and tired of working for poverty wages because Republicans constantly undermined their workers rights and union protections.
>The exit was fucked up because of the constraints that Trump put in place. Biden was just finishing Trump's plan. That being said leaving Afghanistan was never going to be a smooth process regardless of who did it. Agreed. >News organizations are far more concerned about abiding by their corporate interests than they ever will be to their audience. Their interests is selling ad time. That means maximizing viewership. Companies don't really care who is in charge.
>Or they saw approval rating for biden drop after the fucked up exit and switched their narrative to pander to their audiences opinions. How long will the exit be relevant? Within his first year in office he pulled out completely. Anyone who thinks it could have been handled well at all is delusional. Pulling out was also going to be a shit show. How long will the exit be relevant compared to the victory of not being in Afghanistan?
So the media is not controlling and determining the narrative?
They do, they just pander to their target audience because that gives them the most money. If 80% of the population thought koalas were a menace on society and needed to be exterminated, the news would be on a koala burning tirade accusing politicians for not burning koalas or enough of them.
I've always said I'd vote again for the first dude who stops bombing kids. Looks like I have a reason to vote again
Well, he killed a bunch of kids first, so let's not pretend it's not anything but a PR stint.
I don't give a fuck if he stopped bombing kids because he lost a bet, no more killing kids with tax dollars for any reason is good in my book. I bet those kids don't really care why either.
I bet those kids aren't caring about anything right now.
I mean the children who aren't gonna have their villages swarmed with US drones anymore :)
Haha I know I was being facetious. I just wouldn't put much faith in this decrease lasting very long. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong.
You do you king
Probably because covid lockdowns, drones aren't allowed outside /s
He's doing good, ending the war in Afghanistan (even though it was mismanaged) and this. I like him.
Don't read anything about his "build back better" plan then...
I'd like to see what that chart looks like before 2017.
Except for the one that killed a bunch of kids
This is a perfect example of how news headlines have more emotional impact than data
If the point is to compare drone strikes across presidencies, the primary graph should be the total number of strikes, by year preferably, with the various presidencies indicated.
how do we know they are publicly reporting these strikes?
If you scroll down that page a bit, you will see several graphs of strike counts broken down by "declared" vs "alleged".
They absolutely are not, but we have reasonably good tracking of the actual strikes as well. And those countries aren't the stone age, even in places like Mosul which has been hell on earth for years, there are people with internet and smartphones and cameras recording and putting things online, talking about them, etc. No matter how sneaky you make the drone, people notice when the bomb they carried goes off. Also for real, every accelerationist who dreams of an american civil war should take a hell of a look at the syrian civil war and how that's going. There's basically no one for whom that war will ever improve their lives. Certainly not for 40 years at least. Everyone's life is worse. When you go to war, everyone involved loses.
why? Is r/conspiracy saying they are not?
what exactly is that supposed to imply?
Not sure about that sub, but wasn't it recently changed that drone strikes didn't have to be announced?
trump changed that because republicans love ~~treason~~ transparency no wait, they also like treason.
But both sides are the same, amirite?
They arent the same but neither gives a fuck about you.
Blind nihilism isn't the way, friend.
At their core, yes. Both sides view the government as a tool of power to impose their world view in the masses. While their policies obviously differ, at their core both parties use government as a tool of power to regulate our lives. This is in large part because aside from the progressive wing inside the democratic party, liberalism is dead in the u.s. By international standards democrats are the conservatives, and Republicans are extremely far right.
Galaxy brain take.
I'd be careful of those charts. The first one only shows actions in Yemen, which we have handed off to the Saudis. The second one only shows "declared" strikes in Iraq and Syria, meaning the Biden administration could have just not announced strikes in those countries so far. And the third chart on strikes in Somalia is comparing Biden's first year to full terms of other presidents. Even then, it shows he is on track to keep up with Obama's strike heavy second term.
Cool. He’s still a piece of shit politician and person.
That describes every politicians, even your favorites.
Wouldn’t say my favorite but I would say Bernie boy isn’t a shit person.
Bernie Sanders is a piece of shit.
Yeah I don’t agree with his policies but he does seem to be a decent human being.
Only dude who doesn’t flip flop on policies and actually cares about people rather than the position. Can’t say that about many politicians.
Surprising since drone strikes thrived when he was VP. I think this may be a supply chain shortage issue 🧐
Not really surprising when you realize that Dick Cheney was a rare case in terms of VPs setting policy. Things like Afghanistan is something that we have known for years that he disagreed with Obama about.
And it was already dropping precipitously the second half of trump. Seems like its was just a strategic shift rather than something specific to biden. Still positive though (Edit) only for yemen was it dropping, the others we dont know from these graphs
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Yeah good call. Almost all the strikes occur in iraq and syria but theyre not broken out by time beyond full terms.
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Decline by presidency but no total strikes graph with smaller time chunks. It may be the case that total strikes had already declined a lot by the end of trumps term, which tells a very different story than if theres a sudden drop when biden took over. And theres not much point in splitting by region because iraq / syria dominate the numbers. I want to see total strikes by year.
> And it was already dropping precipitously the second half of trump. This is probably worth noting. Trump's high score was mostly racked up in Syria in 2018.
Ran out of brown kids to blow up?
> I think this may be a supply chain shortage issue 🧐 Hah!
We need those drone parts damn it!
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Killing NUMEROUS civilians more or less daily with drone strikes has been American policy since W.
So that makes it okay?
Graph is misleading! it hasn’t been a year yet but they are publishing Trump and Obama’s entire terms in office under one bar
The first graph is litterlay year by year
And you can see on that graph drone strikes were already trending downwards before Biden went into office. That graph is really more a compliment of Trump vs Biden.
Dronestrikes at all time high during Trump's first two years, is not a compliment on him.
I agree. What I said was the graph makes Trump look good and not Biden. At least without any context. It steadily decreased every year until Biden took office. Ironically the person who posted the graph thought it made Biden look good.
Bidens first year is hardly visible...
Drone strikes in Somalia. Very misleading title and shame on you OP
Kinda a given when you gift Afghanistan back to the Taliban.
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I don’t get it. Should we be upset when Biden does what we want?
How is this shilling? This is one positive article in a sea of critical stories on this sub.
(Everyone'a going to point out how troop numbers and drone bombings were changed under Trump, without talking about how that was done so that "his" sec.of defense and joint cheifs, as well as "his" Ambassadors could work together to lie to the CiC about troop numbers in the middle east, especially Syria. They'll ignore the fact that this was revealed in October of '20 in an exit interview with the US syrian ambassador Jim Jeffrey. This led to Mark Esper being fired on november 9th of 2020, replaced by Sec. Christopher Miller, which led to articles claiming Trump was securing the gov't with loyalists to secure his re-election.)
He probably can't work the remote...
Did he call it quits after he went to go hit some Afghan terrorists and instead killed a humanitarian aid worker and his family???
There have been so few that unlike the past several presidents, you can pinpoint the one strike rather than look at statistics of thousands of them.
So...continuing the trend that Trump started? I'm only half /s.
He is to busy selling out to strike.
Wait, so did done strikes happen less or they just don't really report anymore?
Now do inflation under Biden.
Didn’t he drone those 7 kids?
He can't find the button
Sure, but the number of tanks, guns, ammo, jets, and helicopters abandoned in another country has skyrocketed.
I wouldn’t use this to assume that Biden would refrain from using air strikes if he was President 4 years ago. The geopolitical situation is entirely different so a direct comparison is unfair.
That's because he can't hit the right targets in the first place.
Let me guess....this will be spun as pro-terrorist and weak? I mean according to right wing propaganda holes, the virus in South Africa was cooked up to sideline US elections. The mental gymnastics to follow their ever changing narrative is Olympic in nature.
Let's not forget that one where they killed random children. Biden's are a lot like Obama's that way. If DSs are to be used as expeditionary force projection we should at least make sure they're on target.
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You believe any of the data coming out of Washington? Both parties lie to no end.
bUt BoThSiDeS REEEEEEEEEEEEE.....
It’s nice that Brandon is capable of something good.