Part of the Series
Human Rights and Global Wrongs
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump advocated killing innocent families of suspected terrorists. “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he declared. Besides the immorality of killing innocents, the targeting of civilians violates the Geneva Conventions.
The George W. Bush administration unlawfully detained and tortured suspected terrorists. Determined not to send more suspects to Guantánamo, Barack Obama’s administration illegally assassinated them with drones and other methods, killing many civilians in the process.
Now the Trump administration is killing record numbers of civilians and weakening the already-flimsy targeted killing rules Obama put in place.
To read more stories like this, visit Human Rights and Global Wrongs.
In 2013, the Obama administration promulgated a set of requirements regarding targeted killings “outside areas of active hostilities” in a Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG).
The New York Times reported on September 21, 2017, that Trump’s national security advisers proposed watering down Obama’s PPG. These recommendations to Trump are called Principles, Standards and Procedures, or PSP. On October 29, the Times reported, “Two government officials said Mr. Trump had recently signed his new rules for such kill-or-capture counterterrorism operations, without major changes” to the PSP.
Obama mounted both “personality strikes” — aimed at named suspected terrorists — and “signature strikes” — in which all military-age men in an area of suspicious activity could be killed. Signature strikes are often called “crowd killings” because those perpetrating the attacks don’t even know whom they are killing. Trump has presumably continued these two types of strikes.
The PPG required that the target pose a continuing, imminent threat to US persons. There is no indication that Trump’s new rules have changed this requirement. Moreover, even under Obama, a 2011 Department of Justice white paper said that a US citizen could be killed even when there was no “clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” Obama presumably set a lower bar for killing non-citizens.
Obama’s rules also mandated near certainty that an identified “high-value terrorist” or other lawful terrorist target is present before taking a strike. One official told the Times that the administration “reduced the required level of confidence that the intended target was present in a strike zone from ‘near certainty’ to ‘reasonable certainty.'” Signature strikes don’t target named individuals. Under the new Trump rules, targets would no longer be limited to high-value terrorists, but could also include foot soldiers with no leadership roles.
During the Obama administration, targeting decisions were made at the highest levels of government and the president reportedly had the final say about who would be assassinated. Under the PSP, however, these determinations would not require vetting by top administration officials, and could be made by commanders in the field.
Trump advisers recommended maintaining the PPG’s requirement of near certainty that civilians would not be injured or killed, and the administration agreed, according to the Times.
In spite of the PPG, the Obama administration killed many civilians. Obama’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reported killing between 64 and 116 non-combatants “outside areas of active hostilities” from January 2009 to December 2015. That encompassed Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. Civilian deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were not included. And even for the included countries, the ODNI figures could be low: The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimated between 380 and 801 civilians killed outside areas of active hostilities during the same period.
Even before relaxing the rules, drone strikes and other targeted killings outside areas of active hostilities have already increased from one every 5.4 days during the Obama administration, to one every 1.25 days under Trump, Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations reported.
Trump granted increased authority to the CIA and the Pentagon to conduct drone strikes. He also loosened the targeted killing rules in large areas of Yemen and Somalia by designating them “areas of active hostilities.”
In March alone, the Trump administration killed 1,000 civilians in Iraq and Syria, according to Airwars, a non-governmental organization that monitors civilian casualties from airstrikes.
We can expect to see increasing numbers of civilian deaths as Trump continues the “war on terror” he inherited from his predecessors. Since Bush launched this war after 9/11, we have become more vulnerable to terrorism. Civilian killings heighten anger toward the United States and lead to stepped-up recruitment of those who would do us harm.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 182 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy