No. of Recommendations: 14
"We elect a president who has access to classified intelligence to make these kinds of judgements against foreign adversaries,
"Barack Obama significantly expanded the U.S. drone strike program during his presidency, overseeing around 563 strikes primarily in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. This approach aimed to target terrorist threats while minimizing American military casualties, but it also raised concerns about civilian casualties and the ethical implications of targeted killings."
I had no problem with Obama authorizing these strikes without a trial or court order either." - BHM
I was waiting for a Trump cultist to make this false comparison to the Bush/Obama drone strikes.
It is a false comparison for at least a few reasons:
For one, it was congress who authorized the drone strikes on terrorists when they voted to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in order to kill terrorists and other non-sovereign, non-uniformed combatants. Blowing up boats in the Caribbean carrying drugs would not fall under that authorization. At best you can twist words to make an absurd case that justifies this, but it would still be absurd and clearly not what congress was voting for when they authorized the use of force on non-sovereign, non-uniformed terrorists in the War on Terror. Drug runners are not terrorists. Pure and simple. It is quite telling that Trump has to misuse words and twist their meanings in order to even absurdly justify this.
For two, those targeted for drone strikes were directly responsible for actions that had already directly and clearly harmed Americans. The drone targets had either directly worked on terrorist plots to directly harm Americans or were in organizations that were repeatedly and directly firing weapons at American soldiers. The organizations that Trump is using the military against are at best only indirectly harming Americans. Yes, drugs are bad Nancy Reagan, but we do not allow police officers to shoot a person just because they are carrying drugs. Law enforcement can only use force if there is a direct threat to another person. Otherwise Trump could blow up a snack cake factory in Mexico because fatty snack cakes are indirectly causing Americans harm through heart disease. Even you Mike are not stupid enough to try and justify that (though you never fail to surprise me).
For three, congress was generally kept appraised of how the target of those drone strikes were determined. Maybe only generally and not specifically, but at least a few select members of both parties in congress were briefed on who was making the decisions on when and where to fire from drones and what thresholds they were using to insure the targets were who the targeter thought they were and what they had done. So far, the Trump administration has not briefed anyone in congress at all.
