Many fear that Guantánamo could stay open as US President Barack Obama’s term ends. An even more worrisome concern relates to the drone warfare, another of Obama troubling legacy, especially after last week's targeted assassination of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour.
Gitmo was opened by Obama's predecessor George W. Bush. It was also Bush who started the use of drones to kill suspected terrorists. But Obama, through his many acts of omission and commission, has come to be associated with both in public mind.
He very much wanted but could not close the offshore detention facility, but the story is different when it comes to the other Bush-era policy: The summary killing of suspected militants and terrorists, usually by drone.
Obama hasn’t just expanded the number of drone strikes but also their geographical extent. It took only three days for the new commander-in-chief to order his first covert drone strike. On Jan. 23, 2009, a CIA drone flattened a house in Pakistan’s tribal region. At least nine civilians died, most of them from one family. The lone survivor, a 14-year-old boy, had shrapnel wounds in his stomach. He lost one eye. Later that day, the CIA leveled another house killing between five and ten people.
A week after Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize, a missile slammed into a hamlet in Yemen killing 41 civilians including 21 children and five pregnant women. This was the biggest single loss of civilian life from a US strike for more than a year in that country. On Oct. 30, 2006, at least 68 children were killed when CIA drones destroyed a madrasa in the Badger area of Pakistan’s tribal belt. A convoy taking a Yemeni bride to her wedding came under attack on Dec. 12, 2013. “For the most part they (drone strikes) have been very precise, precision strikes against Al-Qaeda,” Obama said in a speech in January 2012.
Does it mean the US president has not heard of almost 300 wedding celebrants who were killed by US air power between late 2001 and the end of 2013? They were not Al-Qaeda operatives, but innocent people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time just like the taxi driver who was killed along with Monsieur. Any way, with last week's strike, Obama's drone policy is once again coming under greater scrutiny. The Obama administration has promised to release its own estimate of the death toll for combatants and noncombatants outside of active war zones.
But what we already know is disturbing enough. New documents indicate that a staggering number of these “targeted killings” affect far more people than just their targets.
According to a report from The Intercept, an online publication, nearly 90 percent of people killed in drone strikes in Afghanistan “were not the intended targets” of the attacks. The Guardian newspaper has reviewed drone strikes in Pakistan and has concluded that 28 civilians are killed as collateral damage for the death of each certifiable “bad guy” target. This means all those policy, constitutional and moral questions raised by human rights groups about the drone program can no longer be ignored.
A related question is what will become of the program under the next president, Republican or Democrat. Hillary Clinton, Democrat, has stoutly defended the drone program inside the White House as secretary of state while Republican Donald Trump has already promised to commit war crimes. This means the next president can change or expand them on a whim. It looks that Obama who campaigned and won election on an anti-war platform and won Nobel Peace Prize will leave office setting his successors a terrifying precedent. They will inherit a sweeping power to use lethal force not only against suspected terrorists and militants but ordinary folks who venture out of their home to participate in a marriage celebration or to join a funeral procession.
