President Obama is set to handover his targeted assassinations program to the administration of Donald Trump, without altering its controversial rules.
The White House has declined to change the guidelines to drone killings and airstrikes abroad ahead of January’s inauguration, according to a report published Tuesday by The Guardian.
The newspaper noted that the current administration “considers its standards for drone strikes to be scrupulous.” The outline is known as the May 22, 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG).
The White House claims it has killed 2,600 “terrorists” through its targeted killings, and has only admitted to causing up to 116 civilian casualties.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, however, there have been up to 745 civilian casualties from President Obama’s targeted killings in three countries: Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
President-elect Trump, in a few months time, will have an opportunity to increase this macabre body count, using rules written by his liberal predecessor.
There will also likely be a range of countries available for these operations to take place, based on the groundwork laid by Obama. As The Guardian also noted, US drones are allowed to operate in remote places across the world–notably in Africa–with missions being flown “in airfields from Tunisia to Niger to Cameroon.”
The 2013 PPG was not released by the Obama administration until it was compelled to publish parts of it, in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
It showed the Obama administration allowing itself to make fatal mistakes by permitting “extraordinary circumstances” in which civilians may be killed our wounded. The CIA and the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command aren’t even required to know who is on the receiving end of a missile.
“When using lethal action, employ all reasonably available resources to ascertain the identity of the target,” the 2013 PPG states. The two organizations are only supposed to have “near certainty that the target present.”
American Citizens abroad are not exempt from being targeted for killing by the US government either, under Barack Obama’s framework. In 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American extremist preacher living in Yemen, was executed by the Obama administration. More controversially, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a separate strike.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder said the teenager had not been targeted. The Justice Department is supposed to conduct “legal analysis” according to the PPG, to ensure the premeditated killings are done “consistent with the laws and constitution.”
