Originally Posted by
Alfster
Haha..stopping the reporting of drone strikes somehow makes him peaceful? The bombs didn't stop, they just stopped reporting.
Yet the report from Brown University shows that under Trump there had been an escalation in warfare, through the use of air strikes, including from drones, and they had led to an increase in civilian deaths in Afghanistan.
In Trump's first year of office, his administration eased two restrictions for drone strikes: removing the limitation that only allowed strikes on high-ranking militants and removing the previous vetting process for drone strikes.
The US also relaxed a restriction on its rules of engagement so that it no longer had to be in direct contact with enemy forces to conduct air strikes.
"The consequences of the relaxed rules of engagement were immediate," the Cost of War project's report said.
This trend exists across the Middle East as well, with the US repeatedly using drone strikes in Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.
In 2017, drone strikes in Yemen increased by 300 percent from the previous year, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The number of drone strikes in Somalia also increased significantly under Trump.
Still, the full picture of these attacks is not clear. In March, the US Central Command stopped publishing monthly summaries of its air strikes in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, rights groups have criticised the United States Africa Command (US Africom) for failing to properly record civilian deaths in air strikes in Somalia.
Airwars, a UK-based war monitor, found that at least 86 civilians had benn killed in Yemen in 2020 as a direct result of US air strikes. The US has not declared a drone strike in Yemen since 2019.
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