Jump to content

Reality vs Idealism For Those Who Stood On the Sidelines..


Recommended Posts

4 hours ago, SnowRider said:

The outrage over Obama's bombs and the new reality of Dump:

 

Donald Trump's Presidency Is Only 10 Months Old, But New Data About His Airstrikes Is Alarming

By Steven Feldstein  On 10/13/17 at 8:39 AM 

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

When President Donald Trump took office in January, it was unclear whether the bombast from his campaign would translate into an aggressive new strategy against terrorism. At campaign rallies he pledged to “bomb the hell” out of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS). He openly mused about killing the families of terrorists, a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits violence against noncombatants.

Ten months into his presidency, a clearer picture is emerging. The data indicate several alarming trends.

Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now

According to research from the nonprofit monitoring group Airwars, the first seven months of the Trump administration have already resulted in more civilian deaths than under the entirety of the Obama administration. Airwars reportsthat under Obama’s leadership, the fight against ISIS led to approximately 2,300 to 3,400 civilian deaths. Through the first seven months of the Trump administration, they estimate that coalition air strikes have killed between 2,800 and 4,500 civilians.

Researchers also point to another stunning trend—the “frequent killing of entire families in likely coalition airstrikes.” In May, for example, such actions led to the deaths of at least 57 women and 52 children in Iraq and Syria.

The vast increase in civilian deaths is not limited to the anti-ISIS campaign. In Afghanistan, the U.N. reports a 67 percent increase in civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 compared to the first half of 2016.

The key question is: Why? Are these increases due to a change in leadership?

Delegating war to the military

Experts offer several explanations.

One holds that Trump’s “total authorization” for the military to run wars in Afghanistan and against ISIS has loosened Obama-era restrictions and increased military commanders’ risk tolerance. Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations notes: “Those closer to the fight are more likely to call in lethal force and are less likely to follow a value-based approach.”

In other words, an intense focus on destroying ISIS elements may be overriding the competing priority of protecting civilians. Because Trump has scaled back civilian oversight and delegated authority to colonels rather than one-star generals, the likely result is higher casualties.

 

10_13_Iraq_MosulSmoke billows following an airstrike in the Old City of Mosul as Iraqi government forces battle Islamic State (ISIS) group jihadis, on July 8. Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty 

Urban battlefield?

A second explanation points to the changing nature of the counter-ISIS campaign. The Pentagon contends that the rise in casualties is “attributable to the change in location” of battlefield operations towards more densely populated urban environments like Mosul and Raqqa.

This is a partial truth. While urban warfare has increased, Trump’s team has substantially escalated air strikes and bombings. According to CENTCOM data, the military has already used 20 percent more missiles and bombs in combined air operations in 2017 than in all of 2016. One notable airstrike in March, for example, killed 105 Iraqi civilians when U.S. forces dropped a 500-pound bomb in order to take out two snipers in Mosul. In fact, a Human Rights Watch analysisof bomb craters in West Mosul estimates that U.S. coalition forces are routinely using larger and less precise bombs—weighing between 500 and 1,000 pounds—than in prior operations. Finally, the urban battlefield explanation also does not account for increased civilian deaths in Afghanistan from airstrikes, where the environment has remained static for several years.

Pressure from the president

A third explanation of higher civilian casualties is that aggressive rhetoric from the president is inadvertently pressuring the military to take more risks and to deprioritize protecting civilians.

As former Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski observes: “If your leaders are emphasizing the high value of Raqqa and Mosul, while saying less about the strategic and moral risks of hurting civilians, it’s going to affect your judgment.” Words matter, especially coming from the commander-in-chief. In the face of such aggressive rhetoric, it should not come as a surprise that military officers feel encouraged – if not indirectly pressured—to take greater risks.

Unfortunately, the increased trend of civilian casualties is unlikely to diminish. In fact, signs abound that the White House is developing a new set of policies and procedures that will authorize more sweeping discretion to the military. In September, The New York Times reported that White House officials were proposing two major rules changes. First, they would expand the scope of “kill missions” and allow for the targeting of lower-level terrorists in addition to high value targets. Second – and more notably—they would suspend high-level vetting of potential drone attacks and raids.

These changes represent a sharp about-face. The Obama administration carefully crafted a deliberate set of rules guiding the use of force. In 2013, Obama released the Presidential Policy Guidance for Approving Direct Action Against Terrorist Targets (PPG), which created specific rules for determining when the use of force against terrorists was legally justified.

Then, in 2016, Obama issued an executive order on civilian harm that established heightened standards to minimize civilian casualties from military actions, and required the public release of information pertaining to strikes against terrorist targets.

While the latest actions from the Trump administration stop short of reversing Obama-era restraints, they are unsettling steps in the opposite direction. For example, it appears for now that the White House will preserve the “near certainty” standard, which requires commanders to have near certainty that a potential strike will not impact civilians. But this could change over time.

One senior official quoted in The New York Times article bluntly asserts that the latest changes are intended to make much of the “bureaucracy” created by the Obama administration rules “disappear.” As the White House dissolves the existing bureaucracy and relinquishes civilian oversight, Trump is embarking on a slippery slope that will potentially lead to major diminutions of civilian protection.

The current battle to take the Syrian city of Raqqa is emblematic of the stakes at hand. The U.S. is leading a punishing air war to soften ISIS defenses. In August, U.S. forces dropped 5,775 bombs and missiles onto the city. For context, this represented 10 times more munitions than the U.S. used for the whole of Afghanistan in the same month and year. The resulting civilian toll has been gruesome. At least 433 civilians likely died in Raqqa due to the August bombings, more than double the previous month’s total. Since the assault on Raqqa commenced on June 6, more than 1,000 civilians have been reported killed.

U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein cautions that the intense bombardment has left civilians caught between IS’s monstrosities and the fierce battle to defeat it. Zeid insists that “civilians must not be sacrificed for the sake of rapid military victories.”

Trump would be wise to heed this warning. Even as U.S. forces continue to turn the tide on ISIS, the trail of destruction left in the campaign’s wake is unsettling. The specter of massive civilian casualties will remain a rallying point for new terrorist organizations long after anti-ISIS operations conclude.

 

http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-presidency-only-10-months-old-and-new-data-his-airstrikes-alarm-684084?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=yahoo_news&utm_campaign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous/news&yptr=yahoo&ref=yfp

You were no where to be seen on the Flat earth when Obama was Bombing the Shit out of everyone. You're a hypocrite 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Map shows where President Barack Obama dropped his 20,000 bombs

Outgoing US leader carries out 3,000 more strikes in 2016 than year before

  facebook.png  
  twitter.png  
 
  email.png  
  blank.gif  
54K
Click to follow
The Independent US
 

obama-bombs.jpg Official figures are likely to be an underestimate, since multiple bombings can be classified as a single 'strike' under the Pentagon definition Reuters

Incoming US President Donald Trump has said he will wage war on Isis, vowing to "bomb the s*** out of 'em".

And as the world gears up for a seemingly more violent four years, it is worth reflecting on President Obama's tenure

According to newly released figures, President Obama had already upped the number of bombs on foreign countries.

US forces dropped over 3,000 more bombs in 2016 than 2015, taking the grand total of strikes for the year to at least 26,171.

This map by Statista shows you where they were:

bombs-obama.png
Vast majority of strikes carried out in Iraq and Syria

The figures are likely to be an underestimate, since the only reliable data only comes from a handful of countries, and multiple bombs can be classed as a single “strike” under the Pentagon's definition.

 

But of the confirmed bombings, the vast majority (24,287) took place in Iraq and Syria, according to analysis of official data by Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

His research concluded that the US dropped 79 per cent of all 30,743 coalition bombs in 2016.

 
 
 
 
 
 
0:00
/
1:54
 
 
 
 
 
 
The most significant moments of Obama's presidency

While President Obama reduced the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, air-strikes proliferated under his leadership.

He expanded the use of unmanned air-strikes outside the confines of war-zones in Afghanistan and Iraq to countries including Pakistan and Yemen.

In the wake of Mr Trump's win, the value of arms companies soared. He has promised extravagant military parades through America's cities and, like many Republicans, vowed to build up the US military.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obama’s covert drone war in numbers: ten times more strikes than Bush

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is an independent, not-for-profit media organisation that holds power to account. We find the facts to expose wrongs and spark change. We tell the stories that matter.

Find out more

Published January 17 2017

By Jessica Purkiss , Jack Serle

The Bureau co-publishes its stories with major media outlets around the world so they reach as many people as possible.

Find out how to use our work

There were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Obama embraced the US drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries, according to reports logged by the Bureau.

The use of drones aligned with Obama’s ambition to keep up the war against al Qaeda while extricating the US military from intractable, costly ground wars in the Middle East and Asia. But the targeted killing programme has drawn much criticism.

The Obama administration has insisted that drone strikes are so “exceptionally surgical and precise” that they pluck off terror suspects while not putting “innocent men, women and children in danger”. This claim has been contested by numerous human rights groups, however, and the Bureau’s figures on civilian casualties also demonstrate that this is often not the case.

The White House released long-awaited figures last July on the number of people killed in drone strikes between January 2009 and the end of 2015, an announcement which insiders said was a direct response to pressure from the Bureau and other organisations that collect data. However the US’s estimate of the number of civilians killed – between 64 and 116 – contrasted strongly with the number recorded by the Bureau, which at 380 to 801 was six times higher.

That figure does not include deaths in active battlefields including Afghanistan – where US air attacks have shot up since Obama withdrew the majority of his troops at the end of 2014. The country has since come under frequent US bombardment, in an unreported war that saw 1,337 weapons dropped last year alone – a 40% rise on 2015.

Afghan civilian casualties have been high, with the United Nations (UN) reporting at least 85 deaths in 2016. The Bureau recorded 65 to 105 civilian deaths during this period. We did not start collecting data on Afghanistan until 2015.

Pakistan was the hub of drone operations during Obama’s first term. The pace of attacks had accelerated in the second half of 2008 at the end of Bush’s term, after four years pocked by occasional strikes. However in the year after taking office, Obama ordered more drone strikes than Bush did during his entire presidency. The 54 strikes in 2009 all took place in Pakistan.

563

Strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms

57

Strikes in those countries under George W. Bush

Strikes in the country peaked in 2010, with 128 CIA drone attacks and at least 89 civilians killed, at the same time US troop numbers surged in Afghanistan. Pakistan strikes have since fallen with just three conducted in the country last year.

Obama also began an air campaign targeting Yemen. His first strike was a catastrophe: commanders thought they were targeting al Qaeda but instead hit a tribe with cluster munitions, killing 55 people. Twenty-one were children – 10 of them under five. Twelve were women, five of them pregnant. 

Through 2010 and the first half of 2011 US strikes in Yemen continued sporadically. The air campaign then began in earnest, with the US using its drones and jets to help Yemeni ground forces oust al Qaeda forces who had taken advantage of the country’s Arab Spring to seize a swath of territory in the south of the country.

In Somalia, US Special Operations Forces and gunships had been fighting al Qaeda and its al Shabaab allies since January 2007. The US sent drones to Djibouti in 2010 to support American operations in Yemen, but did not start striking in Somalia until 2011.

The number of civilian casualties increased alongside the rise in strikes. However reported civilian casualties began to fall as Obama’s first term progressed, both in real terms and as a rate of civilians reported killed per strike.

In Yemen, where there has been a minimum of 65 civilian deaths since 2002, the Bureau recorded no instances of civilian casualties last year.  There were three non-combatants reportedly killed in 2016 in Somalia, where the US Air Force has been given broader authority to target al Shabaab – in previous years there were no confirmed civilian deaths.

Strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia have always been dwarfed by the frequency of air attacks on battlefields such as Afghanistan.

December 2014 saw the end of Nato combat operations there, and the frequency of air attacks plummeted in 2015. Strikes are now increasing again, with a 40% rise in 2016, though numbers remain below the 2011 peak.

The number of countries being simultaneously bombed by the US increased to seven last year as a new front opened up in the fight against Islamic State (IS). The US has been leading a coalition of countries in the fight against IS in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, conducting a total of 13,501 strikes across both countries, according to monitoring group Airwars.

In August US warplanes started hitting the group hard in Libya. The US declared 495 strikes in the country between August 1 and December 5 as part of efforts to stop IS gaining more ground, Airwars data shows.

In the final days of Obama’s time in the White House, the Bureau has broken down his covert war on terror in numbers. Our annual 2016 report provides figures on the number of US strikes and related casualties last year, as well as collating the total across Obama’s eight years in power:

 
Total US drone and air strikes in 2016
  Pakistan Yemen Somalia Afghanistan
Strikes 3 38 14 1071
Total people reported killed 11-12 147-203 204-292 1389-1597
Civilians reported killed 1 0 3-5 65-101
 

Notes on the data: The Bureau is not logging strikes in active battlefields except Afghanistan; strikes in Syria, Iraq and Libya are not included in this data. To see data for those countries, visit Airwars.org.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, motonoggin said:

The bottom line is, if you are anti-war, you have to vote for people who are pro war or you really aren't anti-war.

It's just that simple.

:lol: it might be that simple on unicorn island but in the real world, it isn't. why don't you answer the question I've asked you multiple times above? as well as your other imaginary polices that wouldn't work in the real world?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Platinum Contributing Member
12 minutes ago, motonoggin said:

The bottom line is, if you are anti-war, you have to vote for people who are pro war or you really aren't anti-war.

It's just that simple.

 

7 minutes ago, Snoslinger said:

:lol: it might be that simple on unicorn island but in the real world, it isn't. why don't you answer the question I've asked you multiple times above? as well as your other imaginary polices that wouldn't work in the real world?

 

:lmao: @motonoggin  You know what's simple?  Living in your world of idealism. You know what's difficult? Reality :bc: 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Platinum Contributing Member
1 minute ago, motonoggin said:

Enjoy watching your two party system crumble.

:bc:

 

:lmao: How many years has that narrative been told? :lol: Start local and work your up the chain - until then - keep your nose to the grindstone and STFU :bc: 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, SnowRider said:

@motonoggin @f7ben  :snack:

 

Whine because candidates are not perfect in your eyes while being complicit in the election of one who makes your very issues worse......is the epitome of stupidity.    

you ignorant cunt . just what do you think that fucking hawk queen would have been doing ?  same if not more guaranteed.  I my self am fine with it and have never pretended to be outraged by it even when Obama was doing it

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, SnowRider said:

 

:lmao: @motonoggin  You know what's simple?  Living in your world of idealism. You know what's difficult? Reality :bc: 

like the reality of spouting off stupid shit like wire to wire and Vegas odds and 90% then having your cunt slapped down in to reality . like that kind of realireality? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Ez ryder said:

you ignorant cunt . just what do you think that fucking hawk queen would have been doing ?  same if not more guaranteed.  I my self am fine with it and have never pretended to be outraged by it even when Obama was doing it

IT DOESN'T MATTER! Why? because she wasn't elected president. And we'll never know how she'd react or what decisions she would make because......................... she's not the president. Will the dem clown posse speculate? Of course they will. Why? Because they are the heartbeat, the soul, the flesh and blood of the righteous democratic movement. All for one and one for all. They know how she thinks and what she's gonna say before she says it.To bad, because Hillary still isn't the president. Shit Snow you'd have been a better candidate than Hills. Why didn't you run? You've got the yap for it and you definitely got the ego thing going. Everybody's stupid and idealism this and reality that. Hell Sno could be your VP and MC could be your SOS. Sure be a lot better than the dipshit that's in there now. IF you had only run, things might have been different. But you didn't and now we're stuck with you know who. The shame of it all. An opportunity squandered. You let the people down...........................................  Oh and I shouldn't forget the obligatory :bc:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Gold Member
3 hours ago, Ez ryder said:

like the reality of spouting off stupid shit like wire to wire and Vegas odds and 90% then having your cunt slapped down in to reality . like that kind of realireality? 

No. The reality of having to leave a website for 3 months (a fucking website!!!) because his "girl" lost. For real!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, motonoggin said:

The bottom line is, if you are anti-war, you have to vote for people who are pro war or you really aren't anti-war.

It's just that simple.

He likes hillary and Obama's wars better. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Trying to pay the bills, lol

×
×
  • Create New...