Obama will not restrict drone strike ‘playbook’ before Trump takes office

NewImage

Obama will not add any restriction to the drone program that will soon be under the command of Trump. Under Obama, the president gained the ability to target people with drones overseas, including American citizens. 

Well done, liberals! You were happy with a Democrat murdering Americans overseas. Are you still happy about it when Trump has that power? 

Barack Obama will not tighten the rules governing US drone strikes ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Guardian has learned.

Trump will inherit the apparatus for what Obama calls “targeted killing” – the so-called drones “playbook” formally known as the 22 May 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance or PPG – that has turned drone strikes into Obama’s signature counter-terrorism tactic.

While the White House considers its standards for drone strikes to be scrupulous, much of the rest of the world considers them to represent an arbitrary, secret and dangerous apparatus of secret killing that Trump will soon have at his disposal. 

“Maybe on the left no one would believe that Trump has a steady hand, but Obama has normalized the idea that presidents get to have secret large-scale killing programs at their disposal,” said Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA.

Begun under George W Bush, drone strikes were vastly accelerated and codified by Obama beyond officially declared war zones. Official estimates claim they have killed nearly 2,600 “terrorists”, though human rights activists consider that to be an undercount. 

The footprint of the drones has become increasingly widespread, situated in airfields from Tunisia to Niger to Cameroon, they represent the outgrowth of a legal theory which was embraced by both presidents Bush and Obama, who considered the war on terrorism’s battlefield to be global.

Right-Mind