America's kills
Killing real and imaginary and supposed terrorists and drug smugglers is an American tradition, thanks to our interventionist foreign policy that gives us the 'moral right' to do so.
Let’s all condemn Trump and Pete Hegseth for blasting Venezuelan drug-pushers’ speed boats into kingdom come, which we can watch on video.
The extrajudicial killings by American military under the direction of the CIA is one of the many good reasons we should not be throwing our military weight around the globe and meddling in the affairs of other countries.
Just in case we and the New York Times and the rest of Trump haters in the media forget to mention, Barack Obama got his thrills killing people with drones -- including some American citizens -- and didn’t catch much hell from his friends and exalters in the mainstream media.
The great James Bovard reminds us on X.
@JimBovard
Trump’s killings of Venezuelans are justifiably provoking outrage. Did President Obama kill far more innocent people with almost zero political recoil?
In his 2017 farewell address, Obama boasted, “We have taken out tens of thousands of terrorists.” Was he counting the wedding parties blown up by drones on his watch?
Obama administration lawyers asserted a right to kill U.S. citizens whom it labeled terrorist suspects without trial, without notice, and without any chance for the marked men to legally object. At least five Americans died in Obama-era drone attacks, including a 16-year-old boy. Drone strikes increased tenfold under Obama, helping fuel anti–U.S. backlashes in several nations. Obama personally chose who would be killed at weekly “Terror Tuesday” White House meetings that featured PowerPoint death parades of potential targets. The CIA often did not know whom it was killing but counted all adult males “in a strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent,” the New York Times noted. The Times also revealed that U.S. “counterterrorism officials insist … people in an area of known terrorist activity … are probably up to no good.” The “probably up to no good” standard absolved almost any drone killing within thousands of square miles in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
And here, courtesy of grok, is a scorecard of the deaths attributed to Obama drone strikes -- which https://x.com/i/grok/share/wTSKlOvfl8wga79HMIb2qQu0P
Pakistan: 2,410–3,902 total killed (424–969 civilians, 172–207 children)
Yemen: 1,220–1,598 total killed (136–265 civilians, 32–83 children)
Somalia: 235–840 total killed (very few confirmed civilians early on, rising later)
Overall estimate across all theaters: roughly 3,800–6,300 people killed by U.S. drones under Obama (including hundreds of confirmed civilians and children).
New America Foundation (slightly lower estimates): ~3,000–4,800 total killed.
The Obama administration itself claimed in 2016 that between 64 and 116 “non-combatants” had been killed in 473 strikes from 2009–2015 across all theaters (Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya). This official figure was widely dismissed as implausibly low by virtually every independent monitor and human rights group.
As for Trump, in his first administration drones strikes were much higher than Obama’s and more deadly: Grok again, https://x.com/i/grok/share/gVzPDUczvnc9tmGnK5dK3xiZA
2017: ~1,000–1,500 strikes; ~15,000–20,000 killed (surge in Yemen/Afghanistan; 1,881 killed in March alone).
2018: ~800–1,200 strikes; ~10,000–15,000 killed.
2019–2020: ~1,400–2,100 strikes; ~6,000–12,000 killed (ISIS caliphate defeat reduced intensity, but strikes continued).
Wonder why so many large parts of the world hate us?