US DRONE WARFARE AND CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: A COMPARISON OF THE OBAMA, TRUMP, AND BIDEN ADMINISTRATIONS by Robert Wargaski Introduction In the wake of the tragic attacks on September 11th, the United States began a campaign to find and punish those responsible for the terrorist attacks. America’s War on Terror required a wide variety of strategies to combat international terrorism. One of the responses used was, and still is, drone warfare. First envisioned as early as the 19th century, when Austrians used hot air balloons to bomb Venice, it was not until 2000 that the CIA was able to successfully fit a missile onto a drone.1 Drones have been utilized for many goals. During the Kosovo conflict in the 1990s, NATO used drones for intelligence-gathering and surveillance over the Balkans.2 In October 2021, a US-led drone strike in Syria killed senior al-Qaeda leader Abdul Hamid al-Matar.3 While drones have been extolled by elected officials for their alleged precision and accuracy, there are questions regarding the civilian impact of drones. Ever since the US engaged in regime change in both Afghanistan and Iraq, local
reporting in the region has documented various instances of civilian casualties due to drone strikes. It is estimated that civilian casualties due to drone strikes are in the low thousands.4 Beginning in the early 2000s, the number of civilian casualties by drone strikes continued to climb. Only under the Biden administration have we seen a reduction in drone strikes’ harm to civilians. This paper looks at the civilian death toll resulting from drone strikes across the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. These specific administrations had high levels of military involvement in the Middle East, including the common use of drone strikes. After analyzing each administration’s history and policy on drone strikes, I will recommend solutions that could minimize civilian casualties in the future. It is important to note that the Bush administration is absent from this article. Under the Bush administration, drones were not commonly utilized until 2008. In part, this was due to technological constraints of
the time. Looking at the case study of Pakistan specifically, the drone usage by Bush pales in comparison to his successor. Bush only authorized 51 drone strikes from 2004-2009. 5 By contrast, Obama authorized more than 400 drone strikes between 2009-2013, making drones “the centerpiece of U.S. counterterrorism strategy.” 6 There just is not enough data on the Bush administration’s use of drones to justify a thorough examination and evaluation of policy. Justifying the Drone In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the US’s subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003, drones became an essential way to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda operations and determine further troop engagement. According to former national security reporter Scott Shane, two major claims were made to justify the use of drones. One claim was that drones were accurate and had “pinpoint precision.” A second claim made by drone advocates was that the operators knew exactly who they were shooting at when looking at the camera
1 “History of Drone Warfare,” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, accessed February 21, 2022, https://www.thebureauinvestigates. com/explainers/history-of-drone-warfare#:~:text=Drones%20have%20been%20part%20of,air%20balloons%20to%20bomb%20 Venice.&text=The%20term%20drone%20itself%20started,by%20radio%20from%20the%20ground 2 Katherine Hall Kindervater, “The Emergence of Lethal Surveillance: Watching and Killing in the History of Drone Technology,” Security Dialogue 47, no. 3 (June 2016): [Page #], accessed April 14, 2022, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26294130. 3 Associated Press, “U.S. Military Says It Killed al-Qaeda Leader in Drone Strike,” NBC, last modified October 23, 2021, accessed April 15, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-military-says-killed-al-qaida-leader-drone-strike-rcna3653. 4 Chalin Askew, season 5, episode 2, “Drones and Civilian Casualties: Can Anything Be Done?,” March 18, 2022, in The Delve, podcast, audio, accessed March 26, 2022, https://anchor.fm/thedelve. 5 “The Bush Years: Pakistan Strikes 2004-2009,” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, accessed April 25, 2022, https://www. thebureauinvestigates.com/drone-war/data/the-bush-years-pakistan-strikes-2004-2009. 6 Daniel Byman, “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice,” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 4 (July/August 2013):, accessed May 1, 2022, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526906?seq=1.
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