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By APD Writer Lu Jiafei
**Washington, Sept. 12 (APD) ** -- As the United States is marking the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, an old question is asked anew: Does the U.S. administration now know how to root out terrorism?
While a clear answer to the question still remains elusive, the past two presidents, namely Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama, resorted to the same botched approach: If we cannot root out terrorism for now, at least we can bomb terrorists out.
With U.S. military unleashed powerful bombs on suspected targets of terrorist groups, civilian safety was compromised, which in turn delivered a major blow to U.S. long-term strategic objectives.
According to a report by the Open Society Foundations, during the early years of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the U.S. military killed “too many civilians and depriving too many others of basic rights and liberties.” By 2008, nearly 40 percent of civilian deaths in Afghanistan resulted from U.S. military operations.
Obama’s presidency did not reverse the alarming trend as he greatly expanded the U.S. use of unmanned drones in counter-terrorism operations abroad.
At the end of his presidency, a U.S. intelligence report controversially claimed that excluding civilian deaths in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, Obama's drone program only killed up to 117 civilians worldwide despite the fact that local news reports, NGOs and leaked government documents said up to 801 civilians were killed by the end of 2015.
This is what I would argue a major flaw of U.S. counter terrorism strategy. Unfortunately, there is no telltale sign that U.S. President Donald Trump is heeding past lessons.
When President Trump was still Candidate Trump, he sometimes used profanity to stress his point when it came to counter terrorism.
At a campaign rally in Iowa back in 2015, Trump told supporters that he would “bomb the shit out of them (terrorists)” and “just bomb those suckers.”
Seven months into his nascent presidency and especially after his vague yet muscular speech on Afghanistan war last month, the Trump administration has reportedly chosen to loosen the rules on civilian casualties during drone strikes put in place by his predecessor Obama.
According to a recent report by Airwars, a military tracking group, while at least 2,300 civilians were likely killed during the eight-year Obama presidency, as of July 13 this year, another 2,200 civilians appeared to have been killed during the U.S. –led counter terrorism campaign since Trump took office.
“There is no choice but to loosen the rules of engagement and accept more collateral civilian deaths when you choose a counter terrorism rather than a counter insurgency policy,” Marvin Weinbaum, emeritus professor of political science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told me.
While there may not be simple solution as to the loosening of the rules, there are both ethical and pragmatic reasons why that is bad.
“With respect to ethics, you are killing people who are not fighting you. The rules of war and simple moral standards say you shou not do this,” according to Richard Stoll, professor of political science at Rice University.
As to the pragmatic reason why to loosen the rules is counterproductive, Stoll told me that without being treated with dignity, civilians, whose help the U.S. military urgently needs, are turning away from the U.S. counter terrorism campaign.
“Often they can supply information about the terrorists that cannot be determined from other sources,” said Stoll. “But they will not do this if they feel that they too are being targeted by you.”
Lu Jiafei, fellow of APD Institute. After spending one year in Palestine covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between 2013 and 2014, Lu moved to Washington, D.C. and covered the 2016 U.S. presidential election till the very end of Donald Trump’s upset victory. He is a political contributor to APD.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
