• Hello_there@kbin.social
    67·
    11 months ago

    I have an issue when the same people who were cheering during the Bush years, gave grudging acceptance at drone strikes during Obama, and were silent during the Trump years, pipe up and say drone strikes are bad now.
    Progressives have been saying this the whole time.

    Also, a reminder that Obama tried to write regs limiting the use of drone strikes at the end of his presidency. Trump promptly threw them out on entering.

    • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
      24·
      11 months ago

      As always, when a Republican does something, it’s good and just. When a Democrat does literally the same thing, they’re the devil incarnate.

    • Zpiritual@lemmy.world
      19·
      11 months ago

      Drone strikes are the holy grail of the military-industrial complex. They are cheap to run meaning that the air force doesn’t have to give them a huge budget yet consume precision bombs and missiles at a steady rate meaning that the weapon industry get a secure revenue stream. And they can be scaled up almost infinitely since there is no bad news coverage of wounded veterans or crying widows on us television.

    • dingleberry@discuss.tchncs.de
      14·
      11 months ago

      Also, a reminder that Obama tried to write regs limiting the use of drone strikes at the end of his presidency

      That doesn’t sound good.

    • ox0r@jlai.luEnglish
      12·
      11 months ago

      People who have a large following and magic emojis next to their name will keep using it because it gives them their validation. Twitter celebs are really in a sad state of existence

    • 00@kbin.social
      2·
      11 months ago

      Oh you are saying we shouldn’t communicate and instead rely on aesthetics to signal each other? Thats literally fascism but you do you.

  • UFODivebomb@programming.dev
    6·
    11 months ago

    Observation selection bias is an easy one the GOP likes to take advantage of. Eg: not testing for covid to show covid went down.

    Also: drone strike civilian casualties.

    • Ajen@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      11 months ago

      Also: drone strike civilian casualties.

      When did they change how they count civilian casualties? I heard it was under Obama’s administration, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

      • UFODivebomb@programming.dev
        8·
        11 months ago

        There is quite the back and forth between Democrats pushing for accountability and the GOP pushing against.

        From Wikipedia, which has all the references one might need:

        "On July 1, 2016, President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring annual accounting of civilian and enemy casualties in U.S. drone strikes outside war zones (“Areas Outside of Active Hostilities”), and setting a deadline of May 1 each year for the release of such report. However, soon after taking office, President Donald Trump designated large areas in Yemen and Somalia to be “areas of active hostilities,” thus exempting them from disclosure. The Trump administration also ignored the 2017 and 2018 deadlines for an annual accounting, and on March 6, 2019, Trump issued an order revoking the requirement. "

        The executive order:

        https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2017-title3-vol1/pdf/CFR-2017-title3-vol1-eo13732.pdf

        Trump recinding the order:

        https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/us/politics/trump-civilian-casualties-rule-revoked.html

        Plus some other dumb shit by Trump:

        "During the Obama administration, proposed U.S. drone strikes in locations outside active war zones (i.e., in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia) required high-level approval. The Obama administration process for approving drone strikes in such locations featured centralized, high-level oversight, based on intelligence about individuals suspected of terrorism activity. Obama’s approval was required for every strike in Yemen and Somalia, as well as “the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan” (about one-third of the total as of 2012), and insisted on deciding whether to approve a strike unless the CIA had a “near certainty” that no civilian deaths would result.

        …

        October 2017, Trump abolished the Obama-era approval system in favor of a looser, decentralized approach, which gave the military and CIA officials the discretion to decide to launch drone strikes against targets without White House approval. "

        All sorts of references corroborating those summary:

        https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-killings-count/

        The short version is: Obama demanded accountability and his approval. Which did not exist before and was revoked after. Hence, the different counts of casualties is not representative of an actually difference. Only representative of the GOP being shit.