Trump Has Killed More Civilians with Illegal Drone Strikes in 9 Months Than Obama Did in 8 Years

While the mainstream media focuses on anything but the current state of U.S. intervention in the Middle East, the Trump Administration is breaking records by accumulating a horrific number of civilian deaths.

Former President Obama earned the nickname of “Drone King” when he dramatically escalated the use of drone strikes, while also downplaying the number of innocent civilians who became “collateral damage.” In the two years that his administration devoted to publicly spending millions of taxpayer dollars to fight the Islamic State group, the estimated civilian death toll ranged from 2,300 to 3,400, according to Airwars, an organization tracking deaths in the war against ISIS.

During @BarackObama"s 29 months at helm of ISIS war we tracked 855 alleged civilian casualty events which likely killed 2298-3398 civilians pic.twitter.com/RUVvcy5zX9

— Airwars (@airwars) August 22, 2017

President Trump has been in office for just 9 months, and he has already surpassed Obama’s murderous record with estimated numbers as high as 4,500 civilian deaths.

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Trump made headlines in December 2015, when he declared that if elected, he would not only kill members of ISIS—he would also “take out their families.” He is following through on that promise, according to a report from Steven Feldstein, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.

Feldstein noted that researchers have documented the rise of “frequent killing of entire families in likely coalition airstrikes” under the Trump Administration. This trend led to “the deaths of at least 57 women and 52 children in Iraq and Syria” in May.

READ MORE:  It"s Official: NSA Data Will be Used for Domestic Policing that Has Nothing to Do With Terrorism

While this may come as no surprise, considering the fact that Trump promised to “bomb the hell out of ISIS” while on the campaign trail, his administration’s offensive against the Islamic State is not the only ongoing war that is killing civilians.

According to a report from United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documenting civilian causalities during the first half of 2017, “aerial operations” led to a “43 percent increase in civilian casualties compared to the first six months of 2016, including a 67 percent increase in civilian deaths.”

While Trump bragged about giving military commanders “total authorization” to make combat decisions in Afghanistan, Washington Rep. Adam Smith said he believes that this move is contributing to the increase in civilian deaths.

“You really have the military making decisions that were designed to be made by the civilian authorities running the military,” Smith said. “We’ve seen an increase in civilian casualties. … I think they’ve become a little too indiscriminate in what they’re doing.”

The report from Feldstein noted that the Trump Administration has “substantially escalated air strikes and bombings” and the U.S. military “has already used 20 percent more missiles and bombs in combined air operations in 2017 than in all of 2016.”

The alarmingly high civilian death toll has continued to build up over the months. For example, from May 23 to June 23 of this year, at least 472 civilians were killed by U.S. airstrikes. That is significantly more than the 459 civilians who have been killed by terrorist attacks in Europe—in the last 12 years.

READ MORE:  US Proves Its Allegiance to Terrorism by Threatening War With Russia All to Protect ISIS 

While the argument can be made that Trump is doing the same thing Hillary Clinton would have done if she was elected, the question has to asked as to how anyone can justify killing innocent civilians in the first place.

Obama surpassed Bush’s record, and now Trump has surpassed Obama’s record—but the only thing that has actually been “accomplished” is that thousands of innocent civilians have lost their lives, hundreds of thousands of civilians have lost their homes and their communities, and the civilians who do survive in the countries the United States is targeting now, will grow up hating America for destroying their home in the name of “Freedom.”

Rockets And Grenades Fired At Kabul Airport After Mattis’ Arrival

Less than two hours after the United States defense secretary James Mattis landed in Kabul, about forty rockets and rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the airport. Mattis was not injured.

This is Mattis’ first trip to Afghanistan since President Donald Trump  announced a new strategy for Afghanistan, recommitting to the country and declaring during a prime-time address back in August that U.S. troops must “fight to win.” According to Fox News, the new strategy for the 16-year-old war includes sending roughly 3,500 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to join the 11,000 on the ground. Sixteen years after the 9/11 attacks, Kabul is still being attacked by the Taliban. On Tuesday in Washington, General Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it’s time to demand that Pakistan stop giving sanctuary to the Taliban.

Already, the US military is increasing airstrikes in Afganistan. In August of this year, more bombs were dropped on the Taliban and an ISIS-affiliated group than any month since 2012.

The Defense Secretary had already left the airport to meet with Afghanistan’s President Ghani when the attack occurred. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack and one unconfirmed report had alleged that there was an injury. CNN reported that Mattis was the target of the attack, but wasn’t injured.

Mattis arrived in Kabul just after 11 p.m. ET (7:30 a.m. in Kabul) after spending Tuesday in India. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was also on the flight. Mattis spoke about the attack at a news conference in Kabul, alongside Afghanistan’s president.  “If in fact there was an attack on an international airport anywhere in the world, if it’s an attack by a terrorist it’s designed to go after innocent people,” Mattis said. “And this is a classic definition of what the Taliban is up to now. We will suffocate any hope that Al-Qaida or ISIS or the Taliban have of winning by killing. I want to reinforce to the Taliban that the only path to peace and political legitimacy to them is through a negotiated settlement,” Mattis added.

The director of the Kabul airport said all flights have been halted as result of the mortar attack at the airport for the time being.

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Afghanistan: America's Trillion Dollar War

16 years since the Bush administration launched its military intervention in Afghanistan, President Trump has announced his intention to increase the U.S. military presence in the country. As Statista"s Niall McCarthy notes, there are approximately 8,400 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan and reinforcements could start arriving within days. Trump"s new strategy is set to extend the longest war in U.S. history and add even further to its already staggering cost.

Website "The Balance" has been keeping track of Afghanistan"s economic impact and the conflict has now cost the U.S. at least $1.07 trillion since 2001.

You will find more statistics at Statista

That can be divided into three segments.

$773 billion can be attributed to Overseas Contingency Operations funds specifically dedicated to the war.

$243 billion comes from increases in the base budget of the Department of Defense...

while the increase in the Veterans Administration budget cost $54.2 billion.

Financing Afghanistan reached its zenith in 2010 amid Obama"s surge when costs topped $112 billion.

That gradually dropped as U.S. troops shifted their focus away from offensive operations to concentrate more on training Afghan forces. Earlier this week, General John Nicholson, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, said that the president"s strategy is a sign of long-term commitment to Afghanistan and called on the Taliban to agree to peace talks.

Even though Trump has said that his decision to boost troop levels isn"t "a blank check", it is still difficult to see how his Afghanistan strategy is any different from his predecessors.

NSA Leaker Reality Winner "Wanted To Burn Down The White House"

Whatever one thinks of Edward Snowden, the actions of the original NSA leaker - right or wrong - were dictated not by spite, but an ideology: his desire to expose the pervasive domestic spying apparatus of the NSA, even if meant a lifelong exile in Russia, was - in his view - for the greater good. His infamous successor, NSA contractor Reality Winner, who was recently arrested for providing The Intercept with a top secret document allegedly revealing Russian hacking of the US election, however had a far less lofty goal: to burn Donald Trump down to the ground.

Literally.

On Thursday afternoon, Reality Winner was indicted by a federal grand jury on a single count. She entered a not-guilty plea before the judge denied bond.

Based on evidence seized from her home, federal prosecutors detailed Winner"s alleged plans "to burn down the White House" and travel to Afghanistan, pledging her allegiance to the Taliban according to Atlanta"s Channel 2 News.

EXPLOSIVE testimony in alleged NSA leaker hearing. GOV"T:Reality Winner praised Taliban,wrote "I want to burn the White House down" @wsbtv 5 pic.twitter.com/4Yt1eXGWdC

— Nicole Carr (@NicoleCarrWSB) June 8, 2017

Prosecutors argued that the only thing Winner could do if she were released on bail is be recruited by the nation’s enemies.

Behind the scenes, Winner was even more conniving than her actions revealed: prosecutors said in recorded jailhouse calls, she told her mother how to play her side of the story in the media, as someone who was scared she’d disappear from an interrogation room in her Augusta home after Saturday’s raid. In other words, the mother"s heartfelt appeal was scripted by Reality herself.

It wasn"t just her mother: the prosecution added that in a phone call to her sister expressed her confidence in how to play the court during her bond hearing. “I’m pretty, white and cute,” she allegedly told her sister. Prosecutors said Winner told her sister she would braid her hair and cry in court.

Here, a question we posed earlier in the week re-emerges: how did this 25-year-old, with a checkered public social network past, which revealed her contempt for the president, end up with a top secret clearance and was unaware her NSA work computer was being monitored, and that her prison conversations were being recorded. We can only attribute it to the vast qualified labor gap plaguing America these days.

Going back to today"s hearing, the government said it believes those who knew Winner best did not know an alternate side of her, who confessed to wanting to do harm to the nation through the release of classified documents.

Channel 2’s Nicole Carr spoke to Winner’s parents Thursday morning.

“She offered up her life for this nation and to see her treated so vilely is an insult to every person who’s ever worn a uniform,” Winner’s father, Gary Davis, said. The government said it will likely add to the indictment and more charges are expected to come.

#Breaking: Government: " We"ll likely add to indictment." Alleged NSA leaker bond hearing, more charges expected ,testimony -next on @wsbtv pic.twitter.com/YcPvVge48V

— Nicole Carr (@NicoleCarrWSB) June 8, 2017

Mission Accomplished? Civilian Casualties In Afghanistan Are Mounting

A massive Truck bomb shook the center of Kabul, killing at least 80 and injuring up to 400 civilians on Wednesday. Attacks against civilians have been on the rise in recent years, causing more than 11,400 deaths and injuries in 2016, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

You will find more statistics at Statista

As Statista"s Dyfed Loesche notes, the figure has almost doubled compared to 2009.

“This appalling conflict destroys lives and tears communities apart in every corner of Afghanistan. Real protection of civilians requires commitment and demonstrated concrete actions to protect civilians from harm and for parties to the conflict to ensure accountability for indiscriminate and deliberate acts of civilian harm.”

-Tadamichi Yamamoto, United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Kabul, February 2017.

“Children have been killed, blinded, crippled – or inadvertently caused the death of their friends – while playing with unexploded ordnance that is negligently left behind by parties to the conflict. Women continue to be brutally punished in parallel so-called ‘justice’ processes while religious minorities are targeted as they pray in their mosques. The consequences of each act of violence ripple through families and entire communities that are left broken, unable to sustain themselves and largely failing to obtain any semblance of justice or reparation. After nearly 40 years of constantly evolving armed conflict in Afghanistan, a Daesh franchise has now surfaced as an additional, deadly component. It is about time the various parties to the conflict ceased the relentless commission of war crimes and thought about the harm they are doing to their mothers, fathers, children and future generations by continuing to fuel this senseless, never-ending conflict.”

-Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, February 2017.

Especially in conflicts like in Afghanistan, where the warring factions do not all wear uniforms, most notably the Taliban, it can be hard to make a clear distinction between civilians and non-civilian combatants.

Time For The US To Take A Step Back From Afghanistan

Submitted by James Durso, originaly posted op-ed via The Hill,

Otto von Bismarck said, “The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” America should apply the same reasoning to Afghanistan.

This month we learned the U.S. Marines are back in Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province and the center of opium poppy production, and their mission may expand. President Trump will soon decide if he should send 8,400 more troops there for the latest chapter in America’s longest war. Should he?

I think not. We gave Afghanistan out best effort: over 2,200 dead soldiers, over 20,000 wounded, and over $700 billion for everything from ammunition to medical care for veterans. We need to face the fact that it’s an endemically violent place and may never change and another “whole of government” effort may not make any difference.

And don’t take my word for it: the Talban has rejected peace talks with the Afghan government as surrendering to the enemy and against Islam.

The Afghans have seen off every visitor and invader, from Alexander the Great to the U.S. Central Command, so why spend another dollar there? For example, the regional transport network has avoided Afghanistan and the enthusiasts for a New Silk Road or One Belt, One Road haven’t absorbed that the world is avoiding Afghanistan not out of stupidity but out of hard-won experience.

Yes, there is wealth to be had: Russian, British, and American geologists have found that Afghanistan has enormous untapped mineral resources, valued at $1 to $3 trillion. The minerals are in the ground, sure, but there’s no way to get them out so they’re effectively worth nothing. And there’s no way to get them out because the country is violent and corrupt which scares away prudent investors.

In 2008, the Chinese won the rights to the Aynak copper mine for $3 billion and an alleged $30 million bribe to the minister of mines. In 2017, no copper has yet been mined and the Chinese executive heading the project has been expelled from the Communist party for corruption. The only good news, if you can call it that, has been the recent Taliban green light for the restart of the project.

Wise Western investors should temporarily cede the field to the Chinese, Pakistanis, and Iranians — our enemies and frenemies — and let them try to make something of it. Afghanistan will still want friends in the West and we should exercise some of that recently derided “strategic patience” until the time is right and the Chinese have worn out their welcome when the Afghans realize they won’t create any jobs. Dealing with Afghanistan should be like buying a used car — let someone else take the loss and get it later at a savings. In this case, the savings of American lives and the bandwidth our leaders can devote to tractable issues.  

What should the U.S. do? 

• Ensure the Afghans who helped our military and diplomatic effort as translators or other helpers get visas to the U.S. Yes, that will cause a brain drain, but as it stands now, they’re not being given the chance — by their own government or the Taliban — to do what they’re capable of, so their talent is being wasted. It won’t be wasted in the U.S.

• Enact a soft cordon to protect the neighboring Central Asian states. They have less transparency than we like but have functioning governments and moderate, secular societies. The U.S. should increase military-to-military and cop-to-cop relationships with Central Asia, both for security sector reform and border security to stanch the flow of drugs. If the effort works, and the flow is diverted via Pakistan and Iran, it will increase addiction and public corruption and give the U.S. another lever to use when dealing with Tehran and Islamabad. Central Asia has a lot of human potential, mineral and energy resources, and is an East-West transport route. The transporters will lose a north-south route to the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea via Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the Central Asian states can continue to trade to the Persian Gulf via Iran.

• Focus our effort on the narcotics trade and its twin, money laundering. Afghanistan has one successful export: poppy, which accounts for 90 percent of worldwide production of heroin, and the area under cultivation has increased in fits and starts since 2002. Destinations for drug proceeds and stolen government funds, like the United Arab Emirates, are more interested in being word-class business centers than hosting crash pads for narcos, so we can count on their continued cooperation and assistance. U.S. assistance to Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics effort, which will be centered in Helmand Province — the destination for all those Marines — can be refashioned to technical intelligence support to supplement HUMINT networks. 

We did our best in Afghanistan, but it’s time to move on.

Former Afghan President Accuses Current Regime of 'Treason' For Permitting America to Drop MOAB

Remember Hamid Karzai? That was Bush"s puppet in Afghanistan, post Taliban. Thanks to Karzai, Afghanistan"s opium production rose an impressive 20x under his rule -- fulfilling an insatiable appetite for drug addled Americans in need of firm opiate-laced needles in their necks.

Now retired, he"s pissed off that the current Afghan ruler, Ashraf Ghani, permitted the United States to drop the MOAB on their ISIS loving asses, saying, "How could you permit Americans to bomb your country with a device equal to an atom bomb? If the government has permitted them to do this, that was wrong and it has committed a national treason."

Ghani"s  answer to Karzai"s charges was, err, freedom: "Every Afghan has the right to speak their mind. This is a country of free speech."

Clearly, Karzai doesn"t agree with Fox and Friends assertion that the MOAB is equal to freedom.

Why should Afghanistan suffer in such a massive way with a bomb so big, so dangerous that they themselves call it the "mother of all bombs".

— Hamid Karzai (@KarzaiH) April 16, 2017

More from the former Afghan leader, calling the bomb "poison" and bad for the environment -- because ISIS is all about preserving a low carbon footprint.

Local villagers said they thought the end of the world was upon them, after the U.S. dropped a MOAB on the terrorists traversing underneath the ground in elaborate tunnels.
 

Via Daily Caller:
 
“The earth felt like a boat in a storm,” one villager told The Guardian. He continued, “My ears were deaf for a while. My windows and doors are broken. There are cracks in the walls.” Achin’s Mayor Naweed Shinwari said “my relatives thought the end of the world had come.”
 
“Last night’s bomb was really huge, when it dropped, everywhere, it was shaking,” one resident told Reuters. He characterized the strike as a “positive move” to rid the village of ISIS fighters. One man who lived two miles from the blast area told CNN “we were all scared and my children and my wife were crying. We thought it had happened right in front of our house.”

 
Freedom.

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

US Airstrikes Rose 40% in Afghanistan in 2016

January 10, 2017   |   admintam

(ANTIWAR) While a lot of the focus of America’s endless parade of air wars centers on Iraq and Syria, the 15+ year long war in Afghanistan is continuing apace, with the latest Centcom data showing US airstrikes in the country up 40% over the previous year.

That’s 1,337 weapons dropped by US forces in Afghanistan in 2016, with no sign the escalation is slowing down. Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland confirmed Sunday that the US intends to contiinue with “Aggressive” use of airstrikes “to achieve strategic effects.”

This revelation adds to the signs of just how badly the Afghan war went in 2016, a fact which has led NATO to announce multiple deployments of ground forces in recent days, deployments which come years after “ground combat operations” were supposed to be finished.

Throughout that period, Afghan forces continued to lose territory at an alarming pace, despite a massive increase in US airstrikes, with figures showing the Taliban controls more territory now than at any time since the 2001 US invasion that began the occupation.

READ MORE: Obama Just Quietly Sent US Marines to Fight in Afghanistan

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This article (US Airstrikes Rose 40% in Afghanistan in 2016) by Jason Ditz, originally appeared on AntiWar.com and was used with permission. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

Obama Just Quietly Sent US Marines to Fight in Afghanistan

January 9, 2017   |   admintam

(RPI – Op-Ed) Last week, as the mainstream media continued to obsess over the CIA’s evidence-free claim that the Russians hacked the presidential election, President Obama quietly sent 300 US Marines back into Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. This is the first time in three years that the US military has been sent into that conflict zone, and it represents a final failure of Obama’s Afghanistan policy. The outgoing president promised that by the end of his second term, the US military would only be present in small numbers and only on embassy duty. But more than 8,000 US troops will remain in Afghanistan as he leaves office.

When President Obama was first elected he swore that he would end the US presence in Iraq (the “bad” war) and increase US presence in Afghanistan (the “good” war). He ended up increasing troops to both wars, while the situation in each country continued to deteriorate.

Why are the Marines needed in the Helmand Province? Because although the foolish and counterproductive 15-year US war in Afghanistan was long ago lost, Washington cannot face this fact. Last year the Taliban controlled 20 percent of the province. This year they control 85 percent of the province. So billions more must be spent and many more lives will be lost.

Will these 300 Marines somehow achieve what the 2011 peak of 100,000 US soldiers was not able to achieve? Will this last push “win” the war? Hardly! The more the president orders military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, the worse it gets. In 2016, for example, President Obama dropped 1,337 bombs on Afghanistan, a 40 percent increase from 2015. According to the United Nations, in 2016 there were 2,562 conflict-related civilian deaths and 5,835 injuries. And the Taliban continues to score victories over the Afghan puppet government.

The interventionists in Washington continue to run our foreign policy regardless of who is elected. They push for wars, they push for regime change, then they push for billions to reconstruct the bombed-out countries. When the “liberated” country ends up in worse shape, they claim it was because we just didn’t do enough of what ruined the country in the first place. It’s completely illogical, but the presidents who keep seeking the neocons’ advice don’t seem to notice. Obama – the “peace” candidate and president – has proven himself no different than his predecessors.

What will a President Trump do about the 15 year failed nation-building experiment in Afghanistan? He has criticized the long-standing US policy of “regime-change” and “nation-building” while on the campaign trail, and I would like to think he would just bring the troops home. However, I would not be surprised if he accelerates US military action in Afghanistan to “win the war” once and for all. He will not succeed if he does so, as the war is not winnable – no one even knows what “winning” looks like! We may well see even more US troops killing and being killed in Afghanistan a year from now if that is the case. That would be a terrible tragedy.

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This article (Obama Just Quietly Sent US Marines to Fight in Afghanistan) by Ron Paul originally appeared on RonPaulInstitute.org and was used with permission. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.