How Obama Made It Easier for Trump to Abuse Drones

FEATURING MAHA HILAL – George W. Bush launched the use of unmanned drones to drop bombs in war but it was his successor Barack Obama who relied far more heavily on drone warfare.

It became commonplace under Obama for the US to drop bombs on the heads of Afghans, Pakistanis, Somalis, Yemenis and others. Now, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump has escalated the US’s drone wars even more than Obama.

Civilians are the foremost victims of drone strikes and the US has even targeted and killed its own citizens in what legal experts have denounced as extrajudicial assassinations. We can only expect that even more civilians will die of drone strikes under Trump.

Read Maha’s recent article in Foreign Policy in Focus called ‘Trump Plans to Make It Easier to Kill Civilians with Drones. Sadly, We Can Thank Obama for That’ HERE.

Maha Hilal, Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.