No Rules

[Content Note: War; terrorism; drones; death.]

Last year, President Obama announced new rules governing the use of drone strikes, which included a prohibition on the use of drone strikes unless there is a "near certainty" that the strike will result in zero civilian casualties. At the time, President Obama said it was "the highest standard we can meet."

And now that standard is being tossed out like so much garbage, because it's too difficult a standard to meet in our not-war with IS.

The White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.

A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria's Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.

...[Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council] said that a much-publicized White House policy that President Obama announced last year barring U.S. drone strikes unless there is a "near certainty" there will be no civilian casualties — "the highest standard we can meet," he said at the time — does not cover the current U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.

The "near certainty" standard was intended to apply "only when we take direct action 'outside areas of active hostilities,' as we noted at the time," Hayden said in an email. "That description — outside areas of active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now."

Hayden added that U.S. military operations against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) in Syria, "like all U.S. military operations, are being conducted consistently with the laws of armed conflict, proportionality and distinction."

Emphasis mine.

Yesterday, after Britain's Royal Air Force delivered its first airstrikes against IS targets in Iraq, US Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes tweeted:


Is that more representative of proportionality or distinction, do you think?

This is what is happening: We have lifted guidelines that protect civilians, and we're publicly high-fiving other nations who are dropping bombs that may or may not kill civilians, under the auspices of making us safer, despite the fact that every single thing we know about drone campaigns demonstrably indicates that they make us less safe by serving as compelling recruitment tools for enemies of the US.

Which is to say nothing of the fact that we are claiming a right to make ourselves safe at a grave expense to the safety of other people.

President Obama's drone program and policy are shamefully cruel. And the Republican opposition, who reflexively and vehemently hate literally every single other thing this president does, are completely silent on this issue—because they're quite content to support warmongering.

The issue arose during last week's briefing for two House Foreign Affairs Committee members and two staffers when rebel leaders associated with factions of the Free Syria Army, including Abu Abdo Salabman, complained about the civilian deaths — and the fact that the targets were in territory controlled by the Nusra Front, a sometimes ally of the U.S.-backed rebels in its war with the Islamic State and the Syrian regime.

But at least one of the House members present, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who supports stronger U.S. action in Syria, said he was not overly concerned. "I did hear them say there were civilian casualties, but I didn't get details," Kinzinger said in an interview with Yahoo News. "But nothing is perfect," and whatever civilian deaths resulted from the U.S. strikes are "much less than the brutality of the Assad regime."

Shrug. Proportionality. Distinction.