• Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    He gets tons of flak for his heavy use of drone attacks - which is completely valid - but people usually ignore that:

    • a) The reason we know those numbers is because Obama’s administration put strict reporting policies on drone usage in place that included strikes that weren’t even tracked under previous stats. A lot of those drone strikes were egregious, yes, but also are only public knowledge because he designed a system to be held accountable.
    • b) Trump removed those reporting policies during his first term, then proceeded to order more drone strikes than Obama. Not saying that Obama’s good because Trump is worse, but the reported numbers are back to being fucking lies and those lies make Obama look worse.
    • c) Drone warfare technology started coming into its own around when Obama was elected, and he was stuck with multiple unpopular wars and an openly hostile Republican opposition who would blame any American casualties on him, so of course he used drones more than previous presidents.