BlindBoo
Diamond Member
- Sep 28, 2010
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On March 10, a U.S. drone fired a missile, turning a passenger vehicle outside Janaale, Somalia, into a heap of burnt and broken metal with fresh corpses inside. Whether the people killed that day were “terrorists” or ordinary Somalis is actively disputed. It is also a reminder that the United States’ targeted killing program persists to this day, another legacy of the forever war that has now lasted for three presidential administrations and shows no signs of stopping in the next one. Under U.S. President Donald Trump, however, an already opaque and murderous set of rules has become even more widely applied, and ever less accountable.
Trump Inherited the Drone War but Ditched Accountability
Only a single formal check remains on U.S. killings worldwide.
foreignpolicy.com
The elastic nature of the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) has stretched so far as to cover strikes in Yemen, Libya, and Somalia. The first modern drone attack, a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA-piloted Predator drone in October 2001, was covered by the AUMF, as was the airstrike in Janaale, conducted by U.S. Africa Command (Africom), itself born in the dying years of President George W. Bush ‘s administration as part of the “war on terror.”
In a press release also published March 10, Africom claimed that its attack in Jaanale killed five terrorists. Shortly after, images of the wrecked vehicle began to circulate online, some linked to al–Shabab, the terror group actively targeted by the strike, claiming that instead it had left only civilians dead. Subsequent investigations by journalists found relatives of the deceased, who attested to the innocence of their family members.
