The Crime

On January 23, 2009, three days into his first term as president, Barack Obama ordered lethal drone strikes in the Waziristan region of Pakistan. The strikes killed as many as 20 civilians.¹ Obama greatly expanded U.S. drone warfare—ordering 10 times more drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than his predecessor, George W. Bush, did. Under Obama’s presidency, there was a total of 563 U.S. strikes, mostly by drones, in those countries—compared to 57 strikes under Bush.²

Obama claimed that these and other drone strikes he ordered as president were targeted at armed anti-U.S. Islamic jihadists. But as the British organization Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported at the end of Obama’s two-term presidency: “Drones have hit hundreds of ordinary civilians going about their everyday life… Across his eight years in power the Bureau has recorded between 384 and 807 civilians killed by drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.”³ Countless others were seriously injured. Many of the victims were children.

The drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia were “covert” operations by the CIA and the military outside of “official” U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started by Bush.⁴ When Obama received the Nobel “Peace” Prize toward the end of his first year in the White House, U.S. drone strikes had already killed at least 100 civilians in Pakistan during that time.⁵ Among them were close relatives of 13-year-old Faheem Qureshi. Faheem was at a family gathering at his home in a North Waziristan village to celebrate an uncle’s return from working overseas. A missile from a U.S. drone hit the house, killing two of Faheem’s uncles and an older cousin. Faheem was able to escape alive but needed months of medical treatment for severe injuries, including to his eyes. Doctors managed to save one eye, but he was blinded in the other. The U.S. never acknowledged the horror and death they caused to civilians in this attack.⁶

Once a week, Obama met with top officials to discuss targets for armed drone strikes, in sessions they called “Terror Tuesdays.” They pored over a “kill list” with notes on individual targets, which they called “baseball cards.” Then Obama gave his stamp of approval on the assassinations for that week.⁷ Obama reportedly said to senior staff members, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”⁸

Civilians Targeted

Obama’s drones did kill some leaders and members of al-Qaeda and other anti-U.S. armed groups. But under the tactics the U.S. used, drone operators based thousands of miles away could label a group of people who had gathered as “terrorists” and treat them as “legitimate” targets.⁹ This meant that people not part of jihadist groups but who just lived in the same area—people gathered for community events like weddings and funerals—could suddenly become victims of drone attacks. In one such attack in Yemen in 2013, 15 people on their way to a wedding were killed in a drone strike because the U.S. assumed they were an al-Qaeda convoy.¹⁰ 

Another insidious tactic was “double-tap” strikes, in which an armed drone struck a supposed target, and when people came to help the wounded or look for relatives, they were hit by a second drone attack deliberately aimed at the same spot. According to one account,¹¹ a “double-tap” strike in Pakistan killed 18 villagers and injured 22, including an eight-year-old girl.

In 2012, U.S. drones fired multiple missiles into a tent in the village of Zowi Sidgi, instantly killing eight of the village day laborers who had gathered there to rest. One witness recounted, “When we went to where the missiles hit to help people, we saw a very horrible scene. Body parts were scattered everywhere. [I saw] bodies without heads and bodies without hands or legs. Everyone in the hut was cut to pieces.… Villagers were gathered at the scene with stretchers and water and had begun the process of poring through the aftermath when U.S. drones fired another round of missiles into the same location, killing six people and wounding two others who died soon after." 

In 2013, Amnesty International in conjunction with Human Rights Watch issued reports on civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, and said these military actions should be considered war crimes and violations of international laws.¹²

Assassinations of U.S. Citizens

On September 30, 2011, a CIA drone killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen living in Yemen, along with another U.S. citizen. Al-Awlaki was an advocate of reactionary Islamic fundamentalism and voiced support for attacks against the U.S. Obama officials justified his assassination by saying he posed an “imminent” threat, based on secret “evidence.” 

The U.S. never presented any evidence that al-Awlaki had actually committed any crimes, and he had no opportunity to answer his accusers in court—in blatant violation of rights supposedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. When there were press reports that the U.S. was targeting al-Awlaki, his father—a Yemeni official and scholar who had studied in the U.S.—appealed directly to Obama to stop the killing, including through a lawsuit in a U.S. court.¹³ Obama went ahead with green lighting the assassination and said his decision was “an easy one.”¹⁴

Less than a month later, another U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, also a U.S. citizen, along with a 17-year-old cousin and at least five other civilians. Abdulrahman had no history of involvement in any jihadist groups. U.S. officials claimed the attack was meant to kill a man they claimed was “an al-Qaeda leader,” who was not among those who died—without even a word of apology. 

The Criminals

U.S. Presidents, Republican and Democrat: Bush began the program of drone warfare, which Obama greatly expanded and which was continued and further developed by Trump and Biden.

CIA and U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command: They carried out drone strikes with impunity, even when innocent civilians having nothing to do with the supposed “targets” lost their lives in such attacks. 

U.S. Congress: After the September 11, 2001 attacks by jihadists on New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) law. It gave the President the power to “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States…." This law was so broadly worded that it allowed the President to order open and covert military actions against all kinds of forces around the world, on his say-so. This was part of the justification used by Obama for the escalation of drone attacks.

U.S. courts: Federal courts repeatedly dismissed suits challenging the constitutionality of the Obama drone program, siding with the government’s argument that judicial review would risk exposing state secrets and hinder the ability to act against those the President declares are threats to the U.S.¹⁵

The Alibi

For the first several years of the Obama presidency, U.S. officials refused to disclose anything about the drone strikes and other military actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, which were outside of the officially acknowledged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. With increasing reports of civilian deaths, Obama and his officials began trying to justify the drone wars. 

They claimed that drone strikes were only authorized when the targets posed a “continuing imminent threat to U.S. persons,” without providing specifics on how they arrived at such a determination.¹⁶ They often cited the Authorization to Use Military Force law passed by Congress¹⁷ after 9/11 as giving them the power to take such action.

Regarding the hundreds of civilian killed, Obama claimed that “drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties. For the most part, they have been very precise, precision strikes against al-Qaeda and their affiliates.”¹⁸

Midway through his second term, Obama boasted, “As commander-in-chief, I have not shied away from using force when necessary. I have ordered tens of thousands of young Americans into combat.… I've ordered military action in seven countries."¹⁹

As for the assassination of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, claimed that al-Awlaki’s due process rights were not violated because of the deliberations within the administration that decided he should be killed—which Holder and other officials refused to give details on.²⁰ After al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, also a U.S. citizen, was killed by a CIA drone a few days after his father’s assassination, Obama’s press secretary said in response to a reporter pointing out he was a minor: “I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well-being of their children.”

The Real Motive

Armed drones gave the U.S. rulers an edge because they used advanced technology that was not available to their Islamic jihadist opponents at that time. Drones were seen as more “cost-effective” than using ground troops (although Obama did also send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan), and they did not involve the risk of casualties among U.S. soldiers. Drones provided “deniability”: the U.S. could claim they were only carrying out “targeted” operations against specific jihadists in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere—not invading more countries. 

Drones also served to terrorize whole populations. According to a 2012 study on the effects of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, “Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves.”²¹

In a broader framework, drone attacks and other military actions under Obama were part of the “Global War on Terror” launched by the U.S. under the Bush regime after the 9/11 attacks—first with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and then spreading elsewhere. This war was ostensibly aimed at fundamentalist Islamic jihadist forces behind the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. rulers at that time had summed up that these forces represented increasing dangers to U.S. control over the Middle East, which was strategically crucial to their global dominance. 

The Islamic jihadists are reactionary, using tactics in line with their counter-revolutionary agendas that are extremely oppressive for masses of people. No one who seeks a better world should support these forces or mistake them for anti-imperialists. But the crimes committed by these forces are dwarfed by those of the U.S. empire, from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the CIA-led massacre in Indonesia, genocidal war in Vietnam, and the unprovoked war on Iran today.²²

However, the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. rulers’ “homeland” were a shock both Democrats and Republicans felt compelled to respond to aggressively, in order to send a message: no one was going to get away with such an assault on the U.S. without an extremely violent reprisal. At the same time, those attacks provided a justification for major moves that were already being discussed within the Bush regime before 9/11 to deal with the spread of anti-U.S. Islamist jihadism and to strengthen its grip on the Middle East and other regions.²³ The U.S. rulers had summed up that these forces represented increasing threats to their interests in the Middle East region and to its global dominance. The Bush regime saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as a means to quickly take control of and impose political and economic conditions on these and other countries that would “drain the swamp” of Islamist forces that posed obstacles to American domination over the Middle East and other regions.

Fundamentally, the so-called “Global War on Terror” was a war for empire. Obama avoided using that phrase, to distinguish himself from Bush.²⁴ But the expanded drone attacks and other military actions under his presidency were part of the same war for empire, aimed at protecting and strengthening the U.S. capitalist-imperialist system’s hold on the Middle East and U.S.’s global position—at a time when it faced rising challenges from their imperialist rivals, China and Russia, as well as regional powers like Iran.²⁵

The reality is: Every U.S. President, whether a “liberal” like Obama or the fascist Trump, represents and is an instrument of the capitalist-imperialist system. And they have one main role: to serve the interests of this oppressive, exploitative, planet-destroying system, whatever the cost to the lives of people and to the environment worldwide.