Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

Owen

Everything but tech support.
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2210, 02 May 21

Biden Takes Tactical Control of Drone Strikes

In other words, Trump gave tactical discretion to trained military officers in the field. They were effective in quashing ISIS and other threats. Now Biden has removed that discretion so that amateur politicians in the White House can decide.

While the Biden administration censored some passages, the visible portions show that in the Trump era, commanders in the field were given latitude to make decisions about attacks so long as they fit within broad sets of “operating principles,” including that there should be “near certainty” that civilians “will not be injured or killed in the course of operations.”

 

At the same time, however, the Trump-era rules were flexible about permitting exceptions to that and other standards, saying that “variations” could be made “where necessary” so long as certain bureaucratic procedures were followed in approving them.

 

[…]

 

The Biden administration suspended the Trump-era rules on its first day in office and imposed an interim policy of requiring White House approval for proposed strikes outside of the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the Biden team began a review of how both Obama- and Trump-era policies had worked — both on paper and in practice — with an eye toward developing its own policy.

 

The review, officials said, discovered that Trump-era principles to govern strikes in certain countries often made an exception to the requirement of “near certainty” that there would be no civilian casualties. While it kept that rule for women and children, it permitted a lower standard of merely “reasonable certainty” when it came to civilian adult men.

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2210, 02 May 2021

11 Comments

  1. dad29

    Ah, yes!! Biden* wants to surpass LBJ’s record of screwing up a war effort.

  2. steveegg

    I guess Biden sees himself as the next LBJ too.

  3. steveegg

    Also, remember that Biden was the sole Obama administration official who didn’t want to go kill Osama bin Laden back in 2011.

  4. Jason

    Joe Biden couldn’t take Tactical Control of his bowel movements, let along anything military.

  5. dad29

    Given the Junta’s new domestic spying initiative and its rapidly-growing roster of imprisoned “dissidents” we should not be surprised if those drones begin striking Washington County residences.

    Or parts of Texas, Florida, Montana, and Wyoming.

  6. Le Roi du Nord

    Maybe President Biden could get some advice from the previous guy, “”Having a drone fly overhead — and I think nobody knows much more about technology, this type of technology certainly, than I do.” (2019).

    But Biden is no doubt smart enough to avoid getting advice of any kind from the guy that thinks HCQ cures covid, or that the Brits had airports during the Revolutionary War, or that wind turbines cause cancer.

  7. MjM

    Nazi Nort play his broken record yet again: “…avoid getting advice of any kind from the guy that thinks…”

    … 120 million Americans have died of CCPVirus and 150 million have died from guns since 2007, that you cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent, that all men and women are created, by the, you know the, you know the thing, that FDR went on television in 1929 to discuss the crash, that Theresa May is Margaret Thatcher, that we should choose facts over truth.

    But at least Babblin’ Joe will , “lead lead an effective strategy to mobilize trunalimunumaprzure!”

  8. Mar

    Just another hateful lying troll post from Troll Boy.
    Still waiting for your apology for you lying about what I wrote. But I know you have been busy since you haven’t been posting here for awhile.
    I know hanging out with the pervert judge watching his movies takes a lot of time.

  9. Mar

    Oh look, Senile Joe says no who makes under $400,000 will pay no taxes at all.
    Ooops. Another lie.
    Senile Joe makes President Trump look like a saint.
    But still pales in comparison to Le Roi who is a serial liar.
    Senile Joe has an excuse, he has a mental disability.
    Meanwhile,. Le Roi’s excuse?
    I guess when you are watching movies with a judge watching babies being raped, your mind just is not on telling the truth.

  10. Merlin

    So… who is running the White House operations these days? It is so very obviously not Joe Biden. On any given day they just wind him up and point him in different directions with no apparent concern for what he might say or do. They’re no longer even making much of an effort to conceal the fact that he’s being minded like an ordinary toddler. They don’t bother to offer up lame excuses anymore. They’re effectively normalizing the fact that Biden is functionally useless.

    We have no media criticism and precious little “loyal opposition” criticism regarding the country being “led” by an obviously mentally deficient President. No national security concerns? No foreign relations concerns? No CiC concerns? Republicans are apparently just fine with it all. I find it fascinating that the office occupied by Donald Trump in such a powerful fashion just six months ago is currently occupied by a true puppet with a pulse. Who’s serving as the marionette?

  11. Tuerqas

    Regardless how much praise or blame a POTUS may get, the truth is that the bureaucracy would grind on for several decades with no figurehead at all. If Nance and Kami can get away with it, why wouldn’t they run the country behind all of our backs? Joe won’t complain…

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