Feeling pressure from progressive groups, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order mandating annual accounting of civilian deaths connected to military and CIA strikes. It was in line with Obama’s promises that he would create restrictions on the executive branch’s use of drone technology to engage in war, saying in 2013 that “The same human progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power or risk abusing it.” On Wednesday, Donald Trump issued a new executive order that rescinded the requirement for public disclosure of those numbers.
But don’t you fret, a National Security spokesperson told CNN: “The United States Government is fully committed to complying with its obligations under the law of armed conflict, minimizing, to the greatest extent possible, civilian causalities, and acknowledging responsibility when they unfortunately occur during military operations." See, everything is fine. The Trump administration also elided the issue by arguing that this action “eliminates superfluous reporting requirements,” pointing out that there is already a congressionally mandated report that the military is required to give that includes civilian casualties. However, that report does not require any information of the CIA and the foreign policy initiatives they carry out from the sky.
The Obama-era executive order was already far less transparent (and less accurate) than advocates had hoped for. It only required “aggregate figures that did not include when or where the strikes occurred.” The Obama administration’s first reporting of between 64 and 116 civilians killed in drone and other air attacks was considered very low by many independent counts. That being said, it was a step forward in requiring subsequent presidents to submit some kind of annual report on the subject. In May 2018, the White House was asked where the civilian casualty report was and claimed it was still under “review,” but it was never revealed who was doing the reviewing and when it would be released. Now, that’s all over.