Newsweek: Trump kills more civilians than Obama in ISIS war
According to Newsweek, during the 27 months that Obama was president in the war against ISIS, the group “Airwars”, which describes itself as a “journalist-led transparency project, reports that “we tracked 855 alleged civilian casualty events which likely killed 2298-3398 civilians,” and for the seven months of the Trump Administration, “we tracked 1,196 alleged incidents in which we assess at least 2,819-4,529 civilians died.”
Of course, there’s a simple reason for that – the Obama Administration did it’s level best to avoid fighting ISIS for any excuse.
During the Trump months, the coalition took back Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq and they’re working on taking Raqqa, Syria back. Most of the fighting has been in cities and population centers since Fallujah fell last year. ISIS tends to hide themselves behind women and children, so it’s only natural that these human shields are going to be casualties.
Airwars said that about 80 civilians were killed per month under Obama and that that figure had risen to 360 under Trump by July.
Read any of the books published recently, like “Outlaw Platoon” or Dakota Myer’s “Into the Fire” and you’ll read how the Obama Administration made avoiding combat for supporting fire units a matter of national policy, putting our own forces at risk, costing American lives, so the Nobel Prize winner could salvage his legacy.
FACT: President Obama has a plan to end the war in Afghanistan in 2014—Mitt Romney does not.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 22, 2012
President Obama: "By the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over."
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 13, 2013
Category: Terror War
Does any reasonable human being even read that fishwrap any more?
Fighting = collateral damage
Not fighting = fewer enemy casualties, ineffective prosecution of combat, reduced goal attainment.
I’m confused, Obama told us we were winning?
The JEF called ISIS the “JV team”… and if anyone believes that journalists are “transparent”, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Obama was concerned with his legacy… and it’s lower than Millard Filmore’s right now.
Since when has Snoozeweek magazine been relevant? IMHO they’ve gone the way of the Nooh Yawk Slimes and the Washedallup [Com]Post.
hell, they can;t even manage a print edition any more – no one bought it
IMHO they’re as relevant as Time Ragazine which declared Adolf Hitler as “Man of the Year” in 1938. I wonder if their weasels weren’t salivating over the thought of doing so with Das Hildebeast?
Umm, just one question: Is this leftover gossip column going to track the number of people killed by ISIS/Daesh, too? Are they giving a nod to Vlad Putin’s body count yet?
Fair is fair. Report all the news, or get out of the business.
Oh, yeah – neither of those people mentioned as doing the killing actually anything more tangible than a glass of water.
Define “civilian”.
THAT is the question.
Haha nailed it. All Islamists are civilians. They don’t have a recognized military army.
Newsweek? Newsweek…oh, yeah, I think I saw something with that title on the floor of my aunt’s parakeet cage when I was a kid. I could be wrong, though. It was hard to tell with all the bird shit.
He still ain’t killing enough, so called civilian and otherwise.
I have no problem punishing those who stand next to an act of arson in the same manner of the arsonist. Same goes with murder, treason, late return of library books, etc.
I am even less sympathetic to non-US persons outside of our borders, they don’t rate constitutional rights bro.
Own your AO’s or suffer the Hellfire.
This.
If someone takes up arms against us, they should pay the price… and if they want to get dirty doing it (chemical weapons, etc.), then the “rules of war” go out the window.
Bring the HELLFIRE down on them… and throw in a few TOMAHAWKS to make it really interesting.
I recall some bit of history where our ‘raysis’ U.S. Army Air Corps firebombed the everliving sh*t outta Dresden.
Those white supremacist bombs only managed to kill 25,000 black Saxony Germans, arguably breaking The Hague Conventions. /sarc off
War, regardless of the reason, should be fought for one purpose: total capitulation by your enemy.
Ah, yes. The krauts spent five years firebombing their neighbors’ cities, then cried foul when someone returned the favor. I’ve seen a couple of apologist Germans on YouTube pissing and moaning about that. My answer is that they should be grateful that Patton and Montgomery didn’t decide to shove them into eastbound boxcars with a free shower at the end.
Well, the Constitutional Expert, Barack Obama, who taught Constitutional Law at Columbia or Harvard, I can’t recall which, droned Awlaki. He was a US citizen and of course because Obama did it, “well it was perfectly legal to do that”.
If Trump or GW killed a US citizen without “due process” these same ‘media organizations’ would be calling on them for War Crimes and crimes against the Constitution. The ACLU and SPLC would be leading the charge with every lawyer in their organization attacking either CINC. When it was Obama, “wellllllll, I guess it was legal. He’s a Constitutional Lawyer after all! It MUST be legal!”
I was thinking of that while typing that too. The part that gets me is that he was specifically targeted. I don’t have any place in my heart for a terrorist dickbag but how did no one say boo about it?
The “media” asked him about it and the response was “I checked with my lawyers and they said it was OK” so their response was, “so what other wonderful and super things are you doing to help us and the peasants of the US, Barack?”
Barack the Magnificent was actually a law lecturer at U of Chicago and taught some con law classes. He was not a full-time tenured professor. He was on the radio there once opining that the Constitution wasn’t flexible enough to his liking as a proglodyte.
These so-called “transparency” groups are about as credible as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, et al, who are so quick to nitpick every time one of our guys farts, but completely ignore the horrid atrocities committed by ISIS, Taliban, etc.
Dear Newsweak, eat a bag of fuck.
A whole bag?! Let’s hope their Obamacare covers the Nexium they’re going to need.
If Newsweek reporter Tom O’Connor had torn himself away from Twitter long enough to check some background, he would have realized that Airwars is not a good source of information. His piece that was picked up by Yahoo! is virtually the same story peddled last month by Airwars’ Samuel Oakford to the Daily Beast. Remember him?
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=73417
Oakford is also hooked up with that Dutch dickweed Christiaan Triebert who did a laughably lame story for Bellingcat back in March.
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=70943
Notice too, that O’Connor, the Newsweek/Yahoo! yahoo, couldn’t get through his story without mentioning that routine source on the war against ISIS, the impressive-sounding Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, consisting of one Syrian dude working part-time out of an apartment near London.
I’m shocked! Just totally Shocked!
If we’re going to blame any president for stuff that he didn’t actually do, e.g., killing civilians, let’s blame Lyndon Johnson for killing native Vietnamese, NVA and Viet Cong, as well as ARVN and south Vietnamese.
2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war.
Can we just wave that in Newspeeak and/or O’Connor’s face or something? LBJ was a Democrap, too, a pigheaded ballbuster who escalated something from mere advisers to South Vietnam into a full-fledged undeclared war, because he could.
Question: how many people in the third world did Obama kill when he made energy more expensive by prohibiting new permits for a coal?
There is a direct correlation between low energy prices and improving conditions in the developing world. Not to mention low energy prices make it less likely for a 3rd world government to be overthrown by dictatorial nations like; China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, etc.
Hmmm….NEWSWEEK…the Magazine that preprinted MADAM PRESIDENT with HRC on their front cover the week of 7 November 2016…🤡
Well, they’re on Yahoo’s network, so using a suspect source to create a stir over nothing doesn’t surprise me. Must be a slow news day. Newsweek used to print better stories than this.
However, none of the comments seem to show much support for Mr. O’Connor’s take on who did what to whom. Ergo, he tried to make a point, stir the pot, failed, and now has rotten egg on his metrosexual-approved shirt.
Ya mean he was made to lick the spoon after stirring the shit pot? NICE!!!
The more I think about Newsweek’s virtue signaling about civilian casualties the more I get pissed. How many of the staff have actually gotten up the intestinal fortitude to serve their country in uniform?
How many of them have had the horrible honor to see the metal boxes offloaded at Dover AFB?
How many of them have even talked to a Vet, or better yet, a Combat Vet?
F*ck Newsweek. C*cksucking Bastards.
Ye-e-ess… the things you find out when you start digging. As it happens, Newsweek Magazine is no longer based in New York City. It is no longer an American publication. It is, in fact, based in London, England, at Canary Wharf.
Contact email: emea-support@newsweek.com
Registered Office:
25 Canada Square,
Canary Wharf,
London, E14 5LQ,
United Kingdom.
Newsweek are a company registered in England and Wales under company number 08855703. Yes, ‘are’ instead of ‘is’, because somehow, a company is a plurality instead of a single entity.
This Tom O’Connor prick has been riding pine as a NYC corespondent since 2013 and he when to the illustrious Institute of Palestine Studies (which makes me wonder).
I bet it you scratch this paint you’ll find rust.
That’s good to know. Could they have moved their HQ to another country to ease the corporate tax rate they would suffer in the US? Nawwwwww, couldn’t be.
Perhaps one thing good will come from this. Thugs and terrorists might just learn that women and children are not bullet, rocket, or bomb proof.
Trump is simply going after their recruiting stations much like the aloha snackbar muzzie did to the Chattanooga Marine recruiting station in 2015!
The most important number they fail to mention, the number of American lives lost. From Rolling Stone magazine of all places, written in May 2016:
—2,499 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq so far under President Obama, according to the independent Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.
—Of those, 1,906 have been killed in and around Afghanistan, and 593 in Iraq.
—Under Obama, the United States has been at war for 2,687 days. That’s longer than under George W. Bush — or any other U.S. president, for that matter.
—Obama has conducted airstrikes on seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Syria. (That’s three more countries than George W. Bush bombed.)
—U.S. combat forces are deployed on the ground in three countries: Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. That’s one more war than Obama inherited, and which his successor will likely have to contend with.
– Obama conducted airstrikes on seven countries that we “know” about. I guarantee there were more we haven’t heard about.
– US Combat forces are on the ground in more than just three countries. But those are the big newsworthy three.
And Obama has what Bush and Trump don’t have, a Nobel Peace Prize for his “intention” to do peaceful things.
You left out Lyndon Johnson = Vietnam.
March 1965 to April 1975 is 10 years. Yes, I am counting 1973-1975, because we were still there and still shooting and getting shot at, even though it was supposed to be over. And, no, I do not count Nixon’s term in office as HIS contribution to Vietnam, because Johnson started it and kept it going. Even if you take away 1973-1975, (Nixon/Ford) Johnson still bears responsibility for the other eight years.
Obama’s term of war is 7.22 years.
LBJ’s term of war 3,652.5 years.
Both Democraps. Both arrogant jerks. Both with awards they didn’t deserve, LBJ’s Silver Star, bodaprez’s Novel PP.
Wars of attrition only work if the goal is to conquer and rule the opposition. Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars were for the purpose of acquiring territory in Europe and expanding Roman control. Agamemmnon’s siege war (Mycenaea) with Ilium (Troy) was aimed at acquiring control of the Aegean, among other things. The Siege of Carthage was meant to punish Hannibal Barca for his attempt to take over Rome, just as the Roman siege of Jerusalem was waged to establish Roman rule of Jerusalem.
Unless our goal is to decimate the opposition in the Middle East and establish US rule of the area, why are we really there? Those episodes of jihadis driving vehicles into crowds obviously aren’t winning Daesh any new friends.
So what is this really all about, other than continuing to slap back at an amorphous cloud of useless bullies and scumbag jerks who seem hellbent on suicide?
Is it wrong that I don’t care?
All I want to do is knock the fight right out of them so they become the Germans and Japanese of this century.
“Is it wrong that I don’t care?” No…my first thought was – “So”
Then I thought of all the civilians killed by FDR and Truman…war is and should be hell. I don’t believe one can win it with only “surgical” strikes, especially against an enemy that does not share our morals.
I care(d).
When a warlord rolls into a village and has dinner at a residence in a compound, most of the families living in/near said compound have ZERO options. They can’t refuse hospitality, they can’t leave (killed as spies later if they do), etc.
So when a missile or PGM slams the residence where an HVT was dining/meeting/planning ‘all of a sudden’ that evening, the locals caught within lethal radius are basically screwed.
My main issue is innocent civilians winding up dead because of risk aversion and/or operational laziness on our part.
A-stan ain’t WW2 and we’re not carpet bombing strategic targets.
I have been following the Syrian civil war for a long time
Isis has been truly unbelievable in its atrocities against civilians under its control
Even now in the final battle for Raqqa, they are putting unwilling civilians on the roof of the car bomb factories
We are waiting until the cars leave the factory before destroying the vehicles
Civilians are running the minefields and swimming the river to escape in spite of Isis snipers
It seems we will have to accept these civilian casualties as unfortunate collateral damage if the world is to be rid if the Islamic Caliphate
Kudos to the Syrian Kurds for fighting and dying in Raqqa which is not a Kurdish area.
You gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette, right?
Newsweek lies. Shocking, I know.
Without going into too much detail, the ‘minimum requirement’ for chucking a missile/PGM into a compound/building was greatly reduced under former President Obama.
The net result was a greatly increased # of civilians – truly innocent civilians – winding up dead or severely injured.
Next we’ll be discovering
Time Magazine lies, too. Except I saw their lies as a first person observer of facts they falsely reported in September 1971 on a battle in RVN in 1971.
A country with as much technical superiority as we claim to have should also bear the burden of applying some of it to avoiding civilian casualties. “Collateral damage” is a term I particularly disdain when it’s use has become both ubiquitous and casual.
Terrorists inflict civilian casualties because it’s their stated intent and reason for being. By taking out some buildings on 9/11 Al Quaeda managed to set off a chain reaction in American society and government that reverberates to this day. Terrorists are less interested in who they kill than in the follow-on effect on the populace and the economy, -largely through the actions taken in response by the government. How much have we spent? To what degree have our freedoms been eroded?
Afghanistan is a society with well-documented systems of inter-family blood feuds that go on for generations. If a US combat operation kills a civilian family member, then the remaining males are honor-bound to take out revenge, no matter how long it takes. As it looks like American firepower does little to deter these sorts of people from pursuing what is for them a societal imperative, just how many new combatants are generated by each civilian casualty?
Short of sterilizing the landscape of humans, maybe by use of a novel biological agent, I don’t see how & where this all ends in Afghanistan.
As for Trump, he states a desired outcome, but it’s obvious he has no political will for achieving it. Otherwise, the plan would look pretty different than a repeat of the last 16 years.
UMMM Sneewsweek still in circulation? Obama the sneaky smoker, and toker,and closet joystick junkie and the first mullato Kenyan potus.