Historical memory is a fickle mistress. Take the current war crimes being committed by the Trump administration using the United States' military to carry out extrajudicial killings of suspected Venezuelan drug smugglers in the Caribbean (see reporting in The Intercept and Miami Herald for allegations and ongoing investigations). We can trace the Pentagon's current operational deceit regarding these alleged murders to George H. W. Bush's first Gulf War in 1991.
On August 7, 1990, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and General Norman Schwarzkopf presented intelligence to King Fahd suggesting Iraq was poised to invade his kingdom. This meeting and its influence on Fahd's decision to host U.S. troops are documented in State Department and DoD historical records. This deployment placed half a million U.S. troops in the heart of the Islamic world, a presence that many Islamic fundamentalists equated to a reawakening of the Christian Crusades (see Osama bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 fatwas). Some analysts argue that this decision was an indirect contributor to al-Qaeda's later attack on 9/11, though causation remains debated.
Fast forward to February 5, 2003, when George W. Bush's Secretary of State Colin Powell presented now-discredited evidence to the U.N. Security Council regarding Saddam Hussein's alleged chemical weapons program. The speech is publicly archived on the U.N. website. The invasion that followed resulted in widespread civilian casualties, documented by sources such as the Iraq Body Count Project.
Beginning in 2010, President Obama insisted on personally approving every new name on a drone-strike kill list in Yemen and Pakistan, as detailed in The New York Times investigative reporting. These extrajudicial actions killed over 3,500 people, including hundreds of civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. These victims included four American citizens, one being a sixteen-year-old boy, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.
In 2015, the Obama administration allowed U.S.-made cluster munitions to be used in Yemen by Saudi forces policy documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and U.S. congressional testimony. The Saudi-led coalition would go on to conduct double-tap strikes attacking rescuers after an initial strike documented in multiple human rights investigations.
The people's control of lawful killing by the U.S. military was ceded to presidents starting with Kennedy; Johnson and Nixon who also authorized covert or illegal operations in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, as documented in declassified Pentagon Papers and subsequent scholarship.
While it is morally appropriate to be disgusted by and heap scorn on President Trump's alleged war crimes, which appear poised for higher body counts according to investigative reporting, we would do well to remember his past presidential enablers.
Sources
- The Intercept, investigative reporting on alleged U.S. operations in the Caribbean (2020-2024).
- U.S. Department of Defense & State Department historical archives on Operation Desert Shield (1990).
- Osama bin Laden, Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places (1996); World Islamic Front Statement (1998).
- Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower (Knopf, 2006); CIA 9/11 Commission interviews.
- United Nations, Presentation by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003.
- Iraq Body Count Project, documented civilian deaths (2003-present).
- Jo Becker & Scott Shane, Secret Kill List Proves a Test of Obamas Principles, New York Times, May 29, 2012.
- Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drone strike casualty data for Pakistan and Yemen.
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Charlie Savage, Power Wars (Little, Brown, 2015).
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Human Rights Watch, Yemen: Cluster Munitions Worsen Civilian Toll, 2015; U.S. Congressional Research Service reports on arms sales.
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Amnesty International, Yemen: Evidence of Saudi Coalition Double-Tap Strikes, 2016.
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Pentagon Papers (Gravel Edition); Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War; Ben Kiernan, Bombing of Cambodia.
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Miami Herald and The Intercept, investigations into alleged U.S. operations in the Caribbean under the Trump administration.
