Obama's drone casualties estimate is far lower than independent tallies

(Image credit: The Associated Press)

published 2 July 2016

The White House said Friday that just 64 to 116 civilians have been killed by U.S. drone strikes outside of active war zones, a tally much lower than any independent reports have made.

And none of these figures include civilian casualties inside war zones, which are less clearly defined in the modern war on terror than in traditional battlefield situations. One investigation, for instance, found that U.S. drones targeting just 41 men killed an additional 1,147 people in the process.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Obama's institutionalization of drone warfare, which began under President George W. Bush but dramatically accelerated during his successor's tenure, suggests that for the foreseeable future the tactic is here to stay. "One of the things Obama has had to struggle with and the next president will, too, is that the use of military power — the United States killing people overseas — occurs so frequently now that it just kind of washes over the debate," said former senior Obama adviser Derek Chollet. "It has become almost too easy. No one even notices it any more. It’s just a constant."

Explore More

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.