theunitofcaring:

Trump is on pace to order three or four times as many drone strikes as Obama did. I wish I had thought to register a prediction about this in advance, or solicit predictions from other people; I feel like I heard some people say ‘I am worried Clinton’s likelier to keep it up with the pointless foreign wars than Trump, who is a populist demagogue but at least an isolationist one’, and I’m curious if they would have predicted more drone strikes under a Clinton or a Trump administration.

I also suspect that Trump’s increased willingness to approve the marginal drone strike means that a three or fourfold increase in drone strikes will be significantly more than three or four times as bad; a strike that Obama would not have approved because it has too many civilian casualties, is escalatory, or angers and endangers our local allies will get approved under Trump. Obama’s drone warfare program was awful and unconscionable, of course; this just means we can expect it to keep getting worse.