Trump administration not micromanaging drone strikes against terrorist

Defense One:

President Donald Trump has dramatically expanded the war on terror. But you—and perhaps he—would never know it.

Since he came into office, Trump has reportedly abandoned Obama-era rules governing the use of drones in non-combat theaters such as Somalia and Libya. Whereas Obama operationally expanded but bureaucratically constrained drones’ use, from what we can tell, Trump’s new rules instead vest strike decisions with military commanders, without requiring approval from the White House.

Superficially, this approach may have some logic to it. Use of drones, like most all counterterrorism efforts, is complex and multifaceted, requiring a careful balancing of military necessity with concepts of morality, legality, and fair play in war-making. Behind closed doors, the Bush and Obama administrations spent a great deal of time learning critical lessons on their employment as these newer platforms were tested on battlefields unlike any the United States had fought on before (as we’ve explored in greater depth elsewhere). The Obama team did, ultimately, show some of their work, disclosing in part the hard-earned legal and policy framework governing the drone program, their decision process, some strike data, and their own accounting of civilian casualties. We were both involved, from 2013 through 2015, in developing, implementing, and refining this policy during our time with the National Security Council. The parting message: The policy may need to evolve, but this is precedent worth building on.

Trump seems to have declined, instead “trusting his generals” to guide his strategy. According to leaks to The New York Times and other outlets, last fall he introduced a new policy that moved responsibility for counterterrorism operations outside traditional war zones to lower-level commanders, and lowered the threshold for such strikes. (Targets are no longer required to pose a “continuing, imminent threat” to the United States, but rather may be lower-level foot soldiers, and there is purportedly no longer a requirement for “near certainty” that the target be on-site for strikes.) But this is all just conjecture, as apart from unauthorized disclosures made to media outlets, Trump is shieldingeven the broad contours of his new drone guidelines, his overall strategy, and some relevant data on operations from the American people. Without such information, the voting public cannot make informed decisions as to whether they are comfortable with their government’s new approach.
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This is sound military policy.  Tell the military what you want to be done and let them decide the best way to achieve the objective.  It has been a sound basis for US war policy for most of the history of this country, but there have been exceptions and the results have been unsatisfactory when the President or his staff start micromanaging the war.  LBJ did it in Vietnam and created a quagmire.  Obama turned the decisions over to amateurs in the White House which led to the expansion of ISIS.  Trump took a similar approach to defeating ISIS and accomplished in months what Obama had failed to do in years.