President Trump rescinded an Obama-era executive mandate that required the Department of Defense to publicly report the number of civilians killed by U.S. airstrikes.
The executive order signed by Trump replaces the one Obama signed in 2016, which directed officials within the national security apparatus to deliver an annual report detailing an “unclassified summary of the numbers of strikes” and “assessments of combatant and non-combatant deaths resulting from those strikes.”
The secrecy over how many civilians are killed by airstrikes has been one of the most scrutinized aspects of the U.S. global war on terrorism, and critics view the policy rescission as pulling the curtain back over a window into the otherwise secretive nature of the American military apparatus in the Middle East.
But keeping in theme with a series of deregulation and cutting duplication in the federal government, the White House maintains that annual report required by Obama executive order already exists under congressional preview. The defense secretary already has to produce a similar report and present it to Congress according to the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act.
The National Security Council released a statement Wednesday adding onto the duplicity rationale, saying that the order contained “superfluous reporting requirements, requirements that do not improve government transparency, but rather distract our intelligence professionals from their primary mission.”
The law’s reporting requirement is narrow in scope, however, only requiring the defense secretary to submit a report on the civilians killed by airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Libya.
A policy official for the House Armed Services Committee, the committee in charge of crafting the law, told the Washington Examiner that the criticism of its narrow scope ought to be downplayed as a vast majority of all U.S. airstrike activity occurs in those spheres of combat.
