Trump breaking Obama’s record in dropping bombs
US President Donald Trump is expected to shatter his predecessor Barack Obama’s record of dropping the most bombs in various US military interventions across the world and become the most hawkish American president in modern history.
Six months into his presidency, Trump has already dropped some 20,650 bombs, 80 percent of what Obama had used in US wars throughout 2016.
At this rate, the Republican head of state is expected to surpass his Democratic predecessor by early September.
Trump’s affection with air powers—the signature tactic of US military intervention— has led to an unprecedented increase in airstrikes by the US-led military coalition in Iraq and Syria.
This July, the coalition pilots dropped 4,313 bombs on alleged terrorist positions across Syria, 77 percent more than the same period last month.
In June, the number went all the way up to 4,848. That is roughly 1,600 more bombs than were dropped in any one month under Obama since the campaign started in 2014.
It has been more or less the same story in Afghanistan, despite the Trump White House’s apparent lack of a clear policy for the war-torn country.
In April, the US military dropped more bombs in the country since 2012, the year Obama’s troop surge reached its peak. It was in the same month that Trump authorized the US military to bomb Afghanistan’s Mamand Valley with the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat.
The already high number of US military involvements in non-battlefield settings also saw a dramatic increase in Trump’s first six months.
While there were only 21 lethal operations across Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan in Obama’s last 193 days, the number has quintupled under Trump. The US military conducted at least 92 such operations in Yemen, seven in Somalia, and four in Pakistan in his first 193 days.
All of the above comes amid an apparently higher tolerance in Washington for killing civilians during the attacks.
According to the UN, the US military has killed at least 67 percent more civilians over Trump’s first six months compared to the first half of 2016.
Obama came to office pledging to end former President George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but he left the office having been at war longer than any president in US history. He is the only president to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.
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