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Are we about to see a significant shift in U.S. government policy relating to the use of targeted lethal force for counterterrorism purposes?
Maybe, according to an important article by Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt in the New York Times. Here’s what you need to know:
Yesterday U.S. News ran an article titled “‘Areas of Active Hostilities’: Trump’s Troubling Increases to Obama’s Wars.” As the title suggests, the thrust of the article is that there is something wrong with the Obama administration’s “areas of active hostilities” concept—or at least there’s something wrong with it now that it is in the hands of a different president.
It is hardly uncommon for the United States to use force against AQAP targets in Yemen. Since 2012, we’ve averaged more than two dozen operations every year (see, e.g., here and here). By and large, these operations don’t generate headlines (the airstrike that killed U.S.
In a post earlier today, I highlighted a variety of recent developments in which the Obama administration has adjusted constraints on using force under color of the AUMF, based in part on the report in the
DOD has announced an airstrike on an al Shabaab official in Somalia:
The DOD airstrike that may have killed Taliban leader Mullah Mansour is interesting, from a legal perspective, at many levels.