I mean, yeah, that’s what a declaration of war usually entails.
It used to be that non-combatants weren’t considered legitimate targets. Ain’t progress fun?
Americans have only ever pretended to care about non-combatants when it’s convenient. President Obama even invented the term ‘enemy combatant’ so he could pretend his drone strikes were killing fewer civilians.
Yeah that was George W Bush.
But sure, same thing right? 🙄
It was under Bush to justify imprisoning civilians. Bush was all for direct war actions.
Obama massively increased bombings and drone bombings to pull out combat troops and would do stuff like double tap weddings. To lower the number of civilian deaths, Obama declared any male over the age of 14 to be, by definition, an enemy combatant.
The person you responded to was correct, though a bit imprecise with their words.
President Obama even invented the term ‘enemy combatant’
There’s no grey area here, this is just false.
He absolutely redefined to justify killing children. Bush didn’t do that. It was used, under Bush, to justify torture and jailing of adults.
Obama re-invented it for his purposes. The purpose being to kill children without consequence.
In my mind, that definitional change is significant enough that he owns a lot of that blame.
Fucking goddammit, he redefined the word to justify killing children. Why do you defend that?
EDIT: Removed indirect articles for easier readability, content is the same.