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In 2010, President Obama directedthe CIA to assassinate an American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime, and the agency successfully carried out that order a year laterwith a September, 2011 drone strike. While that assassination created widespread debate the once-again-beloved ACLU sued Obama to restrain himfromthe assassination on the ground of due process and then, when that suit was dismissed,sued Obamaagain after the killingwas carried out another drone-killing carried out shortly thereafterwas perhaps even more significant yet generated relatively little attention.

Two weeks after the killing of Awlaki, a separate CIA drone strike in Yemen killed his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman, along with the boys17-year-old cousin and several other innocent Yemenis. The U.S. eventually claimed that the boy was not their target but merely collateral damage. Abdulrahmans grief-stricken grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki, urged the Washington Post to visit a Facebook memorial page for Abdulrahman, which explained: Look at his pictures, his friends, and his hobbies His Facebook page shows a typical kid.

The U.S. assault on Yemeni civilians not only continued but radically escalated overthe next five years through the end of the Obama presidency, as the U.S. and the UK armed, supported and provide crucial assistance to their close ally Saudi Arabia as it devastated Yemen through a criminally reckless bombing campaign. Yemen now faces mass starvation,seemingly exacerbated, deliberately, by the US/UK-supported air attacks. Because of the wests direct responsibility for these atrocities, they have receivedvanishingly little attention in the responsible countries.

In a hideous symbol of the bipartisan continuity of U.S.barbarism,Nasser al-Awlaki just lost another one of his young grandchildren to U.S. violence. On Sunday, the Navys SEAL Team 6, using armed Reaper drones for cover, carried out a commando raid on what it said was a compound harboring officials of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A statement issued by President Trump lamented the death of an American service member and several others who were wounded, but made no mention of any civilian deaths. U.S. military officials initially denied any civilian deaths, and (therefore)the CNN report on the raid said nothing about any civilians being killed.

But reports from Yemen quickly surfacedthat 30 people were killed,including 10 women and children.Among the dead: the 8-year-old granddaughter ofNasser al-Awlaki, Nawar, who was also the daughter of Anwar Awlaki.

As noted by my colleague Jeremy Scahill who extensively interviewed the grandparents in Yemen for his book and film on Obamas Dirty Wars the girl was was shot in the neck andkilled, bleeding to death over the course of two hours.Why kill children?, the grandfatherasked. This is the new (U.S.) administration its very sad, a big crime.

The New York Times yesterday reportedthat military officials had been planning and debating the raid for months under the Obama administration, but Obama officials decided to leave the choice to Trump. The new President personally authorized the attack last week. They claim that the main target of the raid was computer materials inside the house that could contain clues about future terrorist plots. Thepaper cited a Yemeni official saying that at least eight women and seven children, ages 3 to 13, had been killed in the raid, and that the attack also severely damaged a school, a health facility and a mosque.

As my colleague Matthew Cole reported in great detail just weeks ago, Navy Seal Team 6, for all its public glory, has a long history of revenge ops, unjustified killings, mutilations, and other atrocities. And Trump notoriously vowed during the campaign to target not only terrorists but also their families. All of that demands aggressive, independent inquiries into this operation.

Perhaps most tragic of all is that just as was true in Iraq Al Qaeda had very little presence in Yemen before the Obama administration began bombing and droning it and killing civilians, thus driving people into the arms of the militant group. As the late, young Yemeni writer Ibrahim Mothana told Congress in 2013:

Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants . . .Unfortunately, liberal voices in the United States are largely ignoring, if not condoning, civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings in Yemen.

During George W. Bushs presidency, the rage would have been tremendous. But today there is little outcry, even though what is happening is in many ways an escalation of Mr. Bushs policies. . . .

Defenders of human rights must speak out. Americas counterterrorism policy here is not only making Yemen less safe by strengthening support for A.Q.A.P. [al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula] but it could also ultimately endanger the United States and the entire world.

This is why it is crucial that as urgent and valid protests erupt against Trumps abuses we not permit recent history to be whitewashed, or long-standing U.S. savagery to be deceitfully depicted as new Trumpian aberrations, or the War on Terror framework engendering these new assaults to be forgotten. Some current abuses are unique to Trump, but as I detailed on Saturday some are the decades-oldby-product of a mindset and system of war and executive powers that all need uprooting. Obscuring these facts, or allowing those responsible to posture as opponents of all this, is not just misleading but counter-productive: much of this resides on an odious continuum and did not just appear out of nowhere.

Its genuinely inspiring to see pervasiverage over the banning of visa-holders and refugees from countries like Yemen. But its also infuriating that the U.S. continues to massacre Yemeni civilians, both directly and through its tyrannical Saudi partners. That does not become less infuriating Yemeni civilians are not less dead because these policies and the war theories in which they are rooted began before the inauguration of Donald Trump. Its not just Trump but this mentality and framework that needs vehement opposition.

Top photo: A Yemeni man walks past cars destroyed during fighting with militants in the city of Zinjibar, Yemen, Thursday, June 14, 2012.

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Obama Killed a 16-Year-Old American in Yemen. Trump Just Killed His 8-Year-Old Sister. - The Intercept