 So, earlier this year, we actually received some positive news from the Biden administration as it relates to foreign policy, and it has to do with one of the most egregious human rights violations that our government is propagating abroad. Drone strikes. So, the New York Times reported, Biden secretly limits counterterrorism drone strikes away from war zones, requiring higher level approval is a stopgap measure as officials review whether to tighten Trump-era targeting rules and civilian safeguards. Now, this is a bit vague and we're not going to get into that article. But essentially, at that time, if you read that article, I think the reasonable response was to kind of wait and see what happens, right? The implication is that he'd be scaling back drone strikes. But by how much that was not necessarily to be determined. But if he does less drone strikes than Donald Trump, who ramped up drone strikes almost exponentially after he took office, then that in and of itself would be a victory. But now we're getting a little bit more information about how much Biden has scaled back his administration's use of drones and the preliminary information that we have suggests that he's scaled it back significantly. And to me, as someone who, I mean, my political development centered on drones in 2015, when I had to write a graduate paper on the destruction caused by drones, this is a really, really positive development. So as Michael Hirsch of Foreign Policy explains, in August of 2020, the man who is now U.S. President Joe Biden's Deputy National Security Advisor, Jonathan Finer co-wrote a privately circulated memo titled Ending the Forever Wars, written with two others who have since joined the Biden administration, Christine Abizayid and Brett Rosenberg. The memo laid out a detailed program for extricating the United States from the two decades long campaign dubbed the War on Terror that began on 9-11. Six months into Biden's presidency, the administration has said little about its longer term plans in dealing with Islamist terrorist groups around the world, apart from announcing the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and yet airstrikes by drones and other U.S. kinetic operations in trouble spots around the world outside conventional battlefields have dramatically dropped since Biden took office. The president imposed the partial moratorium as his team conducts an intensive review of every aspect of America's global counterterrorism efforts, which have spread over two decades from Afghanistan post 9-11 to Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia and parts of the Maghreb, Southeast Asia and West and Central Africa, as the finer memo notes. One of the recommendations enacted from the memo is to raise the threshold for use of force. This includes eliminating strikes against individuals whose specific identities are not known. These are signature strikes and who are not identified as tied to immediate U.S. force protection concerns or otherwise posing as imminent threat to United States as the memo puts it. No truly reliable figures exist, especially for drones, since for most of its existence, the drone program has been shrouded in secrecy. In his final year in office, President Barack Obama briefly opened the window revealing that during his term, drone strikes, conventional airstrikes or cruise missiles used outside conventional war zones like Afghanistan had killed as many as 116 civilians, but other independent monitors put the figures much higher. Obama's successor, Donald Trump, made the numbers classified again. The cutback in drone strikes is one element of a much bigger rethink. One Biden administration official who has been involved in discussions said that while a policy isn't yet set and it's not clear when it will be the upcoming 20th anniversary of 9-11 is an important target date and what is amounting to an exhaustive evaluation of the overseas terrorist threat. So keeping in mind that we don't have exact numbers and figures at this point, this is really, really good news. The article is reporting that drone strikes are at an all time low since the drone wars have been initiated. And I would like for them to stop entirely. But to bring them at an all time low, which obviously suggests lower than when Obama left office, that is a really good sign. And Biden absolutely gets credit for this. Countless lives are being saved because he's scaling back drones, at least for now. Now, we still kind of have to wait to see about the outcome of their assessment. Right now, it's a temporary partial moratorium. But still, this is a really, really good sign. And that's not to say that I agree with Biden on his foreign policy. Overall, I have huge disagreements with Joe Biden. I mean, this individual started the war on terror. He voted for the Iraq war. And on top of that, as president, he's bombed Syria twice. He's basically doing a proxy war with Iran in Iraq and Syria. And, you know, on top of that, he, as I record this video right now, his press secretary isn't ruling out sending troops to Haiti as a result of the assassination of their president. So there's a lot to critique with Biden when it comes to foreign policy. But here, when it comes to drones, one of the most egregious human rights violations propagated by the U.S. government. That's this is great news. Objectively speaking, this is really good news that Biden deserves a lot of credit for. This is excellent news. Now, to me, I essentially lost faith in Obama. Like the wake up call that I got was when I learned how extensive his use of drones and signature strikes were. And, you know, I read articles about the victims of drones in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia that haunt me till this day. You know, it's not just that there are victims that are killed by these drones, but children in other countries like Pakistan. They have PTSD because of the buzzing that they hear from drones. They feel as if they're being hunted. They feel as if, you know, whenever it's a sunny day, they don't want to go outside because the drones will be patrolling. People there know of other individuals who have been killed by U.S. drones. We've drone strike, struck grandmas in their gardens. We've, you know, struck weddings. It's an egregious human rights violation and not only should that end, but I think that is incumbent on the U.S. government to pay reparations to anyone haunted by these drones. Anyone who lost a family member should be given reparations. It's such an egregious human rights violation. And so with Obama, he got an office and once he took over immediately, he did what Trump did. He ramped up drones. And then when there were reports that they were killing a lot of innocent civilians, he scaled it back. And then right before he left office, you know, he tried to put in some some mechanisms that would lead to greater transparency by the U.S. government about who we are killing and not killing. But Trump. Undid that like that, right? He he undid all of that easily and he scaled up drones by 400 percent, more than 400 percent. So to see that Biden has brought it down to pre-Trump levels, but, you know, even lower than the time when Obama scaled them down, presumably excellent, excellent news. This is a victory. And I think that Biden deserves a lot of credit. And sure, maybe it's temporary. The partial moratorium is only a partial moratorium, and they're conducting this comprehensive review. But for them to not come in guns blazing, that is actually different in comparison with his two predecessors. And it's a really good thing that I want to applaud credit where it's due. I have a lot of criticisms of Joe Biden, but when it comes to drones, I think this is a phenomenal development to know that he has drastically scaled back the use of drones. These are killers. They're illegal. They violate the territorial sovereignty of these countries, who we are not at war with and haven't declared war with. And so not only are they illegal under US law, but they're illegal under international law as well. So they have to stop. And the fact that he scaled them back dramatically, that's a really, really positive development. And I think it's important that he gets credit for this.