The US has dropped 326,000 bombs on people in other countries since 2001,
Most Recently in Syria
MEDEA BENJAMIN AND NICHOLAS J.S. DAVIES
03/05/2021
( Code Pink) - On February 25th, President Biden ordered U.S. air forces to
drop seven 500-pound bombs on Iraqi forces in Syria, reportedly killing 22
people. The U.S. airstrike has predictably failed to halt rocket attacks on
deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly
passed a resolution to close over a year ago.
The Western media reported the U.S. airstrike as an isolated and exceptional
incident, and there has been significant blowback from the U.S. public,
Congress and the world community, condemning the strikes as illegal and a
dangerous escalation of yet another Middle East conflict.
But unbeknownst to many Americans, the U.S. military and its allies are
engaged in bombing and killing people in other countries on a daily basis.
The U.S. and its allies have dropped more than 326,000 bombs and missiles on
people in other countries since 2001 (see table below), including over
152,000 in Iraq and Syria.
That's an average of 46 bombs and missiles per day, day in day out, year in
year out, for nearly 20 years. In 2019, the last year for which we have
fairly complete records, the average was 42 bombs and missiles per day,
including 20 per day in Afghanistan alone.
So, if those seven 500-pound bombs were the only bombs the U.S. and its
allies dropped on February 25th, it would have been an unusually quiet day
for U.S. and allied air forces, and for their enemies and victims on the
ground, compared to an average day in 2019 or most of the past 20 years.
On the other hand, if the unrelenting U.S. air assault on countries across
the Greater Middle East finally began to diminish over the past year, this
bombing may have been an unusual spike in violence. But which of these was
it, and how would we know?
We don't know, because our government doesn't want us to. From January 2004
until February 2020, the U.S. military kept track of how many bombs and
missiles it dropped on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and published those
figures in regular, monthly Airpower Summaries, which were readily available
to journalists and the public. But in March 2020, the Trump administration
abruptly stopped publishing U.S. Airpower Summaries, and the Biden
administration has so far not published any either.
As with the human casualties and mass destruction that these hundreds of
thousands of airstrikes cause, the U.S. and international media only report
on a tiny fraction of them. Without regular U.S. Airpower Summaries,
comprehensive databases of airstrikes in other war-zones and serious
mortality studies in the countries involved, the American public and the
world are left almost completely in the dark about the death and destruction
our country's leaders keep wreaking in our name. The disappearance of
Airpower Summaries has made it impossible to get a clear picture of the
current scale of U.S. airstrikes.
Here are up-to-date figures on U.S. and allied airstrikes, from 2001 to the
present, highlighting the secrecy in which they have abruptly been shrouded
for the past year:
Numbers of bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the U.S. & its
allies since 2001
Iraq (& Syria*)
Afghanistan
Yemen
Other Countries**
2001
214
17,500
2002
252
6,500
1
2003
29,200
2004
285
86
1 (Pk)
2005
404
176
3 (Pk)
2006
229
1,770
7,002 (Le,Pk)
2007
1,708
5,198
9 (Pk,S)
2008
915
5,051
40 (Pk,S)
2009
119
4,184
3
5,554 (Pk,Pl)
2010
18
5,126
2
128 (Pk)
2011
2
5,411
13
7,763 (Li,Pk,S)
2012
4,083
41
54 (Li, Pk,S)
2013
2,758
22
32 (Li,Pk,S)
2014
6,292*
2,365
20
5,058 (Li,Pl,Pk,S)
2015
28,696*
947
14,191
28 (Li,Pk,S)
2016
30,743*
1,337
14,549
529 (Li,,Pk,S)
2017
39,577*
4,361
15,969
301 (Li,,Pk,S)
2018
8,713*
7,362
9,746
84 (Li,Pk,S)
2019
4,729*
7,423
3,045
65 (Li,S)
2020
SECRET
SECRET
7,622
54 (S)
2021
SECRET
SECRET
310
7 (S)
Total
152,096* + ?
81,638 + ?
65,534
26,712
Grand Total = 325,980 + Trump & Biden's Secret Bombing 2020-2021
**Other Countries: Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia.
These figures are based on U.S. Airpower Summaries for Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Syria; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's count of drone strikes
in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen; the Yemen Data Project's count of Saudi-led
airstrikes in Yemen; the New America Foundation's database of foreign
airstrikes in Libya; and other published statistics. Figures for 2021 are
only through January.
There are several categories of airstrikes that are not included in this
table, meaning that the true numbers of airstrikes are certainly higher.
These include:
- Helicopter strikes: Military Times published an article in February 2017
titled, "The U.S. military's stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands
have gone unreported." The largest pool of airstrikes not included in U.S.
Airpower Summaries are strikes by attack helicopters. The U.S. Army told the
authors its helicopters had conducted 456 otherwise unreported airstrikes in
Afghanistan in 2016. The authors explained that the non-reporting of
helicopter strikes has been consistent throughout the post-9/11 wars, and
they still did not know how many actual missiles were fired in those 456
attacks in Afghanistan in the one year they investigated.
- AC-130 gunships: The airstrike that destroyed the Doctors Without Borders
hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan in 2015 was not conducted with bombs or
missiles, but by a Lockheed-Boeing AC-130 gunship. These machines of mass
destruction, usually manned by U.S. Air Force special operations forces, are
designed to circle a target on the ground, pouring howitzer shells and
cannon fire into it, often until it is completely destroyed. The U.S. has
used AC-130s in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria.
- Strafing runs: U.S. Airpower Summaries for 2004-2007 included a note that
their tally of "strikes with munitions dropped. does not include 20mm and
30mm cannon or rockets." But the 30mm cannons on A-10 Warthogs and other
ground attack planes are powerful weapons, originally designed to destroy
Soviet tanks. A-10s fire 65 depleted uranium shells per second to blanket an
area with deadly and indiscriminate fire, but that does not count as a
"weapons release" in U.S. Airpower Summaries.
- "Counter-insurgency" and "counter-terrorism" operations in other parts of
the world. The United States formed a military coalition with 11 West
African countries in 2005, and now has a drone base in Niger, but we have
not found a database of U.S. and allied air strikes in that region, or in
the Philippines, Latin America or elsewhere.
It was clearly no coincidence that Trump stopped publishing Airpower
Summaries right after the February 2020 U.S. withdrawal agreement with the
Taliban, reinforcing the false impression that the war in Afghanistan was
over. In fact, U.S. bombing resumed after only an 11-day pause.
As our table shows, 2018 and 2019 were back-to-back record years for U.S.
airstrikes in Afghanistan. But how about 2020? Without the official records,
we don't know whether the withdrawal agreement led to a serious reduction in
airstrikes or not.
President Biden has foolishly tried to use airstrikes in Syria as "leverage"
with Iran, instead of simply rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement as he
promised during the election campaign. Biden is likewise trailing along in
Trump's footsteps by shrouding U.S. airstrikes in the secrecy that Trump
used to obscure his failure to "end the endless wars."
It is entirely possible that the highly publicized February 25th airstrikes,
like Trump's April 2017 missile strikes on Syria, were a diversion from much
heavier, but largely unreported, U.S. bombing already under way elsewhere,
in that case the frightful destruction of Mosul, Iraq's former second city.
The only way that Biden can reassure the American public that he is not
using Trump's wall of secrecy to continue America's devastating airwars,
notably in Afghanistan, is to end this secrecy now, and resume the
publication of complete and accurate U.S. Airpower Summaries.
President Biden cannot restore the world's respect for American leadership,
or the American public's support for our foreign policy, by piling more
lies, secrets and atrocities on top of those he has inherited. If he keeps
trying to do so, he might well find himself following in Trump's footsteps
in yet another way: as the failed, one-term president of a destructive and
declining empire.
Via Code Pink