Biden said he'd 'end forever wars,' but he's shown few signs that he won't repeat the mistakes of the past, human rights groups warn

• President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to "end forever wars," but human rights groups are concerned by a lack of specifics behind this vow.
• "Withdrawing troops in itself does not end those wars, or US involvement in them, if the US continues to conduct air strikes, whether by drones or by piloted aircraft," Daphne Eviatar of Amnesty International told Insider.
• Biden has been fairly silent on topics like drone strikes and air strikes, and hasn't outlined how he'd work to prevent civilian casualties.
• "Abusive US counterterrorism policies are a threat to national security as well," Letta Tayler of Human Rights Watch told Insider, warning that civilian casualties "fuel grievances that groups like ISIS love to exploit."

President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to "end forever wars," a proposal that's politically palatable to a majority of Americans after roughly 20 years of continuous foreign conflict. But human rights groups are concerned about the lack of specifics behind Biden's vague promise and his relative silence on issues such as drone and air strikes.

"My primary concern is that while he, like other candidates, suggested he wanted to wind down the 'endless wars' ... most of the discussion has been about withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere," Daphne Eviatar, Amnesty International USA's director of Security With Human Rights, told Insider.

"But withdrawing troops in itself does not end those wars, or US involvement in them, if the US continues to conduct air strikes, whether by drones or by piloted aircraft," Eviatar added. "It's not at all clear from Biden's statements ... whether the new administration plans to end or reduce air strikes, or to make more of an effort to protect civilians from being killed or injured by them, if they continue."

The president-elect needs to "recognize that undeclared wars are still wars if hostilities reach a certain intensity or duration," Letta Tayler, an associate director in the Crisis and Conflict Division at Human Rights Watch, told Insider.

"And if the US targets a terrorism suspect outside of an armed conflict situation, then the rules on lethal strikes are even stricter: the targeted person must pose an imminent threat to life and cannot be stopped using less extreme means like capture," said Tayler, whose work focuses on terrorism and counterterrorism.

Biden should avoid repeating Obama's mistakes

Biden's pick for director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, played a key role in establishing the legal framework of the Obama administration's use of drones and drone strikes. Progressive groups have already expressed concern about Haines in this regard, with some worrying the Biden administration will simply be a continuation of the Obama era when it comes to foreign policy.

Biden's economic recovery plan has been dubbed "Build Back Better." Tayler suggested extending this philosophy and commitment "to US counterterrorism policy — and not by simply replicating Obama's drones program, which killed thousands of people with grossly insufficient transparency."

"'Build Back Better' in this context includes ensuring that the US commitment to core principles like the presumption of innocence and victims' right to redress extend to all people, including terrorism suspects and their family members," Tayler added. "The US abandonment of those values in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks has been a blight on the country ever since and Obama only partially reversed the course."

Time is of the essence because 'lives are at stake'

The global "war on terror" has been ongoing for almost two decades, displacing at least 37 million people, killing over 800,000, and costing the US government over $6.4 trillion, according to a recent report from Brown University's Costs of War project. As a senator, Biden voted in favor of authorizing the use of military force that paved the way for the US to wage war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries across the globe.

It's been 19 years and counting since the initial invasion, and US troops are still stationed in Afghanistan. Though the Islamic State lost its caliphate, or territorial holdings, US troops also remain in Iraq and Syria. American service members are also scattered across Africa and involved in counterterrorism operations, including drone strikes, throughout the continent.

Despite objections and concerns from some members of Congress, including Republicans, President Donald Trump has made the abrupt move to withdraw large numbers of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq before he leaves the White House. The president, much like Biden in 2020, pledged to put a stop to endless wars during his 2016 campaign.

The president-elect, who has promised to withdraw most troops from Afghanistan, is unlikely to break from Trump's plan in a major way.

Biden's campaign website said he would put a stop to the "forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East," and "end our support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen." The site added that a Biden administration would "narrowly focus our mission on Al-Qaeda and ISIS." In September, Biden told Stars and Stripes he wants to keep a small military footprint in the Middle East with a focus on special operations in coordination with allies against ISIS and other terror groups.

But the site said nothing about drones, which were central to the US government's approach to counterterrorism when Biden was vice president.

The president-elect's transition website is also devoid of references to drone and air strikes.

And it's difficult to point to any specific remarks Biden has made on drones over the years, which could be linked to the fact that it's a touchy subject for the Obama administration.

If Biden's silence on these matters "means he intends to consult with all sides, including rights and victims groups, before forming and announcing a policy, that's a good sign," Tayler said. "But he shouldn't wait long. Lives are at stake."

'Bar the CIA from carrying out drone strikes'

The use of drones in counterterrorism operations began under former President George W. Bush, but the drone war expanded drastically under former President Barack Obama.

The Obama administration used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), otherwise known as drones, for purposes of surveillance and targeted killings. Obama saw drones as a means of going after suspected terrorists without putting US troops in harms way. But Obama's drone war led to numerous civilian casualties and raised myriad legal and ethical questions.

During his presidency, Obama faced repeated criticism from human rights groups, civil liberties organizations, and the media over a lack of transparency surrounding the drone program, as well as the administration's dubious legal justifications for targeted killings in places where the US was not technically at war.

As Insider previously reported, a total of 563 strikes, primarily by drones, were conducted in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen during Obama's two terms, killing between 384 and 807 civilians, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported. There were 10 times more covert air strikes as part of the war on terror under Obama than Bush, according to the Bureau, which has tracked US drone strikes for years.

In 2013, Obama moved to limit the CIA's ability to carry out drone strikes, shifting most of the operations over to the Pentagon as part of an effort to improve transparency and accountability. Trump reversed course, granting the CIA more authority to conduct drone operations.

"One of Biden's first steps should be to bar the CIA from carrying out drone strikes and other targeted killings. Unlike the US armed forces, the CIA as a general rule provides no information on its role in lethal strikes, including what kinds of investigations it conducts when it kills the wrong people," Tayler said.

'Abusive' counterterrorism policies help terrorist groups like ISIS

Late into his second term, Obama signed an executive order designed to increase transparency on drone strikes and avoid civilian casualties. The order represented a small step away from the opaqueness that has typified the US drone program, but Trump abandoned the changes and escalated the drone war.

Trump also increased air strikes more generally. Civilians casualties skyrocketed as a consequence.

"We saw a huge increase in air strikes during the Trump administration, and a corresponding huge increase in civilians killed and injured from those air strikes," Eviatar said, noting that Amnesty documented 1,600 civilians killed from a four-month campaign in Syria alone.

"The Trump administration changed targeting rules to make it much easier to kill suspected 'terrorists' even if civilians were likely to be harmed in the process," she added. "Biden needs to make clear he'll change those rules immediately and follow the standards set out in international human rights law for the use of lethal force."

Tayler said that Biden should also consider the fact that jihadist groups receive a disproportionate amount of attention in relation to the level of threat they pose to the US, while warning that "abusive US counterterrorism policies are a threat to national security as well."

"The vast majority of attacks by Islamist extremist groups or their followers take place outside the West," Tayler said. "Indiscriminate or disproportionate killings of civilians, with scant transparency or accountability, are short-sighted as well as unlawful because they fuel grievances that groups like ISIS love to exploit."

The Biden transition team did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.