The Trump administration is moving to potentially eliminate a Defense Department office tasked with helping commanders reduce civilian deaths from military operations.
A memo dated Monday directs Army leaders to prepare to review the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence by February 21, ahead of a request to detach the office from the Army then have Congress abolish it, according to The New York Times, which obtained the document.
“As is routine in a new administration, the [Defense Department] Agency Review Team tasked the Army to review its programs and responsibilities,” an Army spokeswoman told The Washington Post of the directive. “The Army continues to fund and support the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence.”
The office came about after Trump’s first defense secretary, James Mattis, ordered a study into civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, after a New York Times investigation found civilian deaths in the campaign against ISIS may have been undercounted by a factor of 31.
A 2023 law, signed by the Biden administration, later established the Center.
The reported changes come amid speculation the Trump administration could loosen civilian protections and rules of engagement in military operations.
During the first Trump administration, the Republican limited the number of air strikes the U.S. had to disclose to the public and relaxed rules of engagement for such strikes in Iraq.
Subsequent reviews showed that the Trump administration drove a major uptick in civilian deaths in the fight against ISIS.
In Afghanistan, the United Nations found in 2019 that U.S. and Afghan forces killed more civilians that terrorist insurgents did.
The Trump administration’s nominee to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, has claimed he ignored civilian protections during his military service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He told a podcast in November he ignored a commander’s order not to fire on someone unless they raised a weapon to shoot at American soldiers first.
“Clear as day, I remember walking out of that briefing and pulling my platoon together and being like, ‘Guys, we’re not doing that,’” Hegseth said. “’If you see an enemy, engage before he’s able to point his weapon at you and shoot.’”
In his bookThe War on Warriors, Hegseth wrote that Americans “should not fight by rules written by dignified men in mahogany rooms eighty years ago,” and claimed that, “In some cases, our units were so boxed in by rules and regulations and political correctness, we even second-guess ourselves.”
During his time at Fox News, Hegseth successfully urged Trump to pardon U.S. servicemembers accused, and in one case convicted, of war crimes.
As The Independent has reported, the U.S. military has long obscured and undercounted the number of civilians it kills during operations, only disclosing civilian death tolls beginning in 2018, and often failing to conduct full due dilligence on the aftermath of attacks gone wrong.
