Did the obama administration perform a drone strike on a wedding in pakistan
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Executive summary
The Obama administration expanded and oversaw hundreds of drone and airstrike operations in Pakistan and elsewhere; multiple reputable trackers put U.S. strikes in Pakistan and neighboring areas at hundreds during his two terms, and early Obama-authorized strikes in Pakistan in January 2009 killed civilians (as many as ~20), but the widely circulated claim that Obama personally ordered a drone strike that hit a Pakistani wedding with a large civilian death toll is not directly supported in the cited reporting (CFR on early Waziristan strikes and BIJ/other tracking of hundreds of strikes) [1] [2] [3].
1. Obama presided over a large covert strike program
The Obama White House vastly expanded U.S. use of drones and other strikes outside conventional battlefields: independent trackers count roughly 563 strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia across his two terms and note Pakistan was a central hub for operations early in his presidency [2]. The Council on Foreign Relations and other sources document that Obama authorized strikes in Pakistan from his first days in office, including two strikes on January 23, 2009, in Waziristan that reportedly killed civilians [1].
2. Early strikes in Pakistan under Obama did cause civilian deaths
CFR reports that on January 23, 2009—three days after taking office—President Obama authorized two kinetic strikes in Waziristan, Pakistan, that "killed as many as twenty civilians" according to contemporary accounts [1]. Human-rights groups and journalists have repeatedly investigated individual strikes and identified incidents with civilian harm in Pakistan during the Obama years [4] [3].
3. The specific “wedding strike” stories involve different places and dates
Several high-profile incidents of strikes hitting wedding gatherings occurred during the broader "war on terror," but available reporting in these sources attributes some wedding strikes to other administrations, countries, or to Yemen and Afghanistan rather than a named Obama-ordered strike in Pakistan. For example, the Wech Baghtu wedding airstrike that killed about 37 civilians took place on November 3, 2008, under the Bush administration, not Obama [5] [6]. Other documented wedding-targeting incidents in the cited material include a December 2013 wedding procession strike in Yemen that raised questions about compliance with Obama's "near-certainty" civilian-protection standard [7] [8].
4. Investigations, apologies and official acknowledgement were limited and selective
The Obama administration sometimes acknowledged civilian deaths and conducted internal reviews, notably apologizing in the 2015 case that killed two Western hostages in Pakistan and commissioning reviews of other strikes [4] [9]. Human Rights Watch and press outlets criticized the administration’s lack of public transparency in some cases—most notably for the Yemen wedding strike—saying silence magnified concerns about whether policy guarantees were followed [7].
5. Misinformation and conflation are common in online claims
Fact-checking organizations and news outlets have found viral social posts that misattribute incidents—mixing dates, countries and administrations. AllSides and other reviewers flagged a widely shared claim that Obama ordered a strike on a wedding that killed 23 children and 10 women in Wech Baghtu as false because that attack occurred in November 2008 under George W. Bush [6] [5]. That pattern—conflating separate incidents in Pakistan, Yemen or Afghanistan and different years—explains much online confusion.
6. What the sources do and do not say about a Pakistani wedding strike ordered by Obama
The cited sources establish that Obama authorized numerous strikes in Pakistan and that civilian casualties occurred, including early 2009 Waziristan strikes that killed civilians [1] [3]. They also document wedding strikes elsewhere (notably Yemen in 2013) and earlier Afghan wedding incidents under Bush [7] [5]. The available reporting in these sources does not identify a specific, independently verified incident of a U.S. drone strike ordered by Obama that targeted a wedding in Pakistan with the precise casualty figures claimed in many social posts; fact-checkers conclude at least some viral claims about a Pakistani wedding strike under Obama are false or misattributed [6] [5].
7. Bottom line and caveats
It is accurate to say the Obama administration ran an extensive strike program in Pakistan that resulted in civilian casualties and that some strikes hit wedding gatherings in the broader theatre of operations; it is not accurate, per the cited fact-checking and historical accounts, to assert without nuance that a specific Obama-ordered drone strike on a Pakistani wedding produced the commonly circulated casualty numbers—some of those high‑profile wedding incidents are dated to 2008 (Bush) or occurred in Yemen under Obama, and reporting differs by incident [5] [7] [6]. Limitations: these sources do not exhaust every investigation or leaked internal memo; human-rights groups and investigative outlets have identified other problematic strikes in Pakistan that merit further review [4] [8].