On Wednesday, President Trump issued an executive order rescinding part of an order previously issued by former President Barack Obama requiring yearly reports of civilian deaths from military and CIA airstrikes outside of war zones.

What Trump undid, Congress should re-do. Civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes matter, and the American people deserve to know what destruction their government has wrought abroad with their tax dollars.

The Trump administration argued that this specific requirement is redundant, given legislation passed since 2016. According to a statement released Wednesday by the National Security Council, Trump's order simply addresses "superfluous reporting requirements, requirements that do not improve government transparency, but rather distract our intelligence professionals from their primary mission.”

But this explanation leaves out a significant part of what the initial rule included — specifically, the mandated reporting of civilian casualties from CIA airstrikes, not just those carried out by the Department of Defense, which subsequent legislation did indeed mandate.

The requirement to report casualties from airstrikes, however, isn’t an indictment of such CIA operations in general, but rather the recognition that airstrikes carried out by the CIA or the military are both U.S. weapons with the potential to kill civilians. The U.S. government, especially as it conducts covert operations, must be accountable to citizens for those actions.

Although the Obama-era reports were imperfect and likely incomplete as to the extent of casualties, it was better than nothing. Congress should restore the requirement for reporting.