Last Friday, Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie of U.S. Central Command admitted that the August 29 drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that the U.S. had claimed hit ISIS-K fighters had instead killed 10 civilians, including seven children. This “tragic mistake,” as he called it, at the very end of the country’s 20-year engagement in Afghanistan, opens up the larger question of the growing U.S. use of unmanned aerial systems—drones—in warfare.
I find it somewhat ironic the we place on our money "In God we trust" when in reality western society has effectively given up believing in anything but our money. No vision of where we are headed, nor idea of who we are or why we are here remains. There is only the creation, accumulation and dispersement of money that remains.
The divine $ has given us the technology to kill at a 1000 miles distance by drone or missile. From this technology we have created a market which feeds the money machine and lets anybody, anywhere play the killing game.
We have spent the last century pursuing money throughout the world often in a zero sum game. The "other's" constant losses...as we are very good at the money game...have created myriads of people who have reason to hate America and Americans. Would it not fit our objectives better and serve the peacefull pursuit of our life to address the causes of the potential terrorist threat that this represents rather than eliminating by drone its symptomes.
This post and the brilliant comments it gave rise to are on their own worth the subscription. Thank you to one and all.
I would like to add three points: 1) It seems to me that the disorderly withdrawal was inevitable once Trump negotiated independently of the Afghan Government. It made plain that their army was on its own except possibly for supplies. I am sure that I have read that the army was nothing like as large or as well-trained as the published figure, and the Afghan troops will have probably known this, and so felt safer avoiding conflict. This would suggest moderation in attacking Biden for the 'shambles'. 2) Intelligence when invading a country relies on local contacts; how on earth is it possible to check on their reliability? I wonder therefore if the drone strike was not 'targeted' for the Americans by an infiltrator; if so it was a near perfect propaganda coup, as well as revenge against a collaborator. 3) It is tempting to make drones the target of opposition, though they undoubtedly need regulation, but when one reflects on the damage done by other weaponry, and the impossibility of a foreign force distinguishing between friend (or neutral) and foe, it is difficult to see how hostilities can be pursued without enormous collateral damage. A good start therefore, might be to minimise interventions (I think of the many US interventions in Latin America among others) and leave each country to find its own way to better government. Government systems and markets are cultural phenomena and so interventions from abroad are unlikely to be helpful. I leave the question hanging as to whether NATO should have tackled the Russian intervention in Syria, and how that affects this argument.
Now that our government has called the strikes "a tragic mistake," we can either accept that we as a country have instigated something dark, or run away from responsibility, pretend its a one-off, and blame Biden.
We're going to see a lot of independents shoot the messenger, I'm afraid. Our culture does not like stories that diverge from our self-image of heroes.
And this is round two, we as a country have also blamed Biden for not controlling the inevitable panic at the end of the war.
Absurd and disappointing, but predictable according to US cowboy culture, IMO.
This is something I can speak in depth about, at least the first part. I was at USCENTCOM for most of the Obama administration, and I can attest to the general accuracy of what is stated. President Obama did, in fact, greatly enlarge the use of drone strikes, but yes, accompanied that with fairly substantial legal caveats. I would dare to generalize that the entire Obama foreign policy was heavily tied to legal authorities. Yes, such things have a political life to them as well--no one should be naïve about that--but the effort and basis were there. When we killed Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 (perfectly happy to claim such and will never take that back), there was much public debate (I'm sure most, for all of their hand-wringing, have completely forgotten about this now) about the legality of killing him, since he was, famously, an American citizen. It was an important debate, actually, but like most things in our country, forgotten about within 3-4 news cycles.
At the same time, USCENTCOM was behind the physical processes that went into engaging such targets--the procedures of target ID, distance, criteria, approvals etc. I was very familiar with it; a friend of mine was one of those who constructed it. Suffice it to say, if I presented it to anyone not in the military targeting community you would be astounded at how much effort goes into "trying to get it right." Now, I have no idea what has changed since the dawn of the Trump administration--it would seem the allowable civilian casualty estimate (yes, there is such a thing; normally during Obama Admin it was "0") may have changed, but I doubt the procedures did--they've probably improved. So, what happened? As with almost all such things--accidents--I can confidently ascribe it to "human error." Too much desire to even the score after the 13 Soldiers were killed? Bad intel? Really strange coincidences. Any or all, perhaps. Some of the mistakes we made 9-12 years ago were simple things like intervening crests during engagements that allowed a chased, tracked target to be lost and other coincidentally close people to picked up seconds later. It's incredibly complicated stuff sometimes. But it's NOT some ongoing "the evil/derelict military," lest anyone think otherwise. It's a helluva lot more complicated than that.
Heather brings up a good point, and it's one the president SHOULD wrangle with. The injustice of GOP hacks trying to blame him for All Things Afghanistan was, that HE was the one who was against Obama building up the counterinsurgency and supporting operations there 12 years ago...but the counter to that is that he DID want to fight a counterTERROR war there, similar to what we've been doing, and that undoubtedly meant lots of drone strikes--it might have meant MORE than we've done, had he gotten his way. So, this really is his to own and figure out now.
So, Dubya was the first US President to order armed drone strikes. In response to a monstrous criminal act we all remember as if it were yesterday, rather than simply vowing to bring the perpetrators to justice (and then doing so), he declared "war" on terrorism, bombed parts of Afghanistan into dust and initiated a stupid and useless ground intervention in Irag based on fake intelligence, Americans' general ignorance of the world, vengefulness and an enduring habit of callousness towards "others". Soon, the shock and awe that was going to have the Iraqis begging to become our 51st state wore off, and the unpayable bills began to pile up, along with a sizeable number of American bodies. Junior's popularity was dropping well below its 80% post 9/11 peak, so it is not surprising that he was willing to try drones. As we all know, when America is at war, nothing is beyond the pale and getting re-elected is what really matters.
Then Obama, having inherited Dubya's Iraqi morass, and counseled -- no doubt -- by his experienced VP Joe Biden, figured he could keep the lid on the terrorism situation in a largely secret and cost-effective way by increasing the number of anti-terrorist drone strikes by the ever-improving drones. Boom, a Land Cruiser dodging pot-holes in a remote desert blows up. A supposed terrorist and his buddies are vaporized. That's so far away. A week passes. It gets a day or two on the front pages, but there is no further news about the terrorist or his family, friends and community, or about what he was really up to or how we knew about it or what nefarious plan to attack us he was mulling over or why he needed to be executed without a trial or even any formal accusation, at least nothing subjected to public scrutiny. Of course, errors are made, whole families and wedding parties are snuffed out by drones, and there are belated apologies if these events ever make it to the front pages, and our lives go on. Ours.
Needless to say, whatever mistakes Trump's predecessors made, Trump doubled down on them and should be imprisoned.
I must admit to having been very impressed when I first watched a video of a smart bomb flying into the window of an Iraqi ministry in Bagdad, and I find it hard even now to turn away from the videos of drone-fired rockets as they pick off terrorists in their land-cruisers dodging pot-holes in some remote desert. Insatiable curiosity as vice. But this perpetual and largely secret war cannot continue indefinitely. Withdrawal from Afghanistan was the right thing to do, but does not end the Forever war. Perhaps it is time to rethink our position in the world and just stop killing people.
The employment of drones can lead to ‘tragic mistakes’ in which innocent civilians are inadvertently killed. individuals are manipulating these drones in a virtual video game that resembles an impersonal arcade. We should be horrified. However, in real and proxy wars the killing of innocent civilians occur. In this incident, the New York Times swiftly reported the military SNAFU and, soon after, the Pentagon acknowledged it’s error.
During World War II there was a more horrific program to deliberately kill civilians. It was referred to as the ‘Exeter effect.’ When the Germans bombed the British town of Exeter, there was an unusual pattern of heat, air sucked out, and major civilian deaths. Curious scientists studied this deadly combination and determined that it was created by low atmospheric conditions and fire bombs. They refined this information to produce a deadly fire bombing order of battle. In Europe their biggest ‘success,’ was the fire bombing of Dresden, in which up-to-140,000 humans were killed, overwhelmingly innocent civilians.
In Japan Tokyo was fire bombed on various nights. Civilian deaths were in the hundreds of thousands, exceeding the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can recall no reporting of these mass deliberate civilian killings during or immediately after World War II. Many years later I got to know the navigator of one of the Tokyo fire-bombing runs. He was plagued by what he had participated in and, with others from his squadron, established contact with families of these victims.
Thank you for putting this forward! Nobody should be dismissed as "collateral damage"– not the civilians killed, and not the courageous whistleblower Daniel Hale, who was recently given 45 months in prison for speaking up about it. You could argue, as did the judge, that he stole the documents that showed the abuses. But would we be having this conversation today if he hadn't? https://theintercept.com/2021/07/27/daniel-hale-drone-leak-sentencing/
I wrote the following to my US Senator after reading a NY Times article of a similar topic.
"We live in very dangerous times.
NY Times article, 9/18/21, "The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killer Robot." ...."Israeli agents had wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist for years. Then they came up with a way to do it with no operatives present."
High tech and drones will be replacing Pan American flights into World Trade Centers and sniper assassinations of American Presidents like JFK. These terrorist attacks will be perpetrated by nation states like Israel did here to Iran, and by stateless groups like the Proud Boys or ISIS.
We will never have enough security for our critical leaders like our President, Senate and House leaders, military or civilian leaders to prevent what Israel did here, and what our military is doing to Afghanistan civilians by mistake.
When we lose a President or another significant leader by remote AI or drone attack, the US will lash out at other nations as we did after 911. The risk of this becoming a nuclear war in the future only increases with our fear and frustration to deal with such an assault.
Furthermore, our own extremists will be engaging these methods, moving from truck loaded fertilizatizer bombs and AR15s with full combat attire.
The January 6th, 2021 attack on our Capitol is the precursor to where our domestic terrorist politics are going. The combination of Republican politicians who now describe the attack as that of patriots, and now political prisoners when prosecuted, and our decades of 2nd Amendment politics to spread guns indiscriminately among Americans while engaging them in anti government rhetoric, these politics will promote new weapons of domestic terrorism and insurrection.
It's critical that you and other concerned Republicans join other US political and civilian leaders in confronting this new international and domestic threat to our peace and security.
More advanced and plentiful weapons in everyone's hands including the military is not the answer. We must begin with basic human values here at home so we can set the moral example to lead with this abroad. Israel should not be praised nor supported in what they did. Nor can we continue to accept the words of insurrection and violence from people like former general Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump and others as legal free speech. They are as dangerous to our national security as Iran, Israel and every other nation that resorts to force, violence and death as their means to every end.
I watched Richard Engel's documentary of Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires tonight on MSNBC. It was a chilling and scathing exposé of the Afghan war. It is extremely well done and something I would recommend everyone take the time to watch. The cost of war and corruption is brought home. It shook me.
Unredacted Pompeo whistleblower complaint reveals new allegations
A State Department whistleblower accused former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his staff of a litany of misconduct in 2019, according to newly unredacted records obtained by CREW. The alleged misconduct included false or misleading statements to the agency’s legal department, misuse of government resources on personal and political activities potentially prohibited by the Hatch Act, verbal abuse of employees by Mike and Susan Pompeo and directives to staff not to communicate in writing in order to evade transparency laws.
A heavily redacted version of the whistleblower complaint, filed with the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) in 2019, was previously released to American Oversight and reported by McClatchy in July 2020. At that time, the OIG redacted information it claimed was subject to ongoing investigations.
The OIG lifted many of those redactions in the complaint released to CREW, revealing that the whistleblower was a State Department employee who “directly witnessed and/or heard numerous firsthand accounts from those [he or she] supervised of the following behavior by the Secretary of State and his senior (career) staff”:
Just wait until China declares us, yes, the USA, a terrorist state and starts "over the horizon, high tech, high value drone strikes".
Folks walking down the street taking their kids to pre-school in D.C. suddenly vaporized. Kids? Just collateral damage. After all, those US terrorists are dangerous.
200,000 dead, innocent, Afghan villagers over the last 20 years would agree.
Including all of the group of 12 year old boys that were shot up outside their village gathering wood, by a .50 caliber machine gun on a US Helicopter.
We apologized though! So, its all good.
But, wait until the US is targeted as the world's largest terrorist organization and everyone else with drones starts playing with their mouse and their controller to "take them down" right here in the good ole USA.
It is necessary to point out that the Pentagon's acknowledgment of the deadly mistake made during the US military's drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan was not accurately reported by the defense officials until the NY Time's investigation challenged the military's assertions. If and when might we have learned the truth about this tragedy had the NY Times not investigated the matter?
'The Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that the last U.S. drone strike before American troops withdrew from Afghanistan was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, after initially saying it had been necessary to prevent an attack on troops.'
'The acknowledgment of the mistake came a week after a New York Times investigation of video evidence challenged assertions by the military that it had struck a vehicle carrying explosives meant for Hamid Karzai International Airport.'
'Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered a review of the military’s inquiry into the drone strike to determine, among other issues, who should be held accountable and “the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future.”'
'The extraordinary admission provided a horrific punctuation to the chaotic ending of the 20-year war in Afghanistan and will put President Biden and the Pentagon at the center of a growing number of investigations into how the administration and the military carried out Mr. Biden’s order to withdraw from the country.'
'Almost everything senior defense officials asserted in the hours, and then days, and then weeks after the Aug. 29 drone strike turned out to be false. The explosives the military claimed were loaded in the trunk of a white Toyota sedan struck by the drone’s Hellfire missile were probably water bottles, and a secondary explosion in the courtyard in a densely populated Kabul neighborhood where the attack took place was probably a propane or gas tank, officials said.'
'In short, the car posed no threat at all, investigators concluded.'(NY Times) See links at end of the comment.
There were other tragic stories in the headlines last week, which finally began to receive the attention that was called for long ago. Two of them will noted here.
'For decades in U.S. gymnastics, there was one more secret vile contradiction: The doctor who treated thousands of young athletes, supposedly tending to their injuries and ensuring their healthy recovery, was in fact “the most prolific sex criminal in American sports history.”'
'...Abigail Pesta, author of “The Girls: An All-American Town, a Predatory Doctor, and the Untold Story of the Gymnasts Who Brought Him Down,” introduces Larry Nassar. For 30 years or so, Nassar had unfettered access to some of the most promising athletes in the world as he rose from volunteer doctor at a Lansing, Mich., gym to Michigan State University and, ultimately, the USA Gymnastics team.'
'His violence was relentless and breathtaking in scope. By his accusers’ accounts, Nassar abused Olympians at the 2012 London Games and raped children in his home; he assaulted girls in front of their unknowing parents, his body and a sheet obscuring the view as he penetrated his patients with gloveless hands. At his sentencing hearing, presided over by a judge with a real flair for the pull-quote — “I just signed your death warrant” — more than 150 survivors addressed Nassar directly. Their profoundly moving testimony, made all the more powerful for how long its speakers had been silenced, streamed live online and dominated the news cycle. Nassar, who at the time already had been sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for child pornography convictions, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years more for his battery of sex crimes.' (Washinton Post, August 7, 2019)
'Biles: FBI turned ‘blind eye’ to reports of gymnasts’ abuse'
'Biles told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “enough is enough” as she and three other U.S. gymnasts spoke in stark emotional terms about the lasting toll Nassar’s crimes have taken on their lives. In response, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “deeply and profoundly sorry” for delays in Nassar’s prosecution and the pain it caused.'
'The four-time Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion — widely considered to be the greatest gymnast of all time — said she “can imagine no place that I would be less comfortable right now than sitting here in front of you.” She declared herself a survivor of sexual abuse.'
“I blame Larry Nassar and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse,” Biles said through tears. In addition to failures of the FBI, she said USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee “knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge.” (AP) See the link below.
McKayla Maroney, an Olympian in 2012, also testified, describing in detail how Mr. Nassar repeatedly abused her, even at the London Games, where she won a gold medal. She said she survived a harrowing ordeal when she and Mr. Nassar were at a competition in Tokyo, certain she “was going to die that night because there was no way he was going to let me go.”
“That evening I was naked, completely alone, with him on top of me, molesting me for hours,” she said.
'In 2015, when Ms. Maroney was 19 years old and before she had even told her mother what Mr. Nassar had done, she described her abuse to an F.B.I. agent during a three-hour phone call from the floor of her bedroom. When she finished, Ms. Maroney said the agent asked, “Is that all?” She said she felt crushed by the lack of empathy.
“Not only did the F.B.I. not report my abuse, but when they eventually documented my report 17 months later, they made entirely false claims about what I said,” Ms. Maroney testified. “They chose to lie about what I said and protect a serial child molester rather than protect not only me but countless others.”
'Aly Raisman, an Olympic gold medalist who testified at the hearing, has publicly asked for an independent investigation of the Nassar case. She pressed senators for that on Wednesday, saying that it was hard for her to speak at the hearing, but that she did so to protect others and force change within sports and law enforcement.'
“The F.B.I. made me feel like my abuse didn’t count and that it wasn’t real,” she said.
Ms. Raisman, 27, told the senators that she wondered if she was going to be able to walk out of the hearing room after the proceedings.
After the first time she spoke publicly about her abuse, in 2017, she said, she was so shaken that she couldn’t stand up in the shower and had to sit on the floor of the tub to wash her hair. Since then, she said, there have been times when she was so sick from the trauma that she had to be taken to a hospital by ambulance. .(NYTimes)
And, to end with another attack on the youth of our country, in this case, again, particularly against girls.
'Its own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental-health issue that Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show' (wsj) See link below.
'Comprised of findings from focus groups, online surveys and diary studies in 2019 and 2020, the Instagram research shows for the first time how aware the company is of its product’s impact on the mental health of teenagers. And yet, in public, executives at Facebook, which has owned Instagram since 2012, have consistently downplayed its negative impact on teenagers.
'As recently as March, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, claimed social media was more likely to have positive mental health effects. In May, Adam Mosseri, who is in charge at Instagram, said he had seen research suggesting its effects on teenagers’ mental health was probably “quite small”. (Guardian) See link below.
I don't know how many of you could get to the end of these deeply depressing reports about our failures. The light through this darkness are our free press and the brave gymnasts. Over the weekend I read some truly heartening reports about policies and possibilities that could give us hope for future. Stay tuned fellow subscribers
Links to article's about the military drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan are below:
I shudder when I see people playing with radio controlled drones in public parks and when I see ads for drones available to the public. And there has been huge controversy about drones used for photography invading private space with discussions about whether the space near your bedroom windows is a no fly zone. Not to mention the terrifying possibility that Amazon will have a fleet of drones dropping packages on your doorstep. And what else are ICBMs but lethal nuclear drones?
This is not just a military issue - it is a planetary issue.
Offering profound condolences? Is that the military or perhaps the nationl equivalent of thoughts and prayers? Drones have allowed us to kill without involving anyone's conscience. I do not wish to see anyone sent off to kill someone else in my name because that is what war is. By killing with drones we absolve ourselves, our country and our soldiers of facing who we kill. We have required larger and larger armies because killing someone face to face is a difficult choice even for someone who is trained for it. Drones have reduced the targeting and killing of the other side to a video game scenario, but in this one your opponent or whichever side gets the strike does not get a new set of lives.
International law needs to take a good hard look at the use of drones. Their use will escalate. Unfortunately the US seems to be proliferating these weapons. Drones themselves will be big nuisance or worse in all our lives. One nuisance use would be to carry advertisements as you sit in a traffic jamb. Drones will multiply and be very difficult to control. They will be an invasion of privacy as they deliver packages and could be used for surveillance of our homes and a way to case the joint and even steal belongings. I personally would like to see the development of a force field bubble over my property that would zap them if they came onto my property. Of course, I would not want the force field to hurt living creatures like birds so this may not be a viable solution. The use of drones in war is going to come back to bite us. And, can you see Texas passing a law saying anyone can operate a drone that can shoot bullets without a permit.
“What seems to be different about the August 29 killing of civilians in Afghanistan is that the U.S. government has admitted the killings, taken responsibility for them, called them “a tragic mistake,” and offered “profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed.” In the wake of the strike, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered an inquiry into “the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future.””
This won’t raise the dead, but displaying a spirit of contrition (and offering reparations) is, IMHO, preferable to a cover up or a “too bad, so sad” attitude.
I find it somewhat ironic the we place on our money "In God we trust" when in reality western society has effectively given up believing in anything but our money. No vision of where we are headed, nor idea of who we are or why we are here remains. There is only the creation, accumulation and dispersement of money that remains.
The divine $ has given us the technology to kill at a 1000 miles distance by drone or missile. From this technology we have created a market which feeds the money machine and lets anybody, anywhere play the killing game.
We have spent the last century pursuing money throughout the world often in a zero sum game. The "other's" constant losses...as we are very good at the money game...have created myriads of people who have reason to hate America and Americans. Would it not fit our objectives better and serve the peacefull pursuit of our life to address the causes of the potential terrorist threat that this represents rather than eliminating by drone its symptomes.
This post and the brilliant comments it gave rise to are on their own worth the subscription. Thank you to one and all.
I would like to add three points: 1) It seems to me that the disorderly withdrawal was inevitable once Trump negotiated independently of the Afghan Government. It made plain that their army was on its own except possibly for supplies. I am sure that I have read that the army was nothing like as large or as well-trained as the published figure, and the Afghan troops will have probably known this, and so felt safer avoiding conflict. This would suggest moderation in attacking Biden for the 'shambles'. 2) Intelligence when invading a country relies on local contacts; how on earth is it possible to check on their reliability? I wonder therefore if the drone strike was not 'targeted' for the Americans by an infiltrator; if so it was a near perfect propaganda coup, as well as revenge against a collaborator. 3) It is tempting to make drones the target of opposition, though they undoubtedly need regulation, but when one reflects on the damage done by other weaponry, and the impossibility of a foreign force distinguishing between friend (or neutral) and foe, it is difficult to see how hostilities can be pursued without enormous collateral damage. A good start therefore, might be to minimise interventions (I think of the many US interventions in Latin America among others) and leave each country to find its own way to better government. Government systems and markets are cultural phenomena and so interventions from abroad are unlikely to be helpful. I leave the question hanging as to whether NATO should have tackled the Russian intervention in Syria, and how that affects this argument.
Now that our government has called the strikes "a tragic mistake," we can either accept that we as a country have instigated something dark, or run away from responsibility, pretend its a one-off, and blame Biden.
We're going to see a lot of independents shoot the messenger, I'm afraid. Our culture does not like stories that diverge from our self-image of heroes.
And this is round two, we as a country have also blamed Biden for not controlling the inevitable panic at the end of the war.
Absurd and disappointing, but predictable according to US cowboy culture, IMO.
This is something I can speak in depth about, at least the first part. I was at USCENTCOM for most of the Obama administration, and I can attest to the general accuracy of what is stated. President Obama did, in fact, greatly enlarge the use of drone strikes, but yes, accompanied that with fairly substantial legal caveats. I would dare to generalize that the entire Obama foreign policy was heavily tied to legal authorities. Yes, such things have a political life to them as well--no one should be naïve about that--but the effort and basis were there. When we killed Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 (perfectly happy to claim such and will never take that back), there was much public debate (I'm sure most, for all of their hand-wringing, have completely forgotten about this now) about the legality of killing him, since he was, famously, an American citizen. It was an important debate, actually, but like most things in our country, forgotten about within 3-4 news cycles.
At the same time, USCENTCOM was behind the physical processes that went into engaging such targets--the procedures of target ID, distance, criteria, approvals etc. I was very familiar with it; a friend of mine was one of those who constructed it. Suffice it to say, if I presented it to anyone not in the military targeting community you would be astounded at how much effort goes into "trying to get it right." Now, I have no idea what has changed since the dawn of the Trump administration--it would seem the allowable civilian casualty estimate (yes, there is such a thing; normally during Obama Admin it was "0") may have changed, but I doubt the procedures did--they've probably improved. So, what happened? As with almost all such things--accidents--I can confidently ascribe it to "human error." Too much desire to even the score after the 13 Soldiers were killed? Bad intel? Really strange coincidences. Any or all, perhaps. Some of the mistakes we made 9-12 years ago were simple things like intervening crests during engagements that allowed a chased, tracked target to be lost and other coincidentally close people to picked up seconds later. It's incredibly complicated stuff sometimes. But it's NOT some ongoing "the evil/derelict military," lest anyone think otherwise. It's a helluva lot more complicated than that.
Heather brings up a good point, and it's one the president SHOULD wrangle with. The injustice of GOP hacks trying to blame him for All Things Afghanistan was, that HE was the one who was against Obama building up the counterinsurgency and supporting operations there 12 years ago...but the counter to that is that he DID want to fight a counterTERROR war there, similar to what we've been doing, and that undoubtedly meant lots of drone strikes--it might have meant MORE than we've done, had he gotten his way. So, this really is his to own and figure out now.
We shall see...
So, Dubya was the first US President to order armed drone strikes. In response to a monstrous criminal act we all remember as if it were yesterday, rather than simply vowing to bring the perpetrators to justice (and then doing so), he declared "war" on terrorism, bombed parts of Afghanistan into dust and initiated a stupid and useless ground intervention in Irag based on fake intelligence, Americans' general ignorance of the world, vengefulness and an enduring habit of callousness towards "others". Soon, the shock and awe that was going to have the Iraqis begging to become our 51st state wore off, and the unpayable bills began to pile up, along with a sizeable number of American bodies. Junior's popularity was dropping well below its 80% post 9/11 peak, so it is not surprising that he was willing to try drones. As we all know, when America is at war, nothing is beyond the pale and getting re-elected is what really matters.
Then Obama, having inherited Dubya's Iraqi morass, and counseled -- no doubt -- by his experienced VP Joe Biden, figured he could keep the lid on the terrorism situation in a largely secret and cost-effective way by increasing the number of anti-terrorist drone strikes by the ever-improving drones. Boom, a Land Cruiser dodging pot-holes in a remote desert blows up. A supposed terrorist and his buddies are vaporized. That's so far away. A week passes. It gets a day or two on the front pages, but there is no further news about the terrorist or his family, friends and community, or about what he was really up to or how we knew about it or what nefarious plan to attack us he was mulling over or why he needed to be executed without a trial or even any formal accusation, at least nothing subjected to public scrutiny. Of course, errors are made, whole families and wedding parties are snuffed out by drones, and there are belated apologies if these events ever make it to the front pages, and our lives go on. Ours.
Needless to say, whatever mistakes Trump's predecessors made, Trump doubled down on them and should be imprisoned.
I must admit to having been very impressed when I first watched a video of a smart bomb flying into the window of an Iraqi ministry in Bagdad, and I find it hard even now to turn away from the videos of drone-fired rockets as they pick off terrorists in their land-cruisers dodging pot-holes in some remote desert. Insatiable curiosity as vice. But this perpetual and largely secret war cannot continue indefinitely. Withdrawal from Afghanistan was the right thing to do, but does not end the Forever war. Perhaps it is time to rethink our position in the world and just stop killing people.
The employment of drones can lead to ‘tragic mistakes’ in which innocent civilians are inadvertently killed. individuals are manipulating these drones in a virtual video game that resembles an impersonal arcade. We should be horrified. However, in real and proxy wars the killing of innocent civilians occur. In this incident, the New York Times swiftly reported the military SNAFU and, soon after, the Pentagon acknowledged it’s error.
During World War II there was a more horrific program to deliberately kill civilians. It was referred to as the ‘Exeter effect.’ When the Germans bombed the British town of Exeter, there was an unusual pattern of heat, air sucked out, and major civilian deaths. Curious scientists studied this deadly combination and determined that it was created by low atmospheric conditions and fire bombs. They refined this information to produce a deadly fire bombing order of battle. In Europe their biggest ‘success,’ was the fire bombing of Dresden, in which up-to-140,000 humans were killed, overwhelmingly innocent civilians.
In Japan Tokyo was fire bombed on various nights. Civilian deaths were in the hundreds of thousands, exceeding the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can recall no reporting of these mass deliberate civilian killings during or immediately after World War II. Many years later I got to know the navigator of one of the Tokyo fire-bombing runs. He was plagued by what he had participated in and, with others from his squadron, established contact with families of these victims.
Thank you for putting this forward! Nobody should be dismissed as "collateral damage"– not the civilians killed, and not the courageous whistleblower Daniel Hale, who was recently given 45 months in prison for speaking up about it. You could argue, as did the judge, that he stole the documents that showed the abuses. But would we be having this conversation today if he hadn't? https://theintercept.com/2021/07/27/daniel-hale-drone-leak-sentencing/
I wrote the following to my US Senator after reading a NY Times article of a similar topic.
"We live in very dangerous times.
NY Times article, 9/18/21, "The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killer Robot." ...."Israeli agents had wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist for years. Then they came up with a way to do it with no operatives present."
High tech and drones will be replacing Pan American flights into World Trade Centers and sniper assassinations of American Presidents like JFK. These terrorist attacks will be perpetrated by nation states like Israel did here to Iran, and by stateless groups like the Proud Boys or ISIS.
We will never have enough security for our critical leaders like our President, Senate and House leaders, military or civilian leaders to prevent what Israel did here, and what our military is doing to Afghanistan civilians by mistake.
When we lose a President or another significant leader by remote AI or drone attack, the US will lash out at other nations as we did after 911. The risk of this becoming a nuclear war in the future only increases with our fear and frustration to deal with such an assault.
Furthermore, our own extremists will be engaging these methods, moving from truck loaded fertilizatizer bombs and AR15s with full combat attire.
The January 6th, 2021 attack on our Capitol is the precursor to where our domestic terrorist politics are going. The combination of Republican politicians who now describe the attack as that of patriots, and now political prisoners when prosecuted, and our decades of 2nd Amendment politics to spread guns indiscriminately among Americans while engaging them in anti government rhetoric, these politics will promote new weapons of domestic terrorism and insurrection.
It's critical that you and other concerned Republicans join other US political and civilian leaders in confronting this new international and domestic threat to our peace and security.
More advanced and plentiful weapons in everyone's hands including the military is not the answer. We must begin with basic human values here at home so we can set the moral example to lead with this abroad. Israel should not be praised nor supported in what they did. Nor can we continue to accept the words of insurrection and violence from people like former general Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump and others as legal free speech. They are as dangerous to our national security as Iran, Israel and every other nation that resorts to force, violence and death as their means to every end.
Thank you for your attention."
I watched Richard Engel's documentary of Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires tonight on MSNBC. It was a chilling and scathing exposé of the Afghan war. It is extremely well done and something I would recommend everyone take the time to watch. The cost of war and corruption is brought home. It shook me.
Unredacted Pompeo whistleblower complaint reveals new allegations
A State Department whistleblower accused former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his staff of a litany of misconduct in 2019, according to newly unredacted records obtained by CREW. The alleged misconduct included false or misleading statements to the agency’s legal department, misuse of government resources on personal and political activities potentially prohibited by the Hatch Act, verbal abuse of employees by Mike and Susan Pompeo and directives to staff not to communicate in writing in order to evade transparency laws.
A heavily redacted version of the whistleblower complaint, filed with the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) in 2019, was previously released to American Oversight and reported by McClatchy in July 2020. At that time, the OIG redacted information it claimed was subject to ongoing investigations.
The OIG lifted many of those redactions in the complaint released to CREW, revealing that the whistleblower was a State Department employee who “directly witnessed and/or heard numerous firsthand accounts from those [he or she] supervised of the following behavior by the Secretary of State and his senior (career) staff”:
more: https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/unredacted-pompeo-whistleblower-complaint-reveals-new-allegations/
Just wait until China declares us, yes, the USA, a terrorist state and starts "over the horizon, high tech, high value drone strikes".
Folks walking down the street taking their kids to pre-school in D.C. suddenly vaporized. Kids? Just collateral damage. After all, those US terrorists are dangerous.
200,000 dead, innocent, Afghan villagers over the last 20 years would agree.
Including all of the group of 12 year old boys that were shot up outside their village gathering wood, by a .50 caliber machine gun on a US Helicopter.
We apologized though! So, its all good.
But, wait until the US is targeted as the world's largest terrorist organization and everyone else with drones starts playing with their mouse and their controller to "take them down" right here in the good ole USA.
It won't be pretty but it will be fitting.
It is necessary to point out that the Pentagon's acknowledgment of the deadly mistake made during the US military's drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan was not accurately reported by the defense officials until the NY Time's investigation challenged the military's assertions. If and when might we have learned the truth about this tragedy had the NY Times not investigated the matter?
'The Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that the last U.S. drone strike before American troops withdrew from Afghanistan was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, after initially saying it had been necessary to prevent an attack on troops.'
'The acknowledgment of the mistake came a week after a New York Times investigation of video evidence challenged assertions by the military that it had struck a vehicle carrying explosives meant for Hamid Karzai International Airport.'
'Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered a review of the military’s inquiry into the drone strike to determine, among other issues, who should be held accountable and “the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future.”'
'The extraordinary admission provided a horrific punctuation to the chaotic ending of the 20-year war in Afghanistan and will put President Biden and the Pentagon at the center of a growing number of investigations into how the administration and the military carried out Mr. Biden’s order to withdraw from the country.'
'Almost everything senior defense officials asserted in the hours, and then days, and then weeks after the Aug. 29 drone strike turned out to be false. The explosives the military claimed were loaded in the trunk of a white Toyota sedan struck by the drone’s Hellfire missile were probably water bottles, and a secondary explosion in the courtyard in a densely populated Kabul neighborhood where the attack took place was probably a propane or gas tank, officials said.'
'In short, the car posed no threat at all, investigators concluded.'(NY Times) See links at end of the comment.
There were other tragic stories in the headlines last week, which finally began to receive the attention that was called for long ago. Two of them will noted here.
'For decades in U.S. gymnastics, there was one more secret vile contradiction: The doctor who treated thousands of young athletes, supposedly tending to their injuries and ensuring their healthy recovery, was in fact “the most prolific sex criminal in American sports history.”'
'...Abigail Pesta, author of “The Girls: An All-American Town, a Predatory Doctor, and the Untold Story of the Gymnasts Who Brought Him Down,” introduces Larry Nassar. For 30 years or so, Nassar had unfettered access to some of the most promising athletes in the world as he rose from volunteer doctor at a Lansing, Mich., gym to Michigan State University and, ultimately, the USA Gymnastics team.'
'His violence was relentless and breathtaking in scope. By his accusers’ accounts, Nassar abused Olympians at the 2012 London Games and raped children in his home; he assaulted girls in front of their unknowing parents, his body and a sheet obscuring the view as he penetrated his patients with gloveless hands. At his sentencing hearing, presided over by a judge with a real flair for the pull-quote — “I just signed your death warrant” — more than 150 survivors addressed Nassar directly. Their profoundly moving testimony, made all the more powerful for how long its speakers had been silenced, streamed live online and dominated the news cycle. Nassar, who at the time already had been sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for child pornography convictions, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years more for his battery of sex crimes.' (Washinton Post, August 7, 2019)
'Biles: FBI turned ‘blind eye’ to reports of gymnasts’ abuse'
'Biles told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “enough is enough” as she and three other U.S. gymnasts spoke in stark emotional terms about the lasting toll Nassar’s crimes have taken on their lives. In response, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “deeply and profoundly sorry” for delays in Nassar’s prosecution and the pain it caused.'
'The four-time Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion — widely considered to be the greatest gymnast of all time — said she “can imagine no place that I would be less comfortable right now than sitting here in front of you.” She declared herself a survivor of sexual abuse.'
“I blame Larry Nassar and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse,” Biles said through tears. In addition to failures of the FBI, she said USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee “knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge.” (AP) See the link below.
https://apnews.com/article/simone-biles-gymnastics-sexual-abuse-larry-nassar-cb63ffbfd09d9d4ffe21561aa63d3ca5
McKayla Maroney, an Olympian in 2012, also testified, describing in detail how Mr. Nassar repeatedly abused her, even at the London Games, where she won a gold medal. She said she survived a harrowing ordeal when she and Mr. Nassar were at a competition in Tokyo, certain she “was going to die that night because there was no way he was going to let me go.”
“That evening I was naked, completely alone, with him on top of me, molesting me for hours,” she said.
'In 2015, when Ms. Maroney was 19 years old and before she had even told her mother what Mr. Nassar had done, she described her abuse to an F.B.I. agent during a three-hour phone call from the floor of her bedroom. When she finished, Ms. Maroney said the agent asked, “Is that all?” She said she felt crushed by the lack of empathy.
“Not only did the F.B.I. not report my abuse, but when they eventually documented my report 17 months later, they made entirely false claims about what I said,” Ms. Maroney testified. “They chose to lie about what I said and protect a serial child molester rather than protect not only me but countless others.”
'Aly Raisman, an Olympic gold medalist who testified at the hearing, has publicly asked for an independent investigation of the Nassar case. She pressed senators for that on Wednesday, saying that it was hard for her to speak at the hearing, but that she did so to protect others and force change within sports and law enforcement.'
“The F.B.I. made me feel like my abuse didn’t count and that it wasn’t real,” she said.
Ms. Raisman, 27, told the senators that she wondered if she was going to be able to walk out of the hearing room after the proceedings.
After the first time she spoke publicly about her abuse, in 2017, she said, she was so shaken that she couldn’t stand up in the shower and had to sit on the floor of the tub to wash her hair. Since then, she said, there have been times when she was so sick from the trauma that she had to be taken to a hospital by ambulance. .(NYTimes)
And, to end with another attack on the youth of our country, in this case, again, particularly against girls.
'Its own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental-health issue that Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show' (wsj) See link below.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739
'Comprised of findings from focus groups, online surveys and diary studies in 2019 and 2020, the Instagram research shows for the first time how aware the company is of its product’s impact on the mental health of teenagers. And yet, in public, executives at Facebook, which has owned Instagram since 2012, have consistently downplayed its negative impact on teenagers.
'As recently as March, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, claimed social media was more likely to have positive mental health effects. In May, Adam Mosseri, who is in charge at Instagram, said he had seen research suggesting its effects on teenagers’ mental health was probably “quite small”. (Guardian) See link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/14/facebook-aware-instagram-harmful-effect-teenage-girls-leak-reveals
I don't know how many of you could get to the end of these deeply depressing reports about our failures. The light through this darkness are our free press and the brave gymnasts. Over the weekend I read some truly heartening reports about policies and possibilities that could give us hope for future. Stay tuned fellow subscribers
Links to article's about the military drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan are below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-drone-strike-afghanistan.html?searchResultPosition=2
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/world/asia/afghanistan-drone-attack-ISIS.html?searchResultPosition=3
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-drone-strike-afghanistan.html?searchResultPosition=2
I shudder when I see people playing with radio controlled drones in public parks and when I see ads for drones available to the public. And there has been huge controversy about drones used for photography invading private space with discussions about whether the space near your bedroom windows is a no fly zone. Not to mention the terrifying possibility that Amazon will have a fleet of drones dropping packages on your doorstep. And what else are ICBMs but lethal nuclear drones?
This is not just a military issue - it is a planetary issue.
Offering profound condolences? Is that the military or perhaps the nationl equivalent of thoughts and prayers? Drones have allowed us to kill without involving anyone's conscience. I do not wish to see anyone sent off to kill someone else in my name because that is what war is. By killing with drones we absolve ourselves, our country and our soldiers of facing who we kill. We have required larger and larger armies because killing someone face to face is a difficult choice even for someone who is trained for it. Drones have reduced the targeting and killing of the other side to a video game scenario, but in this one your opponent or whichever side gets the strike does not get a new set of lives.
International law needs to take a good hard look at the use of drones. Their use will escalate. Unfortunately the US seems to be proliferating these weapons. Drones themselves will be big nuisance or worse in all our lives. One nuisance use would be to carry advertisements as you sit in a traffic jamb. Drones will multiply and be very difficult to control. They will be an invasion of privacy as they deliver packages and could be used for surveillance of our homes and a way to case the joint and even steal belongings. I personally would like to see the development of a force field bubble over my property that would zap them if they came onto my property. Of course, I would not want the force field to hurt living creatures like birds so this may not be a viable solution. The use of drones in war is going to come back to bite us. And, can you see Texas passing a law saying anyone can operate a drone that can shoot bullets without a permit.
“What seems to be different about the August 29 killing of civilians in Afghanistan is that the U.S. government has admitted the killings, taken responsibility for them, called them “a tragic mistake,” and offered “profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed.” In the wake of the strike, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered an inquiry into “the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future.””
This won’t raise the dead, but displaying a spirit of contrition (and offering reparations) is, IMHO, preferable to a cover up or a “too bad, so sad” attitude.