DOD Admits Kabul Drone Strike Killed “As Many As 10 Civilians, Including Up To 7 Children”

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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24 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    Something must be done.
    This is something.
    Therefore this must be done.Report

  2. Koz says:

    Joe Biden is so smart and dreamy. Whee!Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Koz says:

      Koz, why do you see this as something Biden did rather than something the intel agencies did?Report

      • Koz in reply to Jaybird says:

        Basically for the same reason you articulated in your comment above.

        It was Biden who’s political stature and approval rating that was cratering, he was the one who had to do something.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Koz says:

          And the intel agencies handed up a war crime on a platter.Report

          • Koz in reply to Jaybird says:

            Well geez, maybe if we didn’t draw down all our intelligence capabilities to preserve some talking points for some lib cable net news-hack, that might not have happened now, hmmm Jay?Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Koz says:

              Leaving Afghanistan was going to happen. I’m not one of the Panglossian “This was the Best of All Possible Evacuations” people that you will find on the board defending the evacuation as though they were defending Biden himself.

              I *DO* think that the bungling of the leaving of Afghanistan includes stuff like “massive military failures” (like the whole “wait, you were serious?” thing that happened in the last two weeks there) and “massive intelligence failures” (like the whole “two days to fall” thing).

              Now maybe both of the above are indicators that Biden shouldn’t have trusted a goddamn thing that either the military or intelligence said about Afghanistan the moment that kids were falling off of leaving planes.

              That said, the massive, massive failures are indicators that we should not have been there and, indeed, should have left years prior.Report

              • Koz in reply to Jaybird says:

                Leaving Afghanistan was going to happen. I’m not one of the Panglossian “This was the Best of All Possible Evacuations” people that you will find on the board defending the evacuation as though they were defending Biden himself.

                Yeah, I gotta admit that part is grinding my gears a little bit.

                That said, the massive, massive failures are indicators that we should not have been there and, indeed, should have left years prior.

                Yes and no. In a vacuum, yes. But in this world Joe Biden is the President and given that there are no indications he plans to resign, we have to make allowances for that.

                And in _that_ world, we don’t have enough information processing power at the top of our leadership pyramid, and for that reason we should still be in Afghanistan.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Koz says:

                There should be several dozen resignations over this.

                There won’t be any and I doubt that there will be any firings.

                It is *THAT* that the Biden-defenders need to defend because *THAT* is the shameful thing.

                But the failures were not Biden’s. They were legion among the organizations that had spent the last decade (or more) building a house of lies and selling it to the Executive.Report

              • Koz in reply to Jaybird says:

                But the failures were not Biden’s. They were legion among the organizations that had spent the last decade (or more) building a house of lies and selling it to the Executive.

                Yeah, I’m on the other side of the fence for that one.

                Like I wrote on another thread, I don’t believe we’re in a situation where we have to choose between blaming the brass and the deep state or blaming Biden. _But_, (and this is important), if we _do_ have to choose, I’m with the brass all the way.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Koz says:

                I’m just noticing that Afghanistan fell in fewer than 3-4 days.

                I know that *MY* expectation was that it’d take about six months to fall… and that’s because I thought that, over the last two decades, we’d done a good enough job setting stuff up that it’d take half a year to collapse.

                As it turns out, it took less than 100 hours.

                That’s on a lot more people than Biden, Trump, Obama, and Bush.

                Though if someone wanted to begin their list with “whose fault is this?” and started with Bush, I could understand why they would.Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird says:

                I’m not one of the Panglossian “This was the Best of All Possible Evacuations” people…

                I haven’t been, but: 120,000 people evacuated (plus tens of thousands by other countries), 13 US casualties, on the order of a hundred Afghan casualties. I’m still waiting to hear a plan that (a) accurately reflects the actual conditions on the ground on Jan 26, (b) would have the US out by this past Aug 31, and (c) would produce better numbers than those three.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Given that we didn’t know A and that we still don’t know A, I’d say that the biggest problem that I still have is that we didn’t know that we didn’t know A.

                After two decades.Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird says:

                Personally, on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being “Biden should be a shoo in for reelection thanks to this triumph!” and 10 being “Biden should resign in disgrace and be impeached if he doesn’t.” I’d put it at around a 4. And I think I’m being over generous to the Biden detractors in doing so. Still I don’t think it’ll be a lift of an anchor for the Admin going forward.

                It’s not an immaculate removal from Afghanistan but I’ve yet to see any persuasive argument that it could be avoided without Captain HIndsight levels of hindsight.

                And, I’ll be blunt. 13 American casualties are sad but the public isn’t going to remember that by winter, let alone by the next election. Also, to be blunter, the Afghan lives are probably already out of mind for the public and if they aren’t yet they’ll be forgotten by October.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North says:

                It’s not about Biden!

                Biden got out! He’ll be the guy that got out! People will look back at the chaos and think “meh, only a few kids got killed and they should have known better than to play monkey bars on a plane”.

                This isn’t an attack on Biden!

                The attack on Biden is the whole “did you fire the people who told you that we’d turned the corner and the government will stand for a week or three?” question. Not about the chaos (which is not Biden’s fault (though, granted, it is his responsibility)).Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird says:

                Well sure, but there’s not much to talk about once you turn your gaze away from the Executive. Yeah the Blob shat the bed in Afghanistan and the Media threw themselves into the mess and rolled around in it. Everyone except the tiny neocon rump recognizes that. Not much to argue over there.

                I too wish Biden would just slaughter the various DoD and Pentagon leaders, analysts and careerists who midwifed this disaster. I also would have loved it if Obama had taken up a fiery sword and gone after the torture folks. I just can see why it’s such an unappealing prospect for them to do it.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North says:

                Here is a transcript from General Miley from, holy cow, a mere two weeks ago?

                Q: And for General Milley, I wanted to ask you about Sunday’s drone strike. Can you take us back to that morning? You have intel that ISIS-K is plotting another attack. The military spots a vehicle that you believe is full of — carrying explosives and we take this car out with a drone strike. And reports now say that we may have — that 10 civilians — as many as 10 civilians may have been — may have been killed.

                Because of the urgent threat environment at the time, did preliminary assessments indicate that we may have rushed, relaxed or waived altogether some of the normal checks and balances that we do before a strike like that?

                GEN. MILLEY: A couple of things. One is, as we always do on all of these things, we initiated an investigation. We’re reviewing all of the video and all of that. But having said that, it — we — you know, what do we know, what do we don’t know, what do we think sort of thing — at the — at the time — and I think this is still valid — we had very good intelligence that ISIS-K was preparing a specific type vehicle at a specific type location. We monitored that through various means and all of the engagement criteria were being met. We went through the same level of rigor that we’ve done for years and we took a strike. So that we did.

                Secondly is we know that there was secondary explosions. Because there was secondary explosions, there’s a reasonable conclusion to be made that there was explosives in that vehicle.

                The third thing, as we know from a variety of other means, that at least one of those people that were killed was an ISIS facilitator.

                So were there others killed? Yes, there are others killed. Who they are, we don’t know. We’ll try to sort through all of that. But we believe that the procedures at this point — I don’t want to influence the outcome of an investigation — but at this point, we think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a (righteous strike ?).

                Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird says:

                Yup. We’ve had twenty years of strikes like these. I bet there’re zero “non-righteous” strikes per the brass.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North says:

                I guess my mind is hazy to the point where I remember such things being described as “war crimes”.

                I’ll put them back in the “friction” folder.

                And start wording the question about whether anyone wishes to roll in my Mercedes.Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird says:

                Allow me to cynic for you. They were called war crimes by Dems during the later half of Bush’s term, Republicans during Obama’s terms, Dems again during Trumps term and now presumably back to Republicans now that Biden is running the show.Report

              • InMD in reply to North says:

                I think there’s always been a faction on the left willing to call these things war crimes, across administrations (and honestly I sometimes think they’re right).

                In either case such incidents are among the many reasons the GWoT fails any just war theory analysis.Report

              • North in reply to InMD says:

                Agreed.Report

  3. The DoD being honest about their own atrocities is unacceptable. At least they need to wait until administrations change , so we can all blame That Guy.Report