The Pentagon has investigated itself and, shockingly, found that it did nothing wrong. An investigation into the August 29 drone strike which killed seven children in Kabul has suggested that there be no disciplinary action for anyone involved. The Pentagon initially claimed to have killed an ISIS suicide bomber with the strike and only admitted that it had made a mistake after journalists began to investigate and found what had actually occurred.
Pentagon exonerates itself
Ten civilians in total were killed by the strike, seven of them were young children. The targeted man was an aid worker with no connection to any terrorist group or activity.
The Pentagon review claims that the U.S. military genuinely believed that the man they targeted was a terrorist threat and that they had legitimate reasons for making this assumption.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has approved of the review’s findings and the recommendation that there be no disciplinary action for anyone involved in planning or executing the strike.
The general theme of the review holds that U.S. forces made a mistake due to natural confirmation bias in spite of suitable precautions which generally prevent civilian deaths.
The review is not especially convincing for a number of reasons which the Pentagon seems to be eager to forget. Firstly, it’s important to note that the strike took place immediately after the deadly attack on U.S. troops at the Kabul airport.
The Biden administration and the Pentagon were desperate for a victory after that attack and they were very quick to present their strike as a reprisal which prevented another catastrophe.
No one to be held accountable
There was no investigation by U.S. personnel in the immediate aftermath of the strike to confirm that the person who had been killed was who they were telling the public he was.
The government was quick to brag about the supposedly successful strike but very slow when it came to acknowledging that it had killed a number of children.
After being forced to acknowledge this the Pentagon initially claimed that secondary explosions in the car of the alleged suicide bomber had been set off by their missile and that the children were killed by these explosives.
In actuality, there were no explosives other than the missile launched from the American drone. The car in question was filled with containers of water, not bombs.
It very quickly became obvious that the U.S. military had decided to shoot first and ask questions later in their desperation to avoid yet another disaster in the Afghanistan debacle. They ended up creating a disaster of their own and then they lied to the world about for as long as they possibly could.
The final act of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan will now always be remembered by seven dead children and a failed cover-up from the Pentagon. It seems no one will face any consequences for that or for the rest of the catastrophe in Afghanistan.
