Making A Bad Situation Worse
I’m no military expert, but it is hard to imagine a plan that was executed worse than the U.S. surrender from Afghanistan.
No need to rehash all the errors that were made…but the latest example of making a bad situation worse—to the point of being truly tragic—was released late Friday afternoon. Friday afternoon, by the way, is the time when those in government regardless of political party dump really bad news in the hopes they get lost or forgotten over the weekend.
Following the suicide bombing attack that led to the death of 13 U.S. military members, the cry at home was to do something to avenge that loss, which came only a few days after the president famously noted on television that no Americans had died in the withdrawal.
That led to a strike against what the Pentagon said were two high level ISIS-K targets. There, we got back at them. But there was always something fishy about that, especially when those high level targets were never identified. The Pentagon investigated further and publicly declared that the strike had been conducted correctly.
But the U.S. government had to admit Friday that rather than Islamist extremists being killed…with perhaps civilians killed as collateral damage…only civilians were killed in the August 29th strike, now termed a “tragic mistake”.
Ten Afghan civilians, in fact…seven of them children…killed by a U.S. drone so-called “self-defense” strike.
So let’s see, we know of 13 U.S. military who didn’t have to die…now 10 Afghans who didn’t have to die. How many more? And how many more will we never learn about.
