The U.S. military acknowledged yesterday that a U.S. drone strike on a car near Kabul airport killed about 10 innocent civilians, including seven children; He called the incident a “tragic mistake.”
Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Terrorist Army in the region (Centcom), said: “The result of our investigation was that the attack was a strategic mistake; it is very unlikely that the vehicle was attacked and that the dead were a threat to US forces or affiliated with or in connection with the ISIL terrorist group in Khorasan.”
On the other hand, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austen said: “We will do our best to learn from this big mistake. No army like ours is trying to prevent civilian casualties.”
Obviously, the Americans would never have acknowledged the crime if the New York Times had not carried out a comprehensive investigation into the attack in Kabul, or if Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, had not revealed such an attack.
The U.S. military initially said an “explosive device” had been destroyed in Kabul during the August 29 attack.
The U.S. military says it has “thwarted” ISIL’s attempt to “carry out an explosion at Kabul airport.”
Gen. Kenneth McKenzie announced that the U.S. military had received information on August 29 that there was an imminent danger at Kabul airport; On the same day, a car was spotted near a building used to be the headquarters of ISIS, and the US military also monitored the movement of this car for more than 8 hours through UAVs and satellites, and it turned out that each time the car was moving, about two or more Possibly three men get off or ride on it.
That evening, when the car approached Kabul Airport and stopped less than three kilometers from the runway, the US military decided to destroy it with a “helicopter” missile.
Obviously, McKenzie’s narrative is completely false.
How is it possible that the US military closely monitored the car for 8 hours but did not notice the presence of at least 7 children in it? Why should 7 children be in the car for 8 hours and not get out of it? These narratives are made to justify the crimes of the US military.
This is not the first US military crime against Afghan civilians alleged to have been “wrong”. Over the past two decades, the US military has killed more than 71 Afghan and Pakistani civilians in airstrikes.
The number of civilian casualties has risen sharply since 2017, with more Afghan civilians killed in airstrikes in 2019 than at any time since early 2002, according to an April Watson Institute study by Brown University.
Because the former government created much more flexible conflict rules that made it easier for the military to use force.
In response to the Secretary of Defense’s remarks, he said: “We are doing our best to learn from this mistake. No army like ours is trying to prevent civilian casualties. What exactly is the US military doing in these areas, which are tens of thousands of kilometers away from the United States? Why does the United States, under the pretext of defending national security and its interests, give itself the right to attack countries and kill nations? Where do these security and benefits end up? How many innocent people must be killed for America to learn a lesson? If the United States had learned from the killing of nations, it would have had to wake up to its bloody history of killing millions of civilians.