Relatives and neighbors of the Ahmadi family gather around a burned-out vehicle that the family says was hit by a U.S. drone strike, killing 10 people.
The Pentagon admitted a few days ago that they made a tragic error in a recent drone strike. What they believed was a Toyota Corolla sedan containing terrorists, turned out to contain innocent Afghan civilians – including seven children. Shortly after the drone strike took place, Joe Biden declared it a great “success”, and an example of why his “over-the-horizon” strategy for fighting terrorism was better than actually having “boots on the ground.”
In my opinion, Biden is totally wrong. His hasty retreat from Afghanistan, against the advice of most of his military advisers, has left a black hole in our ability to keep track of what the terrorists are up to in that part of the world. And as we discovered on September 11, 2001, what terrorists plot over there, can endanger us here on American soil.
President Biden has thrown away all those intelligence gathering resources we once had in Afghanistan. Not only are all our military bases gone, but so are our Afghan intelligence assets (spies) and connections on the ground. We are now flying blind.
The over-the-horizon assets that Biden likes to refer to are principally drones (that can launch hellfire missiles), planes from aircraft carriers, and spy satellites. Since our bases in Afghanistan are now gone, drones and planes have to fly long distances just to reach Afghanistan. On average 60% of the fuel will be used just getting there and back, so much less time is available to actually watch what the bad guys are doing on the ground.
Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani.
As tragic as the drone strike which killed 10 innocent civilians was, the mainstream press has mostly given Joe Biden a pass. Yes, he got some press criticism, but nothing like his predecessor, Donald Trump, got when he was successful in taking out Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. Some screamed the Trump strike was “unlawful”. Others said it was “reckless.” An Ohio Democratic congressman (who is currently running for Rob Portman‘s senate seat) said Trump “attacked Iran on a whim…”.
And let’s not forget who Soleimani was. He was the head of a group considered to be a terrorist organization – the Quds Force, and he was responsible for the deaths of many Americans. He was a really bad guy.
So let’s get this straight – Trump gets more criticism from Democrats and the mainstream press for killing one bad guy terrorist, than Biden gets for a drone strike that killed a family of innocents, including seven children.
One final point – in war, mistakes happen. We try to minimize collateral damage, but you use the best intelligence you have to avoid civilian casualties. Unfortunately, because of the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, our intelligence was greatly diminished, and less surgical strikes are therefore likely to happen. Yet one more reason Biden’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan was a mistake.
And that’s why I consider Biden’s chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan to be the worst foreign affairs blunder in American history.