Leon Panetta is an ass

[Shermann]

He was on CNN last week basically saying that the US friendly fire drone attack in Afghanistan was avoidable. His argument was that the US should have had boots on the ground in Kabul verifying the target.

OK, except we were in the midst of a withdrawal. How can we leverage boots on the ground when we are withdrawing?

Also there is the issue of uncertainty that you get during the fog of war. Let's say we were withdrawing from Afghanistan, and our intelligence tells us that there is a 90% chance that a Toyota contains a bomb which will create carnage at the airport. Do you take it out? What about 80%? 70% 50%?

[marble falls]

1. Gee Leon, if no US troops were there at all, it wouldn't have happened.

[Hoyt]

2. Kind of hard to say good things about killing innocent people, even unintended.

Panetta has the credentials to say what he did, even if we don’t like it.

[brush]

3. Hindsight is so easy. The Afghan withdrawal, though chaotic as hell and rushed...

because of the collapse of the Afghan army and its ability to hold back the Taliban, a loss of 13 Americans and many other Afghans is small, not meaning to minimize any deaths, but considering other military withdrawals in recent history—Saigon, Dien Bien Phu, Dunkirk, the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, all with hundreds and thousands lost—it went somewhat smoothly except for the bombing at the end.

And thousands were airlifted out.

[Journeyman]

4. The tall Arab metal recycler was killed by a drone in February 2002 for the crime . . .

of looking like Osama bin Laden, and for people around him being deferential to him.

On February 4, 2002, a U.S. Predator drone relayed images of a tall man thought to be the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, on the basis that he was tall and being treated with respect. As the man and two others emerged from a wooded area, a missile was launched from the drone, killing the individuals. This was the first time that a Predator drone was used in a targeted killing; however, there were doubts about whether the man targeted was in fact Osama bin Laden. A few days after the strike, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked whether any evidence suggested that Osama bin Laden might have been killed and he responded, “We just simply have no idea.” One week after the strike, Department of Defense (DoD) spokeswoman Victoria Clark, stated, “We don’t know yet exactly who it was.” It was later reported that the tall man was not Osama bin Laden. The tall man, Daraz Khan, was five feet and eleven inches tall, shorter than Osama bin Laden by six inches. The individuals killed were simply poor locals scavenging in the woods for scrap metal. Afghan villagers questioned the attack and explained that the three men knew nothing of Islamic politics. Since the killing of Daraz Khan, it is estimated that between 8,858 and 16,901 people have been killed by U.S. drone strikes as of May 2020 in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen alone.

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_contract_law/publications/public_contract_law_jrnl/49-4/casualties-drone/

The inadequacies of this technology were apparent from the beginning ("This was the first time that a Predator drone was used in a targeted killing; however, there were doubts about whether the man targeted was in fact Osama bin Laden." ) and evidently those inadequacies haven't improved any since. A compassionate, concerned militia would make adjustments, perhaps not use such inaccurate, senseless tools of death, but evidently "profound condolences" to the survivors is sufficient to assuage the General's black conscience.