Michael Levenson, writing an “overview” of a major investigation into the U.S. “drone war” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria conducted by the New York Times, reports:
Drawing on more than 1,300 documents from a hidden Pentagon archive, the investigation reveals that, since 2014, the American air war has been plagued by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and imprecise targeting and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children.
Color me unsurprised. I was complaining about this back in 2008 and recently rehashed my complaints in a diatribe directed a bit unsportingly at Samantha Power, Samantha Power’s narrow tailoring becomes increasingly unraveled, since Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and the American military are the major culprits here, even though there was quite a bit of blind shooting back in the George W. Bush era as well. But Samantha, to go back to her, was an aggressive salesperson for the whole “death from above” new style American way of war, and I refuse to forget it.
Any commander in any our splendid little 21st century American wars quickly realizes that, whatever his orders say, job 1 is keeping American casualties to a minimum. In the eyes of the American people, bless our little heartless hearts, the death of one American outweighs the death of a thousand “foreigners”. Which is an awfully good reason for avoiding any more splendid little wars.
Afterwords
John Bolton, at least, has the solution: No more splendid little wars! Splendid big ones! With Russia and China! Many thanks to Michael Bloomberg for giving Big John a forum for his important thoughts!
