The Stunning Lack of Accountability for the Botched U.S. Drone Strike in Afghanistan

A ccountability for the botched drone strike by the U.S. military that killed ten civilians in Kabul must lie somewhere. Having personally conducted countless dynamic-targeting situations while running current operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq, I can attest that you do not just strike a car you have been actively tracking for eight hours that is loaded with civilians without people making serious mistakes. Likely these mistakes came at much higher levels than Air Force lieutenant general Sami Said’s review cared to look.

What I find most interesting is that Said focused all his comments on the “strike cell” and the information that our military had at the time. While I am not for micromanaging our current operations cells, where this strike would have been tracked and processed, it is hard to believe that general or flag-level officers (abbreviated GOFOs, a term used to refer to general or admiral-level officers within our military) were not directly involved in approving this strike. Who were these GOFOs, and how actively were they tracking the situation? We don’t know. But we should.

According to the Associated Press, Central Command (CENTCOM) claims it was tracking the car for about eight hours. AP further reported that, according to Said, two minutes before the strike there was evidence that a child was present in the strike zone. The targeting team clearly missed this evidence. But that leaves another pressing question unanswered: How many people were in the car at the time of the strike? I have personally witnessed the aftermath of numerous car bombs, including one that killed one of our unit medics. Never has there been more than one person inside the suicide vehicle.

There is another question worth asking. In instances such as this, a single person has final-strike authority. So who authorized the strike for the supposed car bomb that had multiple occupants? I suspect it was a GOFO. It is the job of such an officer to be a dispassionate observer and to approve such a strike. Said conveniently leaves out who the approving authority of the strike was. But that is where at least one level of accountability should rest. That, however, would require accepting culpability for a completely botched strike at senior levels. It’s much easier to clear low-level troops of blame and then call the incident investigated.

Intelligence failures do happen. But Said and CENTCOM steered well clear of any comments on why the intelligence was faulty. What gave the targeting team “reasonable certainty” that an imminent threat was present? While I am not advocating releasing anything that would compromise sources or methods, it seems reasonable to address as fully as possible how the intelligence got it this wrong. Again, they had eight hours to develop more intelligence. Was this a case of trusting the Taliban to provide reliable information? Exposing this would not compromise any sources or methods. But it would expose the gross incompetence of Pentagon and White House officials.

Was there pressure to respond to the suicide attack that killed 13 U.S. service members only days before this strike? It is hard to discount pressure from Pentagon and White House officials to live up to President Biden’s declaration that “we will hunt you down and make you pay.” While it seems highly unlikely that Biden himself had direct knowledge of this strike before it happened, it would be gross negligence for GOFOs and senior defense and intelligence officials not to be directly involved with tracking this target. What does Said have to say about the influence of these GOFOs, defense, and intelligence officials on the strike? Nothing. Again: This would bring accountability for senior officials likely responsible for the failures that led to the deaths of ten civilians.

Another key question still unanswered, even after Said’s report: What Rules of Engagement (ROE) were American forces operating under when conducting the strike? CENTCOM mentioned the strike was conducted with “reasonable certainty” that there was an imminent threat to American troops at the Kabul airport. Did the strike team need an “imminent threat” to U.S. forces before it could conduct a strike?

If the targeting team had an ROE that would have allowed for a strike for “hostile intent” during the eight hours of tracking the vehicle, they could and should have struck the target when collateral-damage concerns were at the lowest, long before it became an “imminent threat” to U.S. forces. While it would have still been tragic to kill a single occupant in the vehicle, strike teams in dynamic-targeting situations are always looking for targeting windows that minimize collateral-damage concerns. Why didn’t they here?

There does not seem to be much doubt that the targeting team believed they were tracking a car bomb. The three most likely reasons to hold a strike on a target that has demonstrated “clear hostile intent” — in which there is no other purpose for a car bomb than blowing people and things up quite indiscriminately — are possible intel gain, the lack of a strike platform sufficient for the strike, or your ROE does not allow for it.

In a car-bomb situation, you would never hold a strike for possible future intel gain. The mobility and lethality of a car bomb make it an indiscriminate weapon and a threat to everything around it. Also, car bombs do not drive around loaded for action, simply to return to a base, which negates any reason to continue to simply track the vehicle for possible intel gain. Any “dry run” attacks would be conducted without the vehicle armed — indeed, most likely in a different vehicle. As for lacking a sufficient strike platform: That seems unlikely here, as I suspect the overwatch platforms were armed, and the threat posed by a potential car bomb would warrant the highest targeting priority.

That then leaves insufficient ROE. Neither Said’s comments nor his report covered this. Addressing insufficient ROE would involve looking at the possible culpability of Pentagon and White House officials. But it is clear that Said had no intention of scrutinizing anyone at this level, as that would require holding senior officials accountable. It is at least worth asking, however: Why was the strike delayed for eight hours?

It is also worth considering whether the failure here was simply one of gross negligence in setting up an insufficient Command and Control (C2) structure to facilitate strikes against threats within Afghanistan to our forces. It is easy to forget, in the series of complete failures leading up to the Afghanistan withdrawal, that as far back as early July 2021, Defense spokesman John Kirby discussed how we will retain “over the horizon” strike capability in Afghanistan. But it soon became painfully clear that this was not the case.

The failure to provide sufficient resources to the C2 element to conduct strikes was well outside the scope of the comments made by Said or CENTCOM. This failure again would point to senior officials and possibly even into the White House itself. Leaving questions like this unanswered is a complete failure of any investigation and protects senior officials from having to answer uncomfortable questions.

The clear pattern here is that the Pentagon intentionally overlooked potential failures of GOFOs, senior defense and intelligence officials, and White House officials to shield them from culpability in the deaths of ten civilians. This is yet another black eye in the national embarrassment of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Instead of actually investigating the failures that led to this strike, Said simply cleared low-level operators who were under-resourced, fed bad intelligence, placed under political pressure from possibly as high up as the president, and operating under restricted ROE they did not set. To take any investigation seriously to clear the Department of Defense and Biden administration of “misconduct or negligence” for the strike, we need to look much higher than the “strike cell.” What a complete disgrace and just the latest example of senior officials skirting any accountability.