The killing of 10 civilians in Afghanistan, seven of them children, on the penultimate day of the war, should serve as a lasting symbol not of the chaotic exit of the United States from the country, but of the fallacy of U.S. foreign policy in particular and the folly of war in general. I wonder, will anyone remember the name of the man who was the target of that deadly mistake years from now?
Conservative critics of President Biden cite that military error as further evidence of the mistaken decision to withdraw from the country. That criticism is rather odd given that the decision to withdraw was made under the previous administration, an administration championed by many of those same critics. Meanwhile liberal critics attempt to shift the blame to President Trump for setting the withdrawal in motion. Both criticism are off course and miss the larger lesson to be learned from that most unjustified and tragic loss of innocent lives.
One of my seminary professors, David Griffin, a product of Eugene’s Bushnell University, wrote two of the books questioning the official accounts of 9/11. Though I have always admired Dr. Griffin as one of the most intelligent men I have ever known, I was not entirely convinced by his arguments. His books have made me realize there is good reason to question the certainty of what we know about that fateful day.
It is most sobering to realize that in the 20 years since 9/11, in addition to the 7,000 American soldiers who answered the call and sacrificed their lives to keep us safe, over 30,000 veterans have taken their own lives, ten times the number of people killed in the terrorist attack. Add to that all the countless victims of PTSD—soldiers and civilians—over 100,000 refugees, the billions of dollars spent that could have been used in other ways and many other artifacts of 20 years of war, and one must ask, is this the best we can do to “keep us safe?”
I can accept the invasion of Afghanistan as a necessary response to 9/11 given what we know, or at least what we think we know, about those who used that country as the basis for their campaign of terror. But 20 years of war? How can that ever be justified? Looking back, we can now see two giant missed opportunities. One came early in the war when the Taliban offered to negotiate and the Bush administration, bolstered by the initial success of the invasion, refused to even consider the offer. The second came after the killing of Osama bin Laden. I say this as one who is a great admirer of President Obama. I hold him as the best President we have had since FDR. But his decision to continue the war in Afghanistan after that point was a serious failure of U.S. foreign policy.
Finally there is this lesson we seemingly have not yet learned. Our technology gives us the ability to “take out” a target in the name of protecting innocent lives without risking the lives of our soldiers. After a suicide bomber killed 13 of our soldiers in the Kabul airport along with over 150 civilians, one can easily understand why it would be so tempting to use a drone to take out a potential car bomb that would be even deadlier. But they got it wrong for whatever reason.
To its credit, our military has owned up to their mistake. The question now is, is this a matter of just better intelligence, more precautions and better safety measures, or is it time to reconsider our reliance on drones and technology to achieve tactical advantages on the battlefield? Maybe, just maybe, we should use our technology to better the lives of those in impoverished countries rather than killing them.
Drawing the right lessons from this war rather than the wrong ones will be essential to prevent further mistakes and even more loss of innocent lives. The man we targeted on that day to keep us safe was a worker for a U.S. based non-profit dedicated to improving the nutrition of the Afghan people. The seven children killed by our missile were all part of his extended family, there to greet someone they loved in a car loaded with nothing more explosive than vegetables and water. That widely reported secondary explosion thought to be evidence of hidden explosives turned out to be nothing more nefarious that a propane tank for cooking. He used that same car the previous day to deliver food to a refugee camp. He and his family were making plans to emigrate to the U.S.
His name was Zemari Ahmadi. May we not forget it, nor the lessons to be learned from this last horrible causality of the war.
Photo: Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny, Humboldt University, Berlin. Photo by Dan Bryant