Since 9/11, the United States has been involved in foreign adventures to avenge the attacks on the Twin Towers. Most of these operations were conducted using airstrikes with some of the most advanced fighter jets ever seen by the world.
These airstrikes conducted by the United States have killed many terrorists in countries such as Iraq and Syria, while Afghanistan was also not an exception.
However, the US’s faulty airstrikes on civilian targets have neutralized many families as well, as indicated by the New York Times bombshell.
New York Times Bombshell: US Faulty Air Campaigns in the Middle East Against Civilians
A recent report published by New York Times reveals that the air wars of the United States have been marked by deeply flawed intelligence that resulted in the loss of innocent lives, many of which were children in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The investigation is based on five years of work that analyzed 1,300 reports of civilians who witnessed airstrikes in Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2018.
The interesting thing is that none of the records shows any wrongdoings on the actions of the US Military, which is also very astonishing considering that these operations were conducted by no one other than the US Military itself.
There have been many whistleblowers before this report, including Daniel Hale, Chelsea Manning, and others, but none was taken seriously. Hale was even sentenced to 45 months in prison for exposing the real civilian death toll from airstrikes of the US Army.
This is a huge blow to the Pentagon with its promises of transparency and accountability. The records that were made public by the Pentagon do not have a single page talking about the civilian casualties.
It was during the final years of the Obama administration that air trikes took center stage in the War on Terror, and many ground armies were replaced by an arsenal of aircraft and drones.
The Obama Administration was in a hurry to end the war and did not care much about the innocent civilians that were being killed because military intelligence was failing to get any substantial leads and was working in haste to get things done.
In Pakistan alone, the US Military was conducting drone operations daily, many of which were based on wrong operational information. All of this was being done without any consent or any prior report to the authorities of Pakistan, let alone Afghanistan or Iraq, where there was no authority.
When drones took over the War on Terror, President Obama claimed that this approach would minimize civilian damage as it would be the most precise air campaign in history. They also said that drones would be able to destroy the part of the house filled with terrorists and leave the structure standing.
The reality, however, was different. More than 91,000 airstrikes were carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria during the 20 years of war, and nearly 48,308 civilians lost their lives in them.
Will Downed Civilians Ever Get Justice?
After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the humiliating defeat of the US, this question has become relatively more important.
After twenty years of war, the United States left Afghanistan, with the Taliban capturing the country and the US not able to do anything.
But will the US punish those who carried out operations on false and misleading intelligence? The answer is surely a big NO. Recently, the Biden administration killed ten civilians in Afghanistan and apologized; later on, however, impunity has already been granted to those involved in perpetrating the attack.
The US punished the person who exposed these wrongdoings but took no action against those who were involved in killing civilians.
The fact that the United States stayed in Afghanistan and the Middle East even after achieving the targets, carrying out airstrikes to further a political agenda, and meddling with the internal affairs of these regions even complicates things more.
These events have created anti-US sentiments in the world, which often results in a popular uprising against the west.
Final Thoughts
United States foreign adventures not only took the lives of thousands of servicemen but also took tens of thousands of innocent lives, as revealed by the recent report.
However, authorities are still reluctant to accept their wrongdoings or even apologize for them.
These are very serious claims, and Congress should investigate them to find out the truth so that the faith of the people in the transparency and accountability of American democracy can be revived.
Eli is a Political Data Scientist with over thirty years of experience in Data Engineering, Analytics, and Digital Marketing. Eli uses his expertise to give the latest information and distinctive analysis on US Political News, US Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, and Racial Justice equipping readers with the inequivalent knowledge.