Costly drone mistake bolsters doubts about Biden's Afghanistan strategy

From the first weeks of the Afghanistan war to its final days, U.S. officials repeatedly championed the use of aerial surveillance technology to distinguish friend from foe, fighter from civilian, and eliminate America’s enemies with pinpoint accuracy. The technology was heralded as a way to minimize civilian casualties and reduce the risks and costs of ground deployments. In practice, though, the U.S. military got it wrong — a lot — leading to high-profile civilian deaths and handing the Taliban a potent recruitment tool.

After weeks of hesitation, the Pentagon admitted Friday that it got it wrong again in the final days of the frantic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, when an Aug. 29 drone strike took out 10 civilians who had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorists. What makes the admission so embarrassing for the administration is that President Joe Biden has staked the future of America’s security strategy in Afghanistan on what he calls “over the horizon” surveillance technology to take the place of troops and human intelligence.

American commanders at the time spoke with certainty about what the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Mark Milley, asserted was a “righteous” strike. At the time, relatives of the 10 civilians killed insisted that their family members had been wrongfully targeted. But U.S. officials refused to budge from their version that they had annihilated an Islamic State terrorist threat.