A Tale of Two Drone Strikes

When then-President Trump ordered a strike that killed two leaders of two terrorist organizations with zero collateral damage, many in the media, academia, and Hollywood immediately condemned it as impulsive and dangerous. When President Biden ordered a drone strike against alleged ISIS-K members that instead killed an aid worker and his family, the reaction in those same quarters amounted to barely a reprimand.

The study in contrasts underscores just how differently the two presidents’ actions are filtered through the media and academia prisms.

Trump’s attack on January 3, 2020, killed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force commander and terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani along with his ally, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, a leader of the Iranian proxy terrorist group, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). Removing these two monsters, responsible for the deaths of Americans, disrupted Iran’s plans to kill more Americans in Iraq and to solidify Hezbollah’s control over Lebanon.

Biden’s August 29, 2021, attack in Kabul, on the other hand, killed an aid worker named Zemari Ahmadi and his family; most of the casualties were children. The strike came less than 48 hours after the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that he blamed on ISIS-K. As he telegraphed the coming response, Biden promised, “We will not forgive. We will not forget. . . . We will hunt you down and make you pay.”