Rand Paul Corners Blinken on the Biden Administration Drone Striking Without Identifying Targets
Drone strikes have always been a go-to when it comes to military action for every administration but one from the Biden administration killed 10 Afghan civilians including seven children. This lead Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul to ask if the Biden administration even knew who or what it was shooting at, and it’s a question Secretary of State Antony Blinken couldn’t answer.
The trouble started soon after the fated drone strike when the New York Times suggested that a drone strike described as “righteous” by the US military accidentally targeted an aid worker instead of an “imminent” ISIS-K threat as described by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley.
Paul asked the simple question of Blinken, “was he an aid worker or an ISIS-K operative?”
“I don’t know,” Blinken said, “because we’re reviewing it.”
“You’d think you’d kind of know before you off someone with a predator drone,” Paul responded.
Paul went on to make it clear that this has been a problem with pretty much every administration, citing the Obama administration’s droning of hundreds and hundreds of people. He continued, saying that if we did drone innocents, including children, then we just possibly created thousands of more terrorists for us to deal with.
“So we can’t have an investigation after we kill people,” said Paul. “We have an investigation before we kill people.”
Paul has a very good point. The literal loose cannon that is the military’s drone program has the potential to terminate conflicts and win battles with relative ease, but the sword is double-edged. Without proper investigation and confirmation of targets, innocent bystanders could find themselves getting dusted, and the friends and family of these innocent people are easy targets for radicalization.
These blind strikes confirm every bias and suspicion about the United States and we create the tools that terrorist groups like the Taliban and Al Queda can use in order to drive further recruitment.
On top of that, our government wastes billions of our taxpayer dollars using these missiles to kill people who don’t deserve it and only creates more problems down the line.
Paul is correct. The United States should be far more careful about using its drone program as an assassination tool. It’s our money, and it being used with such reckless abandon should be stopped immediately.