Evan Hill of the New York Times wrote over the weekend: “The final act of the U.S. war in Afghanistan was a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 people. Our latest investigation shows how a man the military saw as an ‘imminent threat’ and ‘ISIS facilitator’ was actually an aid worker returning to his family.” See the investigation.

But activists warn that it may not be the final act at all.

BRIAN TERRELL, brian1956terrell@gmail.com
KATHY KELLY, kathy@vcnv.org
    Terrell and Kelly are with the Ban Killer Drones campaign. Kelly just wrote the piece “To Counter Terror, Abolish War.”

    The campaign has launched a “No More Attacks on Afghanistan” petition which scrutinizes President Biden’s recent remarks that he will “rely on ‘force and precision’ and ‘over the horizon’ attacks targeting ISIS-K, a clear threat of drone strikes and bombing raids. Even if air raids put fewer U.S. military personnel in immediate danger, they will surely kill more Afghan civilians than militants. While extrajudicial targeted assassinations are illegal, documents exposed by whistleblower Daniel Hale prove that the U.S. government is aware that 90 percent of its drone strike victims are not the intended targets….

    “Twenty years of war has only benefited the weapons industries while making the world less secure. We oppose any threat of further attacks on Afghanistan, ‘over the horizon’ or by troops on the ground. Official counts indicate that more than 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zones and the actual number is likely many times more.”