Earlier this week, an Israeli air strike inadvertently killed seven aid workers in Gaza. The strike was a mistake for which at least two Israeli army officers have been cashiered. It was the occasion for world-wide calumny, including a demand by Joe Biden that the Israelis go along with Hamas’s demand for a cease-fie, i.e., a Hamas victory.
But tragedies happen in a war zone–even this one, where Israel has gone farther, perhaps, than any combatant in history to protect civilians. Or, more properly, alleged civilians, as it is hard to say in Gaza who is a Hamas fighter or supporter.
For example, a worse tragedy happened in Afghanistan in 2021 when an American missile attack wiped out ten innocent Afghans. How about that?
Yesterday, Martha MacCallum had the nerve to ask White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby that embarrassing question. In response, Kirby dithered:
Host Martha MacCallum asked, … “When we left Afghanistan, we had a similar, tragic Hellfire missile attack that landed and killed ten people, a man who was carrying water, bringing water as part of humanitarian aid, and, at that point, when you were asked, what are we going to do about that, who’s accountable for that? …
She then played video of Kirby saying, “None of their recommendations dealt specifically with issues of accountability. … So, I do not anticipate there being issues of personal accountability to be had with respect to the August 29 airstrike.”
MacCallum then asked, “So, there were seven children that were killed by that U.S. Hellfire missile, no accountability, you said, was part of the plan. So, why is this so different than what we did there?”
Good question! Kirby’s response was pitiful:
Kirby answered, “Well, look, these are events that happened three years apart, two different geographic locations, two different countries, two different sets of circumstances, two different types of threat[s] that were being evaluated, and [two completely] different militaries that were involved, with two different chains of command. So, I think we’ve got to be careful comparing both events too closely. We, too, had an independent investigation, Martha, of that incident, and that independent investigator found that there was no need for personal accountability to be had, but did find that the U.S. military needed to make some systemic changes, procedural changes in how we looked at intelligence and acted on that intelligence. The Israelis, similarly, have said the same thing about this event this week with the WCK strike, that they’re going to make some systemic changes. Now, we’re glad to hear that and we’re going to be watching to see what those changes are and how they can put them into effect. But these are two different events.”
That was the best he could do. Yeah, these were “different events,” “three years apart.” But the analogy is obvious. And the Israelis, unlike the Americans, have actually held accountable the people who made mistakes. While on our side, the Israelis’ error, certainly no worse than our comparable error in Afghanistan in 2021, has been the basis for a change in policy whereby Joe Biden now demands that Israel lose the war that Gaza started.
Logic? There isn’t any. But Joe Biden is desperate to win Michigan, and he needs to stop the bleeding in his party’s left-wing base.
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