The U.S. Military Still Believes That More Drones And Airstrikes Could Solve Afghanistan's Problems

During Donald Trump's first year in office, American airstrikes in Afghanistan increased heavily and also caused more civilian casualties than in the years before.

Reportedly, this will not change. U.S. military commanders see air power as key to the hoped-for victory, and have assembled in the country what they say is the biggest drone squadron ever.

However, by sharing their views on current events in Afghanistan, military officials also spread false narratives. 

For example, Maj. Gen. James B. Hecker believes that drone strikes are necessary and that the military knows exactly what it is doing: 

"We have to do that. We know that son, that daughter, will never have a dad again, OK? And that wife will never have a husband. Now that's the last thing we want. But what we won't stand for is for the Taliban to go in and kill a bunch of innocents. And that's what they are doing right now—blowing up innocent people."

What he says supports the narrative that drones are "precise" and that operators always know what they see. 

But reality proved too often that this is not true. All over the world, U.S. drone strikes regularly kill civilians.

Thanks to my extensive research on drone strikes, I know that this is also the case in Afghanistan. For that reason, in many, many known cases, the dads and husbands Hecker describes are not militants but simply food vendors, taxi drivers or farmers.