Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder dodged a question Thursday about why no one in the U.S. was held accountable for a mistaken 2021 drone strike, while demanding Israel punish officials for a similar incident.
As Breitbart News reported at the time, the Biden administration claimed that a drone strike on a target in Kabul was a “righteous” strike on a terrorist in the wake of the attack on the international airport that killed 13 U.S. personnel.
Later, the U.S. admitted that the drone attack had targeted an innocent aid worker, who died along with two adults and seven children from his family. No one was ever fired, or reprimanded, for the mistake or the false explanation.
Yet in recent days, President Joe Biden and White House officials have demanded that Israel hold officials accountable for a mistaken drone strike on World Central Kitchen aid workers who were mistaken for terrorists.
The question was posed by Washington Times reporter Mike Glenn. From the Pentagon’s own transcript:
Q: Yes. Thanks, Pat. In August 21, 2021, the U.S. launched a drone strike that killed seven children and three adults for several days. People in this building, including your predecessor and the former chairman, insisted it was a righteous nation. Nobody was punished for it. Nobody lost their job over it. I mean, is it really — is the U.S. really in a position to be outraged about what happened in Israel since it seems to almost mirror what happened in the — what the U.S did in Afghanistan?
GEN. RYDER: Yes, Mike, I mean, I – I appreciate the question but, you know, I – I – I’m not going to be able to talk about the past. All I can talk about today is the present. And the fact is, you know, seven civilians who were delivering food to people who are in extreme need were killed in an airstrike. So it’s a tragic situation, I think we can all agree. And so I’ll just leave it there.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby, who demanded accountability from Israel this week for the World Central Kitchen tragedy, said in 2021 that no U.S. officials or soldiers would be blamed for the Kabul strike: “What we saw here was a breakdown in process, and execution in procedural events, not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership,” he said, when he was the Pentagon’s spokesman.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
