PIERS MORGAN: Where is 'righteous' President Biden's empathy towards the innocent Afghan family he slaughtered with a botched drone strike – and why is the tame liberal mainstream media turning such a blind eye to an atrocity that shames America?
Three weeks ago, a US drone strike was ordered on a white Toyota Carolla car in Kabul, Afghanistan, being driven by a suspected terrorist.
The single Hellfire missile was launched from an M-Q Reaper drone which had surveilled its target for eight hours, flying at a maximum altitude of 50,000 feet.
Hellfire missiles travel at speeds of up to Mach 1.3 or 997 miles per hour, so there would have been around half a minute between the missile being launched and detonating.
The drone did its job and killed the suspected terrorist, whom American intelligence had identified as working for ISIS-K – Islamic State Khorasan Province, the most extreme and violent jihadist militant group in Afghanistan.
It also killed nine other people including seven children.
Despite immediate reports of innocent civilian casualties, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chinese-friendly chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a Pentagon news conference several days later in which he described the attack as a 'righteous strike.'
Righteous, according to the dictionary, means 'morally right or justifiable', 'free from guilt or sin' and 'very good, excellent.'
And General Milley certainly sounded very righteous as he defended the decision to 'neutralize' the suspected ISIS-K bomb maker who was supposedly preparing an imminent attack on Kabul airport.
But there was just one problem.
A rather massive problem, in fact.
The terror suspect, Zamarai Ahmadi, wasn't a terrorist.
He was an aid worker - a $500-a-month employee of the California-based charity Nutrition and Education International.
Three weeks ago, a US drone strike was ordered on a white Toyota Carolla car in Kabul, Afghanistan, being driven by a suspected terrorist. The terror suspect, Zamarai Ahmadi, wasn't a terrorist. He was an aid worker. The other victims were his family including his three sons, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 11, three children of one of his brothers, Arwin, 7, Benyamin, 6 and Hayat, 2, Malika, the 3-year-old daughter of another brother, his nephew, Nasser, 30, and Somaya, a cousin's infant daughter
Virtually a whole family was therefore destroyed in a terrifying onslaught of hellfire and shrapnel that devastated their compound and the surrounding area
There was nothing 'righteous' about this horrifying incident. It was the pre-meditated slaughter of what turned out to be ten completely innocent people. The Pentagon's now admitted it was all a terrible mistake and apologised. But that's not good enough
None of the other victims were terrorists or connected to any terror group either.
They were though all from Ahmadi's family including his three sons, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 11, three children of one of his brothers, Arwin, 7, Benyamin, 6 and Hayat, 2, Malika, the 3-year-old daughter of another brother, his nephew, Nasser, 30, and Somaya, a cousin's infant daughter.
Virtually a whole family was therefore destroyed in a terrifying onslaught of hellfire and shrapnel that devastated their compound and the surrounding area.
There was nothing 'righteous' about this horrifying incident.
It was the pre-meditated slaughter of what turned out to be ten completely innocent people.
The Pentagon's now admitted it was all a terrible mistake and apologized.
But that's not good enough.
This is a shocking, horrendous atrocity that should still be leading the news.
Instead, the liberal-dominated US mainstream media's done what it has done with horrible regularity throughout this Biden presidency when their guy Joe does something awful, and responded with a collective 'oh dear, what a shame' sigh and moved swiftly on.
Just as it did with the devastatingly disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan itself a few weeks ago.
To which I say: sorry, WHAT?!
How dare you all turn such a casual disinterested blind eye to this abomination?
President Biden should be vilified and harangued from every media rooftop until the American people, and more importantly, the remaining members of this poor Afghanistan family, are given proper answers to how the hell this happened and what the US intends to do with Zamarai Ahmadi's relatives, whose own lives are now in serious danger as a consequence of the Taliban discovering the family worked for America.
Astonishingly, the family haven't called for revenge, although the innocent deaths of their loved ones will soon be used as justification for revenge attacks by terror groups like ISIS-K.
Instead, they've asked for those throughout the US military command responsible for the strike to be held properly accountable.
President Biden should be vilified and harangued from every media rooftop until the American people, and more importantly, the remaining members of this poor Afghanistan family, are given proper answers to how the hell this happened and what the US intends to do with Zamarai Ahmadi's relatives, whose own lives are now in serious danger as a consequence of the Taliban discovering the family worked for America
And they've asked for an assurance that they will be helped to leave Afghanistan and be resettled in the United States or another safe country.
Neither of these requests is unreasonable.
Indeed, they seem at the very low end of what should be done by a US government that's done them so much harm.
This, after all, was a family that did so much to help 'righteous' America on both humanitarian and military fronts – and then got blown to smithereens as a thank you.
And to pour salt in the victims' wounds, they were branded terrorists who had it coming.
Well, they weren't terrorists.
They were innocent people, and their deaths are an outrage.
But where is President Biden, the man who vowed to shower the world with empathy after the cruel, callous Trump era?
He's a man who's lost two children of his own, so you would expect him to be especially understanding of the horrifying child-slaying consequences of his drone strike 'mistake'.
But according to reports, neither Biden nor any senior member of the US military has made any attempt to contact the family of Zamarai Ahmadi.
I find that inexplicable and utterly shameful.
Biden's taken to evoking the memory of his son Beau whenever he speaks about the fiasco of his Afghanistan withdrawal. His press secretary Jen Psaki did it again yesterday when she cited Biden's 'personal losses' in her response to a question about the botched drone strike.
I knew Beau Biden well, and his death at 44 from brain cancer was an absolute tragedy.
But that has nothing to do with events of the past few weeks that have been an utter humiliation for the US and a sickening betrayal of the Afghan people who trusted America to fulfil its promises to give them a better future.
A frame grab from Pentagon TV shows Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of US Central Command, announcing via videolink, the completion of the US withdrawn from Afghanistan, on 30 August 2021. McKenzie admitted the US acted in error when it carred out a drone strike in the final days of the US evacuation
And there's something very distasteful about the President continuing to reference his own loss as some kind of distraction tool for being held accountable for the loss he has caused so many others through his terrible decisions in Afghanistan.
There's also something very distasteful about the way the US mainstream media is giving Biden such a pass on his terrible decisions.
Can you even imagine the scale of 24/7 outrage that would still be dominating the news cycle if Trump had made mistakes of this deadly magnitude?
But Biden doesn't get the same treatment because he's a liberal and so are most of the mainstream media.
And that double-standard absolutely stinks.
The US drone strike annihilation of an innocent Afghanistan family that worked so hard for America is an appalling moment in modern US history.
The very least Joe Biden can do it pick the phone up today to those mourning relatives, offer his own sincere and personal apology, and get them all flown to America as a matter of urgency so they can try to rebuild their shattered lives without worrying if the Taliban's going to murder them.
This family's blood is on your hands, Mr President – stop being a coward, own your 'mistake', and make the call.
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