 Ah, and welcome to Figments. On reality, season one, episode 10, hard to believe that many episodes, but there's been plenty to talk about. And I've got more today, a reminder that my commentary is intended to be apolitical or at least non-political and avoid vitriol, even though I've expressed some pretty strong opinions. This is going to be a pretty heavy episode because I'm gonna talk about collateral damage. And bottom line is when bad things happen, it takes more than an apology to make things right. I'd also like to restate something I said on at least one maybe more earlier episode. And that is that revenge is a fool's errand. I really believe that in warfare conflict, it is not, should not be the basis of strategy or operations. So my previous episodes, accountability and the Washington problem have both been quite popular. I would suggest you if you haven't view them, go back and go look at them on the YouTube playlist because I talked about the problem we have with accountability and holding military leaders accountable for mission failure. And in the Washington problem, talk about what I think is the genesis of some of our strategic failings in the national security realm in recent years. Interestingly, one of my neighbors and friends, we were both putting out garbage as I recall and he mentioned that he really liked the accountability episode. He did not have any military background, just business but he talked about how he found it very applicable to the business world as well. And he had shared it with business colleagues in context. Yay. This episode is about things that are truly military but I think they'll have applicability to you whether you are in the military around the military or just a voter. And I'll talk about why I feel that way in a bit. Now, my bottom line assertion in this episode is that somehow we have come to care more about the deaths of military members than of non-combatants of innocent civilians in conflict. And I find that troubling. I think a lot of it has to do with the application of unmanned aerial vehicles, unpiloted aerial vehicles, drones in combat. And I was there when weaponized drones were born. I was the director of operational requirements for the Air Force and part guided the process that made that a routine capability. I've always had concerns about the moral basis for remote control warfare where the attacker risks nothing and takes human life. And I was actually in the room in a building in the Washington DC area for one of the very first drone strikes and watched the process. It was a very careful process, thoughtful, deliberate, no rush to judgment before the hellfire missile was expended against the target and the target included people. And I wanna make sure I do that today is include the human dimension we're not talking about stick figures. We're not talking about merely vehicles or buildings. We're talking about killing people. And that's an unpleasant topic but we've got to address it head on. And I'm not sure we're doing that with regard to the Afghan drone strike. Now, I'm sure most of you are aware that there was a drone strike shortly after the bombing that killed 13 US service members. And the president said right afterwards, we will not forgive, we will not forget, we will hunt you down, et cetera. Again, revenge in my mind is the wrong approach. So not politically, just morally, I'm troubled by that approach. And he's not the first president of any party to take such a vengeful approach to something bad that's happened to the US but it can't be the basis for strategy or operations. This drone strike was initially cited as righteous. And then a review showed that those killed had nothing to do with ISIS-K. They were civilians, including an Afghan who worked for a USAID organization and up to nine other members of this family, including children, not so righteous. And what did we get for that? We got a couple of apologies saying, gee, we're sorry, by Zoom, Admiral. Now, Mr. Kirby, you're listening to General McKenzie, the commander of the Central Command. And I've got to be judgmental in this case. I found both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General McKenzie's apologies, Tepit. We're sorry, kind of bad things happen in war and bad things do happen in war. Don't get me wrong. But that's not an explanation. It's merely an apology. And I think it's very important for the US to provide an actual explanation of what happened, how it happened and what we'll do to prevent it. We'll never, warfare will never be without tragedy, without loss of human life. But we owe an explanation. And we're told that multiple investigations are ongoing, one within the Air Force. So perhaps it was an Air Force drone and the other by the DODIG. And those investigations are going to examine if procedures were followed. It should anybody be blamed held accountable, but they're not gonna offer an explanation. You know, if the DODIG has the targeting guidance and the rules of engagement in front of them, they're gonna say they were followed or weren't followed and then report that finding to the public. I don't think that's good enough. I think that we owe a detailed explanation. And punishing somebody doesn't take the place of that. We need to be reminded of just how tragic the situation and of the nature of the death. Here's a picture from the Associated Press to the right on your screen is the vehicle that was hit. There were 10 people in or around that vehicle apparently. Imagine how they died. Go ahead, suck it up and think about it. This was not tidy, they weren't killed by the Kinka. They were blown apart. We owe an explanation. And if we don't, there's going to be more collateral damage. And I don't mean incidents like this. I mean to the United States reputation. Again, we have to defend our national interests and our country. But we need to do better than this. And if we don't address it, as I said, there'll be damage to our image and our credibility worldwide. There may be punishments, but absent the truth, the full truth, they don't do much. There may be reparations. The family may get some token payment. Could be a lot of money or a little money. But that doesn't replace the truth that's needed for closure. And the entire world, I imagine, wants to know, how could such a technologically sophisticated military make such a tragic mistake? Now I can tell you, those mistakes happen more and that's part of the explanation. And I'm not apologetic for that. But we made a mistake and we need to give the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Now, yes, I'm a civilian journalist, citizen journalist as Jay Fadel of ThinkTech likes to say. And I can sit here in a pine but I actually have some experience in this realm and I would like to share that experience with you. In 1999, I commanded the 31st Air Expeditionary Wing at Aviano Air Base, Italy as a one star during the air war over Serbia, the war to stop ethnic cleansing in coastal. And we had a similar incident. And I get to explain it. So in April of 1999, we had some pilots flying F-16s and they witnessed some acts of ethnic cleansing and saw a convoy that appeared military from the altitude they were allowed to operate at based upon rules of engagement intended to protect our forces. And they expended several 500 pound laser guided bombs and in the end, concerns became apparent within the formation and they terminated the attacks to sort it out. The Serbs took advantage of this situation and took media to the scene of the attacks and showed civilian casualties. And there were civilian casualties. But there's no doubt about it. There was some doubt about the nature of all the civilian casualties, but in any case, they're worse. So the NATO response initially was pretty clumsy and the message garbled, but eventually there was a full accounting and I participated in that. That didn't make the victims any less dead, but it did demonstrate to the public that we were taking every possible measure to protect civilian lives while accomplishing our mission and what had become quite a big global controversy was much less of a controversy now. Now this wasn't the only collateral damage incident during the Coastal War, there were several others. Many of you may remember the bombing of the Chinese embassy accidental using the wrong coordinates and there was a full accounting in that too. This was, that was after this, but generally NATO's handling of collateral damage incidents was proper and effective. And I'm not talking about spin, I'm talking about telling the truth. And so let me tell you a little bit from my perspective, what happened there. I was actually in my quarters putting on my boots and I can go right back to this memory, tying my right boot as I looked up the TV and saw excerpts on CNN or clips from Serbia on CNN of the civilian casualties. And I knew right then that I probably wasn't going to fly my combat mission that night because as the commander I'd be busy. And so I went into work and we began gathering what we knew about it. And it wasn't clear because war is complicated. The fog of war is a real thing. And there were several flights involved. We got the data we could from the pilots and their mission tapes and began putting it together to build a more complete picture of what had happened. And that was difficult. It was a big team effort. We started gathering facts. I sent in what upon further review wasn't the best decision I made. I sent the audio tape of one of my pilots conducting a mission who saw the Serbs burning coast far Muslim homes and acted upon that struck some regular or irregular forces. We didn't know which that were conducting this ethnic cleansing. And to me it was compelling. Now I've been flying in the same area. I've done the same things, same kind of mission as this pilot. And to me it was compelling. He did a great job. He was very careful. And frankly we took far more risk during that war to avoid civilian casualties than to kill military targets. So we sent the audio to NATO and they put clips of it out and frankly that backfired and made this great pilot. And he was one of my best. Sound like a work room. He wasn't. He'd taken great care. They extended properly and stopped that particular act of ethnic cleansing. So there was a large kerfuffle and some NATO members as I recall were even thinking about withdrawing from this coalition effort against Milovstic and his Serb government. And eventually it got so bad. The general West Clark, the Yukon and NATO commander came to Aviano and said Dan, I'm always in trouble when somebody calls me Dan. I need you to come to Brussels and explain this to the media. Now remember, I commande a very large wing in combat. We're still flying combat operations but it was important enough to the NATO commander to pull me away from that to come give a full explanation. And we did. This was a team effort. I was the talking head. And so the most visible point of it but many people put together the fact as well as we could so that we could give a full explanation. And I went up to NATO and did that after two plus days and nights, 24 seven of gathering the information and putting together as much of a story as we could. And then I went to NATO and I had on the screen earlier if you search NATO speech by Brigadier General Daniel Leaf, that was me. You can find the full script of that speech and you'll see what I'm talking about. But the bottom line is we wanted to give the public as much as we knew and describe it in an understandable way for the public. And so I walked into the briefing room. Many of you, some of you older people like me may remember Jamie Shea who was the NATO public affairs lead at the time introduced me to a room of about 200 reporters and I proceeded to tell them what we knew, what we didn't know and some things that we thought were unknowables that because we didn't have access to the target location and because the Serbs had clearly messed with the scene and turned things very much to their advantage. We just couldn't know what there were and that involved the detailed chronology. And we put that up on the screen with everything that happened. We're not gonna go through this today if there isn't time or perhaps interest but everything that happened and we even added imagery of one of the attacks on the screen and we talked through it. And in the end, we acknowledged civilian deaths. That doesn't make them any less dead but we acknowledged them and took responsibility for them and talked about how we'd address that to try to avoid that happening again. You can never fully avoid it. War is as terrible as you can imagine. Speaking of that, if you wanna know truly understand the nature of warfare I highly recommend the book with the old breed by E.B. Sledge the best, most pretty presentation of the realities of combat I've ever read. Fortunately, I'd read it before this so that gave me some sense of how to portray this. So we told the story and the issue went away. I recall watching a CNN report who said this issue that had gone on for five days was now closed and I felt good about that. I meant I'd done my job with the help of many others. And another reason I felt good about it is at some point at the end of a conflict you have to reconcile sometimes in the middle of a conflict. You can't do that without truth. That's why they're often called truth and reconciliation commissions. Google that for more on that important work that goes on around the world during and after conflicts. So that job was done a brief break because I need a breath. I need to get ready for the next part which is gonna be pretty heavy and tell you that I will be giving another baseball show on figments, the power of imagination which is going to be much more lighthearted than this discussion with my buddy and the math whiz Air Force Colonel retired Ross Rowley. He's happy because his Cardinals won 16 straight. I'm happy because it doesn't matter that much as my brewers clinched the NL Central yesterday. So some more fun there but let's get back to the hard stuff. As I got ready for this episode it made me think beyond this particular drone strike and its aftermath. And think about the nature of war and that's why I gave you my bottom line up front which is it feels to me that we've come to care more about combat and deaths than non-combat and deaths. And frankly, I don't think that's a good thing. Now, there always have been as far as I know civilian deaths in conflict and that is not going to be something we can avoid. The narrative I think changed though during World War II when they occurred on a much grander, grander isn't the right word, larger scale. And that started with the Japanese bombing of China of population centers in China and it continued in our U.S. and allied strategic bombing of Europe and the bombing of Japan not only the two atomic attacks but there were specific attacks executed with full knowledge that most of the human consequence would fall upon the civilian population. It continued in the Korean War and in fact maybe to a greater extent per capita if you will during the Korean War when it was much as 15% of the North Korean population civilian population may have been killed in U.S. bombing of population centers that started out intended to have military targets and expanded to purely civilian targets with up to 85% of the cities destroyed. Less of a factor in the Vietnam War though there were civilian casualties clearly there from U.S. bombing. The point I'd make is that there were always discussions about the morality of this on the U.S. and Brit side in World War II a lot of discussions between MacArthur and his Air Force leaders during the Korean War but it happened nonetheless and it became normalized. Now in recent years we've gotten so precise and so capable that the combatant casualties have decreased having lost I think 2,317 men and women in U.S. in Afghanistan conflict but that's not a big number if you look back at casualties in other wars and in the Gulf War and in Operation Iraqi Freedom the numbers were similarly low by the standards of warfare over the centuries. So they're kind of magnified and we pay attention with our yellow ribbon mindset to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines that we've lost and we shouldn't it's regrettable and it's a tremendous sacrifice by the military members and by their family. But what about the civilians? Up to 100,000 Afghan civilians may have been killed in the fighting over the last 20 years. Now we didn't kill them all we didn't even kill a majority of them but they're no less dead and we need to think about that and in my mind as we make the decision on whether or not we go to war we have to be even more careful when the large burden of the human cost but a disproportionately large burden is likely to fall on the civilian populace the noncombatants we should be even more reluctant to apply military force. And when I say war I'm not just talking about full blown invading a country or being invaded by a country warfare because we have gotten to a point with our over the horizon capabilities that the military likes to tout drone warfare and other capabilities where we can initiate conflict lethal conflict that kills people and is likely going to kill civilians just because that's the way it is we've got to be more careful about that more thoughtful and consider the moral element of it. And we need to avoid playing our explanations to the public as the apologies that I would deem as tepid of this Afghanistan drone strike did you know we're trying to get rid of the bad news not to explain it and play the public and that's offensive to me in a personal sense but it's also not very effective. And whether you're on the right left or the middle you can find plenty on Facebook that demeans the American public's awareness well the government and the military have an obligation to educate them and that includes education on how bad war is and how things like this happen. They need to be educated to it because they have a piece of it and back to accountability which had direct business implications and applications this collateral damage has direct applicability to every American of voting age whether they vote or not because we elect the leaders who choose to enter conflict and we should be educated in and now I'm educated from my life and what war is like but the average American isn't and if we just show videos of everything going right on our side then we're not educating in public war is messy and dirty and unintended consequences are going to occur and we should explain that to the public. So what would I do? This episode caused me to do a lot of reflection about my experience of warfare and it doesn't cause me post traumatic stress it war is war but it makes me think about the morality of it and how important it is to have a moral foundation for everything you do before and after a conflict. I could go on and on, I won't about my personal reflection, I think it's healthy. I am unapologetic for the things I did. I did them as carefully as I could. I realized that people I killed with 500 and 2000 bombs did not die a pleasant death. This isn't Hollywood and we should all recognize that. They don't just, it's a horrible violent death. They were in some cases doing ethnic cleansing and they had to be stopped but they were still fathers and sons and they died. And I killed them. We need to know that the cause is important enough to do that and to recognize that we have to acknowledge the nature of the violence that we're bringing to a place and that that violence could be inflicted on people who have nothing to do with it. That's the reality of warfare. So the other thing that I think we should do is, and I've said this already, the US has to make full disclosure. So do your investigations, whatever punish somebody. I hope they look up the chain and not just a Captain Smith who happened to be the predator operator. I hope they look fully up the chain to see who put the pressure on them that made them act in haste and without due care and killed 10 civilians. Whatever they do with that, fine. There has to be a full factual disclosure to the public, not to excuse what happened but to explain it, to make it understandable. To the world that will be good for the image of the United States, not in a PR sense, but we are, I believe, a very moral republic. And I know our military members try their best. It's war and the best doesn't always happen. We've got to do that. Another thing we need to do is be extremely conservative in our use of over the rising capabilities. The administration has touted our abilities to go beyond line of sight, if you will, and to punish the perpetrators of the attack. Well, be conservative, make sure you've got it right. I'm stating the obvious, but it's an important obvious. And today, the US said that they will not ask, the administration said they will not ask for Afghan or Taliban approval prior to executing such strikes. And I'm not sure that's wise. Not that I want to apologize to the Taliban or be subservient to them, but there is an issue of sovereignty and you break the law once and your credibility will suffer elsewhere. And then finally, for those who are executing these missions, I'd remind them of the approach that I saw in a room near Washington, D.C. in one of the very first drone strikes. And that is, if there's any doubt, there's no doubt. Hold your fire. Hold your fire. So I hope you found this thought-provoking. I invite your comment and I appreciate you listening. We need an informed populace on national security matters. We need to all be invested in it because in the long run, it will directly affect our lives. So thank you for that. Again, I'd ask you to tune into Figments, the power of imagination on October 4th and if we'll talk baseball, I'll be back with Figments on reality after a brief two-week vacation and go see some playoff baseball. And I'd like to thank Think Tech Hawaii for putting this on and giving citizen journalists like me a chance to share our views, opinions and experience. So have a great day and aloha.