“Did we just kill a kid?”
With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.
Second zero was the moment in which Bryant’s digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.
Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.
“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him.
“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied.
“Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.
Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote.
They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?
Blowback
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Awful.
UltimateBob on December 18, 2012 at 4:31 PM
This is how our “Nobel Peace Prize winning Prezident” wants to fight wars. He owns this.
UltimateBob on December 18, 2012 at 4:33 PM
Per the GC: When the enemy hides among civilians and the civilians get killed, it is the enemy who committed the war crime.
Blake on December 18, 2012 at 4:35 PM
rogerb on December 18, 2012 at 4:37 PM
I think we all understand the point of an article like this, but what is the difference between a drone doing this and a fighter pilot doing this? In fact the fighter pilot probably has even less opportunity to abort than a drone operator does. So if you want to convince me we shouldn’t use drones because you’re screaming “What about the children!”, I’m going to counter that manned crafts drop and run without eyes onboard the projectile with the ability to abort mid-flight. More drones please.
NotCoach on December 18, 2012 at 4:38 PM
i’m glad we don’t have drones monitoring us in the U.S. and particularly thankful we have Big Sis offering memos on who the most likely terrorist suspects are among us.
a capella on December 18, 2012 at 4:39 PM
yeah, whatever
Blake on December 18, 2012 at 4:41 PM
They killed a Bichon?!?!
Axeman on December 18, 2012 at 4:46 PM
Schadenfreude on December 18, 2012 at 4:50 PM
Yeah, but between his drone warfare and his rendition program, Obama doesn’t have to accept responsibility for increasing the number of detainees at Gitmo. He prefers killing them, even if there are civilian casualties.
obladioblada on December 18, 2012 at 4:55 PM
I trust this was not intended to be a sensitivity lecture from one Herrenvolk to another.
Seth Halpern on December 18, 2012 at 5:19 PM
Even if they are American citizens. To Hades with their constitution…he is a ‘constitutional scholar’ and the president of the once free land.
Schadenfreude on December 18, 2012 at 5:22 PM
Exactly.
The cowards hide behind their women and children instead of coming out to fight like men.
Mommynator on December 18, 2012 at 5:38 PM
People – even children – die in war.
This is made 1000x more likely when one or more sides sets up amongst civilian populations.
It’s tragic and the good guys do what they can to limit the civilian casualties; however, anyone wanting to use this story as an argument against targeted bombings may as well use a story of a kid stepping from a blind spot into traffic and being hit by a car as an argument for outlawing vehicles.
JadeNYU on December 18, 2012 at 5:48 PM
Isn’t this the article about the guy with a “Palestinian scarf”?
NorthernCross on December 18, 2012 at 5:49 PM
Reading this from Israel, and I just want to say we jump through hoops to try to protect civilians here. We endanger our own soldiers to protect the enemy. I know US service people do the same. Our enemies are to blame, no one else. I am proud of the IDF, proud of the US Armed Forces.
saus on December 18, 2012 at 5:52 PM
Oh. I thought the Lede referred to the main stream media admitting that they might be responsible for the shootings at Sandyhook. Nah. In Hot Air, like the journalistic enterprises they are imitating, it obviously refers to something George Bush Did. He would have been blamed for pushing the button. This is just some surrogate for blameless obama.
Old Country Boy on December 18, 2012 at 6:24 PM
Can the fighter pilot abort at all? The only novelty here is that the drone operator also paints the target, and can watch the whole thing in much better detail than anyone ever could before.
There’s a story in Ambrose’s Wild Blue about George Bush Sr. having to ditch a load of bombs, and watching them demolish a French farmhouse (not his intention.) He assumed for many years that he the family had died; somehow later in life he learned that the family had heard the planes overhead and took refuge in a ditch or something.
Feel for the drone operator; it obviously got to him.
TexasDan on December 18, 2012 at 6:25 PM
Yes, but the left used to give special grief to bomber pilots for their “indiscriminate killing of children” or whatever. There was even a MASH episode about it.
But President Obama does it and the left couldn’t care less.
29Victor on December 18, 2012 at 6:45 PM