CIVCAS redux

Outstanding job by NPR to force some transparency by bringing yet another flawed Pentagon review into the light of day -- this time of another U.S. military CIVCAS incident that occurred in fight against ISIS, the 2019 raid that killed the ISIS founder and leader, Al-Baghdadi. 

Bottom line:  once again, the Pentagon concludes "good shot" as it investigates itself, with its cognitive biases on full display. The Pentagon review, released thanks to NPR's FOIA request, even tellingly reveals that HQ USCENTCOM refused to initially investigate the incident because according to it, no credible evidence existed that civilians were killed in the raid. They then seemingly doubled down on the initial misidentification, and completely muddled hostile intent based targeting (and what was likely misidentification of same) with status-based killing under IHL based on combatant status. Such shells games are surely not representative of a credible, accurate and objective analysis of an incident, like so many, that threaten US legitimacy and create new enemies. "Good shot, bugger off" is apparently still the name of the DOD investigative game when it comes to investigating its own CIVCAS incidents.

Yet DOD Secretary Lloyd Austin pledged last year to reduce civilian harm in combat operations through a comprehensive and laudable civilian harm reduction program. However, the Secretary needs to now put money where his mouth is.

Unless the Pentagon uses some of the $3 million dollars Congress specifically gives it to redress civilian harm ($3 mill a year for a decade), to provide condolence (ex gratia/solatia) payments to the victims of this 2019 strike that killed and maimed civilians, DOD's new program will remain superficial window-dressing.

If the US cannot tangibly admit combat mistakes that take innocent lives and injure civilians by providing victims and their families assistance through monetary compensation (despite such payments legally not representing admission of fault), the US military's growing reputation of not caring about civilians in combat zones (hence feeding directly into enemy foreign propaganda and terrorist recruiting lines) will only continue to strengthen. Never mind that paying these victims is simply the right thing to do, and the least the US can do when it unavoidably kills innocents in war (if the deaths were avoidable, then there should be courts-martial along with the payments).