Peach Tree Times

It's unknown whether Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is joining the list of legislators calling for an investigation in the Aug. 29 airstrike in Kubal that killed 10 civilians, including seven children. Calls to Warnock's office were not returned.

Representatives from both political parties have called for an investigation into the events surrounding the strike. 

“I will demand a full accounting of how this strike went so horribly wrong. … President Biden bears ultimate responsibility," Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a Sept. 17 statement. “His precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan has left our military with an impossible mission of countering terrorists without any personnel or partners on the ground. The Aug. 29 strike shows how difficult and complex counterterrorism operations can be, and unfortunately, it highlights that an “over-the-horizon” strategy will only increase the complexity and difficulty.”

The New York Times reported that the military did not know the identity of the driver, Zemari Ahmadi, when it ordered a drone strike on his vehicle, but wrongly suspected that he was involved with ISIS.

The airstrike continues to be problematic for the Biden Administration. Almost two and half weeks after Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, called the Aug. 29 drone attack “a righteous strike” of an “imminent threat, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III called it a mistake, saying "We now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan."

According to the Pentagon and other reports, Ahmadi was an employee of an American-based aid organization Nutrition and Education International and posed no threat to U.S. forces.

The Sept. 17 statements contradicted statements issued on the day of the strike by the U.S. Central Command that said the U.S. executed a "self-defense, unmanned, over-the-horizon airstrike" against a vehicle in Kabul, which posed an imminent ISIS-K threat." Three days later, Gen. Milley praised the airstrike, saying at least one of the people killed was an ISIS facilitator and "procedures were correctly followed."

Two days after the strike, President Biden called it an example of his "over-the-horizon" counter-terrorism strategy.  He called the attack retribution for the "13 servicemembers and dozens of innocent Afghans" killed in an ISIS-K attack at the airport.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) demanded on Twitter that there be consequences. “There must be accountability," he wrote. "If there are no consequences for a strike this disastrous, it signals to the entire drone program chain of command that killing kids and civilians will be tolerated.”

Axios reported that the tragedy has counterterrorism experts questioning Biden's "over-the-horizon" strategy, with one unnamed source calling it the "over-the-rainbow" strategy.