ISIS Leader and 10 Innocent Casualties Killed in American Special Forces Home Raid
On February 3rd, 2022, ISIS leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, also known as Haji Abdullah, was killed during a U.S. commando raid on his home. The raid resulted in 13 civilians, including 6 children and 4 women being killed, along with 3 ISIS state fighters. The US military is claiming that Haji Abdullah killed himself on the third floor of his home with a suicide bomb vest killing the civilians. They claim that this bomb was a secondary explosion, similar to the US military’s allegation that a secondary explosion killed 7 children when a drone strike of a vehicle posed a supposed bomb threat to a Kabul airport on Aug. 29, 2021, was directed.
During this attack, a drone strike was targeted on a vehicle believed to contain an ISIS bomb. This drone strike would kill 10 people including the falsely believed ISIS agent, Zemari Ahmadi, and 7 children in his family. These claims were proven to be false in an NYT investigation where video surveillance and interviews with Zemari Ahmadi’s family show that he was a U.S. aid worker, who was not part of ISIS. The United States military claimed that this drone strike was “righteous” and the secondary explosion from the supposed bombs in his vehicle, killed his family and it was not at the hands of the United States’ airstrike.
The immediate belief in the US military and the US government’s statements was quite questionable as in similar past occurrences, these statements have been proven to be false. Many of these statements from the military that have been recognized to be false were covering up information and denying accountability when the outcome was the inadvertent murdering of dozens to hundreds of innocent people including women and children.
The United States continues to act as a global police force, bursting into homes and bombing families, with no accountability for their actions. The U.S. military then tries to justify these imperialistic actions with the suggestion that possible ISIS members may have been present and thus targeted and killed. In a press conference responding to the raid, President Biden claimed that the Special Forces raid was done in lieu of a possible drone strike in order to minimize innocent casualties, yet of the 13 who were killed in the raid, only 3 were ISIS agents. The U.S. military commanders seemed to have no issues with the collateral damage done to make y nearby innocent people.
America’s world police attitude should not be justified by the killing of an evil leader of ISIS, while dozens of innocent people are killed in the process. Being related to a bad person should not demand a death sentence. Not to mention that America’s continued world policing attitude is one of the reasons that ISIS even exists today. The imperialist attitude within the Middle East is unnecessary and has created greater troubles for the world. Violent American intervention in a depleting terrorist group at the risk of innocent people should not be done as there should be no reason to create or extend a never-ending war in the Middle East, especially at the risk of the lives of innocent people. Americans watching news coverage of these bombings, see Middle Eastern citizens as others or just characters or people we can not relate to as they live thousands of miles away. Unfortunately, for these innocent victims of America’s crimes, their lives are disrupted and forever changed. These innocent people must live knowing their friends and family members were all just brutally murdered by the American military. This festers into hatred for America, and to these people the true terrorist is America. America comes into their towns, takes over the government, and murders innocent people to suit their own needs. This is the never-ending cycle of American imperialism in the Middle East. The justification of innocent people dying by a - so-called - “secondary” explosion should not be necessary as there should be no reason to put these innocent people in harm's way. America as a military power must recognize its military strength, utilize non-violent actions whenever possible, and must put an end to this constant cycle of violence.
