The drone operators who killed the family of Zemerai Ahmadi, an employee of a US aid organisation, were authorised to do so because his white Toyota Corolla was mistaken for a similar vehicle reported as belonging to the local franchise of Islamic State. But that make is one of the most common vehicles in Afghanistan.
The head of the aid organisation where he worked told reporters pointedly: "I do not understand how the most powerful military in the world could follow [Mr Ahmadi], an aid worker, in a commonly used car for eight hours, and not figure out who he was, and why he was at a US aid organisation's headquarters."
The decision was, at best, recklessly indifferent as to whether Ahmadi was a genuine target and whether children would die as a result. But more likely, when it attacked Ahmadi's vehicle, the entire US military system was in the grip of a blinding thirst for revenge. Three days earlier, 13 American soldiers and 169 Afghan civilians had been killed when a bomb exploded close to Kabul airport, as Afghans massed there in the hope of gaining a place on one of the last evacuation flights.
That airport explosion was the final military humiliation - this one inflicted by Islamic State - after the Taliban effectively chased American troops out of Afghanistan. Revenge - even when it is dressed up as restoring "deterrence" or "military honour" - is not an "honest mistake".
But there is an even deeper reason to be sceptical of the Pentagon inquiry. There is no "honest mistake" defence when the same mistakes keep happening. "Honest mistakes" can't be a pattern of behaviour.
And yet the long years of US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and meddling in Syria, have been pockmarked with air strikes that obliterated families or slammed into wedding parties. That information rarely makes headlines, eclipsed by the Pentagon's earlier, faulty claims of the successful "neutralisation of terrorists".
But just such "mistakes" were the reason why the US occupation of Afghanistan ultimately imploded. The Pentagon's scatter-gun killing of Afghans created so many enemies among the local population that US-backed local rulers lost all legitimacy.
Something similar happened during the US and UK's occupation of Iraq. Anyone who believes the Pentagon commits "honest mistakes" when it kills civilians needs to watch the video, Collateral Murder, issued by WikiLeaks in 2012.
It shows the aerial view of helicopter pilots in 2007 as they discuss with a mix of technical indifference and gruesome glee their missile strikes on a crowd of Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists, moving about on the streets of Baghdad below.
When a passing van tries to come to the aid of one of wounded, the pilots fire again, even though a child is visible in the front seat. In fact, two children were found inside the van. US soldiers arriving at the scene made the decision to deny both treatment from US physicians.
As the pilots were told of the casualties, one commented: "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle." The other responded: "That's right."
Before the video was leaked, the military claimed that the civilians killed that day had been caught in the crossfire of a gun battle. "There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force," a statement read.
The video, however, shows that there was nothing honest or mistaken about the way those Iraqis died, even if there was no specific intention to kill civilians. They were killed because US commanders were uninterested in the safety of those it occupied, because they were indifferent to whether Iraqis, even Iraqi children, lived or died.
Killing innocentsThe states that cry loudest that they kill innocents "by accident" or "unintentionally" or because "the terrorists shield behind them" are also the ones that keep killing innocents.
Israel's version of this is the "tragic mistake" - the excuse it used in 2014 when its navy fired two precision missiles at a beach in Gaza at exactly the spot where four boys were playing football. They were killed instantly. In seven weeks of pummelling Gaza in 2014, Israel killed more than 500 Palestinian children and more than 850 adult civilians. And yet all were apparently "honest mistakes" because no soldiers, commanders or politicians were ever held to account for those deaths.
Palestinian civilians keep dying year after year, decade after decade, and yet they are always killed by an "honest mistake". Israel's excuses are entirely unconvincing for the same reason the Pentagon's carry no weight.
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