A Principled Non-Interventionist Mindset

Maybe Donald Trump will pull out of Afghanistan; I know how I’m betting and I would be very happy to be wrong. But meanwhile civilians keep getting killed:

At least 10 civilians were killed and several others were wounded over the weekend during American airstrikes in southern Afghanistan, local officials and residents in Helmand Province said on Sunday.

Two residents of the Sangin district of Helmand said eight members of a single family were killed by airstrikes in one house and two more in a nearby structure, among them women and children. Mohammad Hasim Alokozai, a member of Parliament from Helmand, put the death toll higher, saying in an interview that 14 civilians were killed and six wounded in the two houses.

A local resident, Aslam Khan, said the home of his brother, Assti Khan, in the Sangin district, was fired upon by a helicopter when he switched on a flashlight to find his shoes. The shots killed Assti Khan’s 10-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter and wounded his wife and 18-year-old daughter, his brother said in a telephone interview.

An American military spokeswoman in Kabul said that American aircraft had conducted airstrikes in the province late Friday night and early Saturday morning, but that she could not confirm or deny that civilians had been killed. The spokeswoman, Sgt. First Class Debra Richardson, said military officials were looking into the episode.

However — and this is a critical moral distinction — the aircraft that did the killing appear to have been manned, so I guess Trump is the peace candidate after all.