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On August 29, as American troops were accelerating their pullout from Afghanistan, the U.S. military ordered its last drone strike in the 20 year war. The missile destroyed a parked car that military officials said was operated by an Islamic State sympathizer, and contained explosives for a suicide attack on the Kabul airport, where American forces and civilians had gathered for evacuation. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told a news conference, \u201cWe think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.\u201d\nLast week, separate investigations from The New York Times and The Washington Post questioned those assertions, reporting that the driver was Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime engineer for the California-based aid group Nutrition and Education International. The supposed explosives, said the Times, were canisters of water Ahmadi was bringing home to his family because Taliban\u2019s takeover of the city had cut off his neighborhood\u2019s water.\nThe Times also reported that 10 members of the Ahmadi family were killed in the Hellfire missile attack, including seven children.\nGeneral Milley told reporters, \u201cWe went through the same level of rigor that we've done for years. Yes, there are others killed. Who they are, we don't know. We'll try to sort through all that.\u201d\nThe British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has counted that the US military conducted more than 13,000 drone strikes in Afghanistan over the years, with at least 4,126 people killed, including at least 300 civilians and 66 children. Drone policies changed over the years under during different presidencies. As did the way the US counted civilian deaths by drone strikes. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has a dramatically higher count for civilians killed in Afghanistan by drones: more than 2,000, with more 785 of them children. If accurate, that would mean that about 40 percent of civilians killed by drones in Afghanistan were children.\nIt appears that drone warfare will continue to play a major role in Afghanistan. Earlier this month, President Biden promised Islamic State\u2014or ISIS-K, \u201cWe are not done with you yet. \u2026 We will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth, and you will pay the ultimate price.\u201d But without troops in the country, that hunting will almost certainly be done mostly through unmanned aircraft.\nBack in 2011, CT ran a story asking \u201cIs it wrong to kill by remote control?\u201d This week, we want to revisit that question.\nOur guest this week is Paul D. Miller, is professor of the practice of international affairs at Georgetown University\u2019s School of Foreign Service. He earlier served in the US army, the CIA, and on the National Security Council staff as director for Afghanistan and Pakistan.\nThese days, in addition to his post at Georgetown, he is a research fellow with the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is author of Just War and Ordered Liberty, published earlier this year from Cambridge University Press. Among that book\u2019s chapters is one one on the ethics of drone warfare. Quick to Listen listeners may also remember Dr. Miller from our January episode on Christian Nationalism.\nWhat is Quick to Listen? Read more\nRate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts\nFollow the podcast on Twitter\nFollow this week's hosts on Twitter: Ted Olsen and Andy Olsen\nFollow our guest Paul D. Miller\nMusic by Sweeps.\nQuick to Listen was produced this week by Ted Olsen and Matt Linder\nThe transcript is edited by Faith Ndlovu\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices