Recently, a United States airstrike in Afghanistan struck a charity hospital that was treating civilians, killing nearly 30 people. The hospital was run by the medical charity organization called Doctors Without Borders, which is calling the U.S. airstrike a war crime.

The military’s use of airstrikes to combat terrorism has caused innumerable civilian casualties since 2004 and is a disgraceful, expensive tactic that must stop.

There are benefits to the drone program. For instance, every group that we target (al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, etc.) weakens after drone strikes.

Strikes provide short-term benefits that are clearly visible - yet, long-term consequences for bombing around and on innocent people. Our use of drones are radicalizing the regions under attack, and creates more terrorists.

The very first drone was used in 2002 to attempt to kill Osama bin Laden. A location of the target was confirmed by the CIA, so a missile was fired.

Osama bin Laden was not inside the building hit by the missile but several unaffiliated civilians were. One of the civilians killed was mistakenly identified as Osama bin Laden “due to his height”.

Later in a press conference, officials from the Pentagon stated while they did not know the identity of the person targeted, they were convinced he was an “appropriate target”. Thus, the future of mistaken identities and costly accidents for the US drone program was perfectly portrayed by just the first use.

The government is able to avoid much of the negative press by not necessarily hiding the evidence, but by changing definitions and records to allow the program to continue. Former Attorney General, Eric Holder, stated that drones are only used when an “imminent threat” to national security exists—this phrasing sounds reassuring.

However, the Justice Department defines an “imminent threat” as something that “does not require the U.S. to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future”. This reversal of the normal definition of the phrase “imminent threat” allows a loophole for the military to conduct drone strikes without legal repercussions.

Not only do the American public not know the details about the drone program, but U.S. officials also don’t even know who or how many people they are killing. In a classified document obtained by NBC, the amount of people killed in each strike can have a margin of error as high as 30 percent.

In the latest five-month period of U.S. drone strike kills, a report obtained by Fox News tells an appalling story. It states that of the around 200 people that were killed in various attacks, only 35 were actually intended targets. That’s an accuracy level of only 17 percent—twice the ratio of civilians killed from World War II.

This latest attack on a charity hospital - one that the U.S. military had documentation proving its use as a hospital - is an inexcusable accident. The U.S. should never be in a position to accidentally murder any civilians in any country.

As for the accusation that it should be considered a war crime, that’s true. A report was released proving U.S. forces had spoken to the county director of Doctors Without Borders the day before the airstrike, confirming that it was not under Taliban control as U.S. troops claimed.

Under international law, it is a war crime to deliberately attack a hospital, even in a war zone. While the U.S. military did not deliberately attack the site, knowing it was currently a functioning hospital; reports state that the U.S. military did have the capability to find out information about the target that would have prevented this tragedy.

If a publically known charity hospital can be accidentally attacked by the U.S. military, it’s past time to rethink our airstrike policy. The face of America in the Middle East should not be the approach of a Hellfire missile that accidentally strikes innocent people dead. We have been cruel to the people in those regions, and we shouldn’t expect them to stand idly by as we kill their friends and family.