Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately I'm not aware that minimization of civilian casualties is a US military objective. Until I hear that it is, I will assume it is not, since it's much easier to achieve your mission of killing bad guys if you're also willing to kill good guys. You get more rewards for killing more bad guys, not saving more good guys. Unfortunately that's how militaries and governments work.
Unfortunately I'm not aware that minimization of civilian casualties is a US military objective. Not to put too fine of a point on it but even a basic search on the topic would yield a ton of official policy doing exactly that. There is explicit guidance and long history of minimizing civilian casualties as a goal within the DoD, and such guidance is codified in multiple legal documents under the Uniform Code of Mili…
But are such claims really true? Does the part of the military chain of command that actually does the killing take those claims to heart, as much as pentagon spokesmen do? Do the superiors of lieutenants and privates hold them to that standard, even when the laws of conduct become unenforceable by collateral victims, as in drone strikes?
In several US wars, such claim were not taken to heart. Vietnam became infamous in US history as lacking a sound casus belli, just as the 2003 Iraq War has. In messy wars like these, one of the principal casualties is often the enforcement of the rules of war, especially when it comes to laws of conduct that are still in the course of being written, such as the proper use of drones or AI.
This lack of enforcement becomes especially fraught when novel weaponry and its use is governed not by the military under its code of conduct, but by the CIA (who now runs most drone snipery), which AFAIK lacks an equivalent martial code of conduct.