SECOND UPDATE 6-OCT-2016
Multiple sources like this report that, for the first time, Pentagon officials admit that the attack was made by US aircraft in response to a request from US special forces (emphasis mine):
“To be clear, the decision to provide aerial fires was a U.S. decision made within the U.S. chain of command,” Campbell said. He added that U.S. special forces nearby were communicating with the aircraft that delivered the strikes.
“A hospital was mistakenly struck,” Campbell said. “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility.”
Not surprisingly, the assertion that this was not intentional enough to qualify as a war crime is being challenged by some.
UPDATED 6-OCT-2015
According to multiple sources, the Pentagon has admitted that “no US Forces had been under fire at the time” (emphasis mine):
Afghan forces called in the air strike that hit a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) clinic in Kunduz, killing 22 people, a US general says.
Gen John Campbell admitted that no US forces had been under fire at the time, reversing an earlier statement.
MSF says Afghan attempts to justify the strike amount to “an admission of a war crime”.
Afghan forces backed by the US have retaken much of Kunduz, which was overrun by the Taliban last week.
Twelve MSF staff members and 10 patients were killed when the hospital was hit on Saturday by a US airstrike. MSF says it was a lifeline for thousands in the city and in northern Afghanistan.
“We have now learned that on 3 October, Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from US air forces,” said Gen Campbell, the top commander of the US-led Nato coalition in Afghanistan.
“An air strike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat and several civilians were accidentally struck.” He expressed his “deepest condolences” over the civilian deaths.
“Several civilians”? “Accidentally struck”? That’s like saying that Columbine caused “several students” to “accidentally die”.
But Mr. Campbell reversed more of what the US said earlier (emphasis mine):
The Afghan defence ministry said on Saturday that “armed terrorists” were using the hospital “as a position to target Afghan forces and civilians”.
A day later, the Pentagon said a strike had been conducted against insurgents directly firing on US forces – a claim Gen Campbell has now rolled back on.
So here’s what the US says today:
– US forces were NOT under fire
– Taliban forces were NOT using the hospital
– The deaths of TWENTY TWO innocents, inside a fully-functioning hospital, was “accidental”.
Some “accident”.
Multiple sources report that (emphasis mine):
International charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has demanded an independent inquiry by an international body into the air strikes that hit its hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz.
At least 22 people, including MSF staff, were killed in attacks the charity blames on US-led Nato forces.
…
Dozens were injured and the hospital severely damaged by a series of air strikes lasting more than an hour from 02:00 local time on Saturday morning.On its Twitter feed, MSF said: “The hospital was repeatedly and precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched.
…
The Washington Post reports, in a follow up, that an Afghan official claims that the hospital was a Taliban base:
KABUL — The acting governor of Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province said Sunday that Taliban fighters had been routinely firing “small and heavy” weapons from the grounds of a local hospital before it was apparently hit by a U.S. airstrike over the weekend.
In an interview, Hamdullah Danishi said the Doctors Without Borders compound was “a Taliban base” that was being used to plot and carry out attacks across the provincial capital, Kunduz city.
This claim is refuted by Doctors Without Borders General Director Christopher Stokes in the latter piece (emphasis mine):
“We reiterate that the main hospital building, where medical personnel were caring for patients, was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched,” Stokes said. “We condemn this attack, which constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law.”
The US has claimed that the hospital may have suffered “collateral damage” in an attack. An hour-long series of air attacks targeting the hospital itself, and not the surrounding grounds, does not cause “collateral damage”. It is a crime against humanity.
It appears that America continues to commit war crimes under Barack Obama, just as we did under George W. Bush. It seems that the motivation for the decision not to pursue war crime prosecutions of the prior administration is becoming more clear.
This appears to be yet another crime against humanity, perpetrated this time by a Democratic president. We should all be ashamed. We should demand prosecution of ALL American war criminals — past and present.
It sounds like the US may have acted on bad information rather than commit a war crime. Do you seriously think US/NATO would target what it knew to be a DWB hospital?
I seriously think that US forces targeted a hospital.
When launching attacks on urban targets, acting on “bad information” is, in my view, a crime. Sending a SWAT team into the wrong address and killing the occupants is criminal (like Massachusetts did recently in Worcester), and so is this — whatever the law says.
In my view, the headline is appropriate for the event.
Can’t we find in ourselves just enough patriotism to give our own country the benefit of the doubt? You can’t say something is criminal “whatever the law says”. Laws by definition define crimes. By all means let’s investigate, but let’s not start with an answer and work backwards.
We know that there is compelling evidence that America committed war crimes during the prior administration, and that evidence was not pursued. There is now compelling evidence that the US targeted a hospital this weekend. It is not “patriotic” to deny this evidence.
International law is quite clear about the definition of these crimes. The US has also refused to accept the jurisdiction of the International Court. That, too, does not change the reality that these acts are illegal under international law.
We ignored the investigation that produced the evidence against the prior administration. I see no particular benefit to waiting for another investigation so that we can ignore it.
It is not patriotic to deny the reality that America is committing crimes against humanity.
Maybe that guy in Oregon was acting on bad information too. After all, the investigation is not complete.
We weren’t reckless. We just acted on bad information.
What? We’re responsible for getting things right?
Uh, no way! We’re here to drop bombs not work through silly obscure details of native “cities”.
The U.S. may not have intentionally killed the MSF staff and other civilians, but what happened was clearly negligent. If you kill someone through negligence here in America, you’re likely to be charged with involuntary manslaughter.
That said, I don’t think there is evidence that this is a war crime, under the accepted definitions of that term. I also think it is a complete stretch to suggest that Obama should be prosecuted for this. He has, in fact, expressed his condolences to the victims and their families and has called for a full investigation of the incident.
If there was evidence that Obama had ordered the targeting of hospitals or had encouraged recklessness in the conduct of our military operations, then there might be grounds for prosecution. But I don’t know of any evidence of that to date.
On a battlefield, there is shooting, bombing, etc. Sometimes I think this comes down to, “OMG, we’re at war – stop the presses!” Even stateside I would hope that a true accident would be accepted as a defense in a court of law.
International law is quite clear about this (please see below).
War, shooting, bombing, and so on aren’t new. America CREATED these laws against war crimes in the aftermath of WWII, in the Nuremberg prosecutions. The point of Nuremberg that there ARE limits to what is acceptable, even on a battlefield where there is “shooting, bombing, etc'”.
A one-hour tightly-focused aerial attack on an operating hospital is NOT an acceptable part of war.
There is a difference between negligence and criminal negligence.
From Google —
Attacks like this don’t happen by accident. A one-hour barrage is not an accidental misfire. Somebody chose the coordinates and passed those coordinates along. It is inconceivable that whomever chose this target didn’t know it was an operating hospital.
Somebody committed a war crime.
…suggesting the facility was a Taliban base. Is it possible this is a horrendous case of mistaken identity like in the Sudan in 1998? Sure, but you better show me some VERY STRONG evidence that the US knew we were TARGETING a HOSPITAL.
Here is just one of the MANY published sources that say that the US knew this was a hospital (emphasis original):
So MSF says that it provided the GPS coordinates on 29-Sep-2015 (before the attack). It says that has provided that information multiple times before. The MSF says it routinely communicates that information to all parties in the conflict.
Are you suggesting they’re mistaken or lying? How much stronger do you want the evidence to be?
I really don’t think there’s any way to dispute that we knew it was a hospital. I think the only plausible defense is that US forces had information that the facility was being used to launch attacks against US forces.
I think, frankly, that if any “VERY STRONG evidence” is needed it is very strong evidence that otherwise credible sources told US planners that Taliban operatives were firing weapons from the building itself.
I still say that for whatever reason, the US chose to believe the intelligence about there being hostile intent. I cannot fathom that a US commander would deliberately say, “See that hospital over there? Let’s just bomb it to let off some steam.”
Multiple sources report that Afghan forces frequently expressed resentment towards the hospital because it treated ALL injured combatants regardless of who they were fighting for. US forces were apparently helping Afghan forces in an advisory role.
Afghan forces were being fired on from somewhere. Somebody told the US forces that the fire was coming from the compound. The US forces called in the AC-130 gunship. That aircraft conducted a one-hour attack on the compound.
Rumors from already resentful Afghans under Taliban fire does not meet my standard for “VERY STRONG evidence”. Your mileage may vary.
We require motorists to take extra precautions because cars can be lethal.
Requiring VERY STRONG evidence the US military knew it was TARGETING A HOSPITAL is VERY CALLOUS AND RECKLESS.
Perhaps you shouldn’t be driving?
There are no good guys or bad guys in this war, just competing warlords eager for power. Let them play their game of thrones in Afghanistan without further American assistance or intervention.
We have spent nearly a trillion dollars rebuilding this country, and all of that goodwill is blown up the second we bomb a hospital or a wedding, or drone a busload of children on their way to a wedding. It doesn’t really matter what the international community or the American people think, it matters what Afghans think. And like it or not, they don’t view it as an accident or an isolated incident.
They think we have repeatedly killed innocent people in their homeland hospital, because we have, and that is all the Taliban will need to keep recruiting fighter to continue the fight. In this way, we are their greatest ally, and our full withdrawal would erode their legitimacy faster than any bomb or strike ever could.
…would you allow for the possibility of an accident or would you automatically assume that I saw the pedestrian and deliberately steered my car toward him? There are times when charges aren’t even brought because it’s obvious it really was an accident, as horrible as it is.
The pedestrian would likely be angry at you whether it was an accident or not. I hit a Ford Escape pulling out of the parking lot last June, and didn’t need my fiancee to translate the Spanish when the lady called be a puta madre. She knew it was an accident, why would I cause $600 worth of damage on purpose? I may occasionally drive like a Masshole, but not one with pockets deep enough for that.
She still was angry and took it personally, since it was her car with her kid inside that got damaged. It’s the same thing. It’s their children, their health workers, and their people that are getting killed. And hate the Taliban all you want, they are the only government in the last 60 years that brought peace and stability to this country. Barbarians yes, terrorrist harboring, yes, but they stabilized the country in a way we have not.
Jefferson and Madison are nowhere to be found, the guys we are allied with are just as awful as the Taliban, but they pinky promise not to sponsor Al Qaeda. That’s the only major difference. And with Al Qaeda eradicated by all intelligence estimates, it’s time to let the Afghan people choose which side to back. As long as we are there, we help them choose Team Taliban every time.
…but OF COURSE intent has to be taken into account in determining whether it was a crime. Otherwise either all acts of war are crimes or none of them is. Even when I have been on the receiving end of an auto collision (only a couple times thankfully) I have started by asking out of concern rather than anger what happened with the other driver. Otherwise I don’t know things like (as was the case in one instance) that the other car completely lost brake function, or maybe the driver had a medical episode. As bad as something looks, always ask questions before jumping to conclusions.
It seems from your last paragraph we are pretty close. You say, “it’s time to let the Afghan people choose which side to back” which to me is just another way of calling for elections, though I do value democracy over stability. Prioritizing the latter has gotten us into trouble over the years, making us look like hypocrites, and leading us to ask why they hate us.
We’re not talking about striking a pedestrian.
If your car managed to mow down a group of pedestrians on grass island 200 years away from the street, and your car had to make several turns and accelerate to hit them, then no — I don’t think anyone would automatically assume that it was accidental.
The US command has admitted today that the attack was a “mistake”. It promises to “hold people accountable”.
Your pedestrian analogy gravely understates what happened here.
Too quick on the “submit” button.
…offered by kbusch regarding driving and pedestrians (a comment you uprated so you obviously saw it). Yes, your example was deliberate; mine was not.
The pedestrian-driver metaphor is mine, mine, mine.
My point is that we don’t just require drivers to have an excuse for every mishap in which they participate; we require them to be careful, to be prepared to stop, to not run over pedestrians.
I wrote “We should demand prosecution of ALL American war criminals — past and present”. I make the perhaps rash assumption that, unlike the prior administration, this administration has NOT ordered war crimes from the Oval Office.
By “ALL American war criminals”, I mean whomever within the military authorized this attack. A one-hour tightly-targeted attack doesn’t just happen, it’s ordered by somebody. It doesn’t matter whether that was a “mistake” or not — I find it impossible to believe that whomever ordered the strike did not also know it was a hospital.
I therefore agree with you that there is no evidence that Barack Obama was personally implicated in this act.
I think you are incorrect about whether this attack is a war crime under accepted definitions. I call your attention to, for example, the definitions used by International Committee of the Red Cross (emphasis mine) —
I’m sorry, but there really is NO question that an hour long aerial attack on an operational hospital is a crime, whether intentional or not.
for the outcome of the investigation before concluding that this incident qualifies as a war crime. Including “making a medical unit the object of attack” in a list of war crimes implies knowledge that the object of attack is a medical unit.
You say that it doesn’t matter whether the attack was a mistake or not. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that intentionality is implied in each of the items on the Geneva Conventions’ list of war crimes.
That said, even if the investigation reveals that the attack on the hospital was done by mistake, I don’t believe it gets anyone off the hook. There should still be accountability, discipline and an appropriate punishment for those found to be responsible. Negligence is a potentially criminal act; but, at least based on your list, I’m not sure the intention of the Geneva Conventions or the Nuremberg Tribunals was to include acts of negligence in what they considered to be war crimes.
Open a history book, my friend. The US has never had qualms about attacking civilian infrastructure.
I’m pretty sure we would hear all about it if Russia, China, or North Korea destroyed a functioning hospital, killing 22, with a targeted one-hour aerial attack.
I doubt that the American media or Americans would be very interested in waiting for an investigation before calling it a war crime. I also doubt that we’d take seriously the inevitable assertions that it was “accidental” by that foreign government.
It is true, though, that when America or Israel does it, it’s either accidental or being used to launch “terrorist” attacks.
What objective are we achieving by continuing to fight in Afghanistan? Al Qaeda is destroyed or irrelevant, ISIL is the greater regional threat that continues to destabilize the world balance of power, Bin Laden and his top lieutenants are dead or captured. Their government is corrupt and illegitimate and unworthy of another drop of American blood shed on its behalf.
Well past time to negotiate a power sharing agreement with the Taliban and get the hell out, if neither side wants to deal than fuck them both and get the hell out. One of my best friends growing up has PTSD and is 40% deaf in both ears from constant machine gun fire and explosions. And he and I both know he got off easy compared to others. The Times profiled a USMC unit last week that saw heavy fighting and has a 40% suicide rate. It obviously wasn’t intentional, but thanks to bad intel we just spent tens of millions of dollars on an operation that killed a ton of innocent people, including a world renowned NGO that gets funding and personnel from the US, and basically shot a Taliban recruitment video with the amount of play this is getting. Talk about a money pit, let alone, a never ending fight with no objective. It’s time for America to come home.
…to any agreement that includes power-sharing or any other recognition of legitimacy for the Taliban. They harbored those who wish us harm and as far as I’m concerned must be utterly destroyed.
Olly, olly, home free, moderates! You can stop hiding now. Come out from your hiding places and show yourself.
Christoper is not going to accept a government without you Afghan moderates. So you’d better stop hiding. Without you guys, we can’t stop this war — or at least Christopher won’t let us.
Come on! Olly, olly, home free already.
Or at very least a government instituted by free and fair elections. I suppose if the Taliban won such like Hamas has in Gaza I could at least tolerate it on the principle that US policy should be to support self-determination and let the chips fall where they may.
are not a tradition in Afghanistan. They are of course in Fantasy Afghanistan where there’s a large moderate bloc that would be elected if only people’s yearnings for free and fair elections could be met. Unfortunately, Fantasy Afghanistan doesn’t exist.
And so we must put up with the actual carnage in Actual Afghanistan with actual human beings while we wait for the dawn of Fantasy Afghanistan?
Most, if not all, countries that currently operate on the basis have not done so since time immemorial. If we could just be more consistent about it ourselves I am quite confident that we can get there. Just powers being derived from the consent of the government is not that difficult a concept. This is an absolute principle for me and we must IMO put in the effort.
doesn’t happen too often, though.
Perhaps your pronoun gives it away: we can fix that. The Afghans themselves have to “fix” it and, for that to work, they have to believe there’s a problem. Afghanistan is not Poland or Czechoslovakia behind the Iron Curtain with crowds clamoring for representative democracy.
Similarly, it would be rather intrusive and threatening for Somerville Tom, say, to insist that you’re missing the point but that he can “fix” that.
I’m happy to cheer for this from the sidelines, but what I don’t want to do is affirmatively prop up an undemocratic regime. “We” was intended as more rhetorical and idiomatic than literal in this case.
I’m not sure that I know what you mean then. The “we” who is going to “fix” the democracy deficit is an easter bunny (not literal), a plumber (idiomatic!), or persuasiveness itself (very rhetorical). Clearly, I am not made to understand this sublime mystery.
*
Possibly it has occurred to you that the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the recipients of lavish propping, are not democratic. They are sectarian regimes with a thin facade of elections.
The list of undemocratic regimes that our government has propped up, and continues to prop up, is very long. I do not see you complaining about our support of, for instance, Saudi Arabia.
I actually don’t like the many regimes we support because they provide something to us like oil, or they are ideologically anti-Communist despite being just as bad in the other direction. Just so we’re clear though, I’m not advocating a severing of all relations either. I believe we should have full diplomatic relations with any nation with which we are not at war.
The reason ISIS exists is that we propped up Middle Eastern despots for a generation. Not just Saudi Arabia, but throughout the region.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Israel has been hated by the PEOPLE of the Middle East for as long as it’s existed. Our response to that was to ensure that we kept despots and tyrants — who were happy to accept our guns, weapons, and oil money — in power while they (with our help) ensured that dissent among their people was crushed.
Case in point is Iran, where our puppet was overthrown and replaced by an extremist Muslim fundamentalist government. After that, Iraq was our best hope for stability in the region in no small part because we ensured that Saddam Hussein had the arms, material, and money he needed to stay in power. America had no problem with Saddam Hussein’s oppression of his people for decades. The reason we knew so much about the chemical weapons he possessed was that we sold them to him.
The Taliban exists today in no small part because funded them when they were the “popular uprising” against the Evil Soviet Oppressor in Afghanistan. Osamba Bin Laden was trained by the US. Like so much US foreign policy, they were good guys before they were bad guys.
“Popular support” and democracy had NOTHING to do with any of this.
You don’t seem to acknowledge that two things will happen when democratic rule comes to a Middle Eastern nation, in this order:
1. It will immediately join the call and movement to destroy Israel
2. It will side against the US because of our generations of support for its overthrown tyrants.
The very reason that ISIS exists is in response to our failed attempt to replace Saddam Hussein with a puppet. We spent generations turning the people of the ME against Israel and America (in exchange for oil profits and the domestic political advantages of pandering to Israel).
ISIS exists because it was able to mobilize and integrate that hatred into a single entity, specifically in response to the power vacuum created by our destruction of Saddam Hussein.
Your “absolute principle” depends on a number of assumptions that simply do not work for much of the world. It is, in fact, working less and less well even in the US because those assumptions are falling by the wayside here.
The assumptions I mean include:
– A literate electorate able to understand the issues
– An electorate willing to abide by the results of rational discussion
– An electorate willing to accept evidence even when it conflicts with prejudice
– An electorate willing to give up the rule of might in exchange for the rule of law
Like withdrawal from a dangerously addictive drug, propping up undemocratic regimes is a habit America is thoroughly addicted to. It will not be painlessly given up.
…but we have to break the cycle somewhere, and I am advocating doing that by letting the people decide and showing them that we are in fact willing to work with whomever they choose. They may or may not automatically be hostile toward us or Israel. If they are they have a sovereign right to their foreign policy, but it has also been suggested that their hostility thus far is the result of a successful misdirection by their undemocratic elites regarding whom to blame for their problems. Yes, prejudices will be hard to overcome, but we certainly have not proven ourselves immune or innocent in that regard. I also see no reason to believe that Westerners are somehow inherently superior in their ability and willingness to embrace these concepts.
They’re not using the process you prefer, which is disappointing. They appear to be using the process they’ve used in the past, which is to make war until somebody wins, and the winner gets to govern. Your impulse is to make war until you (or your favorites) win, then tell the survivors to be all democratic. Their undemocratic elites are the only people in the game besides us; everybody else is busy trying to not get shot or bombed while they feed their families. They may eventually embrace your concepts, but short of total war, you aren’t going to impose those concepts on them.
Mullah Omar is long dead, and apparently was politically dead within his own organization for quite some time. There was always a faction willing to cut a deal to hand over Bin Laden and top Al Qaeda leadership, the leading diplomat in Afghanistan from that period laments it never happened. Today’s Taliban is a catch all force opposed to the government and continued US military presence. We can always monitor the area and make sure Al Qaeda isn’t coming back, but our own CIA director said its been defeated.
Now we are just fighting their civil war for them, both factions are corrupt and anti-American so I really don’t see the point. This is a mission in search of an objective-never a sustainable enterprise in the long run.
I was in Iraq in 2008 but I was not “in the suck.” I was in the very safe Kurdish zone, very fortunate to be away from the violence that my country, our country created. GWB and the Dems like Kerry and Clinton created a shit storm. There should be no forgiving for this, only a a recognition that a lot of young Americans were wounded and died for the political sins of Washington.
But even more Iraqi people lost blood than we lost. I can make any normal person cry if I tell even a few stories I heard when I was doing my peace work. I can now barely keep my tears at bay when I think about what I witnessed and I had it easy. I had a gun pointed at me, and bombs under me but it was NOTHING compared to what our soldiers and Iraqi’s faced daily.
I worked with the Iraqi people. You cannot imagine the horror that Iraqi’s lived.
Kerry had it right at the end of the American war against VietNam. He and Hillary had it wrong when they started another in Iraq..
Is there any confirmation/denial of the allegations in the story that Taliban forces were using the hospital as a base and fortress in the same was they have done in the past with other hospitals, schools, etc.? I don’the see any denial by Doctors Without Borders that guns and artillery WERE being fired from the location.
Which is another whole debate, but information may have been correct and Taliban may have have been exploiting them.
I found multiple statements like this after about ten seconds of Googling (emphasis mine):
Those reports (coming primarily from Afghan government officials) asserted that the Taliban fire was coming from the spacious gardens that surround the hospital building. The US barrage clearly targeted the hospital building itself, not the surrounding compound.
The weapons used in this attack have pinpoint accuracy. We broadcast videos of “smart bombs” going down individual chimneys two decades ago in “Desert Storm”. If the weapon is fired at a garden bench 50 ft away from the building, it will hit that bench.
If guns and artillery were being fired from the compound (apart from the building), then that location should been the target. If Taliban fighters had been in the building, they would have been among the victims.
Instead, care providers and patients were killed — including three young children who were burned alive.
You may perhaps take comfort in such evasions. I do not.
My point was that we should wait for the results of an investigation. You may not trust the US to do a thorough investigation, but I personally wouldn’t trust a UN investigation either.
There are many disturbing questions raised about US and NATO actions in this incident, but I find hard to believe that we would have deliberately targeted a hospital for a military strike. I think this was probably a case of negligence. If so, it was a serious crime, but I believe Doctors Without Borders may be rushing to judgment in calling it a war crime.
I’m all in favor of an investigation.
I have seen no plausible scenarios where the hospital was not targeted. That target wasn’t just invented, somebody selected it and gave the orders to proceed.
I invite you to offer the language that includes intent as relevant to whether or not a war crime has occurred. I see no such language in the excerpts I’ve found and posted here.
When all the evidence indicates that medical staff and children were murdered and incinerated by an obviously targeted one-hour barrage on a clearly marked operational hospital, I fail to see any “rushing to judgement”.
It is what it is.
Here is the relevant Statute of the International Court. Here are the relevant clauses from Article (8)(2)(b):
The language does include intent.
The attack happened. The hospital was targeted.
So it seems that the questions to be answered include:
– Was there evidence that the hospital itself was “being used as a military object”, and if so from whom?
– What steps were taking to confirm the validity of that evidence?
In my view, there is probable cause to believe that a war crime occurred. These questions address the guilt or innocence of individuals who participated in the attack, rather than whether the crime occurred.
…that it was a mistake and that a hospital would never be targeted. Now it’s your turn to decide whether he is a liar.
America’s apologies however sincere do nothing to change the dynamic on the ground. This is a lost war. I really don’t care whether it was accidental or intentional-for the civilians and the Americans who continue to die over there the result is the same. More men and women who we are asking without their consent to be the last to die for a mistake. Continuing this war long after Al Qaeda and Bin Laden were defeated was a tragic mistake, one of the worst of this presidency. Time to go home.
the best case scenario is that the first three versions were lies. so the answer is yes, he’s a liar.
n/t
The fact is that the hospital WAS targeted, and targeted by US forces. Another fact is that there were no Taliban combatants among the dead or injured. The burden of proof was on the US chain of command to confirm that weapons were being fired from the hospital. It seems clear enough that that proof did not exist, because the rumored Taliban combatants didn’t exist.
I don’t know whether “liar” is the term I’d choose. Somebody in the US chain of command authorized the attack. Somebody committed a crime, of negligent homicide if nothing else.
Let me ask again — if the attack had come from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, or any other nation that we view as hostile, would we accept similar assurances from their military officials that “a hospital would never be targeted”?
We KNOW that we committed war crimes, as formal policy originating in the Oval Office, at least as long ago as the 2003 Iraq invasion. We KNOW that we have chosen not to prosecute any of the officials responsible in that chain of command.
Tell me again why this is any different.
I’ll tell you what will change my view of this. If the people in the US command chain responsible for this decision are identified, investigated, and prosecuted, then I will soften my cynicism. I’m not talking about demotions, transfers, or discharges. I’m talking about PROSECUTION. Punishment comparable to that meted out against, for example, Private Manning.
I’m not holding my breath.
Russia took down an airliner during fighting with Ukraine and everyone was quite upset with them, it’s why we were able to slap a stronger set of sanctions since the lightly opposed in Europe like France became strong opponents because of Russian barbarism. In all likelihood that jetliner was taken down accidentally as well, since it was mistaken for a combat plane.
I am not saying the bombing was or wasn’t accidental, I’m agnostic on that question, I am saying to the Afghan people it doesn’t matter either way since it’s their innocent dead they are burying at our hands. What is intentional is our continued, directionless strategy, and another round of surges that will take our occupation to 2018, meaning a soldier born after 9/11 could conceivably die over there. Time to declare victory over Al Qaeda and go home.
…but for the record, I AM going to give my country a little more benefit of the doubt than the others you mention, though even there I would investigate before jumping to too many conclusions.
I heard something on TV last night that made me absolutely cringe. Chris Hayes interviewed the executive director of the US branch of DWB who said that they are going to presume a war crime unless or until proven otherwise. THAT IS SO WRONG! There is a reason domestic law provides for the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. That is also without question the only moral and ethical attitude to take even outside the courts. I reacted so strongly to your headline because you jumped to a conclusion. At very least follow good journalistic practices and use the word “alleged” in front of war crimes and “allegedly” in front of any verb used to indicate the act committed. That is appropriate no matter how obvious you think it is.
I’m agnostic to the question of culpability or intent, I am far more interested in what this incident says about the wider immorality and futility of continuing this conflict. That to me is where to focus on, in all likelihood, whether a war crime was committed or not does not alter the fact that this is a bad war that we need to extricate ourselves from. Vindicating or indicting those involved in this incident will matter little if we can’t extricate ourselves from the mess entirely. That’s where I am coming down anyway.
Is that what you are saying, Christopher?” God forbid that you run over a pedestrian, give four different stories that suggest that the pedestrian maybe was a threat to you, ran the pedestrian over again every 15 minutes for two hours, and then demanded that you handle the investigation yourself.
How many innocent people are we going to kill before we realize just how bad these stupid bombing raids are?
Doctors Without Borders? Seriously?
SHAME
The law of armed conflict is a highly specialized area. My feeling is that it’s not that helpful for non-experts (I obviously include myself in this category) to state that what happened was or was not a war crime, which is such a charged thing to say. My guess is that none of us really know what we’re talking about here. I’m sure there will soon be good commentary from people who really do know what they’re talking about at, for example, Opinio Juris, Lawfare, or CAAFlog, the military law blog.
Let the lawyers have their fun. As a US citizen, whose government claims to act in my name and for my benefit, I believe I have the right to say this was an evil thing to do, whether mistaken or deliberate, and i want my government to quit doing things like it. To date, that government shows zero inclination to leave off bombing innocent people, despite its occasional remorse.
No objection to people opining about whether the bombing was “evil,” or whatever. Let’s not make legal claims, however, unless we know what we’re talking about.
Cardinal Bernard Law claimed that the Church had “more expertise” in “treating” sex abusers by the time his role in the scandal was revealed. He claimed that he and the hierarchy didn’t know any better when the earliest reports came in and the abusers were quickly and silently transferred to other parishes were they victimized more children.
I claim that “expertise” was not and is not needed to know that child abusers should not be around children. Similarly, I suggest that expertise is not needed to know whether shooting down airliners or destroying fully-functioning hospitals is a war crime. I’ve already said that I accept that it may turn out that no one person or group of people can be convicted and punished. That is quite different, however, from claiming that no war crime was committed.
Water-boarding prisoners is a war crime. Shooting down airliners is a war crime. Burning children alive in a one-hour aerial attack on a fully-functioning hospital is a war crime.
I don’t want hear about “expertise” and similar hand-waving about why we should “wait”, “reserve judgement”, or all the other self-serving hogwash we tell ourselves when we know we’ve done wrong.
This is the time for us to say “Mea Culpa”. Then we look at how to stop it from happening again.
For what it’s worth.
I honestly don’t see why we are continuing this foolhardy effort in Afghanistan, I would note, no one on this thread has voiced disagreement that the war itself is a lost cause and a waste, even if we are arguing about the specifics of this particular incident. It is well past time for America to come home, from this entanglement.
I just want to thank the editors for promoting this piece.