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US Bombs Hit Doctors Without Borders Hospital
Prune writes: According to multiple news sources, U.S. airstrikes partially destroyed a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Afghanistan, killing at least nine staff members and at least 50 overall, including patients, and this after giving its coordinates to U.S. forces multiple times. I'm especially saddened to report this given I had become one of the supporters of this charity after recommendations from Slashdot members in a discussion about choosing charities to donate to a while back.
not after having been made aware of their coordinates and location several times. Someone ordered this strike, believing there were "terrorists" treated at that facility, knowing very well it was a hospital and what the result would be, and giving no damn about it because they can get away with it. This is worse than all the other killings commited by U.S forces abroad, and people and governments must take a stand, or killings and murders like these will just continue.
Airstrikes on population centres cause civilian casualties you say? The cost of sending in soldiers instead is too high, justifying the cost of the collateral damage you say? But not when Assad or Putin does it you say?
""The bombing continued for more than 30 minutes after American and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed,” the organization said in a statement."
I guess the difference is the level competence and precision.
Bombs without borders got the date and time mixed up and there was a scheduling conflict.
Arresting people occasionally puts innocents in jail.
It's impossible to completely avoid civilian casualties in war unless you conduct absolutely no military operations whatsoever. The subtext of this is, of course, that the US should have avoided this, but how? Never go to war? That's obviously impractical.
Okay, so how about only going to war when you have a really good reason? If that's your plan, and you do approve of war as long as there is a really good reason, then (since some civilian casualties are inevitable) you've just said that you're okay with civilian casualties as long as the war is for a really good reason. Needless to say, you never see anti-war people saying this.
Being more careful in war? Well, you can be more careful, but nobody's perfect; there will always be *some* civilian casualties. So you're not really objecting to civilian casualties; you just think there are too many, but fewer but still some is okay. I've never seen anti-war people saying that either.
So what exactly should be done, other than never going to war, ever?
Gods. Doctors Without Borders is one of the best charities on the planet, and gives hope that humans can actually be civilized.
They were told, more than once, than a MSF hospital was there. Do they just get to ignore that because some yahoo thought there might be some Taliban in the area?
Someone might want to remind these people that they're not playing Call of Duty. This is criminal level stupid.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The Canadians learned the lesson at Tarnak Farm: Get the hell out of ANY country that is suffering US airforce attacks.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
Here is a prime example of your "foreign policy"
You idiots are the one who financed the Taliban, Osama bin-laden, and this brought upon 911 on yourself, and indirectly causing the rise of ISIS. The bottom half of this 1998 interview is the proof of that.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/a...
Do they just get to ignore that because some yahoo thought there might be some Taliban in the area?
I think you meant to say:
Do they just get to ignore that because some yahoo thought the Taliban might be operating a command center from within the hospital?
The answer to that question is "no, you take everything you believe to be true into account and make a sober military decision based on what you believe to be true, and you take into consideration the risks and consequences if your information turns out to be false or outdated. Oh, and you don't let 'yahoos' make command decisions like whether to bomb a hospital or not. If you have the luxury of time, several high-level decision-makers need to be in on the decision. If you don't have time to get several generals' input, then a high-level person who is known to think soberly (i.e. not a 'yahoo') should make the decision."
In other words you don't go and say "hospital? who cares?" but you don't say "dammit, hospital, that's 100% off limits no matter what the justification" either.
If you are 99.44% sure your intelligence that the Taliban is operating out of the command center is true, and you have very good reason to believe more good will come from taking out the hospital than harm (including the local and international political repercussions for taking out a hospital), you take it out.
If you don't, then your enemy can just take over hospitals knowing that their command centers are "untouchable" once they do so.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Ignorant fuck.
Bombing a hospital, even by mistake (which is hard if you've been told where it is), is very nearly an act of war in itself.
Even if you live in a country that's too fucking thick to sign up to the Geneva convention on humane treatment, you have to be a really stupid fucker to hit a hospital full of allied and even US-based doctors trying to heal the sick, injured and dying.
It's like shooting at the red cross. There's a reason that even special forces will not abuse the privileges provided by masquerading as red cross personnel.
Get your head out of your arse, and realise that your country just DELIBERATELY bombed a fucking hospital full of friendlies that they were told was there.
The sick and injured are not a threat to a military superpower.
Having a general blanket statement like that and suggesting it be considered insightful based on one individual is a bit like claiming all Jews are swindlers and pointing to Bernie Madoff in defense of the statement. I'm sure other examples could be made as well that you would find disgusting.
I believe you're mistaken in referencing Iraq. This incident happened in Afghanistan.
No. They are terrorists. You are in control of professional soldiers. If you can't control your urge to hurt beyond such that you bomb doctors in hospitals, you shouldn't be in charge of anything remotely capable of doing that.
Why don't you get real. The hospital is in a territory recently taken over by the Taliban and the air strikes were called in by afghan police who claimed they were taking fire from the building.
Given the history of the Taliban killing people from the west, what indication is there that this was still only a hospital and that these allied people were still alive and free at the time the air strike was called in? You do understand that when an enemy army takes over a city, that city is now behind enemy lines. What you know or thought you knew about it may or may not be even close to correct anymore because it is controlled by the enemy.
Maybe it's time to actually inform yourself about Afghanistan before making such bold statements?
If the Washington Post's article's details are correct, this was NOT a bombing gone awry. It was artillery rounds (and possibly 40mm cannon fire) from an AC-130 Spectre, a gunship that's been in use since the Vietnam era. They're usually pinpoint accurate, every round is fired with an eyeball targetting via low-vision video, and there'll be full video tape of the entire action.
Doesn't make it any nicer, doesn't make it any less of a screw-up (in fact, more so). Lots of videos online of Spectre working out in Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
The hospital should consider itself lucky: those hits were probably only 105mm howitzer rounds. If they'd been multiple thousand pounders, the catastrophe and casualties would've been even greater.
Of course if the Post is wrong and this was NOT an AC-130 .. never mind.
[Re-posting to fix fucked-up tags:]
the overthrow of Ukraine's democracy
The what? Yanukovych campaigned on a promise not to sell the country out to Putin, then promptly turned around and started to sell the country out to Putin. The people who'd voted for him quite understandably raised hell about this, and he fled the country for (surprise, surprise) Russia, leaving behind an estate and mansion worth at least 100 million US dollars, which he somehow had been able to afford on a 2,000-dollar-per-month salary.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I like this one
http://www.globalresearch.ca/t...
(...)
Before his next appearance on Fox, Kristol could do worse than peruse Professor Hamoud Salhi’s address, presented at the Center for Contemporary Conflict, of the (U.S.) Naval Postgraduate School in June 2004.(iii pdf) It is entitled: “Syria’s Threat to America’s National Interest.” It is arguably even more pertinent now – and another reminder of how long Syria has been in U.S. sights.
He opens: “Syria’s threat to America’s national interest in the Middle East can only be understood in the context of U.S. plans to reconfigure the Middle East. Knowing now that the motive for invading Iraq was strategic, taking over Syria would give the United States further strategic depth in the region tipping the balance of power (even more) in favour of the United States regional allies, Israel and Turkey.”
Salhi notes that “strategic pre-emption” is long central to American policy in the Middle East, citing Rapid Deployment Forces during the Carter Administration, Dual Containment under Clinton, Pre-emptive Doctrine under George W. Bush. Polices, he holds, which: “have been instrumental in maintaining hegemony in the region”, avoiding threats to U.S interests, or to those of Israel,Turkey and the Gulf States.
After the 1998 US-UK Christmas bombing of Baghdad drew world-wide criticism, Salhi points out that the often daily (illegal) bombing of Iraq by the two countries was stepped up, with often daily sorties, “using the latest technology” destroying what minimal economic infrastructure remained: “under the pretext that they represented future threats.” It was he contends, the “quiet war”, an ongoing tragedy little noticed by the world.
The ground was – literally – being prepared for invasion, the trigger finger ever itchier, any excuse sought. George W. Bush would later explain that invading Iraq was necessary: “ to advance freedom in the greater Middle East ” (Emphasis mine.)
11th September 2001 arguably gave the excuse to release the safety catches. On 20th September 2001 PNAC sent a letter to Bush: “ recommending the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, even if no direct link to the 9/11 attack were found.” Time to redeem American: “supremacy in global politics (and for) regime changes in Iraq, Iran and Syria.”
Michael Ledeen, foreign policy expert, another neo-con minded Fox News commentator, alleged to be a “strong admirer” of Niccolo Machiavelli, regarded 1991’s Desert Storm attack on Iraq as a woeful missed chance states Salhi. He notes Ledeen’s view that driving Iraqi troops from Kuwait was wholly inadequate. Strategy should have been: “regime change in Baghdad” (as) “one piece in an overall mission”, which should have been: “one battle against Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia.”
Addressing “The Syrian Threat”, Professor Salhi reminds of the U.S. Congress 2004 “Syria Accountability Act” which considerably financially weakened Syria’s fragile economy, with further aims clearly paving the way to regime change.
That achieved: “the United States will have completed its final stage of encircling Iran. This would further tip the region’s balance of power in favour of Israel and ultimately open new doors” for the U.S. “active involvement in toppling the Iranian regime.”
(...)
Afghanistan is just a side gig, perhaps simply an opportunity to wage war even if it's strategically useless. The "revenge war against 911" narrative needs the US to go in Afghanistan : if you only attack Iraq, every one knows it's unjustified because there's no Al Qaeda or Bin
MSF/Doctors Without Borders has been adamant there were no Taliban shooting from the hospital, and MSF has a lot more credibility (they're comparable to Red Cross) than the Afghan police that reported this as supposedly a fire base. Not to mention that the police have a clear revenge motive against MSF, as they are known to have long been complaining that MSF treats patients from all sides, including the Taliban, indiscriminately.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."