Another war crime
posted by TheDon
Corrected – note at bottom
First (as usual in the ongoing effort to win hearts and minds), the US military denies killing civilians in a bombing in Afghanistan, then admits to the slaughter of civilians, which has been an ongoing feature of the war on Afghanistan. First the ongoing feature:
An official close to the Uruzgan governor, who asked not to be identified because he was talking about preliminary estimates, said 70 to 75 civilians had been killed or wounded, while more than 100 Taliban and more than 35 police had been killed....Coalition troops had “surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there were children inside the building,” said Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman. He accused the militants of not letting the children leave the compound that was targeted. “If we knew that there were children inside the building, there was no way that that air strike would have occurred,” said Sgt. 1st Class Dean Welch, another coalition spokesman.
According to Keith Olbermann last night, they now admit that they knew there were children there (and other civilians for a total of at least 30), but the terrorist they were after was such a high value target that it was worth killing them.
The reason they always deny killing civilians is that it is illegal to intentionally target them. The calculation has to be that the target is worth killing your own soldiers to capture/kill, not that he is worth killing children over. This is a war crime. Another war crime
The battle for hearts and minds has been well documented. Bombing weddings and soccer games doesn’t even warrant a headline anymore. “Shake and Bake” chemical warfare attacks never got any attention. At least not here. Torture. Kidnapping. Murder. Rape. The war crimes tribunal for the GWOT, in a just society at least, would last about 10 years at this point.
Just remember every time you read a headline bragging about how many “insurgents” or “Taliban” we kill – every time – they are leaving out civilian deaths that we just don’t give a shit about. And the first report is a lie. But you knew that.
Correction – the original post used a notation that I commonly use in email to indicate a “snipped” portion of the news story. Unfortunately, Blogger’s engine thought it was a meaningless html tag and eliminated it, giving the impression that the second part of the story was a continuation of the first. I was trying to give two types of information and failed. The first part of the story is about the ongoing slaughter of civilians, the second about the criminal murder of schoolchildren.
I regret the mistake, and have put in a vertical elipse, along with some clarifying verbiage.
Correction II – A kind reader pointed out the mistake above (I believe the word fool was used), and I *now* know that editing a post to correct it removes the comments. That was not my intent at all – lesson learned, apology extended. (hey! The comments are back. Must be a timing thing.)
The point of the reader was that the cowardly terrorists hid in a school, forcing us to kill the children. My point remains that when you want to kill someone who is hiding in a civilian population, you are required by law and by morals to risk as much of your own soldiers’ life as it takes to protect innocent human life. You can NOT drop bombs on civilian populations and then whine about the nasty tactics used by the guys in the black hats. If you aren’t willing to lose some of your soldiers to get a “high value” target, but you are willing to kill some of the brown children, you are a criminal and a coward.
