None of the article really surprises me though. I just can't believe that the scale of the drone war has increased as much as it has with a nobel peace prize winning president in charge.

War brings out the worst in people - I can attest to that from my own experiences.

Kind of makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?

No kidding.

They have approved the practice. And we have already had ghoulish posts here attempting apologism for this depravity.

Purposely aiming bombs at children: "It kind of opens our aperture."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021931748

The US Military Approves Bombing Children
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021930268

"Some Afghan kids aren’t bystanders"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021931789

I wonder if the tough-talking mangoman, who likes to throw the word "lie" around, will respond.

it's hard for anyone to keep up with whether the corporate spin is supposed to be in denial mode or justication mode for any given outrage, because it shifts back and forth so quickly.

their children as human shields'. Because we all know that those inferior beings cannot possibly love their children as much as love ours.

They LIVE there!

Justifying war crimes is what Empires do and have always done. They are always fighting 'savages' or 'commies' or 'terrorists'. They can never rest, so long as there are resources we want somewhere in the world.

Dropping two bombs on a target is not a war crime

that the U.S. is using the tactic described, or that it is a war crime?

Mangoman, whom you appear to be siding, with, accepts that we are using the tactic but denies that it is a war crime.

Carpet bomb a city , but dropped only two bombs on that same target and it's war crime ?

If there were fired in rapid succession I wouldn't call it into question.

The whole thing with the "no double tap" rule is that once a target has been hit, it is essentially out of play if it doesn't pose a threat. For instance, say you were an Infantryman. You are assaulting an objective and you see a guy with an AK-47 running around. You shoot him from 100 meters away, he falls and lays on the ground bleeding to death. You continue to clear the objective and now at a closer range, you see the guy again. His weapon is on the ground and he obviously doesn't pose a threat. You can't shoot that guy again to "finish him off". However, if he reached for that weapon and posed a threat, then he is fair game again.

With lag between the first and second strike, you are waiting for first responders to arrive and then they are being engaged. The target has already been neutralized.

Second, if we have a bombing, and a second bomb goes off as rescuers start working the scene...we call that terrorism. What they are being critical is of the lag time, on an objective that is no longer a threat, that is targeted when rescuers are at work.

See the example above me...accurate example at the infantry level.

Carpet bombing cities & "double-tap" attacks on first responders.

is the neocon hypocrisy and attempts to create partisan lemming mentality in defending the very same sorts of war crimes that Democrats were united against under Bush.

The Third Way is neocon and invites hatred of the US by justifying slaughtering innocents, just as it is corporate-Republican extremist on economic issues.

Last edited Thu Dec 13, 2012, 09:53 AM - Edit history (1)

edit to add that Mangoman can't answer my question because his post was hidden, so he can't post in this thread anymore.

But apparenly he has no answer anyway because his PM to me was filled with insults directed at me.

Christof Heyns said that if there are "secondary drone strikes on rescuers who are helping (the injured) after an initial drone attack, those further attacks are a war crime."

And many of those injured have been children:

...long enough they would rise up, overthrow the Nazis, and sue for peace. Instead, they discovered the German civilian population grew to hate the daily bombing runs and made them even more determined to continue to fight. Survivors were more prone to want to avenge the loss of family members than they were to join a German resistance movement.

Proponents of bombing a civilian populace also supported the mass bombing of North Vietnam. They will claim that's the reason the North Vietnamese were willing to come to the peace table toward the end of the war, when in reality, Americans had grown tired of sending their best and brightest to early deaths, terrible wounds, mental illness, and drug addiction. Far from being a defeated nation, North Vietnam invaded the south soon after the peace agreement with the US, and took it over.

So, what did we do in our latest conflict in the Middle East? We bombed the heck out of populated centers in Iraq and Afghanistan and called the large number of civilian deaths, "collateral damage". So what was the result of our two latest wars in the Middle East? Most Iraqis hate us for what we've done to their country, with some becoming totally radicalized.

Undoubtedly, most Afghans feel the same way about us, and now we're trying to further radicalize Pakistan by our drones flying in their airspace and killing their people. Thank goodness the Pakistanis haven't become so radical as to launch one of their nuclear missiles at one of our Middle Eastern bases in retaliation for our drone strikes.

I'm at a loss to understand why we're resorting to secondary strikes. Nothing good will come of it.

But I guess when they make their money from war, they want to foster more war.

UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Christof Heyns said that if there are "secondary drone strikes on rescuers who are helping (the injured) after an initial drone attack, those further attacks are a war crime."

If they are aiming at people trying to attend to the wounded, then it is a war crime. And what are we doing in all of these countries anyhow? The whole Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war is a crime against humanity, including our own troops so many of whom died because Bush lied.

You can scrunch your face up all you want and rage at the "far left", but this does not have the tendency to budge reality be even an inch.

...you might be singing a different tune if your family was the target of this kind of attack.

...IS a war crime.

because Americans understand what rescue workers face.

We can expect a very strong Third Way spin campaign on this one.

....with the second impact taking place about 15-20 minutes after the first. The first impact ensured every TV camera in the world would be focused on the WTC at the moment of the second impact, thus achieving what the terrorists wanted....to terrorize the US general population. Additionally, first responders would be caught by the damage from the second strike. The collapse of both towers made everything much worse, something not foreseen by anyone.

And "Business Insider" is a RW source.

and the part about the war crime comes from this article in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/21/drone-strikes-international-law-un

in military actions which result in innocent civilian death.

That IS a war crime.

Maybe you need to step back from individual leader worship and just look soberly at what the USG does and has always done in its murderous foreign policy. To point this out has nothing to do with your preferred front-man, who after all is only temporary. The last 67 years have shown that US military actions are not only imperialist and criminal. They are objectively creating enemies and making our national security more precarious. I would welcome it (and so would the majority of the world) if "our" president moved finally to change this.

All war is a crime.

But this is especially heinous, it says just exactly what an awful thing has been done to this once great Nation by the EVIL MIC. America has become the empire that kills without conscience.

I don't want to wake up anymore, what I see sickens my heart.

Way to go!!

Hey, howzabout we just decide nothing the Bush regime (never really elected) did was a war crime? That's what the Obama administration (actually elected) did when it came in. Problem solved!

I would agree that in or near villages and even moreso urban areas, the double tap approach would seem to be at least a potential war crime, probably an actual one.

But, if we're talking a remote ridge in the Hindu Kush 15 KM from the nearest human settlement . . .

Civilians are routinely hit along with the "militants" (defined as any male killed, basically). Civilians who might try to rescue them also.

I'm sorry, first of all, who exactly calls this the "double tap"? Someone watching too many movies.

Secondly, what part of "war is godawful terrible" did anyone miss?

Tertiary attacks have been military strategy since bombing began, and likely well before. The reason the Allies adopted firebombing as part of an aerial warfare strategy was that it kept civilian responders occupied, so that more people would die at other targets. It also created a medical supply shortage and a drain on resources because of all the people that were so badly fucking burned they required a lot of extra care.

I've said before: the high-water mark for outrage at the poor reflection on mankind all warfare offers is hundreds of years in the rear-view mirror. Warfare is terrible beyond reason, horribly unfair, and universally gruesome. Elevating one atrocity above another makes people look like idiots, or like children at the beach desperately piling more wet sand between the ocean and a rapidly deteriorating castle.

You cannot make war -- the practice of killing people -- better by banning practices that kill people. It's about as sensible as passing legislation that prohibits automobile accidents.

You end war. That's it. Because if you tolerate war, you tolerate the inutterably dreadful.

Your argument is like saying medal ceremonies ended the 100-yard dash.

War crimes prosecutions are a great opportunity for the victors to grind the defeated a bit more. Some victims can feel like they saw justice. And don't get me wrong, everyone convicted as a war criminal has it coming.

But if you think implementing Marquess of Queensberry rules makes a slugfest civilized enough to tolerate, all you're doing is enabling that slugfest.