There are never consequences no matter how barbaric the behavior. We're exceptional, don't you know?

But that decision has allowed us to do as we please. Every country under The Hague has limitations. We do not. We will never go under The Hague now for sure. We really answer to nobody.

is not covered by the international criminal court. You were expecting maybe Daffy Duck? It's ALWAYS Repigs.

Why are you saying Repigs are responsible? It seems to me that both parties are involved. Sorry that it is not as exciting.


Positions in the United States concerning the ICC vary widely. The Clinton Administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit it for Senate ratification. The Bush Administration, the US administration at the time of the ICC's founding, stated that it would not join the ICC. The Obama Administration has subsequently re-established a working relationship with the court.


In 2000 the Senate was Democratic and so was the House. I can't see why it could not be passed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_International_Criminal_Court

The House was Republican from Jan 1995 to Jan 2007.

The Senate was Republican until Sen Jeffords crossed the aisle (I believe sometime in 2001)..

The Senate ratifies treaties. The Senate was under Democratic control from 2007 to 2015. Obama could have submitted it at any time.

But the treaty could have been submitted starting in 2009 even if it was not going to be passed. Put people on the record.

And America does, and if America says, it's so.

We - the US - have fucked up the ME enough for several lifetimes and it's time to get the hell out.

The Saudis have one of the largest militaries on earth thanks to the US. Let them deal with it.

Unless you actually think that the entire conducting of a fight against ISIS/Taliban is equivalent to the accidental bombing of a hospital.

Unless you actually think I would "endorse bombing hospitals"

surprised you'd stoop to such a pose of asinine false equivalency

& that's sad

Don't try to conflate the two, ala Bush.

I do not support any involvement Afghanistan and have not for over a decade. There is no reason for us to be there.

And we should not be bombing hospitals anywhere.

What I've read so far in the myriad explanations issued by the military is a passive voice admission that a hospital was bombed. As far as who did it, why, on whose orders, and all those other nosy-parker details, we might as well have lockjaw.

My guess is some colonel somewhere will get his general's star and then be forced into early retirement on a general's pension and that will be the extent of any punishment.

If Russia had done this, we'd be all up in their face.

Hypocrites. Not a peep from Obama and if any senators have spoken up - I've missed it.

it sounds like a govt to govt apology. i wonder where the apology is to msf. the skeptic in me also wonders if it was more like "oooops sorry, our bad" to some govt official. when i see an apology to msf as well as restitution paid to the organization and the families of the dead and injured, then i might think it is something more than a hollow political gesture.

thx for the link.

I knew you were speaking figuratively. But we have offered the weak sauce response the United States would never deem acceptable from another country.

i would not want to attribute any style of apology to the military or the country if they didn't really provide one

It does what it wants.

The "war against the Taliban and ISIS", is really about controlling key resources in the Middle East. Anyone who believes otherwise, has no interest in drawing rational conclusions about the events of history. They simply swallow, whole-hog, the nonsensical official narrative about our involvement there.

And please don't bring up any non-existant pipelines in Asia as something we give a shit about.

....."strategic" resources.
Also the US has mines for rare earth elements, they are just unprofitable while China keeps the price low. And if US based mines are unprofitable, imagine how much more unprofitable a mine in a warzone on the other side of the planet in a country with almost no infrastructure would be.

We're there to 'help' the people of Afghanistan and wage a 'war against terror', because that is what we do in other countries; we 'help' the people there. We have no interest whatsoever in their resources.

Are you laughing, when you post that kind of nonsense?

With out purchasing them on the open market like everybody else.

US imperialism is about control, not necessarily 'having'. We don't use oil from the Middle East, but we exercise a great deal of control over it, for strategic and economic advantage.

First, you have to do reconnaissance, especially if no previous surveys exist, which is mostly the case with Afghanistan. Then you have to identify promising areas based on geological attributes using the raw data you have obtained. Then you have to do preliminary surveys, which involves on-the-ground work. But in order to do on-the-ground work, you have to have a way to get the geologists and technicians into the area and provide them with everything they need to do their work, including security. After preliminary surveys comes more exploration, which usually involves trench surveys and/or drilling for core samples. The core samples then have to be taken back to a laboratory for analyses to determine the contents of the minerals they may contain.

If the analyses show that usable minerals exist in sufficient exploitable amounts, then an economic feasibility study has to be conducted to determine whether or not the benefits outweigh the costs. Parameters can include the cost of developing the mine and associated facilities, the cost of developing infrastructure (electric power supply, roads and other transport links, etc.), the availability of workers who know what they're doing, environmental impact studies, and so on. All of this takes years for the average mine even in an advanced countries with a high level of public safety. In countries like Afghanistan which have no mining history, security or infrastructure to speak of, it can take a decade or more just to bring a mine into production in a *safe* area. In most of the country, however, it is still unsafe to do the field work for the exploration stage. And then there is the problem with taking the mined ore to a place where it can be processed. In Afghanistan, this is still a formidable task, given the extremely primitive and unstable conditions in the country.

Why do you think we're still in Afghanistan years after the official reason why we're supposed to be there no longer exists?

Think a little more. Read what I wrote again, especially that part about "safety" and "security".

Not a peep about these murders carried out in his name.

Count the number of threads you see about OR and compare it to this topic.

One reason - our guy is CIC, therefore, we can't get too angry.


Shit like this is why people don't vote. The people that make up both sides are such phonies.

War is hell and collateral damage is part of war. I don't believe for a second we intentionally targeted them.

Eye witnesses have said that the main buildings were hit repeatedly, while surrounding structures were not harmed. How do you suppose that happened if the hospital wasn't targeted? Do you think those multiple airstrikes were misfired or wayward munitions? Over and over, managing to accidentally land on that single building while the aircraft orbited directly overhead? By accident? Really?

I disagree with you. The hospital was targeted. The only "mistake" involved was the criminal act of targeting a civilian hospital. It's location was known. It's buildings were marked so that there could be no mistaking it for anything else (the Geneva Conventions require this and MSF always complies). Everyone from the officers on board that plane to the ranking official who approved the mission are culpable for crimes against humanity.

I believe the strike was called in by the Afghan army?

I'm against any more military involvement in Afghanistan. But the fact is that we are there and we are supporting the Afghan government. Kunduz was the scene of intense urban combat for days as the Afghan military fought the Taliban (and are still fighting them in Kunduz). The U.S. was providing air support throughout the battle. Afghan units called in a strike. The hospital was hit. I don't for a moment believe that U.S. military commanders knowingly and willfully targeted a Doctors Without Borders hospital -- just because.

There is no motive here. It was a terrible mistake "on our part" that people with an anti-American agenda are trying to use to their advantage. Yes some of those post here.

Even though it would be true in a strictly literal sense, given that they are taking an adversarial position against the United States in this matter, that particular phrase carries deeper connotations that might not be warranted.

I agree with you that it was a tragic accident but almost certainly not a crime under the rules and conventions of war.

An AC130 is a major piece of hardware with a significant crew including at least one officer and more likely two or more, someone in the US chain of command authorized that strike.

Hospitals should ALWAYS be off-limits, even in a bullshit war like this one.

Those who approved it need to be fired and those who conducted it need to be drummed out of the military at the very least. Heads MUST roll over this.

Fuck the asshats who okayed this.

The strike was done by US at the behest of some of the local thugs we're in bed with there (because they're not as bad as ISIS or whomever), but they hate that the MSF hospital treats everyone, even Taliban. As they should.

It was an AC130, a flying battlewagon that loiters and circles over the target, pumping thousands of rounds of machine gun and cannon shells in. Absolutely a deliberate hit.

What will those darn those darn army gun fanciers think of next!!??

What's Obama trying to compensate for ???

OK...

You are getting increasingly pathetic in your need to defend this horror.

There will be gun camera video shot from the plane, it will show the hospital marking on the target as the rounds are pumped in.

as if you can even say what really happened better than an investigation can.

In fact, since you're into this fantasy that a "hitman" "pulled the trigger" and it was "deliberate", please answer my questionnaire: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027237563

This was a war crime, committed IN OUR NAMES. Our participation in the political life of this country put the people into office who are ultimately responsible for American crimes against humanity. I want to see arrests and war crimes prosecutions, beginning with the officers on board that plane and continuing up through their chain of command. That, or turn them over to the Afghans for prosecution. Or perhaps the French.

against civilians and innocents without any accountability whatsoever - Israel and the US. What a surprise.

As if we don't have a right or obligation to criticize and reform our government's policies, when we find them questionable.

I don't want Americans tried in France or Afghanistan. Why give them jurisdiction? It has nothing to do with either country.

Afghanistan deserve justice but still confused about France.

...Doctors Without Borders in English. In Kunduz Afghanistan. It's a French humanitarian organization, and several of the staff victims were French.

I sure you have some whacked out conspiracy theory all prepared.

I mean, if I can't think of any rational reason to do something so irrational as bomb a civilian hospital in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, does that make it OK? Do you really think an AC-130 gunship orbited that hospital and fired on it for an hour by ERROR? That is simply not credible. I don't know why the hospital was targeted, but so far no one in authority is claiming that it was not deliberately targeted. I think it's a given that the hospital was not destroyed by mistake. That's why we need an investigation and war crimes prosecutions-- to get to the real reasons for bombing a civilian hospital.

The premises keep changing as you argue. You start against one point, but mid-argument you find that the premises have changed and you need to refocus.

1. Bombing a civilian hospital is not necessarily on contravention of the Geneva Conventions. Protected civilian buildings are not legitimate targets, but if they're used by armed members of the opposing military they cease to be protected. That can include staging armed military in the building, using it as a safe building for launching attacks from, etc., etc. It must be demilitarized to avoid this risk.

That's part of the Conventions, pure and simple. We like to claim how important the Geneva conventions are, but really want to ignore those parts we find inconvenient.

One principle, though, is that the target has to be worth the damage. In other words, there must be some sort of proportionality. That doesn't mean "if they're shooting pistols, we can't use J-DAMs." It means that if there's one fighter we can't level the building and kill 500 civilians. The level of civilian damage and loss of civilian life has to be proportional in some undefined sense to the military value of the target. At that point the entire loss of civilian infrastructure and loss of civilian life falls clearly, squarely, and absolutely on those who caused the devaluation of the civilian target, not on those who targeted it.

2. What do you mean by "error"? Mistaking it for some other building? Nobody's claiming that.

Mistaking it for a legitimate non-civilian target because of bad intelligence that claimed it was a military target? That's what's claimed, and if the US has no forces on the ground to provide the intelligence then it has to decide to either trust the Afghan army or to decide that they're untrustworthy.

If they're untrustworthy, how can you bomb any target they identify?

Trying to decide on a target-by-target basis is to thread the needle from 10 000 miles away. Fiendishly difficult to do. And this is the kind of claim that can be ticklish to pull together when the info's in several countries across 12 time zones in several languages--it relies on numerous sources of information and cross-linked chains of command. Hard to collect, collate, synthesize in the 28 seconds' turnaround time that we can usually pull off in complicated situations. Expect a moving target of sorts in the explanation as a matter of course.

3. Or perhaps it was an honest error on the part of the Afghans that coordinate with the US. The higher ups got intelligence from those on the ground, but those on the ground misrepresented things. 4 fighters became 40 or 400 as they panicked or misjudged the situation. If so, it may wind up being the MSF folk versus Afghan fighters on the ground who are either dead or unavailable for the indefinite future. If this is so, then the risk is assuming that what we know is all there is to know--we hear from the MSF folk and can't hear a counterclaim, so the MSF (who benefit from the halo effect anyway) go unchallenged by any opposing narrative or our own critical faculties.

Note that the MSF have no great love for the US military, since the halo effect works here and in reverse; if they let their building, through weakness or indifference, be used by the Taliban then they have no grounds to make any claims; if they lost their building and the US is culpable, then they have claims for compensation.

Emotional flying off the handle is ruined by that stuff, and invested haters do not want any of that reality-based argument

I am so done with you.

How about I cook up a "reason" that links to your image of "Bernie"?

This is just one fucking bombing, Tommy2Tone, in a war that's being going on for 15 years and that's spread across the entire ME, and that the USA calls "the long war" just to drive the point home.

What do you think the USA is doing in the ME, Tommy2Tone? What is the USA fighting for.
Be honest now.

The Afghan Army was in a battle with the Taliban. The Taliban was hiding in a hospital, and using it to launch attacks. The Taliban doesn't fight fair.

No hospital was bombed, it's all imaginary.

Gotcha.

prosecutions.

many innocent people were massacred, and it's not like the US didn't know that was a hospital

These are the ones ultimately responsible:

It's been 7 years. Get out of Middle East completely but even the president isn't for that unfortunately.

Then, he did not.

What's the deal? Is Obama completely helpless?

I completely agree.

He's weak and powerless.

From December 2009:

Obama repeated Bush line that Taliban refused to turn over bin Laden.

Which also hurts.

eom

If they were still in office and this happened, everybody on DU would be calling for them to be hauled off to the Hague, except for those who wanted to see them summarily convicted and executed right here.

Obama was going to get us out of both Iraq and Afghanistan. He failed to do this. He shouldn't get a free pass for this.

but i also think that, even though it has been years, cheney and friends pnac/lets take over the world/regime change BS set up a chain of events that led us to where we are in foreign policy.

we were supposed to capture or kill obl and weaken al queda, not be traipsing all over the ME and Asia wreaking havoc everywhere.

so obama is responsible for his own decisions but the whole mess can be traced to the devil...er, cheney, imo

The history books will not be kind to the BFEE...no matter how much some here like to tee hee giggle about that. Not kind at all.

In the past we have not even apologized.

Sources say the air support was carried out by an AC130 gunship not to be confused with an aircraft dropping gps guided smart bombs, but a gunship with machine gun and cannon fire and some types of AC130 carrying small bombs unlike the 500-1000-2000 lb bombs of tactical aircraft.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/968407/the-kunduz-hospital-attack/

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/10/04/ac130-gunship-carried-out-attack-in-kunduz-reports.html

It's a simple question related to the subject. This horrible mistake happened as part of the war against the Taliban. It's a totally relevant question

Hardly.

pls go to http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027237563

in response to a post about the bombing of a HOSPITAL

that sound freakishly like gun humper logic

ugh, out of here

But given that the hospital bombing mistake happened during the war against the Taliban, it's an entirely appropriate question.

too bad about your ugh, so sad

and i don't imagine one is coming.

lot of money to be made

Winston Churchill's terror bombing of German cities, Harry Truman's ultimate act of terrorism at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Lyndon Johnson's carpet bombing in Laos, and Richard Nixon's carpet bombing in Cambodia.

That's how you commit war crimes.

To be clear though, no authorities are actually going to drag U.S. military commanders to the Hague to face a military tribunal. This is an academic discussion only.

Not only were none of the previously mentioned war crimes prosecuted, but Ronald Reagan was not charged (nor did he apologize) for shooting down a fully loaded Iranian passenger plane, nor was Bill Clinton inconvenienced for blowing up the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

But to my real point, Kunduz was and is a war zone.

Non-combatants have rights under the rules and conventions of war. Cheif among them is the right to not be killed. Soldiers have rights and duties under the rules and conventions of war. Their duties include respecting the rights of non-combatants. Their rights include the right to use violence and lethal force to kill or defeat the enemy. (It's a sorry mess, but there it is. The awful morality of war.)

When civilian areas become a war zone, there are questions to be asked about whether or not to proceed with the attack. The answers are seldom clear. But if the attack is warranted, then non-combatant deaths that occur while fighting the enemy can be tolerated, provided.

There just aren't easy answers.

Except that we shouldn't be in Afghanistan.

that's the takeaway for me

or Syria, or Iraq. I've made that case in much detail many times before.

Bottom line, lasting solutions to a country's internal struggles can never be imposed from the outside.

But to the "war crime" thing, as long as the military planners believed, or claimed to believe, they were firing on a legitimate military target it would be hard to prove otherwise. And anyway, it's moot. No foreign tribunal is going to prosecute U.S. military officials.

and as to the hospital, i will always have my doubts, but nothing will ever come of it, i know.

today on CSpan apologizing for the tragedy at Kunduz. There is only one apology that would be of any help to MSF, the Afghans or the the rest of the world: We made a terrible mistake, we are sincerely sorry, and it will never happen again because we are withdrawing all our troops out of Afghanistan and will never drop another bomb there or anywhere else.

Couldn't agree more, locks...

wow. ok

but i think we should have been out of af. long ago, and we never belonged in iraq. and fwiw, imo we could have targeted obl and his key people without going into a country even the soviets couldn't overrrun and occupy it. i am one of the minority who thought a full scale invasion and occupation of afghanistan was a bad idea. and now we know it was part of darth vader's oil grab/pnac fantasy.

is that the US is a benign force in the world, that 'helps' people by fighting 'bad guys' in other countries. The invasion of Iraq alone, based on a pretext of lies and conspiracies, renders this view utter nonsense. The political and religious extremism in Afghanistan currently, is a direct result of US covert operations there, decades ago, where our government deliberately promoted this type of extremism, for purely self-serving purposes. The invasion of Indochina, and the subsequent slaughter of millions there, along with the destruction of three countries, provoking chaos throughout the entire region, further illustrates the complete foolishness of your posts.

Empires have always sought to control resources in other lands, and the peoples who reside there, have always suffered as a result.

Your posts simply cannot be taken seriously.

would we even be talking about this? How does this ongoing slaughter in Afghanistan help help US citizens? How much blood is enough?

Our country has morphed into the collective equivalent of a sociopath. No shame, no conscience.

How on earth can anyone be it the US or Russia bomb a place that doctors without borders are located? It boggles my mind especially when the coordinates explicitly say, this is a hospital!

But it's not talked about too much. That's why the countries in which these things happen let the US us its military in their airspace.