Well geez, I hope you guys aren’t loosing to much sleep over this. I know a lot of overseas aid-worker types. They run the gamut. But MSF is really something differnt. They do the hardest work in the most difficult places. Time and time again, MSF has been heroic.
I’m sorry for the families of these patients and doctors. A loss isn’t any less tragic just because there are a lot of them to go around.
I hope this incident is investgated, and we are able to learn from it to prevent future incidents. And i hope that Afghanistan has peace soon, as big of a long shot as that seems to be.
According to MSF, not only the coordinates of the hospital were well known by the American and Afghani authorities, but the bombings kept going after they had reached both to tell them about what was happening. It wasn’t a single hit but a continuous attack.
Also, they state that the American position according to which it was collateral damages doesn’t hold water because the hospital was the only building targeted the whole time, with planes passing over and attacking repeatedly.
Finally, Afghani authorities stated that the attack took place because Taliban fighters had entered the building where they were preparing an attack on Afghan forces. Not only does MSF deny that any Taliban entered the premise at any moment, but also it points out that this statement directly contradicts the American stance (according to which the hospital wasn’t the target).
MSF wants the incident to be treated as a war crime, and in particular investigated by independant parties (not internally by the Pentagon).
If wars drag on too long they become very different creatures. The Thirty Years War started as a religious conflict in Central Europe, and ended as a contest between the Catholic Bourbons and Habsburgs. This month we saw the War on Terror become the same thing between Russia and the U.S. Now that these stakes are set, fewer and fewer fucks can be expected to be given.
This thread is truly terrifying. Bombing hospitals is a war crime. This wasn’t an accident, it was either deliberate, or an act of utter negligence. The fact that MSF called everyone but Michelle Obama’s mother to say “you’re bombing our hospital, the one you’ve known the precise location of for ages and killing patients in intensive care and doctors” and the bombing continued points to deliberate.
The United States, through profound incompetence or stunning sociopathy killed, amongst others, three children laying in an intensive care unit. That’s not just something we should be able or willing to shrug over.
While the first spin effort from the US was “tragic accident” the Afghan defense was that the hospital compound was harboring and/or infiltrated by al-Qaeda and thus the bombing was justified and the dead MSF workers and patients were “collateral damage.” I don’t know if they’ve changed their tune yet. We’re on story 3.5 from the US by now and they’re sticking by accident/didn’t know the location of the hospital/oopsie.
What would the US have to gain by intentionally going along with the Afghan claim that the compound was compromised? Taking out more of al-Qaeda, which was the whole point of the sortie. The decision could have been made that the hospital and its occupants were acceptable loss.
In the other thread on this, I referred to the Chinese Embassy bombing in Belgrade. This strike was ordered by the CIA — the only one they did order on that conflict; and the explanation they gave was that they were relying on old, out-of-date maps.
I’m going to visit Sarajevo some time and will rely on Austro-Hungary, Including Dalmatia and Bosnia: — Handbook For Travellers by Karl Baedeker from 1905 for all my travel needs. I will kick up a fearful fuss if anything has changed in the meantime.
The Afghans could have requested fires based on the insurgents fighting from the area thus negating the protections in their assessment. The US process to clear fires may not have caught that the location of the insurgents was the hospital. Because they missed it nobody then made an informed decision balancing the need against the risk of collateral casualties. Potentially a better decision could have been made without the mistake (implementing controls, reducing fires, using different means, not engaging with fires at all, etc. ) Not making that decision would still be a mistake in terms of process regardless.
I wonder how big a factor is the US forces withdrawal? There aren’t that many troops left in Afghanistan. Are we still flying AWACs to coordinate air attacks? We’ve got so few resources left in that country that I’m not sure there’s enough missions to justify using the AWACs.
That’s going to impact the few air support missions that we still operate. We may not have the best of the best running that air operation anymore. I’m sure the guys still left working are doing their best. But if they are understaffed in key positions that could result in targeting mistakes.
It’s a tragedy, but really, shit happens in war. I don’t mean to minimize the tragedy, but accidents do happen in these conditions.
For the Vietnam War, it was commonly claimed that restrictions on aerial bombing withing X distance of schools and hospitals was a major factor in losing the war. But my understanding is the restriction was limited to Vietnam alone. There were no such restrictions, none at all, laid down for Laos, whose schools and hospitals certainly did get caught up in the bombings. And yet, we still did lose there, belying those claims.
So your theory is that the US decided to kill dozens of innocents and accept the inevitable international shit storm in order to eliminate a handful of terrorists, all based on 3rd party information. Sorry, I’m still going with incompetence.
No, my theory is that people acted with too much haste, too little thought, and too much zeal for “laying fire” when they should’ve asked some damn questions first. My theory is that in a time when GPS positioning can let me see on my civilian cellphone the specific house a friend is visiting in India, maybe planes that can’t tell they’re over a fairly sizable hospital shouldn’t be used for bombing in such close proximity to civilian locations. My theory is that an independent investigation must happen because we’re now on different story number four from US “command” and the lies are getting tissue thin. And my theory is that intentional or accidental, shrugging this off as ‘shit happens in war’ is a sign of sociopathy and some people need a swift and strong check of their morality.
(AC-130, I believe.) It confirms that the specific building complex was targeted. This was not an off-course bombing from altitude or shelling from distance.
It does not address whether the targeting was done without knowledge of the hospital presence, or despite that. Nor where did the claim of Taliban presence came from. Any plausible scenario involves a failure of some kind on the American side, but it remains to be seen what and where.
I’m not sure what, aside from the US official statements, completely rules out the chance that of this being error free. Two plausible scenarios that would not include a failure of some kind on the American side.
ANA request their adviser call for air support. He does. Either the observer or the clearance process identifies the hospital. Given the insurgents fighting from it, that negates the universal protections of the facility. They then assess proportionality, distinction, and necessity to see whether fires are appropriate. They decide that using the available AC-130 with its relative accuracy (compared to fast movers on gun runs) and lower risk of collateral damage (33lb artillery shells as the big weapon versus 2000lb bombs) allows them to use fires. In making their decision they weigh the collateral risk to the doctors of bombing versus a close quarter infantry fight inside the hospital complex. They assign the mission to the AC-130 and direct controls limiting the use of fires to further try and minimize risk. Execution goes picture perfect and all rounds hit within the expected error radius. Some doctors are still relatively close to the insurgent fighting positions and die. All the principles for justifiable use of force are applied correctly. Risk is minimized and justifiable. Potentially the use of airpower even reduce civilian casualties compared to clearing the complex room by room. Medical staff are still dead.
Similar to above but they are very judicious and mostly avoid civilian deaths due to American airpower. The “sustained bombing” reported includes all the other things that sound like bombs in this light infantry fight - grenades, along with RPG-7 rounds firing and exploding. A couple of the ANA launched RPG-7s either miss their intended targets, get aimed at the wrong position in the confusion, or intentionally hit buildings with both insurgents and doctors accounting for the rest of the civilian casualties. There’s not American error there. There might not even be ANA error. Medical staff still end up dead.
