Okay, so the latest Taliban propaganda du jour is that the United States bombed an Afghanistan hospital, killed 50-70 people, and might have been using chemical weapons as well. There was also a radio news report this morning where a Taliban spokesman was saying the US justified killing civilians by comparing the relatively small number of Afghani deaths with the loss of 6,000 lives in the WTC.
Let me say up front that I trust the Taliban as far as I can throw a Ford Explorer; these are the same nitwits who flip-flopped back-and-forth over the question of whether or not they were harboring and abetting Osama bin Laden, after all. But while I was shrugging off the charges, another question (or two) popped into my mind:
If the US did bomb a civilian hospital (say, by accident), would they admit to it? And SHOULD they admit to it?
While I would like to think the US would have enough balls to admit if/when it screwed up and accidentally hit a civilian target, I’m cynical enough to realize it might not do so – after all, bombing a hospital full of civilians would play into the hands of the Taliban and Islamic extremists, and the middle east is already suspicious of the US as it is. On the other hand, if the US were to try and stonewall such an event and the truth comes out anyway, that will also give the US a black eye and further distrust from the extremists (and possibly the moderates).
So I toss the issue out to the self-proclaimed ethicists of the SDMB: under what circumstances would and should the US admit that they accidentally hit a civilian target in the war in Afghanistan? What are the moral, legal, and ethical repercussions? And does the US have any chance of spinning such a (hypothetical) event so it doesn’t look even worse to the folks sitting on the sidelines in the middle east?
The US certainly shouldn’t lie about these things, but I see no obligation to disclose the information, a least not while hosilities are ongoing. The US can simply say “We are not releasing information on our bombing activites at this time”. As for “spinning” it, I don’t think that there’s much that people who have already made up their minds will listen. But I think that they should point that while a US bomb may have been the proximate cause, ultimately it is the Taliban that is responsible.
Disclosure is a good thing, but I would accept a black out period.
The report makes me even more dubious as there are claims of chemical weapons being used. Why use a chemical weapon that is at best bad publicity when you can just bomb the everlasting tar out of a target with conventional bombs?
There is a Loud Engineering, and they do make “shock struts”. Evidently it’s a airplane or helicopter component. The question is, would a shock strut say “shock” on it? And the other question is, could the Taliban have shot down one of our aircraft without us knowing about it?
The more readily the U.S. admits to errors, mistakes, and embarassing fuck-ups for which it is responsible, the more credibility the U.S. government will have when denying other incidents.
If the U.S. says “Yes, we bombed a hospital. Here’s the footage from the plane. Our pilot was off course, and received the drop order over the wrong target. Here’s what we’re doing to obviate these mistakes in the future.”, then it’s a hell of a lot easier for everyone to believe them when they say “there were no chemical weapons, we did not deliberately target the building, and we regret the accident deeply”.
More than that, it helps the U.S. retain the moral high ground, which is of the utmost importance in this war.
I think based on past experience, that a) we would acknowledge it only when it was no longer in dispute, and b) that we should have admitted it right off, and appologized before everyone was shocked that we hadn’t yet.
War is like politics. All the advisors say “stonewall” and “plausible denyability”, and the public says “be straight with us for once!”
I think I agree with hansel, and I think NATO did a fair job of exposing its own bombing flaws in the recent actions in Kosovo. I recall seeing bombsight video of a bridge that was bombed just as a civillian train went past, and we owned up to that particular disaster. It was astonishing seeing video from the ground right after the attack. NATO didn’t flinch from admitting they totally screwed up but it was pretty clear they were not intentionally targeting civilians. Much handwringing ensued, and a bitter policy debate about high-level vs. low level bombing had some impact on current doctrines (for good or bad, I don’t know).
Anyway, there was a segment on the CBS News tonight about US bombers hitting “friendly” Northern Alliance positions in the front line against the Taliban. They advanced and took over Taliban positions and got the crap bombed out of them from behind. Oops. The NA doesn’t have ground to air communications so they can’t coordinate close-air-assaults. This seems to be US doctrine, Rumsfield said the US would not do bombings directed by NA forces, we will pick our own targets. Here we are in the same debate as in Kosovo, do we have the right intelligence, are we getting close enough to identify the right targets, or are we too close and now within range of antiaircraft fire?
Do you have a cite for the Chinese Embassy thing? I hadn’t heard that we admitted we purposely bombed their embassy. A quick search on CNN.com turned up nothing. I’m not actually doubting you, I think I just must have missed something.
Because we didn’t. We deliberately bombed what we thought to be a legitimate target, using outdated info. Turns out that the Chinese Embassy was occupying that spot when the bombs arrived. We 'fessed up to being stupid on that one, pretty quickly.