Here is a photo essay of the inside of the MSF hospital in Kunduz that was attacked by US air power. The destruction is chilling.
It’s horrible that this devastation and death was wrought on a hospital, but we need to keep in mind that this is what follows every time our military decides that a point on the map needs to be obliterated. This is the wreckage we leave behind with every mad venture we engage.
We just don’t see the detailed images of the ruined lives and buildings afterwards.
Content note for this, the pictures are horrible and show human remains
I’m reminded of the ‘smart bomb’ line from Wag the Dog about how one clip of a bomb falling down a chimney convinced the public that there were no innocents killed during the Gulf War.
I really wonder if anyone will actually be punished for this. It needs to happen. There needs to be a point where someone finally stands up, looks at the horrors that the U.S. commits, and says “this is not justified”. The line has been pushed back so many times before though that I fear that this is no longer over it…
“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
William Tecumseh Sherman
As a Vietnam war vet I can attest to the soundness of Sherman’s opinion. Nothing has changed in the last 150 years.
Remember, this sort of thing is happening all the time. The only thing that makes this bombing of civilians any different is that they picked a target that had a certain amount of power and could protest. The Afghanis, Iraqis, etc who were bombed just disappeared without anyone “important” noticing.
Dec 22, 1972: a US B52 bomber in “operation linebacker” bombed Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi, killing 28. It got some media attention, but … The US military is used to fobbing off such things. During the battle of Fallujah hospitals were struck with 155mm artillery fire (US engaged in area attacks all over the city) It all was swept under the rug.
Much respect to MSF for trying to continue to make a stink about this. I doubt they expect much more than that.
How about the time the US entered another county’s home waters and shot down a civilian airliner? Iran Air Flight 655. It took 8 years for the US to pay compensation and it still didn’t admit fault.
Many a truth is said in jest- Mitchell and Webb’s “Are We the Baddies?”
Only slightly off-topic, but:
What can I do as a US citizen? WE are responsible for this, and some of my taxes pay for this atrocity. To make matters worse, some of my taxes help pay to cover this crap up. Aside from the usual (Vote, dammit!) I’d like to point out one more option.
For the past few years I have supported http://www.kiva.org. This organization makes small loans to individuals around the world. What makes it special to me is the fact that I can target my loans to people in Iraq and Palestine, two of the countries that my tax dollars have helped screw up beyond all belief. There is no way that I can give enough to offset the damage that my taxes have done, but I can do a little.
BTW, the charity navigator rating is here:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=12978#.Vh7Mz3h438s
This should also be kept in mind as to what is actually wrought every time some intervention-obsessed politician utters such absurd buzzwords as “freedom,” “democracy,” “security,” or “stability” in regards to foreign policy.
Also, keep in mind how little the gargantuan military investments and constant deployments to nearly every corner of the globe has accomplished for the U.S. Thousands of nuclear weapons certainly didn’t deter Al-Qaeda on 9/11, nor did thousands of troops stationed around the world, especially not in places where they’ve been since the middle of the last century.
If anything, “the strongest nation on earth,” so heavily armed and trigger happy it’s ready to drone its own shadow, is just provoking further conflict to crudely remind the rest of the world who’s in charge. Not, as the Washington Post quoted someone from DOD recently, “to keep the wolves at bay and buy space and time.”
The Iraq war, as seen by a European: http://satwcomic.com/the-day-the-iraq-war-started
More atrocities of this sort are inevitable; a dismal procession of them down the years as long as the great powers continue attempting to control events in the Middle East.
The smart play for the U.S.? Leave. Immediately. At first it may mean more bad things, more chaos, but nothing the U.S. does militarily will help bring peace. The region needs to sort itself out, a task that would be long and occasionally horrifying, but that is the price imposed on the people of the region by foreign interference.
Absolutely heart-rending.
Here’s hoping the dull, ignorant, Penny “America is the Best, rah, rah” L has the decency to stay out of this thread.
She doesn’t.
It is heart rendering, I completely agree. But what everyone here appears to want is an end to war itself. That’s a wonderful thought, but it’s something that’s not going to happen in any of our lifetimes. And someone please check with the Taliban and Al Qaeda to make sure they’re good with the whole “ending war” thing, too.
I wonder when the last time PZ posted horrific pictures from a Taliban suicide bombing. Actually I just did a search and the answer is never. When they decide to obliterate a point on the map it is equally if not more horrific, because they specifically target innocent women and children.
If a war crime was committed at this hospital, I’d like to see the people responsible charged and tried for the crime. But I’m equally interested in seeing the Taliban terrorists called to account for their horrific, and purposeful, war crimes. For some reason that sentiment doesn’t get much traction around here.
As has been noted, PZ’s readership does not include a large number of Taliban supporters or active members of the Taliban. So it’s not clear to me what pressure any of us can bring to bear on the Taliban to reduce their bad behavior. Though I would note that the Taliban specifically did not attack the MSF hospital, despite having numerous opportunities to do so. And, in fact, they pulled out of Kunduz recently, ostensibly because they were concerned about increasing civilian casualties.
Penny will likely say that if I believe that the Taliban withdrew because their delicate ethical sensibilities couldn’t stand the idea of civilians being hurt then she has a bridge to sell me. Don’t worry, Penny, I no more believe that the Taliban’s reason for pulling out of Kunduz was to avoid civilian casualties than I believe that the US bombing of the hospital was a simple mistake. My point in bringing it up is twofold: First, it indicates that the Taliban cares, if not who they kill, at least what Afghanis and the international community think about who they are likely to kill. If the Taliban were really the “screw it, kill them all, let Allah sort it out” types you believe, they wouldn’t bother with trying for the propaganda value of claiming to want to protect civilians because they simply wouldn’t care. Second, the withdrawal, at a time when, as far as I can tell, they did have the resources to keep fighting, does suggest that they want to rule Afghanistan, not lay it to waste. The Taliban may not care who they hurt in their quest to rule Afghanistan but that is their quest: ruling Afghanistan, not destroying it. Or the world. Or even the US.
Cool. I don’t see anyone here arguing that the Taliban shouldn’t be held responsible for any attacks it commits. I’m certainly for it. Now, if we could only get the people who bombed a civilian hospital with no warning with the clear and direct intent of killing civilians held responsible, preferably by the same authority and with equal punishment for equal crimes. Do you want that too?
Some other things you won’t find on this blog:
Observations indicating that the sky is blue.
Discussions of the wetness of water.
Remarks on the greenness of the grass.
Recordings of birds going “tweet”.
Stories about dogs biting men.
Predictions of the direction from which the sun will rise tomorrow.
“Terrorists are bad” is not some kind of interesting, controversial topic for discussion. It’s a commonplace truism, so universally accepted as to not be worth remarking on.
Unless, of course, the terrorists are white US-American men. Then they’re “misunderstood” or “loners” or possibly just “mentally ill”. Certainly not terrorists being systematically supported and encouraged by US based organizations who want to terrorize women out of getting abortions or blacks into being quiet and letting whites get away with all but reinstituting slavery. Or members of the US government bombing hospitals from a distance. Then they’re heroes who might be just a little bit clumsy once in a while, but shouldn’t we give them the benefit of the doubt?
Until I dug into this, I like many thought that a single missile or bomb had been fired – terrible in it’s own right, but just, possibly just, some terrible mistake.
However digging into this it seems that the attack was carried out by a heavily armed gunship which made numerous 15 minute circles round the hospital whilst systematically machine-gunning it. For fuck’s sake – how can the military argue the toss about that ?
This is, of course, completely wrong.
The Taliban don’t have the fire power to match the USA in destruction. Their most “powerful” weapon are suicide bombers who, indeed, target people.
Second, if you ever wondered how the Taliban could make a come-back, it is exactly because of the attrocities commited by the USA, their allies, their puppet government, combined with their corruption and incompetence. The Taliban didn’t fall from the sky. The have support within the population. Oh, you can say they’Re just acting as if they cared about the people and you’re probably right, but that doesn’t change how they’Re perceived.*
Thirdly, again: Because the Taliban do worse is not an argument. You are essentially declaring the US army to be on the same moral level as the Taliban as you want them judged by the same standard as the Taliban, because that’s the only damn standard you can find that makes them look good.
*See Kunduz airstrike
Another one of those “horrible mistakes”, this time made by a German officer. Tell me who came out of this “looking good”? The Taliban who were seen as supporting the suffering population or the Germans and the Nato who incinerated them?
To follow Opus’ tangent (just once, then I’ll shut up), while Kiva certainly has it’s faults, the team of Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious is the lending team which stands at the all time top of the leaderboard in terms of amount of money lent, but the Kiva Christians team are only $1.8million behind us and closing the gap by a couple of hundred thousand a month at the moment. There are also several team resources to help in, for example, selecting field partners who don’t tie their help to religious conditions. http://www.kiva.org/team/atheists
I just love that Penny is now literally saying “The Taliban do it too!”
Nothing even needs to be said. Thanks, Penny, for doing the work for us.
katybe @#20
I had no idea that I could support atheism in kiva – thanks!! I have been a member/lender since my son made a loan in my name for a FestiChrisMakkah present one year but never looked further. Excellent recruitment work on your part!
Among other things, the statement is an admission that the US does it. Just like the Taliban, except wearing the “good guys” hat, which makes it okay.
Apparently Obama has decided to keep troops in Afghanistan through the end of his reign. Specifically, 9800 soldiers. WTH? That’s neither enough to occupy the country nor few enough to be an advisory force. So what is the US’s intention? It sure seems like the intent is simply to prolong the fight by providing just enough support for the current Afghani government to keep control of much of the country without giving them the ability to eliminate the Taliban. Got to keep an enemy around or the peasants might get restless, I guess.
“War is horrible” is an equally commonplace truism, yet here we are.
I see the usual suspects are back to try their failed arguments once again (surprised Saad didn’t mention the Ameriyah shelter). Also appreciate Dianne defending the Taliban, that gets to another point I want to bring up:
Once again thank you for confirming that the US is in a different moral universe than the Taliban. We are surprised when the US kills innocent civilians like this because that is not in their nature or mission. We are not surprised when religious terrorists kill innocent women and children becuase that is their nature, and it is what they believe their religion is telling them to do.
We can rightly criticize the US when they do fail, but a myopic focus only on US failures gives a pass to the people who aren’t even trying to meet the same standards. When the focus of the world’s attention – or this blog’s attention for that matter – is on a country trying to do the right thing and occasionally failing, instead of being on a fanatical terrorist group bent on death and destruction, something is wrong. It’s like criticizing Montgomery for Operation Market Garden and forgetting about the people he was fighting on the other side.
The Taliban don’t have to be in the same moral universe as the US – but they do exist as thinking human beings on this planet. They chose to harbor a group responsible for murdering 3000 people by flying planes into buildings, and they choose to side with that group to this day. There’s a reason they’ve chosen to do this, that is well steeped in religion, something anathema to most of the readership here. Yet where is all of our attention focused? On the country trying to stop these fanatics from re-taking Afghanistan. There is something truly fucked about this state of affairs.
I realize I’m not going to convice the Dianne’s and Saad’s of the world, and I won’t muck up this thread any further. I want to see the people responsible for the hospital bombing brought to justice if they committed a crime, but I’m going to reserve my harshest criticism for the homocidal religious fanatics they are fighting.
“If they committed a crime”? IF? In what world is bombing a hospital NOT a crime. Oh, right, in the average US-American’s world when the US does it.
Remember, this bombing was not unique. The US has been bombing random civilians in Afghanistan for years. What’s different here is they bombed civilians from western countries who had the means to tell the world about the bombing and try to get some sort of justice for it.
Don’t worry, Penny, they’ll fail. The latest word on the MSF website is that the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission has been activated. This is the first step in getting an independent investigation of the events. But it’s stalled…waiting for an agreement from the US government before it can proceed. If the US does not cooperate then…nothing. Because who’s going to be able to demand justice of a country with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over?
But, of course, they’re fighting homicidal fanatics, as Penny says. Homicidal fanatics that exist because in the 1980s the US funded and armed Islamic rebels against the invading Soviets. They chose to support the most radical believing that they would be the easiest to control. The result? As you see.
Penny L
Ehm, actually, no. I’m not the least surprised when the USA kill innocent people. Again. As usually. I am angry and outraged and sad. Surprise doesn’t come into the equation. You’ve been laying waste to great parts of the Middle East since like forever. You’re murdering innocent people with drones every day.
And actually, no, Islam doesn’t tell the Taliban to kill innocent women and children. Also, what about the men? All horrible terrorists, I guess…
Here’s the fundamental differnce: nobody here believes the USA is “trying to do the right thing” except you.
Dianne
That’S probably the most useless thing the UN has. MSF cannot even demand an investigation because they’re not a member country and each country involved can simply block it…
Yep. And yet it’s the only thing that MSF does have, the only thing that they can do to try to get an investigation. The US is very careful to make sure that it can’t be caught by any of the international agencies that can (in principle) right wrongs brought about by a state. Remember the Hague Invasion Act? The one that basically says that if US military personnel are tried for war crimes by the ICC the US will invade to free them?
Frankly, the US is looking more and more like a “rogue state” every day. Whether the Pennys of the world want to admit it or not. I don’t know where this will all end, but it’s probably no place good.
I said I wouldn’t muck up the thread but this is a point Dianne’s brought up before and is confused about:
The US is a signatory but not a party to the International Criminal Court, and one reason for that is ICC procedures would violate the constitutional rights of Americans charged with a crime (5th and 6th Amendments). The idea that another court would have jurisdiction over American citizens in the first place is likely unconstitutional as well. I know you’re trying really hard to find some nefarious motives behind every move the US makes, but here they’re just protecting the rights of their citizens. Didn’t see Obama pushing this, even when he had a supermajority in the Senate.
Amazing how reasoned thought tends to disappear when certain subjects are discussed.
Penny
Cool, so you can rape and murder and ignore laws everywhere in the world! How convenient. And funny how others aren’t awarded that generosity as I’m pretty sure US courts have tried, convicted and improsoned non US citizens
I’m having a hard time finding any US successes in the field of war to bring up. At all.
And perhaps it’s the failures that should be examined in order to do better in the future. Is the US doing any better by avoiding the responsibility of their failures?
Nope. So it is only right that a USAmerican blogger discusses the failures of the US. It’s the responsible thing to do. Especially for the side on the morally high ground, as some people insist the US is. If you’re better than your enemy, you damn well should give extra scrutiny to your errors and failures, otherwise you lose that leading edge.
Though I do think the US lost its leading edge years n years ago.
rq@31
Liberating Buchenwald and Dachau comes to mind as does military emancipation during the Civil War.
I finished reading Manufacturing Consent two weeks ago, and one point it makes that I hadn’t realised is that active participants in the peace movement didn’t say much about the My Lai massacre. Because they knew it was the norm. It just so happened that it ended up being known to a public who didn’t realise that systematic extermination of civilians was standard operating procedure throughout the war.
Penny at #29
“The idea that another court would have jurisdiction over American citizens in the first place is likely unconstitutional as well.”
I guess this means that all those sanctuary cities are just A-OK with Penny, since it would be unconstitutional to try citizens of another country in the USA for crimes allegedly committed here.
/sarcasm off/
qwints
Mm, you’re right.
Except, politically speaking, they lost a lot of the gains in the aftermath of the Civil War (I know, I know, that’s still after the war).
Doesn’t seem to be a particularly long list, in any case.
And when you consider the number of wars they have
startedengaged in since WWII….AP Follow-up
The AP has confirmed that US analysts knew the hospital was there, although those analysts allege that the site was being used by the Taliban as a command center. The article suggests that the strike may have been an intentional attack on the hospital.
I always find it amusing when people like Penny L seem to think that intent is magic. Since I am Canadian I didn’t grow up with the Pollyanna attitude that the Us always mean well that atrocities are exceptions etc., that “we” mean well. The whole notion that the usual cold blooded realpolitik that applies to the behavior of states doesn’t apply to the USA.
The problem with the whole intent is magic notion is that sadly the Taliban and other fanatics think the same way that their “pure” intentions excuse atrocities. They don’t. Further the notion that the USA always means well and is trying to do good is bogus. What state doesn’t make that claim? After all the Soviet Union when invading Afghanistan justified its behavior has bringing enlightenment and progress, trying to do good, and fighting reactionaries and terrorists. All the while raining down death and destruction.
The idea that the USA has pure motives and any atrocities are exceptional is standard fare that has been duplicated in each and every great power in history. The actual behavior of various US governments over time indicates quite clearly the primacy of realpolitik. The bottom line is that large number of civilians have died from US action in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Numbers vastly in excess of the dead of 9/11. And guess what the Taliban is still there and a fanatically anti western group ISIS controls much of Iraq and Syria. I’ve talked to refugees from both Afghanistan and Iraq and the death of civilians by firepower from America and her allies is distressingly common.
I simply don’t get the notion that somehow the USA is radically different from other great powers. Because it isn’t.
opus @ # 9 & 22, katybe @ # 20 – Before you go throwing money at Kiva, please do some research on the Kiva management’s odd and violating-their-own-stated-policies special relationship with the Catholic parafascist organization Opus Dei.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any specific links to post here, but this search should get you started – and, I hope, motivate you to find microloan projects with cleaner records.
Per conservative congresspeople whose agenda is to make Obama look bad, no matter how much they have to twist the argument or harm the US or the world to do so. In the best case, this is simply more American exceptionalism and evidence that you aren’t, in fact, willing to see those responsible for the MSF bombing tried on an equal basis to the Taliban. A Taliban member accused of the same crime could be tried in the ICC without Afghanistan threatening to invade the Hague. So thank you for making my point so clearly.
It’s true. All “great powers” were or are scum. It’s part of the nature of having that much power. Which is one reason that I think that the most patriotic thing I can do as a US-American is try to reduce the US’s power in the world.
If you doubt that power corrupts and endangers, internally as well as externally, consider McCarthyism. Normally, a country turns to radicalism when its economy is in shambles, its power waning, and its leaders indecisive or effectively absent. For example, consider the Weimar Republic or the last tsars. Or the last French kings. The US in the 1950s was in a period of unprecedented economic growth and worldwide power. Its leaders were as competent as any and had excellent claims to having been elected freely and fairly and holding popular support. There was literally no stress on the country…until it made one up. Why did people fall for the “Communist threat” scare? I suspect it was because the US had no enemies that could actually threaten it (including the Soviets) and people in the US knew, on some level, that they were safe and could play whatever games they liked with their politics and that they wouldn’t suffer for bringing on a little fascism (Or at least not as much as the rest of the world would suffer). Or maybe it was a toddler style tantrum because even though the US was literally holding a weapon to the world’s throat, everyone didn’t instantly obey. Either way, the power of being a “superpower” corrupted the US and led to internal as well as external damage.
Despite their horrific and purposeful atrocities and war crimes, how many Taliban members have been investigated by the ICC? How about Al Qaeda? ISIS?
Zero. It appears that all of their investgations and trials originate in Africa.
Pakistan, the country from which most of the Taliban now operate, is not a party to the ICC. Neither is Syria or Iraq. Or Iran or Russia.
Afghanistan, as of 2004, is.
http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/situations%20and%20cases/Pages/situations%20and%20cases.aspx
I must admit that I did not know that. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Yet since Afghanistan is a party, if the Taliban has been massacring people in Afghanistan indiscriminantly, why has Afghanistan made no complaint to the ICC? Surely it has managed to capture some high level Taliban members who could be tried.
Do you applaud Russia, Iran, Iraq, etc for their willingness to protect their citizens from the big bad ICC the way you appear to applaud the US for same?
So the security council can refer a case involving non-state parties. One wonders why, if the Taliban is the mindless, murderous set of thugs Penny portrays the US, a member of the security council, has not referred the situation in Afghanistan to the organization that could try them. Surely they have evidence of Taliban atrocities (or, as they would be called if committed by the US, “misadventures”) to bring to the court’s attention.
Will Penny L ever learn that “the Taliban do it, too” and “the Taliban are worse” are actually non-arguments but a total declaration of moral bankruptcy?
I mean, it’s a strategy most children learn is doomed to fail the first time they get grounded for skipping school no matter how often the worst kid in school does it and doesn’T get grounded
@ Pierce R. Butler (#39) – There’s been much debate and criticism around Strathmore and Opus Dei on the team message board (you have to be a member of the lender team in order to read this, but then just search Strathmore and it’s all there), and a number of people did stop lending on Kiva because of it, but ultimately just about every alternative microlending programme that people checked out turned out to be worse for borrowers, lenders or both. As I said, it does have faults, and various people involved have reached different conclusions about how to support the borrowers without supporting that relationship.
katybe @ # 46: There’s been much debate and criticism around Strathmore and Opus Dei on the team message board …
I know – I was part of that, and among those who chose not to accept Kiva management’s favoritism, stonewalling, and deceitfulness.
… ultimately just about every alternative microlending programme that people checked out turned out to be worse for borrowers, lenders or both.
Perhaps I quit reading those threads too soon. Please name those projects (or provide other searchable keywords).
… various people involved have reached different conclusions about how to support the borrowers without supporting that relationship.
How do you participate monetarily in an effort which subsidizes recruitment of, e.g., Kenya’s “most likely to succeed” into a psychotic but powerful cult without de facto supporting that cult?
Any time you have to resort to “Well, other people are worse”, you’re inherently giving up on trying to actually defend the group in question and just trying to deflect onto some other boogeyman. It’s both useless and incredibly intellectually dishonest.
Sorry – I feel like I’m really going off topic but there doesn’t seem to be a better place to take my answer – if anyone wants me to move the discussion, I’m happy to comply.
Mostly by not subsidising Kiva with donations whilst using their lending platform to reach people in need who are served by secular field partners, and going nowhere near any loan involving Strathmore. Any education loan in Kenya with a different partner though, to make sure Strathmore don’t get all of the future leaders! I’m also seeing a lot more due diligence and screening going on amongst the Atheists team, because we’re less inclined to take Kiva’s word for it that something’s ok.
I don’t know if you deleted your account, or would be prepared to reactivate it to join and read a team message board, but the Alternative Microfinance team is where most of this discussion has been concentrated (http://www.kiva.org/team/alternative_microfinance). Zafar and Milaap looked really promising, but then entered into a relationship whereby all their loans are funded through Kiva, not independently (Milaap may have recently begun recruiting lenders outside of Kiva). Vittana closed down. There are also a couple of small organisations who only work in tightly defined geographical areas, which doesn’t help if you’re a lender trying to spread your loans to minimise risk, but do seem quite good if you specifically want to lend to Kenya or South America, for example. A couple of others stated that loans were donations that could be relent but not withdrawn, or carried out no on-the-ground diligence, making repayment effectively optional. And the big hope was Zidisha. Lots of people thought they were really promising, but all I’ve seen about them in the last year has revolved around huge losses (of up to 60% in some cases) and really poor treatment of lenders. I’d encourage you to read the reports that have been coming back to the Alternative Microfinance team in the last few months, from people who had started to transfer significant funds – I’ve been reading them and concluding I’m better sticking with Kiva. There may be platforms which could scale up, and are doing things mostly right, but if so, the people who found them haven’t been coming back to share their good experiences and recruit. Instead, people either seem to have come back to Kiva, or ended up spreading themselves thinly around other organisations and having longer gaps before they could reloan credits.
For anyone unsure about Kiva or microfinance as a whole, please consider Give Directly which provides unconditional cash transfers.
Qwints @ 50:
Thanks for that link!
katybe @ # 49 – Thanks for an informative (if depressing) reply.
How the US conducts fair and impartial investigations. From the Guardian: US tank enters ruined Afghan hospital putting ‘war crime’ evidence at risk
NBC:
Penny L (#24)
… but you’ll always be here to ensure that we don’t lose perspective by reminding us they are not alone in engaging in the absolute worst humanity can offer. Thanks!
From Pteryxx’s post #53
Look, the U.S. made another mistake, Penny!
How as it supposed to know the hospital it hit was still there?!