All this bomb dropping, civilian killing, and arms sales sure has calmed down the crisis in the middle east. It’s so much more peaceful there and people love us now.
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Blowing up a hospital does not class as a friendly fire incident. It is a war crime. Notice the total lack of hospitals being blown up in the link you provide.
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And happens often, see MSF’s press release for Syria.
Busra hospital, in Dara’a governorate, was destroyed after being hit by ten barrel bombs on Monday night. It is one of ten medical facilities that have been targeted in the past month.
afaik the MSF does not know the responsible party.
Thanks, you know how to cheer me up 
This is not new:
Only a war crime if it was intentional. That has yet to be proven.
The building was targeted with high precision, I think it’s out of question that the attack was executed by chance. I don’t know enough about international law to decide if it’s a war crime if the responsible officer was unaware about the function.
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Did you read the original comment, because that’s not a “similar mistake.” The commenter was talking about the possible (probable) methodology used to determine who to kill - cellphone analysis - being fundamentally flawed and resulting in flawed outcomes - i.e. “mistakes” - which is fundamentally different from confusion about targets that leads to the “wrong” people being killed - that is, someone other than the intended targets being hit. The “intended target” was hit in this (and other) cases, only in this case, there was someone there to make a fuss about it.
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…sweet dreams…
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I would argue that pulling out ground operatives and switching to war by whack-a-mole using insufficient signals intelligence was entirely intentional and this bombing was a consequence. Like driving a car at night, turning off the headlights, hitting someone and arguing it’s not a crime because you didn’t see them.
Beyond that I think I’m going to back down because I don’t want to get into a technical argument over what is or isn’t a war crime. The United States has been in Afghanistan for what, more than a decade now? And there’s still no clarity over whether or not they classify as an occupying force. It’s a farce, it always descends into semantics and the whitehouse press office is too good at it for me.
So if you don’t want it to be a war crime, fine. But it was still negligent, avoidable, predictable, and a totally fucking abhorrent tragedy that is unacceptable and appalling.
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In other news, Russia intentionally bombs hospitals, lies about it:
(This post is not meant to imply that America bombing a hospital and apologizing for it is ok. It’s not. Don’t even go there.)
Your link us about a hospital occupied by ground troops, not bombed from above. In your story, the hospital continues to function after zero staff were killed. It’s a very different kind of action.
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My point is not the disparity in the numbers of staff killed, or the force used. Rather that the U.S. military has been violating international laws with respect to hospitals in war zones for quite some time.
I thought the obvious implication is that this is an argument against going to war. Clearly I wasn’t obvious enough.
Related to that, the reporting I’ve seen says that troops on the ground called in air support that was provided by an AC-130 gunship. That would mean that this is old fashioned air support gone awry, with no drones or SIGINT involved.
IMO the US should negotiate an agreement with the Taliban and get out. We can’t seem to even do that right though as the leader we thought we’d been making feelers to had actually been dead for two years.
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Bush and Cheney started two wars that is why they are under house arrest (sort of) I like DWB but it a simple fact that they did have Taliban operating in their hospital with nothing they could do about it. Treating wounded Taliban was one thing, I don’t fault but when an armed group moves into a room in your hospital and your unarmed doctors then that should surprise no one that someone lobs a bomb at your hospital.
A fact? Do you have a source for this accusation?
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When you consider that Obama is the Anti-Christ, it’s really surprising he’s not doing worse things.
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