Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/19/afghanistan-u-s-drone-kills.html
“The workers had lit a bonfire and were sitting together when a drone targeted them,” says a tribal elder.
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Surely this degree of negligence rises to the status of war crimes.
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This is why I roll my eyes anytime ‘our’ military points to state sponsored terrorism. You want to stop terrorist attacks in the region, stop attacking already!
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Welp, if that wasn’t an ISIS training ground, it certainly is now…
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Does a War Crime require intent? They’re pretty hard to prosecute and all of the successful cases I know of were quite blatant, like directly ordering your soldiers to massacre specific ethnic groups. Unintentional casualties have never been prosecuted as far as I know.
Ugh.
Atrocious shit like this makes it even easier for the rest of the world to hate the US as a nation;
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We are aware of allegations of the death of non-combatants
That’s a very clinical way of putting things, also downplays the complete and utter crime that’s occurred. It really bothers me that the US can coldly kill someone with a drone from across the world and no one is punished for murdering innocents.
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Not a lawyer, but i know if i hit someone with a car i can be prosecuted regardless of intent. Same if i work for a gas utility and due to my own negligence a bunch of people die in an explosion i am personally liable for my choices. I don’t see why the military should be exempt for killing innocents, especially in something akin to this case or the one where they bombed a hospital they knew had no militants in.
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From 2015:
“…the annual defense appropriations bill included a provision, championed by Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., which instructs the Pentagon to set up a permanent process for administering condolence payments. The measure is intended to prevent the delay and inconsistencies that marred the system in the early years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to improve record keeping, so that the Pentagon doesn’t start from scratch in each new conflict.”
"A defense official told The Intercept in an emailed statement that the Pentagon has not yet implemented the provision, but is “reviewing the processes related to ex-gratia payments to determine if there are areas where improvements can be made.”
“The Foreign Claims Act, passed in 1942, gives foreign citizens the ability to request payment for damages caused by U.S. military personnel. But the law only covers incidents that happen outside of combat situations — meaning that civilians caught up in battles have no recourse.”
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You aren’t a leader of a nation-state though. The rules you live by aren’t the same as the ones a 4-star general lives by when commanding his troops. It’s not like there is a world police force that enforces some world law. It’s all treaties made up by countries that would be guilty of breaking every law if they were drawn up the same as the laws for civilians. That’s why they only apply to the most blatant of offenders, and typically the ones on the losing side of a conflict only.
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I don’t know. But I just don’t get how the US keeps bombing weddings, hospitals, and pine nut harvesters, going “whoopsie doodle”, and getting off without even a slap in the wrist. This wasn’t “we hit a training camp and got the caterer.” It’s not collateral damage. It’s manslaughter.
(I know it’s not just the US. I know lots of other places do it as well. It just seems to happen more often, and on a grander scale.)
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Who is going to prosecute? Whom do they intend to prosecute? What evidence are they going to use to prove guilt? War crimes trials are extremely difficult to prosecute.
We are taking this report at face value, but every single bomb dropped on Afghanistan has killed an orphanage for sick kids if you go by certain sources. This one may be true, but I’m not there to investigate. While it is certain that many innocents have been killed in the war, proving that they were targeted is a very difficult task.
Do you prosecute the guy flying the drone? The guy who gave the order to fly the drone? The guy who vetted the intel that made the guy give the order? The guy who gave the bad intel in the first place? I feel it is unlikely that some pine-nut cartel conspiracy was operating behind the scenes in conjunction with the US Government to kill off the competition. Intent is going to be difficult to prove.
Tell that to the families of the 30 killed.
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What you’re saying isn’t wrong, but the problem doesn’t go away because it’s been re-framed, it’s still morally reprehensible and those involved should still be held accountable. The fact that there is not presently an option for doing so is the problem.
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Bombing a field with no combatants in the vicinity is a quite a misuse of deadly force and i bet the end result is a slap on the wrist. But its just my personal opinion, i’m also hugely frustrated over how the US has handled and continues to handle their operations in other countries.
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Thank you, you have made the point that I couldn’t seem to make.
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I think the only option here is for US citizens to make it politically impossible for the US to continue doing this.
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No. Only when you try to prosecute the winners.
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They also bomb rescuers to a previous bombing and funeral processions.
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