News accounts of this weekend’s U.S. airstrike on that same hospital hinted cryptically at the hostility from the Afghan military. The first NYT story on the strike – while obscuring who carried out the strike – noted deep into the article that “the hospital treated the wounded from all sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked Afghan security forces.” Al Jazeera similarly alluded to this tension, noting that “a caretaker at the hospital, who was severely injured in the air strike, told Al Jazeera that clinic’s medical staff did not favour any side of the conflict. ‘We are here to help and treat civilians,’ Abdul Manar said.”
As a result of all of this, there is now a radical shift in the story being told about this strike. No longer is it being depicted as some terrible accident of a wayward bomb. Instead, the predominant narrative from U.S. sources and their Afghan allies is that this attack was justified because the Taliban were using it as a “base.”
The US investigation about the incident (war crime?) is executed sophisticated: Drive into the hospital compound with a tank.
A US tank has forced its way into the shell of the Afghanistan hospital destroyed in an airstrike 11 days ago, prompting warnings that the US military may have destroyed evidence in a potential war crimes investigation.
What I find curious is that the US would be willing to risk PR issues just because our precious-and-oh-so-respected local puppet government wants something. Especially given that we were just warming up our “Putin’s air strikes in Syria are ‘indiscriminate’, unlike our implicitly precise and wholly just activities.” narrative. We had a few op-eds and such on that topic out; and then we go and shell a hospital into smoking rubble for reasons that nobody even had a decently polished lie for. Really cut that campaign off at the knees.
I don’t doubt that we’d do it if we thought that it suited our interests; I’m just surprised that we’d be so willing to put our own image on the line just because our regional proxies want a score settled. Tell them “FFS, haven’t we bought you enough mortars to ‘accidentally’ raze it yourself, idiots?”, sure. Very, very, visibly do it ourselves with hardware that is 100% unique to use and definitely under our control at all times? That’s pretty generous support.
Even if we were going to get our fingerprints all over it, the choice of an AC-130 seems…artless. An ‘errant’ bomb of sufficient size could have done massive damage in a single ‘oops-technical-problem-with-JDAM-guidance’ strike. A half hour of leisurely circling and sustained artillery fire looks so much more intentional.
Could it be that the military is just not interested anymore in simulating Geneva Convention compatibility? According to this article the UK has a two step program to make warfare more convenient:
withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Afghan armored vehicle with U.S. personnel inside drove through the gate last Thursday to gain access to the compound, believing incorrectly that no Doctors Without Borders personnel were present.
Even if they were correct and no one on the compound - how the fuck is it reasonable for a team assessing “the ‘structural integrity’ of the building damaged” to drive with a fucking tank through a fucking gate?
The US investigation states that the crew of the aircraft couldn’t find the correct building. So far no explanation why the attack wasn’t interrupted when MSF called $everyone.
