How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
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Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
#2As horrible as those allegations are, let's appreciate that the U.S. military may be about the only military force that is both capable of committing these mistakes/war crimes and investigating them.
Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar.
Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
#3Not perfect and sadly Harbor some insurrectionists who are under some mistaken idea that fascism is protecting Freedom and America. But still a cut above Russians and Chinese brutalists.
Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
#4As horrible as those allegations are, let's appreciate that the U.S. military may be about the only military force that is both capable of committing these mistakes/war crimes and investigating them. Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar.
>U.S. military may be about the only military force that is both capable of committing these mistakes/war crimes and investigating them
I'd prefer if they just not did them in the first place. I consider the alleged transparency simply to be a more subtle form of propaganda. It simply exists to give more credibility to warfare. It's in a sense how everything around American society is structured. When you make everyone belief they can be a millionaire they're not going rebel although they won't, when you get people to voluntarily fight they'll do it eagerly, etc
Also as a psychological mechanism it is a kind of reverse version of what Adorno called secondary antisemitism. Which is the kind of antisemitism where someone will use the crimes committed against the Jews against them. (for example "I hate them, they've ruined the idea of German nationalism!"). Arguing to take American war-crimes as an opportunity to appreciate American virtue in dealing with them is to relegate the victim to an object, and to basically declare the American moral character the most important thing in the world, which is very bizarre.
Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
#5Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
#6And a more recent airstrike…
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/17/politics/kabul-drone-strike-u...
Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
#7How long until people realize that any authority saying “justified” is not using a definition found in any dictionary.
The term used by any American imbued with the option of extrajudicial killings is only to - at best - match your pre-existing agreement with the action or your likelihood of agreeing with authority. “Justified”, for these people, does not mean “other actions were evaluated in a hierarchy and we were in a circumstance that this greater level of force was necessary” such as how a civilian is evaluated, it means “this choice was in a catalog of equally weighted choices, any of the choices including inaction would be justified”. I don’t view this as good enough, as it makes investigations and courts a waste of time and energy, when the only resolution can be to say “and now I present as evidence: the catalogue of choices that happens to list the choice taken” acquitting all.
Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
#8Why do we believe we killed Bin Laden even? Given the track record of the military, it was probably some goat farmers in Pakistan—-which is why no one saw the body and it was unceremoniously dumped in the ocean.
Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
#9As horrible as those allegations are, let's appreciate that the U.S. military may be about the only military force that is both capable of committing these mistakes/war crimes and investigating them. Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar.
So the US internally docummented some of the incidents. Is that useful to anyone? Did it have impact on anything? A lot of the reporting at the time in the west was actually done by non-US organizations like airwars.org.
I watched the reporting quite closely at the time.
At least now I know how to interpret the reports from reporters embedded with US coalition in the past that they were not allowed into some area before it was cleaned. This article paints a clear picture of what might have been happening.
Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
#10Highlights:
- Special task force ordered strike. They didn't have to go through normal checks and balances because they were doing it under emergency provisions apparently due to an emergency request from arab allies on the ground.
- They claim they didn't see the civilians because they were relying on SD quality drone feed.
- The group is accused of falsifying log records afterwards.