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How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

nytimes.com

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Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#91

Post by bserge »

pan69 wrote: post #36
dragontamer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction Afghanistan War was 2001. Iraq War was 2003. Your history is off by about 1.5 years.

> After 9/11, the Bush administration national security team actively debated an invasion of Iraq. On the day of the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his aides for: "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit Saddam Hussein at the same time. Not only Osama bin Laden."[90] President Bush spoke with Rumsfeld on 21 November and instructed him to conduct a confidential review of OPLAN 1003, the war…

The atrocious English makes me question this Wiki entry.

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#92

Post by q1w2 »

stunt wrote: post #37

Most of the civilian casualties aren't even documented in a war. If you think the military you support invades a country and only kills the bad guys, you are watching too many hollywood movies.

Even Hollywood movies often show civilian casualties.

It's a war - it's chaotic by nature.

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#93

Post by rendall »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #85
missedthecue wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't bin Laden saying verbatim to the public that he's responsible enough? If that's not enough, what could the coalition forces possibly say that would convince the Taliban? There isn't high bar to cross. They've already decided what they think. That's what I mean by 'bad faith'.

Killing infidels is justifiable and completely ethical to some people.

Unfortunately, true. We humans are still just scary, tribal apes who have brains big enough to feel the need to build elaborate rationalizations for brutish, reprehensible behavior

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#94

Post by bserge »

h2odragon wrote: post #41
photochemsyn wrote: post #20

The US record in Afghanistan is arguably even more ridiculous (and psychotic) than in Iraq. We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) - although to be honest, the argument for doing the regime change op in Saudi Arabia was far more robust, as members of the Saudi government aided the hijackers and Saudi Royal family members were a…

> train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members "Afghanistan's ghost soldiers undermined fight against Taliban" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564 IIRC there were complaints being published at least as far back as 2009 about that problem.

The ghost army in LOTR was cool, but that's fiction. Doesn't work that well irl, I guess.

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#95

Post by jay3ss »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #79
midasuni wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were the real situation then the taliban could have taken Bin Laden into custody and hand him over for trial in a neutral country (say the Netherlands alike Lockerbie trial, or somewhere like China or India)

The Taliban offered to cooperate in turning Bin Laden over to another country. The US refused.

Do you have a source for this? Sounds like an interesting read

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#96

Post by bettysdiagnose »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #79
midasuni wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were the real situation then the taliban could have taken Bin Laden into custody and hand him over for trial in a neutral country (say the Netherlands alike Lockerbie trial, or somewhere like China or India)

The Taliban offered to cooperate in turning Bin Laden over to another country. The US refused.

That was after the bombing had already begun and it had to be a "country that wouldn't come under US pressure".

I don't see what's so unreasonable about handing him over to the US tbh.

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#97

Post by kodah »

photochemsyn wrote: post #20

The US record in Afghanistan is arguably even more ridiculous (and psychotic) than in Iraq. We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) - although to be honest, the argument for doing the regime change op in Saudi Arabia was far more robust, as members of the Saudi government aided the hijackers and Saudi Royal family members were a…

> The whole 'Special Forces' fetishization is also pretty ridiculous. The best of the best of the best, la-dee-dah.

This is a pretty common misunderstanding by civilians. Special forces come in tiers and usually they're designated for certain kinds of work. It doesn't mean they're "best of the best", just special training that may or may not be useful in a place like Afghanistan. Historically they're used for training foreign fighters. From what I read in this article, this looks like work that line companies should have been doing.

> Oh, and the "Afghan Army Training Program" - at a cost of something like $10 billion to train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members who'd be the nucleus of the new independent government...

I don't think that money went any conspicuous. I served in 2012, when a lot of that ANA training and colocation was going on. You're absolutely right that it was a failure. The problem was that the President was telling the American people things were going well, when in reality troops were getting shot in the back on patrol by their counterparts, people were deserting post while high on hash, and most ANA were paid over four years the equivalent of a dowery.

> Getting in bed with heroin-shipping warlords because they were anti-Taliban?

This was surprising to me when I was in country, but I get it. Most of these dudes are the equivalent of governors and own their own armies. They just didn't want to follow the Talibans rules, so "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Quite complicated, but I don't know how it'd be different.

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#98

Post by boomboomsubban »

jay3ss wrote: post #95
boomboomsubban wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Taliban offered to cooperate in turning Bin Laden over to another country. The US refused.

Do you have a source for this? Sounds like an interesting read

Someone else in the thread linked https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#99

Post by [deleted] »

P-ala-din wrote: post #55
photochemsyn wrote: post #20

The US record in Afghanistan is arguably even more ridiculous (and psychotic) than in Iraq. We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) - although to be honest, the argument for doing the regime change op in Saudi Arabia was far more robust, as members of the Saudi government aided the hijackers and Saudi Royal family members were a…

> Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism If we put in mind what we know post hoc about the torture and inhumane interrogation techniques used in both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, wouldn't you agree that it's reasonable to assume that there was a high risk of torture? and isn't torture a well-accepted reason to block extradition. In fact, let's take it even a step further in…

[deleted]

Re: How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

#100

Post by 1123581321 »

adolph wrote: post #24
bayesian_horse wrote: post #2

As 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.

> Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar. There doesn't seem to be English language publication to establish if similar internal criticism occurs in other countries or not. For all we know Daesh PR did a through analysis of burning Jordanian pilots alive in cages [0] and found it unhelpful to their cause. Given that any large enough human org…

Political science studies in English-speaking universities would uncover this. There isn't the same opportunity for public-exposed internal investigations in countries where media and whistleblowing is less free. Whistleblowing does not have to be safe in the US to still be more dangerous in another country.
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