International War Crimes Charge Against US Unlikely After Kunduz Hospital Bombing, Expert Says

[IDemo]

Source: ABC News

Despite claims by Doctors Without Borders that the U.S. bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan was a "war crime," a top legal expert ABC News spoke with said it is unlikely that international charges will be leveled in the incident, which left 22 dead.

However, there is the possibility that those involved in the bombing could be prosecuted by a U.S. military court.

Following the tragedy, officials with Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF, called the airstrike an "abhorrent and a grave violation of international humanitarian law," and suggested that a "war crime has been committed."

ABC News spoke to a number of leading war crimes experts, including the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and former DePaul University law professor M. Cherif Bassiouni, who explained that the motive behind the strike will matter a great deal.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/international-war-crimes-charge-us-kunduz-hospital-bombing/story?id=34345406

[bumprstickr]

1. no one messes with the big dog.

The winners make the rules and write the history.

[Blue_Tires]

2. No big surprise here

I've seen nothing so far to meet the legal threshold for proving willful intent...

Besides, the only people screaming up and down about this being completely "intentional" are Glenn Greenwald and MSF themselves... And even Greenwald with his epic hatred of Obama has been quietly backing away from his earlier tweets because he knows it's bullshit...

[uawchild]

3. "just" more collateral damage

Seriously, its not that people were ordered to shell a hospital from a flying gun platform, its just that it was near legitimate military targets and the fog of battle engulfed it tragically. And I am not even being sarcastic here.

Until all militaries place more emphasis on not harming civilians, these type of mistakes will continue to happen. And we all know that THAT isn't going to happen any time soon unfortunately.

The concept of civilians being sacrosanct and protected by a chivalric "Code of War" went out of fashion, oh, in the 15th century? The meat grinder of 20th century warfare took it all even further and made enemy civilians legitimate targets since they were part of an industrial society producing weapons and supporting the war effort in general.

Now, we only hear a clamor about civilian casualties when one side wants to score propaganda points against the other side. All combatants excuse their own "collateral damage" killing of civilians without much thought or introspection, sadly.

It's the 21st century now, you would have thought societies would be less callously violent by now.

[Purveyor]

4. But of course. eom