Airstrikes in Afghanistan: US Knowingly Kills Civilians

[babylonsister]

Airstrikes in Afghanistan: US Knowingly Kills Civilians

Posted by Scarecrow at 5:50 AM on October 29, 2007.

Scarecrow: There's a "macabre kind of calculus" about whether the "target" was "worth" the likely number of civilian deaths.


This post, written by Scarecrow, originally appeared on FireDogLake

CBS 60 Minutes revealed last night that the US military in Afghanistan uses air strikes in situations it knows will kill innocent civilians, if the commanders also believe enough Taliban might be killed. The result has been a doubling of civilian casualties, such that we now kill as many civilians as the Taliban and al Qaeda.

And all Aghfan President Karzai can do is plead with George Bush, so far unsuccessfully, that the US stop using air strikes against civilian targets.

In one of many such incidents this year, US forces announced they had carried out an air strike and had killed several suspected militants. However, the military declined to provide further information on who might have been killed, and when reports leaked out that most of the victims had been women and children -- innocent civilians -- 60 Minutes sent a team to find out what happened.

In interviews with 60 Minutes, US military acknowledged that field commanders had clearance to call in air strikes on civilian targets, knowing that innocent deaths would likely occur, provided they made what one official described as a "macabre kind of calculus" about whether the "target" was "worth" the likely number of civilian deaths.

more...

http://alternet.org/blogs/peek/66351/#more

[NNN0LHI]

1. I wonder why they hate our fecking guts? n/t

[babylonsister]

5. Who can blame them? nt

[indepat]

6. Enough to make one wonder if the guys wearing the black hats are the only ones who commit

acts of terrorism.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Sad that we're still bombing them six years later--how fucking inept.

[gratuitous]

3. Isn't this prima facie evidence of a war crime?

I'm not as up on the Geneva Conventions as perhaps I should be, but isn't the deliberate targeting of civilian non-combatant populations a war crime? See, that's why war is such a difficult proposition: You're supposed to fight your armed, combatant adversary, not the civilians who just happen to live where you chose to prosecute your war. More of that hard work the commander in chief detests so much.

[babylonsister]

4. I wonder how that would hold up, since this isn't a declared 'war'? nt