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posted by
n1
on Thursday October 08 2015, @06:44PM
from the known-unknowns-of-collateral-damage dept.
from the known-unknowns-of-collateral-damage dept.
A Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) hospital was bombed by the US. Result, 12 dead staff members and 10 dead patients. The coordinates of the hospital had been communicated to the US forces before to avoid mistakes. The US admits the attack was a decision. MSF is now seeking an independent inquiry.
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Afghan Hospital Bombing: MSF Demands Investigation Under Geneva Conventions
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by RedBear on Friday October 09 2015, @01:58AM
If anything? If anything?!? What went wrong is quite clear and has already been admitted, we bombed a hospital full of doctors and non-combatant patients, doing immeasurable damage to our international reputation and violating the established Rules of War which we have sworn to follow.
It doesn't matter how (un)civilized you think the enemy is. Everyone involved in a conflict always makes that claim anyway, so it's frequently meaningless. But even if it's completely true, it's still meaningless. The only thing that matters in a conflict is how civilized _we_ are. We don't get a free pass to commit war crimes in violation of the Geneva Convention just because our enemy might be violating the Geneva Convention. We have to follow the rules that we have agreed to and accept the consequences of violating those rules or we end up just as lacking in honor as the supposed enemy. And don't give me that crap about, "No war has been officially declared so the Geneva Convention doesn't apply." That's just juvenile sophistry of the highest order.
If it is in fact the enemy's goal to operate out of protected civilian bases for the specific purpose of being targeted so they can use the end results for propaganda, it seems to me that's a perfect observation of exactly why those facilities should never be targeted under any circumstances. Because it doesn't matter if that hospital was chock full of "terrorists" and completely devoid of non-combatants, what matters is that the whole world now knows you just bombed a goddamn hospital. And it was full of civilian doctors this time.
As a former Marine and son of a Marine, and an American-born citizen descended from I don't even know how many generations of Americans, it never ceases to amaze me how the conservative war-hawk mind can't seem to comprehend how stupid, dishonorable and completely counterproductive it is to commit any sort of violations of things like the Geneva Convention, or argue that they are somehow justified under some specific set of circumstances. You're just descending to the level of the opposition forces and playing right into their hands, acting as willing participants in their campaign to show how their enemy has no honor or moral authority. You wrestle with the pig, you get covered in stinky mud to the point where nobody can tell the two of you apart by sight, sound or smell.
(I don't even have the slightest clue what you meant by the last sentence (in either paragraph), unless it was, "The whole world is out to get 'Murica 'cuz we're the Good Guys[TM]!" "International gang of misfits"? I can't even.)
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @10:19AM
That's cute. You think honor exists. Let me guess and say you never actually saw an active warzone. The greenhorns always talk about honor until they see what war looks like for themselves.
It's the job of service members to go out and kill enemy soldiers, innocent of any crimes. Don't talk about juvenile sophistry when you hang the rule of law against murder in favor of your profession. That is what we do. Kill people. That is what the armed forces is. You clearly are naive.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Friday October 09 2015, @02:45PM
nope, the job of service members (i'm assuming you mean infantrymen specifically here), per FM 7-8: [globalsecurity.org]
killing is neither a requirement nor recommended during combat, since killing a person only takes that one person out of combat, but wounding him takes out him, and the 2-3 more guys that will have to take care of him. or at least thats what they taught us at Infantry AIT. and there are legitimate justifications for the use of deadly force, such as self-defense (which a firefight is by definition), but so long as you don't go outside the bounds of your ROE [wikipedia.org] and other laws of war [wikipedia.org] like the geneva conventions [wikipedia.org] there's no problem and you're not a murderer, but if you go outside of the ROE and laws of war, such as murdering innocent civilians or doctors or enemies that have surrendered, then you're the same kind of scum as the nazis.
your gross oversimplification tries to gloss over the complexities involved in warfare in order to push one specific, biased viewpoint. once bullets start flying all that temporarily goes out the window, but once that firefight is over, you're still responsible for all of your actions. "they were shooting at me a minute ago" does not justify murdering or torturing them after they surrendered, or abusing any of their corpses.