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Afghan Hospital Bombing: MSF Demands Investigation Under Geneva Conventions

posted by n1 on Thursday October 08 2015, @06:44PM   
from the known-unknowns-of-collateral-damage dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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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Original Submission

• Re:Meh. (Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Friday October 09 2015, @02:45PM

  by tathra (3367) on Friday October 09 2015, @02:45PM (#247438)

  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.

  nope, the job of service members (i'm assuming you mean infantrymen specifically here), per FM 7-8: [globalsecurity.org]

  The mission of the infantry is to close with the enemy by means of fire and maneuver to defeat or capture him, or to repel his assault by fire, close combat, and counterattack.

  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.

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