Often times news such as this fly under the radar with our media.
This has to stop.
Aljazeera said:
This has to stop.
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U.S. strike targeting Taliban commander results in 60 civilian casualties.
- Thread starter Daverytimes
- Start date
Brown people apparently don't count as equal value humans. I am surprised they are being designated as "innocent" and simply not being labelled, "militant combatants" by sheer virtue of proximity to the target.
This is just horrible. Hearing so many things go wrong around the world, and the ensuing casualties. We could do so much better.
I could have sworn I've read stuff about the Bush admin doing this.
Doesn't seem like many have actually read the article, and it reads like clickbait. This was a NATO strike, not a US one, and the only source for the supposed 60 casualties is, according to the article, "the people."
Obama's admin did it, especially with the designation of casualties via drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Casualties were considered combatants if they were male and over the age of 16 (iirc). The designation would be on occasion be retracted posthumously after inspection.
"Toryalai Tahiri, deputy head of Herat provincial council, told Afghan local media TOLO News."
User Banned (2 weeks): inappropriate pedantry over multiple posts
"Resolute Support, NATO's mission in Afghanistan, told AFP news agency it launched "a defensive air strike in support of Afghan forces", with a spokesman confirming US participation in the operation."
US participation isn't the same thing as the US deciding to launch a drone strike in Afghanistan. It sounds more like the ANA called in an airstrike and it was given to them.
OP
OP
I mean it comes from the deputy head of the provincial council and eye witnesses, am afraid if you are waiting for U.S. confirmation that a drone strike led by them resulted in mass casualties, you'll be waiting for a very very long time.
The ANA calls airstrikes for local disputes all the time, it's just a gaggle of local grievances that they use US ordinance to settle.
One terrorist killed along with sixty innocent civilians. Who authorises a strike like this?
Obama admin had classified any male over a certain age killed in a strike to be a lawful target. Then came the killing of US citizens.
Obama admin had classified any male over a certain age killed in a strike to be a lawful target. Then came the killing of US citizens.
I agree. That's how I read it too.
ANA intel isn't exactly pristine. Separate question as to whether we should allow them to be our forward controllers.
Resolute Support has personnel from many different countries, with the U.S., Germany, and the UK each having over a thousand members. You can read about it here: https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2019_12/20191202_2019-12-RSM-Placemat.pdf
The ANA screws up constantly, and the article reads like this is another mistake on their part. The U.S. has done a great many terrible things around the world but I don't see any reason not to call out clickbait.
Guess it started later than I remembered. And worse than I remembered.
There are two important points with this.
First, it puts a very large thumb on the scale of any civilian casualty reports, as you correctly pointed out.
The second is that, while these so-called "combatants" aren't the targets of strikes -- that's the Taliban leaders on whom there is actionable intelligence -- if they're considered "combatants," then the jus in bello principle of proportionality is set aside. Normally, belligerents must take all feasible precautions to protect civilian life. See Protocol Additional I to the Geneva Conventions, art. 51(5)(b) ("an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated"); art. 57(2)(a)(i).
Accordingly, the position that unknown men are combatants doesn't mean that the U.S. considers them the direct targets of attack. (There's no intelligence on random Afghans. There is intelligence on certain Afghans -- some of these people are bad guys.) It does, however, mean that Allied belligerents have assigned them a status that obviates the need to conduct any proportionality analysis whatsoever.
In other words, their lives literally don't matter.
Resolute Support is commanded by a US General and nearly half its personel are US troops.
Yes, the US decided to launch this. That youd try to dismiss it as clickbait is appaling.
Haven't they been developing drones without explosive payloads? Why don't they actually start using that shit? Then again the US voted against getting rid of cluster bombs in the Yemen war that can stay undetected for years until someone innocent walks over them and dies.
I really appreciate your taking the time to break down the vernacular of the Laws in question for a more comprehensive look at how dismissive of American warfare is of life abroad especially of non-white people. Thank you.
I doubt this thread lasts all that long, not due to mods, but just due to lack of interest. Happens all the time with these. I'm sick of his bipartisan effort to continue doing this crap. Call out everyone who takes part in this. That's the only way this will ever be taken seriously as a starting point.
Yeah they are probably hanging out with the 80 US soldiers that lost their lives in the Iranian rocket strikes.
