Afghani Feelings.

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Yesterday's news was about 9 Afghani children who were dismembered accidentally by American military attacks. The fathers of the dead children ask "what kind of terrorists were these?"

Indeed...

 

I know. Imagine the guilt that father must be feeling. All those years we allowed the Taliban to rule us. All those years the Taliban supported Al Queda (sic). If only we hadn't been a nation that harbored villians capable of the 9/11/01 disaster. Then this ACCIDENT would have never happened. Hindsight is always 20/20.

 

@ The Great Snook

Unfortunately, I doubt anyone in Afganistan is going to blame this or any other problems that theyhave in the future on the Taliban's support of Al Qaeda.

As tradition dictates, the United States will be blamed for all of it.

Hell, "they" blame us for World War 1 and 2 - if you can believe it.

 

The problem is that, as far as I can remember and with the possible exception of Chechenya, the american armed forces are the only ones who are involved in such "accidents". The chinese embasy in Belgrade, the civilian convoy in Kossovo, the Canadian troops in Afganistan, the wedding in Afganistan and the list goes on and on. Are they incompetent, cold blooded murderers, or just scared kids who are afraid of their own shadow and therefore they shoot everything that moves? The choice is yours.

 

With all due respect to my American brethren, the Afghans have every right to blame this particular tragedy on Americans. After all - our military did do it, right or wrong.

Tradition, sentiment, or politics have nothing to do with it. It's a fact. We just killed several innocent children. Please don't piss on their graves.

The Taliban or Al Quaida have nothing to do with the fact that even the most precise, well funded and well trained military in the world can f*ck up and hit the wrong target sometimes. Just ask Canada if we're capable of mistakes like this.

 

@Blackthorne TA

The question to ask is would they still have done it if they knew that the children were down there. Would this knowledge have detered them from their goals?

 

@ Jaguar

No doubt. Americans, like most civilized people, consider acts against the weak and young as the most depraved and evil.

There are very few societies which will consciously target children.

Quite true. Of course, America is usually the only nation doing the actual fighting. As a result, we will be responsible for the majority (if not all) civilians casualties.

But, in all, this was a horrible incident. Its certainly not the worst that has happened in that very chaotic part of the World, but still very unfortunate.

 

Dresden. Hiroshima. My Lai. Enough said.

 

@ Sojourner

War then is very different from war now. The techinology of the time was very "dumb" and civilian casualties were commonplace.

Look what happened to the people of Berlin?

The military made a decision - a rather unforunate one - that using the bomb would, in the end, save lives. All in all, we shouldn't have dropped it

BTW, did you know that the military did not understand the long term consequences of nuclear technology? American troops were killed while training with test nukes in Arizona.

 

The Brits have participated in all the major military campaings or peacekeeping missions the last years and they were never responsible for such accidents. Many other nations have participated in such campaigns or missions and they have never caused such accidents. I don't know if you remember an incident in the last gulf war when an American A-10 attacked a british armored convoy. One of the british soldiers said that the A-10 was just 50 meters off the ground and that before he attacked he flown above the british convoy. The fact that the pilot could not see the difference between British Scimitars and Iraqi BMP-1s shows just two things, incompetence and lack of training.

 

Brits kill four Iraqi protestors.
Gallipoli
Bombing of civilians in N. Ireland

... I got bored of looking after I got this far. Let me just say it's stupid to say that Brits don't make military mistakes.

 

Well shoot, I was beaten to the punch. I was just going to say I randomly picked nations and started looking.

Pakistan killed 16 civilians in a hospital.

India killed 26 civilians, including a 6 year old girl by mistake.

France special forces accused of civilian deaths in Algeria - numbers disputed.

Germans kill civilians in the Balkans.

I stopped there. I think people notice the US' mistakes for a couple of reasons. 1) They want to notice them - the world press doesn't care nearly as much when Pakistan or whoever kills civilians. It isn't as "news worthy." 2) The other reason it seems like the US is involved in more accidents is, as noted above, because it is. I saw where Germany had ~60k abroad in 2002 according to one paper. For comparison, the US had 68,000 in Germany alone. More troops abroad equals more accidents. It seems like common sense to me.

 

The US Military is perhaps the best trained, best equipped in the history of the world. They perform missions that no other military could, using hardware no other military has. I am certain that the statistics are out there to support it, but I would be willing to bet that the number of civilian deaths per involved combatant is lower than in any other armed conflict.

The US goes out of it's way to minimize civilian casualties, even to the point of dictating a "rules of engagement" in Afganistan that actually puts our soldiers at greater risk. There were supposedly opportunities for us to get bin Laden, and the authorization to strike came too late because of concern about collateral damage.

At a personal level, if it had been my child who died as the result of a misdirected bomb, I would be hard pressed not to hate those who dropped it.

 

I heard of a documentary a while back. Apparrently (and this was in Afganistan as well I believ, allthough in an earlier conflict) Some US troops' tank had broken down, so they were waiting for the repair crew to get back to them. Sometime later an envoy of US troops came upon them, all standing outside their tank, and immediately opened fire, most were killed before it was realised they too were American. The Government ordered everyone involved to tell the families of the dead soldiers, and everyone else, a fictiotious story that they were shot by 'terrorists' or something ridiculous similar, on penalty of court-martialing. Someone leaked it. The program was entitled 'Friendly Fire' I believe, and this was just one of the stories.

US trops also recently chain-gunned an Iraqi villiage at dawn, because some of the houses might have been harbouring 'terrorists' I believe someone here actually linked an article regarding it.

Now I've seen some footage of the troops, I know this must be taken with kilograms of salt, but it doesn't seem like the majority of the troops treat the others with much respect, indeed, they seem more than happy to shoot first and ask questions later. The Government has more than showed its contempt for civilian life, and such buildings are frequently bombed - now I'm not talking about the buildings in Iraq which have weapons installed upon them, but so-called 'missfires' with long-range missile attacks.

Now I'm certain a good deal care greatly about human life, I am in no way denying this. But perhaps it is the exception and not the rule. Please understand I am not portraying every soldier as a trigger-happy or cold-hearted murderer, I know this is not the case, but either some are, or those same are callously inept.

By no means am I trying to portray that no other nation is innocent of this. I live in a country which has been long used to being sent in as allied cannon-fodder. That seems to be our main purpose in the wars we have previously been ordered to participate in by our 'commonwealth'.

 

I did a search for 'Friendly Fire' to try to find Manus' documentary. I found two news articles I thought worth linking. If anyone is interested they can read those articles and then do a compare/contrast on how they are presented. The difference in presentation is... interesting. Note that both news sources are respected UK sources - both at least relatively against the Iraq war (with the Guardian publicly against it and the BBC less publicly):

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1104539,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2901515.stm

At least this statement is backed up by your having seen some footage of troops before. Sheesh.

 

This is a two-fold issue, with the issue of American involvement in the killing of children being deftly turned aside by the smoke and mirror approach used by the apologists for the "mistakes" made by the American military. Oh, yes, "well Pakistan does such and such, or "India does this as well." As if that is really the issue of the topic before us. The first issue is the killing of children plain and simple; and I am surprised by some on this board who most often show some senitivity on other matters and are overlooking the moral consequences of these "mistakes." Or should at least be willing to render the "reponsibility" word used so often by my countrymen when it is in their best interest to pull out the big "R" word.

To say that the children died because of the Taliban is a gross mischaracterization of the issue. What have the children to do with the Taliban? Did they personally install the Taliban in their country? Did they vote them into the offices of high government? Yet, they are the ones who are dead. And those who would deflect blame off the US government for their deaths are only producing the worst kind of excuses for the tragedy before us. The children paid the full price, and are now left with the legacy of "blame" for a brutal and totalitarian regime that did support and harbor the murderers of several thousand other innocents in New York City. But that is the pattern; the innocent die, then they are blamed for the deaths of other innocents. The real perpetrators wash their hands and walk away, smug and as arrogant as before. I'm sure Bin Laden is "laughing" somewhere. How utterly pathetic.

The second issue is the involvement of America in accomplishing two things: Frist, chasing the Taliban out of Afghanistan, and second, chasing the terrorist network out of the country that had become entrenched there since the Russian retreat left the power vacuum which allowed them both to gain control. That is good thing for everyone, except the bad guys. Are innocents going to die in the process? Well, probably. Should America be willing to take responsibility for their "mistakes?" And perhaps rethink a few things? I would hope so.

And, sorry for the sarcastic tone of this post, but the thought of my country killing children for the "good and noble cause" just doesn't sit so well with me at the moment.

 

Laches, I am not sure if I get the correct meaning of your post. But if my assumption is right, and you're implying some "bias", by comparing/contrasting them, then I think you mix apples with oranges. The BBC one is from March, the linked Guardian article is from December. The Guradian article which should be contrasted with the BBC-march article is the according Guardian one from march, I think.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,926167,00.html

 

@Shralp and Laches

If by Gallipoli, Algeria and German in Balkans, you mean WW1, the algerian war of independence and WW2, you compare apples and oranges. All these examples took place at least 50 years ago (if you haven't noticed, in my post I have written "last years" meaning the last 15-20 years) and furthermore these examples were deliberate killings not accidents and mistakes (I include to this category Sharlp's links about Iraqi protestors and Nothern Ireland as well). The soldiers, who killed these people, did it on purpose knowing exactly what they were doing. All the incidents caused by americans that I have mentioned happened because of bad information (chinese embasy) or because of incompetence and lack of training (civilian convoy in Kossovo). Of course if you mean that these incidents were not mistakes but deliberate actions, then I agree with you.

PS1. Laches, I've searched the web but the only thing I found about your examples on India and Pakistan was a pakistani report that Indian artillery had caused civilian casaulties. Could you provide some links?