It was just a mistake.
A US air strike killed more than 85 civilians, including children, in Syria on Tuesday after the coalition mistook them for Islamic State fighters.
Some eight families were hit as they tried to flee fighting in their area, in one of the single deadliest strikes on civilians by the alliance since the start of its operations in the war-torn country.
A slight inaccuracy. A little slip-up. A bit of a faux pas, don’t you know. A blunder. A goof. Flubbed that one. A boo-boo. One brown person fleeing looks like another. They were wearing middle-eastern-looking clothes! If they didn’t want to get blown up, they shouldn’t have been living in a place that has terrorists. How do you know they were all innocent? Not our fault, we had good intentions, we didn’t mean to kill frightened civilians. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette. We have to kill the terrorists, sometimes civilians get in the way. Would you rather let the terrorists win? Collateral damage. Collateral damage. Collateral damage.
85 dead Syrians/terrorists/Islamic State fighters/Muslims. The labels help. Makes it easier to forget these were 85 dead human beings, as long as you don’t use the labels “children”, “women”, “men”, “families”, “people”.
Oh well, no hard feelings, right?
I’m sure the death of civilians never inspires anybody to join the opposing forces.
Collateral damage. What a disgusting, dirty, evil, dehumanizing word.
In Germany, it was in fact crowned the “un-word of the year of 1999”.
How many American civilians have been killed by terrorists since 9/11/2001? How many civilians has the US government accidentally killed? How many civilians have been killed on purpose?
How exactly is terrorism defined?
… in one of the single deadliest strikes on civilians by the alliance …
So this particular massacre may not even claim the record, for Obama, in Syria. (Not that anybody in US corporate media will ever attempt a tally.)
let me go Muslima about this: You think Obama is bad, Dubya was worse. Dubya would have thought 86 was essentially a miss, calling to redouble the effort to get that number up into the hundreds.
Pierce R. Butler @3: It’s not just the corporate media. I stopped reading and commenting at TBogg’s old blog because of the support for drone strikes by him and most of his commenters. Anyone questioning their wisdom was taunted for their “purity”, and inability to understand the “real world” we live in, with many references to unicorns and rainbows, etc. The moral vacuity was nauseating. No idea if he still feels the same way, but I could never read anything by him again. Puke.
Idunno. I find the idea of a collateral-free war criminally naive. The last few decades we’ve been swallowing the idea of “surgical warfare” with little critical thought. We’ve all seen the PR-footage of a cruise missile navigating the traffic, knocking on the door and verifying the identity of the occupants before blowing up that house without disturbing the curtains next door. Clean warfare.
MY ARSE! War means killing people. Soldiers or civilians, bombs can’t tell the difference. Heck, often a person on the ground can’t tell them apart. War means collateral damage, if you can’t justify that then stop waging them.
You may notice a scarcity of pro-war writers on this network (i.e. preaching to the choir, mate).
Or make shit up to pretend everything is justified. The enemy has terrible weapons [he doesn’t actually have]! Call everything the enemy does terrorism!* Use crappy ‘definitions’ that muddy the waters further still and can be made to fit any mould you need them to. (e.g. the ‘imminent danger’ stuff in some documents used to justify drone strikes)
*At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if an old-fashioned tank battle between US and IS would be called an ‘act of terrorism’, no matter who started it.
The problem is, sadly, that we know objectively that isn’t true. Obama enormously increased the rate of drone strikes when he took office. See this visualization for a dramatic illustration. (The page has an auto-play video–you’ll have to kill it and scroll down.)
I’m sure Dubya would have liked to unleash the kind of furious death that Obama did. I suspect he was afraid that if he went too far, he might trigger a backlash from the outraged 50% plus-or-minus of voters who opposed him. Just as he stopped short of pronouncing a doctrine that he himself could declare anyone in the world an “enemy combatant” and then order them killed without a trial.
Obama did both of those things secure in the knowledge that the right would actually assist him by loudly complaining that he’s not doing ENOUGH about “terrorism.” The left would ignore or rationalize his actions, and would use the complaints of the right-wingers as evidence that he couldn’t possibly have just done what he did, indeed, just do. If the right says he’s “soft on terrorism,” in fact a closeted Muslim himself, then he can’t possibly be raining merciless death from killer robots in the sky, right? If he were, the right would applaud, wouldn’t they?
Obama’s biggest crime is making this kind of mass murder bipartisan. There’s no reason to doubt that Hillary will follow his example, and that we’re basically looking at a 5th term for GWB.
(That Trump would probably be worse, and is certainly dangerously unpredictable, I fully realize. Our choice is between a fraternal twin of GWB, who will be decent on women’s issues at least, and a crazed[*] supervillain literally escaped from the pages of comic books.)
[*] I don’t mean that in the ableist sense, and I’m not referring to mental illness. I’m referring to the comic-book trope of the crazed supervillain who cackles as he destroys worlds, in pursuit of nothing except destruction as an end in itself.
this highlights what is the state of language around war.
It probably is not a new phenomenon. Getting accurate information is extremely difficult and since Vietnam and the effect of news coverage had on that conflict.
The overall stats are broken down and distinctions are made that distort or put the best face possible face on the facts. Some times facts come out so they have to use “soft words” to shade things other times they just bury it by not counting them or including them with the enemy dead. Civilian casualties are seldom counted publicly.
Our dead and injured numbers are also broken down in ways that appear better then they are, combat dead are only counted in the totals if they died in the field or in country but not if they died some time later as the result of the injuries received in battle all in the name of accuracy of course. The numbers in war have always tended toward inaccuracy.
uncle frogy
“War means collateral damage, if you can’t justify that then stop waging them.”
That WOULD be nice. I am not a half-measures kinda guy. If we want war with all the brown people, let Congress declare war. Recognize ISIS as a legitimate government of a section of Syria and declare WAR!!
Or, if you don’t think you can go that far, GO HOME!!
How much money are we pissing away in that area on military action? How much money would it take to set up a refugee pipeline to resettle refugees in the US? How much human potential and good will are sacrificing every time we blow up a “terrorist” in that area?
Call in the Marines. Do a giant refugee relocation program – we can even send them to the southwest US so the climate is a little familiar. Call it Operation Levant Airlift. How many grateful hardworking Syrians do we get as US citizens in 10 years after naturalization?
Sorry, I forgot. Better to kill them. Yeah, that will get us what we want.
I’m generally OK with stopping waging war, thanks.
Also, are “we” actually at war in Syria in any kind of formal sense? Has the Syrian government requested our assistance? Has there been a UN resolution authorising the use of force? Has there been a formal declaration of war? Has Congress authorised military action? What are our war aims? Who, exactly, is the enemy? What are the terms of engagement? How will we know when we’ve won?
It is ironic that the Bush administration arrested and tortured insurgents as “illegal combatants” but its OK to penetrate other countries’ airspace with armed drones when you’re not at war with them, and fire missiles at their civilians. Nothing illegal about that, right?
Dunc@#12:
Has the Syrian government requested our assistance?
I assume you’re asking rhetorically but: no. The Syrians asked for help from the Russians against the CIA backed militias attempting “regime change” – you know how the US complained about “foreign fighters” in Iraq? This time they’re us. And “officially” there are no soldiers deployed there so the president can ignore the war powers act.
Thus assuring that research on autonomous robotic soldiers is going full tilt in secret labs somewhere. Once we have an all-robot army, the President could exterminate the populations of entire continents for all most Americans would care.
Time for everyone to reread “Second Variety” by Philip Dick…
Meanwhile the US air force is flying strikes for the PKK/peshmerga – who were a terrorist group according to the US Department Of State. It’s like a scene out of Woody Allen’s “bananas” except its not as funny. And “bananas” wasnt very funny.
So, that’s essentially the death toll of Nizza, including the horrors of killed children with the world collectively shrugging its shoulders
Yeah but look how good this will seem compared to when Trump nukes everything.
You can’t build oil pipelines if people are living on the land.
I still doubt that I was wrong (naturally /s). meaning I was basing my “muslima” on death toll, not limited to drone strikes.
While not having actually tallied the figures, I’d still bet that GWB has a far bigger toll than Obama (initials are misleading).
I too dislike the drone strikes, so I’ll leave it at that.
@Dunc #12:
When the big ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner goes up on an aircraft carrier half a world away, of course.
slithey tove… @ # 20: …I’d still bet that GWB has a far bigger toll than Obama …
But, sfaict, GWB’s policies have killed fewer Iraqi civilians than WJC’s. I’ve looked, and still don’t know where you could find reliable figures for either administration’s atrocities, but Bill Clinton’s faithful following of Dubya Daddy’s Iraq sanctions program killed at least 500,000 children (as acknowledged on camera by his UN ambassador), a number matching the higher range of estimates for total casualties caused by Dubious’s war on Iraq.
Something tells me HRC will outdo her husband. [Insert desperate screaming emoji here.]
Oh fuck.
Another war criminal for president.
And another.
Jado,
I keep saying that with the right immigration and integration policies refugees could actually solve or at least mitigate Europe’s current demographic crisis. I also keep learning that by “demographic crisis” people don’t mean lack of young people, they mean lack of white babies.
Nonononononono: to pull a Muslima, you’d have to say something like “Daesh does worse“, which would
1. Be technically true
2. Utterly fail to hide one’s contempt toward human lives who don’t belong to the right social group.
The problem is that people have fundamentally unrealistic expectations about how wars are fought. Whether its fuck ups like this or the kunduz hospital or that afghan wedding etc. These things are unavoidable. Does that mean we should take on a non combat role? I would say that may be a good idea. We can provide some support from the back but ultimately it’s the locals who have to get things done. This whole conflagration isn’t simply a result of the iraq war, it is a result of an unsustainable geopolitical configuration made in the power vacuum following the collapse of the ottoman empire. it is far more likely than not that we could be talking about Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and possibly even Saudi Arabia in the same way we talk about Yugoslavia in a few years. We need to let these countries form organically, not based on any preconceived notions of our own if they are to succeed. There will be blood, but I have my serious doubts we are going to improve this already horrifying situation by directly intervening. Get people food, shelter, education, and something to hope for. Beyond that I have no idea.
#17
Yes, but the West did it therefore it isn’t terroristic, because terrorists are by unwritten definition not westerners. When the West attacks a sovereign nation (or whoever, it doesn’t really matter so long as they are brownish), our lofty and idealistic self appraisal means we are justified and totally not bad for having done so, even if we fuck it up. Kind of like when christians defend their good as infinitely good despite all evidence to the contrary.
Well, up to a point (I’m currently reading Sean McMeekin’s The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908-1923). But intermittent if not continuous war has been the normal state of affairs throughout most of the world for most of history. That doesn’t mean it’s inevitable, or that we shouldn’t try to prevent it, or take responsibility for our own states’ past and present roles, but there just wasn’t, and isn’t, any “organic” arrangement of frontiers in the Middle East that would not leave plenty of grounds for inter-state wars, intra-state conflicts, and the persecution of vulnerable minorities.
However, I agree with your conclusion: the best we can do is to (press our governments to) stop actively killing people, and provide help and where necessary refuge for the victims.
My condolences to the family and friends of the victims.
This kind of “mistake” should mean military court and dishonorable discharge at the very least.
Further to #28: Oh, and scrap the arms export industries of our own countries (last time I looked, the five main arms suppliers to the world were, by an odd coincidence, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council).
Sounds like a ‘Free Fire Zone.’
For those too young to know what that pithy phrase means I suggest reading Nick Turse’s book ‘Kill Anything That Moves’. It’s about Vietnam, but I see definite parallels here. Actually, I dare anyone to read that book from cover to cover. If you do, you will never be able to hear the word ‘hero’ in connection to Vietnam without wanting to start throwing things.
I have never been able to get the image of Samar Hassan taken by Chris Hondros at a checkpoint in Tal Afar in 2005 out of my head. I won’t link to it due to being a TW, (description below) but searching for those names will get it. American soldiers somehow deemed her family a threat and shot her parents in front of her, at age 5. The picture is right after, her covered in her parents’ blood and screaming in terror.
We have been doing this for a long, long time. Not just in general, but as a response to this same “terrorist” thread of threat. It is horrifying.
@KG that’s a pretty fair point. I don’t think you’ll ever see an end to interstate conflict(there or anywhere else). I just think that could help mitigate it(Europe formed organically and that wasn’t exactly a bloodless process). I’ve long felt that terrorism was a highly overrated problem that would be largely forgotten about when the prospect of a real peer to peer interstate conflict became a real possibility. I fear I may be right. Between america and russia in the middle east and europe and china in the south china sea there is very little respect for international law, lots of nationalist chest beating and the creeping fascism that goes hand in hand.
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/comedy/funnystuff/syrian-orphan-sorry-to-hear-north-american-childhoods-ruined-by-enjoyable-film-about-ghosts-1.3680718
See, this is why I’m not voting for Clinton.
I’m honestly getting a little fed up with the hypocrisy of people who proudly support warmongers and then pretend they oppose their wars.
Yeah, we should all vote stein.
As we all know, anti-science medical quackery comes with no associated loss of life.
@Vivec: The number of people who die for quackery is not even comparable to the amount of death, destruction and trauma that a war produces. You are being disingenuous.
Oh, so I’m supposed to vote for the person that will lead to less innocent deaths?
I thought the “not as bad as” thing was the whole reason to vote third party?
Sorry, less – but not zero – innocent deaths?
Like, I’m supposed to pick from a spectrum of candidates, all who support candidates that will lead to dead innocents, and just accept that some amount of innocent deaths come along with electing a politician.
I also remain unconvinced that stein would somehow be unlike every president ever and avoid the urge to throw some bombs oversea.
That second “candidates” should be “policies”
Jake Harban, #35
Yeah, I’m not proudly voting for Clinton.
@Vivec: I’m not saying you have to vote for Stein: I was calling out a poor argument of yours.
The article I posted above was a parody of whataboutism.
Jake Harban’s or my posts were not “not as bad as”, since we are specifically discussing war casualties and how easily we dismiss them, exactly as you implicitly did at #36.
We all agree that this is a “pick your poison” situation where there are no good choices, and I already expressed my hope in a Clinton victory.
The use of drones by the US is remarkably similar to the use of planes by the British to “police” their empire after ww 1. They called it “air control,” an appropriately sterile euphemism. They would randomly strafe villages and gatherings of people who opposed British rule in any way. It was most commonly used in Africa but also in the north west frontier of India and in the British mandate areas of the middle East. So really nothing has changed. Meet the new empire same as the old empire.
Am I happy with Obama’s foreign policy, which will almost certainly be Clinton’s foreign policy? Hell no, not even a little bit.
However, I would point out that it was Bush’s foreign policy that created ISIS. If Gore had been elected he almost certainly would not have invaded Iraq and therefore there would not be this power vacuum that allowed the creation of ISIS*. There’s a good chance Gore’s far from perfect but not quite as bad policy on LGB people in the military would also have meant that he would not have fired the Arabic translators who could have given warning of the WTC attacks in time to stop them…which would have improved life on all sorts of levels from less screwy airport security to fewer people in the US demanding that Agrabah.
So I still see a difference between voting for the Republican, even a “traditional” “reasonable” Republican and the Democrat. I would prefer to have lived in a world where Gore won, though I’m sure you’d be arguing that he was a war monger for invading Afghanistan (which he likely would have done based on the information about the planned attack on the WTC) and for FSM knows what other foreign policy idiocy he would have committed. And I would have agreed with you that they were idiotic moves. Just not as bad as the moves Bush would have made. (Admittedly, if I’d said, “But Bush would have invaded Iraq too on a completely false pretense and that would have led to another particularly nasty radical Islamic terrorist group” you would have laughed me off the board, because what a ridiculously paranoid thing to think!)
*Of course, if we could somehow go back and prevent Reagan’s election, al Qaeda would probably never have been an issue either. It was his intervention in Afghanistan that led to its formation. Protecting the world from Communism, you know.)
dianne @ # 44: … Reagan’s … intervention in Afghanistan that led to its [ISIS’s] formation.
Alas, Reagan and his merry maladroits merely continued the Afghan war launched by Jimmy Carter & his Svengal, Z. Brzezinski.
Urrgh. Pls substitute “Al Qaeda” for “ISIS” in my # 45.
@45: Interesting point. As far as I know, Carter only blustered but Reagan was the one who actually supported the most radical parts of the Mujahadeen (spelling?). As I understand it, Reagan and co thought that the more radical factions would be the easiest to control and so provided them with funding and arms. Didn’t work out the best. Would Carter, in his hypothetical second term, have done better? I’m not sure, at least on that issue. He might have. He does have some ability as an international diplomat and might have managed to negotiate a peace in Afghanistan…or not. He might also have escalated much the same way Reagan did. He certainly would have done less damage to the internal economic structure of the US and we would probably not be in the mess we are right now in terms of rich/poor disparity. I suppose it’s irrelevant given how badly he lost: The US clearly wanted a Reagan, not a Carter at that point. Gore/Bush, though, could have gone either way and it’s the world’s bad luck that it went the way it did.
dianne @ # 47: As far as I know, Carter only blustered …
Nope. Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski had the brainstorm that “we” could “liberate” Eastern Europe by “giving the Russians their own Vietnam” by stirring up enough trouble in Afghanistan that it would force the Soviets to intervene.
Carter signed off on the project, in between posing as the president most concerned about international human rights ever. The CIA went to work, and Brezhnev drove Moscow into the trap at the end of 1979. That gave Carter a full year to pour gasoline on the fire (with dollar-for-dollar matching efforts by our glorious freedom-loving allies in Saudi Arabia, who stoked the most fanatical factions), in large part by mobilizing, motivating, and munitioning a previously tiny “Pan-Islamic jihad” movement around the world – a campaign so mind-bogglingly stupid and vicious that the Reaganistas couldn’t help but adopt it as their very own.
Look it up.
The US clearly wanted a Reagan, not a Carter at that point.
Again, nope. The polling was pretty close for much of the 1980 campaign, but Carter lost face in failing, both diplomatically and militarily, to get Iran to release US embassy staff taken hostage in Teheran. Illegal stealth negotiations with the ayatollahs by the Reagan campaign, it turns out, had a whole lot to do with that (aided and abetted after the fact by careful corporate media neglect of the story and the usual conspiracist concoctions muddying the water).
Iran released the hostages on Reagan’s inauguration day, knowing they now had a US presidency willing to make dirty deals.