Whenever the US suffers a military setback, it reacts the same way. It lashes out in revenge, usually by bombing the hell out of some people in an effort to show that it is still powerful and to distract attention from its failures. While the US military always says that it aimed at and hit military targets, more often than not innocent people are among the victims of its actions. This seems to be the case with Joe Biden’s bombing of targets in response to the bombing near the Kabul airport that killed over a hundred people. The US military’s initial reports, as usual, claim that mostly militants were hit and that any civilian casualties, if any, were inadvertent or even the fault of the targets.
A U.S. drone strike blew up a vehicle carrying “multiple suicide bombers” from Afghanistan’s Islamic State affiliate on Sunday before they could attack the ongoing military evacuation at Kabul’s international airport, American officials said. An Afghan official said three children were killed in the strike.
…Earlier in the day, Urban said in a statement that the U.S. was confident that the missile successfully hit the target. And he said that the large secondary explosions indicated the presence of “a substantial amount of explosive material” in the vehicle.
The strike came two days after an Islamic State suicide attack outside the airport killed at least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. The U.S. carried out a drone strike elsewhere in the country on Saturday that it said killed two IS members.
President Joe Biden had vowed to keep up the airstrikes, saying Saturday that another attack was “highly likely.” The State Department called the threat “specific” and “credible.”
However, it appears that many civilians were killed in the attack, including children.
A US drone strike near Kabul airport ended up killing 10 members of one family, including six children, surviving relatives have told the BBC.
The 10 were killed when a car parked at their home was struck by an explosion on Sunday.
The US military said it was targeting a vehicle carrying at least one person associated with the Afghan branch of the Islamic State group.
It said people nearby may have been hit in the aftermath of the strike.
The youngest child to be killed was two-year-old Sumaya, and the oldest child was 12-year-old Farzad, the family said.
“It’s wrong, it’s a brutal attack, and it’s happened based on wrong information,” Ramin Yousufi, a relative of the victims, told the BBC.
He added, tearfully: “Why have they killed our family? Our children? They are so burned out we cannot identify their bodies, their faces.”
Another relative, Emal Ahmadi, told the BBC that it was his two-year-old daughter who was killed in the strike.
It never ends.
Those Americans, they just don’t value human lives like other people do. Not even their own.
Off topic: you Americans right now have good reason to mock the parliamentary system *).
https://everything.explained.today/Dutch_cabinet_formation/
After 6 ½ months the politicians have finally decided to kick in the open door: the first phase (information) has failed. Let me see if I can explain.
-- the biggest party VVD (conservative like JoeB) wants a coalition with CDA (christian right wing; they have lost the elections) and D’66 (liberal in the American meaning of the word -- ie sometimes moderately progressive, sometimes moderately right wing in Europe; they have won several seats) Evt. VVD will agree to have either PvdA (used to be and has become again social-democratic) or GL (the ecological party that has become way too big a fan of free market superstition to my taste) but not both. Ideally they want to continue the now demissionary cabinet.
-- PvdA and GL only want to join the coalition together. They have proposed to form a joined parliamentary group.
-- D66 doesn’t want CU (Christian Union -- fundamentalist on issues like abortion, progressive on ecological and social topics) to join the coalition, hence CU “doesn’t feel welcome”.
-- CDA has lost both the elections and the second most important prominent Pieter Omzigt; since then it doesn’t know what it wants.
So a coalition that has a majority in Dutch parliament is impossible, something that was clear right after the elections.
*) This mess is one reason I’m a fan of the German political system.
Ten people dead, but the deaths were justified because one of them was a terrorist.
mnb0:
Starting from the largest and going down until it’s above 50% (from wikipedia):
VVD: 21.9%
D66: 15%
PVV: 10.8%
CDA: 9.5%
That equals 57.2%.
Not saying it would be a good coalition which could have agreements about a coherent set of policies. But to be fair, it doesn’t look like any such combination would be easy to put together.
It looks very clear that this is all being done in order to skip over PVV and keep them out of the picture. From what you’re saying, it sounds like they’re also avoiding SP (6%) in favor of smaller ones like PvdA (5.7%) and/or GL (5.2%). You also brought up CU (3.4%), which itself is behind FvD (5%) and PvdD (3.8%), which didn’t even get mentioned.
It’s sort of understandable that they want to be selective (not just use impartial mathematical criteria, like going from largest to smallest as I did above). But obviously, you do run into issues this way.
I suppose a big part of it is not about finding allies you can agree with or anything of the sort…. After all, how could anyone do that with such a mess? I mean, you also don’t want to create more competition for yourself in future elections, by enhancing another party’s legitimacy and giving them a larger role to play. So instead of working with them, some of the big ones become your targets (for exclusion), because even at that basic level they’re the most threatening.
Also, it’s PVV … enough said. But at the same time, if they’re also leaving out SP, then it’s a rather delicate balance for them, isn’t it?