[HN Gopher] How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of ...
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How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in
Syria
Author : AndrewBissell
Score : 192 points
Date : 2021-11-14 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| tyingq wrote:
| It is encouraging to see this kind of in-depth reporting on the
| incident. I wonder for how much longer that's possible, given the
| declining revenue possible for news organizations.
| deanCommie wrote:
| If the Nuremberg principles were applied, every post-World War 2
| president would be indictable. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXtgq0Nhsc
| [deleted]
| GoodJokes wrote:
| Ok military industrial complex coders, give us a reason why you
| don't quit your job?
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| Americans literally fund murder of innocent children. Insane. We
| need Nuremberg Trails 2.0
| dumdumdumdum wrote:
| Would be nice to have Nuremberg Trials 1.0 for Hiroshima and
| Nagasaki first.
| stunt wrote:
| Most of the civilian casualties aren't even documented in a war.
| If you think the military you support invades a country and only
| kills the bad guys, you are watching too many hollywood movies.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| I think everybody understands there was never in history a war
| without innocent dying.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Even Hollywood movies often show civilian casualties.
|
| It's a war - it's chaotic by nature.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| As horrible as those allegations are, let's appreciate that the
| U.S. military may be about the only military force that is both
| capable of committing these mistakes/war crimes and investigating
| them.
|
| Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military
| lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar.
| megous wrote:
| So the US internally docummented some of the incidents. Is that
| useful to anyone? Did it have impact on anything? A lot of the
| reporting _at the time_ in the west was actually done by non-US
| organizations like airwars.org.
|
| I watched the reporting quite closely at the time.
|
| At least now I know how to interpret the reports from reporters
| embedded with US coalition in the past that they were not
| allowed into some area before it was cleaned. This article
| paints a clear picture of what might have been happening.
| curiousgal wrote:
| And y'all wonder why Americans are hated. It takes a special
| amount of delusion to pat yourself on the back, for whatever
| made-up reason, after having killed innocent people.
|
| Imagine saying the same thing about 9/11 and watch your life be
| torn to pieces.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| In the real world military actions often have unintended
| civilian casualties. The difference is that some groups don't
| care (china, russia) or are doing them purposefully
| (terrorists). If you can't understand the moral distinction
| then I don't think you're going to be able to add anything
| but noise to these kinds of debates.
| jessaustin wrote:
| The only intention of our many stupid wars is to further
| enrich armaments manufactures. It has nothing to do with
| security; Americans are vulnerable mostly to violence from
| ourselves. Killing civilians enriches armaments
| manufacturers just fine, and it plants the seeds for future
| wars, so it certainly is intended. Probably not by the rank
| and file (cf. Daniel Hale), but certainly by everyone in
| the Pentagon.
|
| Claiming otherwise is the best example of "noise".
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Perptually committing events like My Lai & Abu Gharib show
| how much we 'care'
|
| You should read this.
| https://theintercept.com/2017/01/10/the-crimes-of-seal-
| team-...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Americans are hated? I think you hang out in a fairly small
| social circle if that is the norm. Or are you just one of
| those self-hating Americans who thinks everyone else is just
| like you? Guessing that's the case from the use of "y'all"
| pkphilip wrote:
| You should travel more and ask people outside the US what
| they actually think about US military policy. Note, some
| people do distinguish between what the US establishment
| does and what ordinary American civilians do but that is
| not always the case.
| holoduke wrote:
| Ordinary Americans are quite nationalistic and rarely
| leave their country. World knowledge is very poor amongst
| the mid and low class American citizens.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| The US military has made plenty of mistakes but it is
| easily the fighting force that has done the most to
| ensure the rise in standard of living across the globe
| via protection of shipping lanes and maintaining global
| order
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's not what the article says. The article says that they
| stymied any internal inquiries, fudged numbers, and lied at
| every possible opportunity to do so. It's great that the NYT is
| covering it, because liberals might pay attention, but this
| looks like another case (like the rocket into the compound of
| an Afghan family seemingly out of a Hallmark card or a segment
| of CBS Sunday Morning) where pictures, testimony, and clear
| analysis were up shortly after the event, but since they were
| posted by locals and people opposed to the war, completely
| ignored by the media.
|
| No one will be punished for this, ever, except the people who
| wouldn't let go of the incident internally, and anyone who
| leaked to a journalist.
|
| I actually think that if it were China, we would see
| prosecution and punishment. It absolutely could never happen in
| the US.
| adolph wrote:
| I wonder what the larger societal context for this airstrike?
| The context for the "the rocket into the compound of an
| Afghan family" was a retreat from Afghanistan. Other previous
| bombings of questionable military value had other contexts.
|
| _These justifications for the bombing were disputed by the
| owners of the plant, the Sudanese government, and other
| governments. American officials later acknowledged "that the
| evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile
| strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first
| portrayed. Indeed, officials later said that there was no
| proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve
| gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been
| linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in
| the 1980s." The attack took place a week after the Monica
| Lewinsky scandal and two months after the film Wag the Dog,
| prompting some commentators to describe the attack as a
| distraction for the public from the scandal._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-
| Shifa_pharmaceutical_factor...
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| The United States asked its ally countries to manufacture
| charges to imprison a foreign journalist for exposing many of
| its war crimes during the Iraq War, and they complied. We are
| no better than your imagined, contrived scenario.
|
| This hubris that we are somehow better, more moral, or more
| able to investigate and correct mistakes is a long disproven
| farce that needs to die.
| sollewitt wrote:
| The story is how
|
| 1) there are systems in place to stop this happening.
|
| 2) there are system in place to investigate if it happens.
|
| 3) the systems in 1) are circumvented
|
| 4) the systems in 2) are stymied
|
| This means the systems have been corrupted. It means the US
| military can claim to care about those things but actually acts
| entirely contra to those stated principles. This is more
| cynical than not pretending to care.
| __m wrote:
| Next you'll tell us that Julian assange is on the payroll of
| the us military and the us is not going after him.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >U.S. military may be about the only military force that is
| both capable of committing these mistakes/war crimes and
| investigating them
|
| I'd prefer if they just not did them in the first place. I
| consider the alleged transparency simply to be a more subtle
| form of propaganda. It simply exists to give more credibility
| to warfare. It's in a sense how everything around American
| society is structured. When you make everyone belief they can
| be a millionaire they're not going rebel although they won't,
| when you get people to voluntarily fight they'll do it eagerly,
| etc
|
| Also as a psychological mechanism it is a kind of reverse
| version of what Adorno called secondary antisemitism. Which is
| the kind of antisemitism where someone will use the crimes
| committed against the Jews against them. (for example "I hate
| them, they've ruined the idea of German nationalism!"). Arguing
| to take American war-crimes as an opportunity to appreciate
| American virtue in dealing with them is to relegate the victim
| to an object, and to basically declare the American moral
| character the most important thing in the world, which is very
| bizarre.
| lordgrenville wrote:
| Following through on your analogy, though, this would be akin
| to "secondary patriotism" - responding to criticism of your
| country with mitigation: "well, we've done bad things, but at
| least we have mechanisms for internal criticism and
| improvement". Put that way it doesn't sound so bad.
| jessaustin wrote:
| You overestimate the USA military's tolerance for investigation
| of its many "mistakes". Julian Assange has been persecuted for
| over a decade now for the "crime" of investigating such
| "mistakes". Korsak and Tate as described in TFA will probably
| suffer as previous whistleblowers like Daniel Hale, John
| Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, Chelsea Manning, etc.
|
| Let's not give TFA too much credit, however. In 12 pages of
| reporting on USA military action in Syria, they couldn't find
| space to mention the fact that right now in mid-November 2021
| USA military _still_ occupies the oil- and agriculturally-rich
| eastern _third_ of this nation, thus ensuring that while they
| can 't buy food due to sanctions they're also not allowed to
| eat their own food because "fuck you"? In order for this
| brutality to end, it must be reported upon.
|
| https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/05/tulsi-gabbard-calls-out-t...
| trasz wrote:
| It's a slightly different case, but look at what happened last
| time Russia shot down an airliner
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17):
| the perpetrators weren't exactly judged, but they got
| "disappeared", which is a form of punishment. For comparison,
| when the US shot down an airliner
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655), the
| perpetrators... got decorated.
| m0llusk wrote:
| And their weapon system was retired. There were terrible
| crimes, but trying to make complex situations simple to suit
| your preferred narrative actually weakens your arguments.
| trasz wrote:
| That American perpetrators got decorated for this is a
| pretty simple and easily verifiable fact.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| The cases couldn't be more different...
|
| There is no record of an investigation of how the Malaysia
| Airlines Flight 17 got shot down. Whereas the incident with
| the Iranian airliner almost looks like it was provoked by the
| Iranian side.
| trasz wrote:
| Yay, blaming the victims, I almost didn't see that coming.
| adolph wrote:
| > Just imagine what would happen if Russian or Chinese military
| lawyers or journalists tried to do something similar.
|
| There doesn't seem to be English language publication to
| establish if similar internal criticism occurs in other
| countries or not. For all we know Daesh PR did a through
| analysis of burning Jordanian pilots alive in cages [0] and
| found it unhelpful to their cause. Given that any large enough
| human organization has internal conflict it would stand to
| reason that similar internal criticism occurs.
|
| It's not as if US whistleblowers live carefree lives. The NYT
| associates Mr. Tate's job loss with criticism of the US'
| internal response to the bombing.
|
| _Mr. Tate, a former Navy officer who had worked for years as a
| civilian analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the
| National Counterterrorism Center before moving to the inspector
| general's office, said he criticized the lack of action and was
| eventually forced out of his job._
|
| 0. https://www.albawaba.com/development-iraq/breaking-daesh-
| bur...
| dragontamer wrote:
| > For all we know Daesh PR did a through analysis of burning
| Jordanian pilots alive in cages [0] and found it unhelpful to
| their cause.
|
| I mean... ISIS-K / Daesh is still murdering people in
| Afghanistan, even after we've left.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/world/asia/afghanistan-
| mo...
|
| Considering that the Daesh / ISIS-K organization is so
| freakishly violent that they're attacking the _TALIBAN_ for
| being too moderate, gives you everything you need to know
| about that group.
|
| For better or worse, ISIS-K is the Taliban's problem for now.
| But I do worry that the Taliban are going to be toppled by
| ISIS-K, and once ISIS-K is in power they'll use Afghanistan
| as a training center to launch international attacks from.
|
| Or Syria, or Iraq. ISIS-K has strength in a fair number of
| regions. They clearly don't care "which" land they get, they
| just want some land / safe havens to train up and grow in
| strength.
|
| ------
|
| Brutally killing civilians is their modus operandi. USA hides
| it when we do it because we're at least embarrassed about it
| and nominally against that sort of thing..
|
| Unfortunately, we have more important things to worry about
| and prepare for.
| yardie wrote:
| > USA hides it when we do it because we're at least
| embarrassed about it
|
| Who's embarrassed by it and who's hiding it?
|
| The civilian Afghans killed by ISIS- K are terrified
| because that is the point. The civilian Afghans killed by
| Americans are still terrified because they are largely
| irrelevant to Americans. Which is its own point. These
| deaths aren't being hidden from Afghans by Afghan media.
| They are being ignored by US media. The killings are
| chocked up as "accidents" and the machine moves on.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Political science studies in English-speaking universities
| would uncover this. There isn't the same opportunity for
| public-exposed internal investigations in countries where
| media and whistleblowing is less free. Whistleblowing does
| not have to be safe in the US to still be more dangerous in
| another country.
| stunt wrote:
| I think other NATO members do similar investigations too. But
| remember, most of the civilian casualties are never recorded to
| be even investigated. What you hear is just the tip of iceberg.
|
| Not to mention that the US military force is also the only
| military force that is in the business of invasion and dropping
| bomb ALL THE TIME, which translates to more and more
| casualties.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Well, just right now, Russia is doing the same in Syria and
| sometimes Ukraine and other regions around the world. Then
| there's Iran. Other "bad guys" are more involved with their
| general vicinity.
| [deleted]
| csee wrote:
| Highlights:
|
| - Special task force ordered strike. They didn't have to go
| through normal checks and balances because they were doing it
| under emergency provisions apparently due to an emergency request
| from arab allies on the ground.
|
| - They claim they didn't see the civilians because they were
| relying on SD quality drone feed.
|
| - The group is accused of falsifying log records afterwards.
| adolph wrote:
| Second paragraph: "Without warning, an American F-15E attack
| jet streaked across the drone's _high-definition_ field of
| vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it
| in a shuddering blast. "
|
| Who is lying about the surveillance quality?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Further in the article
|
| >A 5th Special Forces Group officer in the task force looked
| at the drone footage and didn't see any civilians, a task
| force officer said. But the drone he relied on had only a
| standard-definition camera. Central Command said there were
| no high-definition drones in the area that could get a better
| view of the target...In fact, a high-definition drone was
| available. The task force did not use it.
| csee wrote:
| There were 2 drone streams. The HD one that the Qatar base
| was watching, and the SD one that the task force was watching
| (if we're to believe their account).
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Not perfect and sadly Harbor some insurrectionists who are under
| some mistaken idea that fascism is protecting Freedom and
| America. But still a cut above Russians and Chinese brutalists.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The US record in Afghanistan is arguably even more ridiculous
| (and psychotic) than in Iraq. We went in with a pretty good
| justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for
| his central role in 9/11 terrorism) - although to be honest, the
| argument for doing the regime change op in Saudi Arabia was far
| more robust, as members of the Saudi government aided the
| hijackers and Saudi Royal family members were a key funding
| source.
|
| Everything since then has been ridiculous. Getting in bed with
| heroin-shipping warlords because they were anti-Taliban? Not that
| the Taliban got over $100 million from the USA in 1999-2001 for
| opium poppy eradication efforts, which were quite successful,
| although TAPI pipeline talks didn't go as well in this period.
|
| The whole 'Special Forces' fetishization is also pretty
| ridiculous. The best of the best of the best, la-dee-dah. Lots of
| nightime raids, which only pissed off the local population and
| made them quite willing to hand over power to the Taliban without
| a fight this year. Didn't 'US leaders' learn that from Vietnam?
| If the locals all hate you they're not going to support your
| remotely installed puppet government.
|
| Oh, and the "Afghan Army Training Program" - at a cost of
| something like $10 billion to train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army
| members who'd be the nucleus of the new independent government...
| all that cash just went into Dubai bank accounts, didn't it? Or
| McMansions in Kabul. Gross blatant corruption (and the
| 'infrastructure projects' oh god... for a million bucks you get a
| chain of ten subcontractors backed up by one guy digging a ditch
| with a worn-out shovel... get used to it, that's coming here
| now).
|
| American foreign policy in the 21st century - what an absolute
| disaster. Reminiscent of say, France and Britain in the Middle
| East from oh 1945-1954. Similar long-term results are to be
| expected.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > made them quite willing to hand over power to the Taliban
| without a fight this year.
|
| The most ridiculous I saw from your post:
|
| A reasonable citizen, who saw from the very beginning the
| ridiculousness of the whole thing, in the end, seems to suggest
| the whole thing should not end so abruptly?
| GoodJokes wrote:
| To your first paragraph, there is no ethically sound reason to
| invade another country. That is where these conversations
| should begin and end. It also has the added benefit now of not
| just being ethically correct, but economically correct when it
| comes to the interest of a nation state.
| kodah wrote:
| > The whole 'Special Forces' fetishization is also pretty
| ridiculous. The best of the best of the best, la-dee-dah.
|
| This is a pretty common misunderstanding by civilians. Special
| forces come in tiers and usually they're designated for certain
| kinds of work. It doesn't mean they're "best of the best", just
| special training that may or may not be useful in a place like
| Afghanistan. Historically they're used for training foreign
| fighters. From what I read in this article, this looks like
| work that line companies should have been doing.
|
| > Oh, and the "Afghan Army Training Program" - at a cost of
| something like $10 billion to train and equip 350,000 Afghan
| Army members who'd be the nucleus of the new independent
| government...
|
| I don't think that money went any conspicuous. I served in
| 2012, when a lot of that ANA training and colocation was going
| on. You're absolutely right that it was a failure. The problem
| was that the President was telling the American people things
| were going well, when in reality troops were getting shot in
| the back on patrol by their counterparts, people were deserting
| post while high on hash, and most ANA were paid over four years
| the equivalent of a dowery.
|
| > Getting in bed with heroin-shipping warlords because they
| were anti-Taliban?
|
| This was surprising to me when I was in country, but I get it.
| Most of these dudes are the equivalent of governors and own
| their own armies. They just didn't want to follow the Talibans
| rules, so "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Quite
| complicated, but I don't know how it'd be different.
| dumdumdumdum wrote:
| > Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central
| role in 9/11 terrorism
|
| That's not entirely true. They wanted to negotiate his
| extradition. As any sovereign nation would.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| That's one of the central reasons a regime change op in Saudi
| Arabia would have been more justified. I think the rational
| explanation is that Team Bush wanted war, but couldn't
| directly attack Iraq (the efforts to link Al Qaeda and the
| anthrax letters to Saddam were largely unsuccessful), so they
| went into Afghanistan instead.
|
| The complete abandonment of 'nation-building' Afghanistan in
| 2002 as all efforts shifted to invading Iraq sort of supports
| this scenario.
| tuyguntn wrote:
| Exactly!
|
| US have an excuse all the time, surprisingly, people who
| represent educated segment don't either want to look to other
| side, I remember Taliban tried to have a negotiation with US,
| they tried to get their voice heard in western media, but
| failed, because everyone was blind sided, no one wanted to
| hear them and US anyway launched attack, 20 years later,
| everything is even more fucked up over there.
|
| Now we should be really worried if there are other extremist
| groups are training and planning another attack soon, this
| time everyone would know US don't have a justification and
| obviously will fail again. (I don't remember if US won any
| war recently? Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan all are in trouble,
| all of the wars are started wrongly)
| dragontamer wrote:
| Given the official statements of the Taliban (ie: that
| Osama Bin Laden didn't cause 9/11), what exactly is your
| proposal?
|
| Taliban were protecting Bin Laden, period. Their official
| stance on the subject is clearly false, and they were
| willing to go to war to provide sanctuary to Bin Laden. The
| main worry was that any such delays at this point would
| give Bin Laden more room to get away (and Bin Laden did
| escape: all the way to Pakistan).
|
| So if anything, we should have pursued Bin Laden even more
| vigorously back then. The Taliban were successful in buying
| enough time for him to hide with their false diplomacy.
|
| We were at least successful in destroying the Al Qaeda
| training centers in Afghanistan (successfully located,
| blown up, and dismantled). Maybe these bases will return
| now that we've left Afghanistan, but we at least rendered
| them unable to train new terrorists for the last 20 years
| or so (and the new Taliban regime officially doesn't want
| to sanction any such training sites anymore. They've got an
| ISIS-K problem because of it too)
| tuyguntn wrote:
| agree with you, maybe they tried to protect Bin Laden.
|
| But there are multiple questions which should be
| answered:
|
| 1. are we 110% sure that Bin Laden ordered the attack? I
| am not trying to defend him, but you know there are many
| organizations who can do that attack, including multiple
| organizations funded by CIA (don't forget Bin Laden was
| initially funded by CIA), maybe government could prevent
| attack but didn't prevent, because they were also
| interested in natural resources of Afghanistan?
|
| 2. Are we 120% sure we can capture and execute Bin Laden
| without civilian fatalities? if civilian fatalities can't
| be avoided, did we have numbers in mind, how many people
| will get killed?
|
| 3. Why western media didn't give enough voice to Taliban
| at that time? If enough people listened to them, maybe US
| could make public negotiation and if negotiation fails
| publicly, then everyone would definitely know Taliban is
| to blame for this war. In reality, US just said, we are
| super power, we can do whatever we want.
|
| 4. Are we sure war wasn't lobbied? You know, US sells
| lots of weapons, they sometimes need to test, are we sure
| that war wasn't lobbied? where did 2T$ go? Do you think
| all were eaten by corrupt Afghan government? even 10% of
| it would be 200B which would create 100 billionaires.
|
| I am not defending Taliban or Bin Laden, just showing how
| decisions made was wrong and I still doubt US can make
| right decision. Now Afghanistan has lots of uneducated
| people, who lost their families, children. Do you think
| they would just forgive? Who can guarantee that they
| won't come over to US and start killing people?
| dragontamer wrote:
| > 1. are we 110% sure that Bin Laden ordered the attack?
|
| Bin Laden attacked the USA in the 90s (the original twin
| tower attacks). Then issued a Fatwa declaring a Holy War
| against the USA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fataw%C4%8
| 1_of_Osama_bin_Laden).
|
| Bin Laden's writings on 9/11 are well published, even on
| Western Media (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov
| /24/theobserver).
|
| There's no doubt in anybody's mind that Bin Laden was
| involved in 9/11.
|
| > 2. Are we 120% sure we can capture and execute Bin
| Laden without civilian fatalities?
|
| Of course not. We would have preferred for the Afghan
| government (aka: the Taliban) to cooperate with us. But
| they didn't.
|
| > 3. Why western media didn't give enough voice to
| Taliban at that time?
|
| We have Bin Laden's writings published and the Taliban's
| writings published. What exactly is missing from their
| argument that you want published?
|
| > 4. Are we sure war wasn't lobbied?
|
| Oh, Cheney was definitely a Warmonger. But that doesn't
| make the Afghan War a wrong move.
| iszomer wrote:
| > Bin Laden attacked the USA in the 90s (the original
| twin tower attacks).
|
| Thought it was the "other guy"..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramzi_Yousef
| mannerheim wrote:
| > are we 110% sure that Bin Laden ordered the attack?
|
| Bin Laden made a video in '04 regarding the US
| presidential election at the time in which he implicitly
| claimed responsibility.
| whakim wrote:
| > So if anything, we should have pursued Bin Laden even
| more vigorously back then. The Taliban were successful in
| buying enough time for him to hide with their false
| diplomacy.
|
| The problem was, real intelligence on the whereabouts of
| Bin Laden and Al Qaida in general was extremely rare. It
| was the vigorousness with which we pursued Al Qaida that
| helped really poison the relationship with local Afghans.
| You had local elites claiming that their rivals were
| somehow related to Al Qaida, which usually resulted in
| innocent people being taken into custody, tortured and/or
| killed. You had some legitimate leads (but often on mid-
| level operatives at best) that resulted in extremely
| risky special forces operations in remote and treacherous
| terrain - often resulting in both US and civilian
| casualties. You do this enough and people hate you,
| you've got an insurgency.
|
| > We were at least successful in destroying the Al Qaeda
| training centers in Afghanistan (successfully located,
| blown up, and dismantled).
|
| Real "training centers" were something of a white whale
| for the military in Afghanistan. A lot of the supposed Al
| Qaida "training" was taking place in Kunar and Nuristan
| provinces, in particularly inhospitable terrain. We'd run
| military operations in these remote Nuristani valleys, US
| troops would die, we'd almost never capture anything of
| value, and local people would slowly get fed up with
| their husbands/children/etc. getting accidentally blown
| up in airstrikes.
| [deleted]
| mannerheim wrote:
| They wanted proof bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. Given
| that they've denied he was responsible as recently as a
| couple months ago despite him claiming responsibility on
| video in '04 or so, I don't think this was in good faith.
| missedthecue wrote:
| The Taliban can not be expected to negotiate in good faith.
| It would be beyond naive to think they would.
| rendall wrote:
| Can you say more about that? Why not? Have they broken
| agreements before?
| mannerheim wrote:
| In this specific case, the Taliban still to this day
| doesn't believe bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, so
| their supposed offer to hand over bin Laden back then if
| they were given proof he was responsible probably wasn't
| made in good faith.
| rendall wrote:
| ... I don't see how that follows, logically.
|
| These can all 3 be true: The Taliban does not believe
| that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. They would hand
| over bin Laden if they saw credible evidence. Their bar
| for credibility is quite high.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Bin Laden himself claimed responsibility on video in '04.
| If that isn't credible evidence, no evidence in the world
| could ever have been credible for them.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Why isn't bin Laden saying verbatim to the public that
| he's responsible enough? If that's not enough, what could
| the coalition forces possibly say that would convince the
| Taliban?
|
| There isn't high bar to cross. They've already decided
| what they think. That's what I mean by 'bad faith'.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Killing infidels is justifiable and completely ethical to
| some people.
| rendall wrote:
| Unfortunately, true. We humans are still just scary,
| tribal apes who have brains big enough to feel the need
| to build elaborate rationalizations for brutish,
| reprehensible behavior
| rendall wrote:
| I cannot conclude logically that evidence sufficient for
| me means that anyone who disagrees is per se operating in
| bad faith.
|
| I'm not going to argue for the Taliban. I have no idea
| whether they're good faith actors or not. Regardless,
| they're assholes, and I'm pretty sure, as far as I can
| ever be, that bin Laden is responsible.
|
| But to be fair, "he claimed responsibility" isn't by
| itself iron-clad proof for anything. All kinds of people
| claim all kinds of false things for all kinds of reasons.
| We know this. The Taliban knows this. I could easily come
| up with a plausible, reasonable explanation why bin Laden
| would falsely make such a claim. You could too.
|
| When someone rejects evidence that you find convincing,
| don't assume bad faith. Ask them what evidence they would
| accept no matter how unlikely. If they have something
| (e.g. "If I had a private meeting with bin Laden and he
| assured me personally..."), it means they just have a
| really high bar.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Ask them what evidence they would accept no matter how
| unlikely.
|
| > it means they just have a really high bar.
|
| Nope.
|
| Truth does not require meeting everyone's bar for
| evidence.
|
| Motive, Opportunity, Means, Confession. Done.
| Unquestionably culpable, even if only through negligence
| (in controlling his own messaging).
|
| Just as the US is for various "mistakes" made in targeted
| attacks.
| icelancer wrote:
| bin Laden said he did it. Many times.
| kreeben wrote:
| That seems to indicate he wasn't very fond of the US.
| It's not proof, though, of him being the mastermind of
| 9/11.
|
| If the CIA/US military was sure of his guilt, why didn't
| they bring him before a court?
| tuyguntn wrote:
| One more thing!
|
| Person who tried to expose what is actually happening is now
| going to jail, right? I am talking about Julian Assange.
|
| No one needs such "world police", who is trying to build a
| democracy in other countries, but failing on pillars of
| democracy by putting journalist to jail in home country.
| h2odragon wrote:
| > train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members
|
| "Afghanistan's ghost soldiers undermined fight against Taliban"
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564
|
| IIRC there were complaints being published at least as far back
| as 2009 about that problem.
| bserge wrote:
| The ghost army in LOTR was cool, but that's fiction. Doesn't
| work that well irl, I guess.
| dragontamer wrote:
| People keep crapping on the Afghan Army, but it should be
| noted that the Afghan security forces suffered 65,000+
| casualties officially (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_
| Afghan_security_forces...).
|
| And some estimate that the number may be as high as 100,000.
|
| -----
|
| In contrast, the US sent ~110,000 soldiers at its peak (2011
| surge), and lost ~7000. The Afghan Army took the bulk of the
| attacks by any reasonable analysis.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| But is that 'official death count' any more reliable than
| the total count of 350,000? Let's say I'm a grossly corrupt
| Afghan general, and I'm diverting pay and equipment money,
| say 50% of the total, to my private bank accounts. Now
| someone asks me to account for the smallish number of
| soldiers in my barracks.
|
| "Oh sir, we have suffered great casualties in our fight
| against the terrorists, here are the records."
| dragontamer wrote:
| > But is that 'official death count' any more reliable
| than the total count of 350,000?
|
| No. Because the Afghan security forces would be lying to
| try to improve their morale.
|
| If anything, the official death count is almost certainly
| an underestimate. No army likes to admit that their death
| rates are in the 25%+ level, when you admit such a thing,
| you won't be able to find recruits.
|
| ------
|
| Besides, we paid the Afghans on number of soldiers on
| payroll. Not on number of deaths. So the number they were
| corrupt on was #-of-soldiers.
| P-ala-din wrote:
| > Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central
| role in 9/11 terrorism
|
| If we put in mind what we know post hoc about the torture and
| inhumane interrogation techniques used in both Abu Ghraib and
| Guantanamo, wouldn't you agree that it's reasonable to assume
| that there was a high risk of torture? and isn't torture a
| well-accepted reason to block extradition.
|
| In fact, let's take it even a step further in light of the
| fabrication of evidence seen in Iraq. The general atmosphere of
| hate at the time. not to mention that we now know that bin
| Laden not only was not tried but was thrown in a bag with the
| fish. How can we be so sure that he would have had received a
| fair trial? How would you even find an unbiased jury[1]?
|
| Do we deem it ok to extradite someone to a place with a high
| risk of torture and unfair trial?
|
| [1] - this is a rhetorical question but I'm actually curious
| how would one find such a jury that hasn't already made its
| mind?
| prepend wrote:
| > and isn't torture a well-accepted reason to block
| extradition.
|
| Maybe for blocking from the UK to US, but Afghanistan legally
| tortured/tortures so not sure why they would care about that
| regarding extradition.
| midasuni wrote:
| If that were the real situation then the taliban could have
| taken Bin Laden into custody and hand him over for trial in a
| neutral country (say the Netherlands alike Lockerbie trial,
| or somewhere like China or India)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The Taliban offered to cooperate in turning Bin Laden over
| to another country. The US refused.
| jay3ss wrote:
| Do you have a source for this? Sounds like an interesting
| read
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Someone else in the thread linked https://www.theguardian
| .com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
| bettysdiagnose wrote:
| That was after the bombing had already begun and it had
| to be a "country that wouldn't come under US pressure".
|
| I don't see what's so unreasonable about handing him over
| to the US tbh.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >country that wouldn't come under US pressure
|
| Given the context of also asking for bombing to stop,
| that seems like they were trying to stop the US from
| using military pressure to force their will on
| Afghanistan. The deal wasn't even considered, who knows
| what they were actually trying to negotiate.
|
| >I don't see what's so unreasonable about handing him
| over to the US tbh
|
| History has now shown the US was willing to torture
| people associated with al Qaeda, and execute Bin Laden
| then desecrate his corpse. They were absolutely right to
| distrust the US there.
| [deleted]
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The Taliban did offer Bin Laden and the Bush administration had
| rejected it.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
|
| Bombing small non-white countries is part of the Ledeen
| Doctrine and this would fit that bill.
|
| "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some
| small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just
| to show the world we mean business,"
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal
| to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11
| terrorism)
|
| That would _not_ be a good justification to wage a war, but I
| think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of
| mass destruction - later found to be non-existent. 215
| Republicans and 82 Democrats voted for this. They paved the way
| for a war of aggression... and I seem to remember that
| Americans have previously hanged foreign politicians for
| precisely that.
|
| Edit: Misread above comment and thought he was talking about
| Iraq. Point still stands, though.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's
| weapons of mass destruction
|
| Afghanistan War was 2001. Iraq War was 2003. Your history is
| off by about 1.5 years.
| [deleted]
| pan69 wrote:
| > After 9/11, the Bush administration national security
| team actively debated an invasion of Iraq. On the day of
| the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his
| aides for: "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit
| Saddam Hussein at the same time. Not only Osama bin
| Laden."[90] President Bush spoke with Rumsfeld on 21
| November and instructed him to conduct a confidential
| review of OPLAN 1003, the war plan for invading Iraq.[91]
| Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks, the commander of US
| Central Command, on 27 November to go over the plans. A
| record of the meeting includes the question "How start?",
| listing multiple possible justifications for a US-Iraq
| War.[92][93] The rationale for invading Iraq as a response
| to 9/11 has been refuted, as there was no cooperation
| between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.[94]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
| bserge wrote:
| The atrocious English makes me question this Wiki entry.
| [deleted]
| chernevik wrote:
| https://archive.md/gNyhH
| GaryTang wrote:
| And a more recent airstrike...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/17/politics/kabul-drone-strike-u...
| propogandist wrote:
| This won't get coverage as it would put the blame on Biden
| administration. NYT is out to try and win support for the
| current administration, I don't believe they care about actual
| accountability for wrong doing.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-
| strike-...
|
| One of at least five NYT stories about the strike.
| vmception wrote:
| How long until people realize that any authority saying
| "justified" is not using a definition found in any dictionary.
|
| The term used by any American imbued with the option of
| extrajudicial killings is only to - at best - match your pre-
| existing agreement with the action or your likelihood of agreeing
| with authority. "Justified", for these people, does not mean
| "other actions were evaluated in a hierarchy and we were in a
| circumstance that this greater level of force was necessary" such
| as how a civilian is evaluated, it means "this choice was in a
| catalog of equally weighted choices, any of the choices including
| inaction would be justified". I don't view this as good enough,
| as it makes investigations and courts a waste of time and energy,
| when the only resolution can be to say "and now I present as
| evidence: the catalogue of choices that happens to list the
| choice taken" acquitting all.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think it's even worse. "Justified" means "we issued a
| document that says that in in order to kill more terrorists,
| killing a lesser number of civilians is justified, then we
| issued a document that declared 90% of the civilians
| terrorists."
| vmception wrote:
| yeah, I think this is supported by a large number of people
| not understanding this.
|
| like, a lot of support comes from evaluating each event in
| isolation from more neutral people, but I think even more
| hawkish as well as bigoted people would say "hm this is not
| okay for domestic or foreign policy"
| charbonneau2 wrote:
| > The most foolish notion of all is the belief that everything
| is just which is found in the customs or laws of nations. Would
| that be true, even if these laws had been enacted by tyrants?
|
| > What of the many deadly, the many pestilential statutes which
| nations put in force? These no more deserve to be called laws
| than the rules a band of robbers might pass in their assembly.
| For if ignorant and unskillful men have prescribed deadly
| poisons instead of healing drugs, these cannot possibly be
| called physicians' prescriptions; neither in a nation can a
| statute of any sort be called a law, even though the nation, in
| spite of being a ruinous regulation, has accepted it.
|
| Cicero
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| War is hell. Tell ISIS to stand further away from civilians.
| trasz wrote:
| It's not ISIS that's droning those civilians.
| sharklazer wrote:
| Why do we believe we killed Bin Laden even? Given the track
| record of the military, it was probably some goat farmers in
| Pakistan---which is why no one saw the body and it was
| unceremoniously dumped in the ocean.
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