...Or at least, that's the way it is playing in some circles in Europe. After the squiggle I provide as an example a translation of an op-ed published in the electronic edition of Liberation, the foremost center-left paper in France. The author accuses in so many words the U.S. military of having wilfully bombed the Doctors Without Borders hospital because the NGO refused to be controlled by U.S. representatives in the region.
That such a theory would be seriously considered is already pretty depressing. The fact is that U.S. representatives on the ground are known to be cynical, manipulative, and not always the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. Their complicity in bombing the hospital may exist, not as a dastardly ploy, but as reckless endangerment and wilfull neglect, of much the same sort as when beefy, racist cops let an African-American teen die on the sidewalk after having shot him out of a mixture of spite and fear.
But the worst part of it all is that while the U.S. military is accused of a major war crime, with outrage levels high enough to keep the whole thing three straight days on the front page of BBC News, the left here has all but decided to go to sleep on the issue. Not just Daily Kos, which is a symptom (in spite of the brave efforts by LaFeminista and Meteor Blades, h/t to them); from HuffPost to Bernie Sanders, everybody has more or less moved on.
As for Obama, he seems to be eager to go the way Lyndon Johnson did, and be remembered abroad mostly for burnt children. As an example of criminally stupid behavior in high places, this is hard to beat.
See below for the source prompting this post. I kept the lead (in italic) and title and sub-headings (in bold) since this is what a hurried reader would get out of the article.
Afghanistan: why the U.S. military targets humanitarian workers
by Gilles Dorronsoro, Professor of political science, University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne / Institut Universitaire de France — October 5, 2015 at 13:01
The bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital by the U.S. military in Kunduz can be held as a war crime, linked to specific practices developed by the said military, particularly its peculiar conception of war, which criminalizes humanitarian activities.
On October 3rd, the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz was bombed by the American military while operations were under way to recapture the town from the Talebans. The latest body count has risen to about twenty dead, humanitarian workers and patients, several of them children, and several dozen seriously hurt. The hospital has ben closed, since MSF could not guarantee any more the security of its buildings. This closing deprive the wounded of the one and only chirurgical installation in good working order in the entire region. This is also one of the deadliest incidents ever for this NGO, in any of the many theaters of war it entered for the last several decades. Was the U.S. bombing a mistake stemming from the "fog of war", an incident tragic indeed, but understandable in the confusion which characterizes combat in an urban environment? Unfortunately, the available indications point to a very different direction: this was a war crime, linked to the practices of the U.S. military, most notably its conception of war, which criminalizes humanitarian activity.
The context is one of utter failure on the part of the Afghan government and its allies. The fall of Kunduz, a city of over 300,000 inhabitants, created a major shock in Kabul, happening as it did on the heels of the loss of Northern Helmand, in spite of the latter region having been a major focus for pro-Western counter-insurgency. Whatever the pronouncements of the Afghan government, the Talebans held the town for several days, and the weak showing of the Afghan military eventually forced the U.S. to step up again its commitment to a conflict from which Obama was trying to extricate the country, and allow bombings and special forces operations.
Unconvincing explanations
What are the explanations offered for this bloody incident? According to a first line of defense, the bombing would have been the result of a mistake, due to the fact that the presence of the hospital had not been declared to the military authorities. This hypothesis must be dismissed outright, however, for Doctors Without Borders is a completely professional organization whn it comes to this type of issue. The location of the hospital had in fact been reported repeatedly to the U.S. military. One can add that the hospital consists in a very recognizable compound, well known to the population and to visiting observers. Moreover, there is no explanation as to why the bombing lasted more than one hour in spite of the repeated emergency calls Doctors Without Borders placed with U.S. representatives.
A second line of defense quickly emerged; Taleban fighters would have been present in the hospital and would have taken aim at U.S. or Afghan forces. Some Afghan officials, displaying an inventiveness all the more impressive considering its total absence of factual base, even described the Doctors Without Borders hospital as a Taleban command post. This argument however, clearly developed as a stopgap response, does not hold water. The victims were all patients or hospital staff, direct witnesses denied that any armed combatants were present in the hospital, the doors of which had remained closed day and night anyway since Monday, September 28, being open only for ambulances. Lastly, even if occasional shooting from the hospital had really been observed, a targeted and prolonged bombing of buildings sheltering patients and medical personnel would still have been illegal in international law, and above all repugnant from a moral point of view.
A legitimate target
As a point of fact, these aerial strikes are the manifstation of a dangerous tendency to criminalise humanitarian activity. The hospital was bombed because it treated Taleban casualties. Indeed incidents had already happened in July, in which Afghan commandos had broken into the hospital compound and accused Doctors Without Borders of treating insurgents. At a deeper level, this incident is a result of the continuing legacy of the George W. Bush war doctrine born after 9/11. The paradigm which still shapes U.S. military practice represents a break with the western legal and humanitarian tradition, over a century old: a humanitarian space, neutral and protected by international law, does not exist any more. All actors, including non military ones, operating on a battleground which is very little defined anyway in today's standards, become legitimate targets. Incidents similar in nature have indeed repeatedly occurred with news representatives, treated as targets simply because of their presence in ennemy territory.
Thus the crux of the matter is that the U.S. military dos not allow Doctors Without Borders to act independently in the name of humanitarian and legal principles, for such an autonomous action would represent a departure for the polarization it wants to generate in this conflict. It must be kept in mind that the strategic plan of the U.S. in Afghanistan from 2001 on, unambiguously presented by Colin Powell, was to turn humanitarian activities into a tool of U.S. power. Various NGOs, including Doctors Without Borders, refused to take part in the U.S. scheme, which denied any specificity to humanitarian activities and indeed threatened to undermine them. Similarly, in the early 2000s, the U.S. had waged an organized lobbying campaign against the Red Cross international Committee which denounced the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody. There again, the obsolete character of the laws of war came to be accepted. For the U.S. military, condemning torture was tantamount to protecting terrorists then, just as treating wounded combatants is tantamount to helping the insurgency now.
What are the consequences for what is indeed in law a war crime? The political consequences are more important that one would think. [Afghan] President Ghani, already very weak, is placed in a difficult position and will have to distance himself from the U.S. in one way or other. Second, the Taleban will have won an easy propaganda victory, especially considering the extent to which the multiple incidents of collateral damages inflicted by U.S. special forces have already contributed to Taleban gains in the past few years. Lastly, this incident will further a general cynicism in Western public opinion: why join in a war which brings about the very crimes for which a Bashar al-Assad is pilloried?
Those responsible for the bombing enjoy guaranteed impunity, which extends up and down the chain of command. President Obama has ordered an inquiry which he knows will not give any result. In fact U.S. authorities refuse to acknowledge any responsibility and count on the speed of the media cycle to limit the political cost of the incident. Nothing can be expected from European governments because of their dependence on the United States. A U.N. inquiry, the results of which will take months to be published at best, is assuredly to be wished for, but will not convince the U.S. military to change its practices. A common declaration from all NGOs operating in war zones, with political backing for instance from the European Parliament, would at least marginally increase the political cost of targeting NGOs for the U.S. military. What is at stake is our values, the security of humanitarian workers, and in the long run our own political freedom
Link for the French version:
http://www.liberation.fr/...