[Peace-discuss] The Radically Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital

Tue Oct 6 20:37:22 EDT 2015

<https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/the-radically-changing-story-of-the-u-s
-airstrike-on-afghan-hospital-from-mistake-to-justification/> The Radically
Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to
Justification

<https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/the-radically-changing-story-of-the-u-s
-airstrike-on-afghan-hospital-from-mistake-to-justification/>
https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/the-radically-changing-story-of-the-u-s-
airstrike-on-afghan-hospital-from-mistake-to-justification/

 <https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-greenwald/> Description:
https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2014/02/Glenn-Gree
nwald-Original_350.jpgGlenn Greenwald

Oct. 5 2015, 9:11 a.m.

When news first broke of the
<https://theintercept.com/2015/10/03/one-day-after-warning-russia-of-civilia
n-casualties-the-u-s-bombs-a-hospital-in-the-war-obama-ended/> U.S.
airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan,
the response from the U.S. military was predictable and familiar. It was all
just a big, terrible mistake, its
<https://twitter.com/stuartmillar159/status/650271482057113601> official
statement suggested: an airstrike it carried out in Kunduz may have
resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility. Oops: our bad.
Fog of war, errant bombs, and all that.

This obfuscation tactic is the standard one the U.S. and Israel both use
whenever they blow up civilian structures and slaughter large numbers of
innocent people with airstrikes. Citizens of both countries are well-trained
 like some tough, war-weary, cigar-chomping general  to reflexively spout
the phrase collateral damage, which lets them forget about the whole thing
and sleep soundly, telling themselves that these sorts of innocent little
mistakes are inevitable even among the noblest and most well-intentioned
war-fighters, such as their own governments. The phrase itself is
beautifully technocratic: it requires no awareness of how many lives get
extinguished, let alone acceptance of culpability. Just invoke that phrase
and throw enough doubt on what happened in the first 48 hours and the media
will quickly lose interest.

But theres something significantly different about this incident that has
caused this mistake claim to fail. Usually, the only voices protesting or
challenging the claims of the U.S. military are the foreign, non-western
victims who live in the cities and villages where the bombs fall. Those are
easily ignored, or dismissed as either ignorant or dishonest. Those voices
barely find their way into U.S. news stories, and when they do, they are
stream-rolled by the official and/or anonymous claims of the U.S. military,
which are typically treated by U.S. media outlets as unassailable authority.

In this case, though, the U.S. military bombed the hospital of an
organization  Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)) 
run by western-based physicians and other medical care professionals. They
are not so easily ignored. Doctors who travel to dangerous war zones to
treat injured human beings are regarded as noble and trustworthy. Theyre
difficult to marginalize and demonize. They give
<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/u-s-airstrike-hits-doctors-without-borders-h
ospital-afghanistan/> compelling, articulate interviews in English to U.S.
media outlets. They are heard, and listened to.

MSF has used this platform, unapologetically and aggressively. They are
clearly infuriated at the attack on their hospital and the deaths of their
colleagues and patients. From the start, they have signaled an
<https://twitter.com/MSF/status/650397969779425280> unwillingness to be
shunted away with the usual collateral damage banalities and, more
important, have refused to let the U.S. military and its allies get away
with spouting obvious falsehoods. They
<https://twitter.com/MSF/status/651003030557560832> want real answers. As
the Guardians Spencer Ackerman
<https://twitter.com/attackerman/status/650821262898544640> put it last
night: MSFs been going incredibly hard, challenging every US/Afgh claim
made about hospital bombing.

In particular, MSF quickly publicized numerous facts that cast serious doubt
on the original U.S. claim that the strike on the hospital was just an
accident. To begin with, the organization had repeatedly advised the U.S.
military of the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital. They did so most
recently on September 29, just five days before the strike. Beyond that, MSF
personnel at the facility frantically called U.S. military officials
during the strike to advise them that the hospital was being hit and to
plead with them to stop, but the strikes continued in a sustained manner
for 30 more minutes. Finally, MSF yesterday said this:

All of these facts make it extremely difficult  even for U.S. media outlets
 to sell the accident story. At least as likely is that the hospital was
deliberately targeted, chosen either by Afghan military officials who fed
the coordinates to their U.S. military allies and/or by the U.S. military
itself.

Even cynical critics of the U.S. have a hard time believing that the U.S.
military would deliberately target a hospital with an airstrike (despite
<https://twitter.com/mcurryfelidae07/status/651001001743372288> how many
times the U.S. has  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3988433.stm>
destroyed hospitals with airstrikes). But in this case, there is
long-standing tension between the Afghan military and this specific MSF
hospital, grounded in the fact that the MSF  true to its name  treats all
wounded human beings without first determining on which side they fight.
That they provide medical treatment to wounded civilians and Taliban
fighters alike has made them a target before.

In July  just 3 months ago  Reuters reported that Afghan special forces
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/02/us-afghanistan-hospital-idUSKCN0P
C14Z20150702> raided this exact MSF hospital in Kunduz, claiming an Al
Qaeda member was a patient. This raid infuriated MSF staff:

The French aid group said its hospital was temporarily closed to new
patients after armed soldiers had entered and behaved violently towards
staff.

This incident demonstrates a serious lack of respect for the medical
mission, which is safeguarded under international humanitarian law, MSF
said in a statement.

A staff member who works for the aid group said, The foreign doctors tried
to stop the Afghan Special Operations guys, but they went in anyway,
searching the hospital.

The U.S. had previously targeted a hospital in a similar manner: In 2009, a
Swedish aid group accused U.S. forces of violating humanitarian principles
by raiding a hospital in Wardak province, west of Kabul.

 <https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/10/reuters1.png>
Description:
https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/10/reuters1-540x222.png

News accounts of this weekends U.S. airstrike on that same hospital hinted
cryptically at the hostility from the Afghan military. The
<https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/cnn-and-the-nyt-are-deliberately-obscur
ing-who-perpetrated-the-afghan-hospital-attack/> first NYT story on the
strike 
<https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/cnn-and-the-nyt-are-deliberately-obscur
ing-who-perpetrated-the-afghan-hospital-attack/> while obscuring who carried
out the strike  noted deep into the article that the hospital treated the
wounded from all sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked Afghan
security forces. Al Jazeera similarly
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/aid-workers-killed-air-strike-afghan-
hospital-kunduz-151003043052500.html> alluded to this tension, noting that
a caretaker at the hospital, who was severely injured in the air strike,
told Al Jazeera that clinics medical staff did not favour any side of the
conflict. We are here to help and treat civilians, Abdul Manar said.

As a result of all of this, there is now a radical shift in the story being
told about this strike. No longer is it being depicted as some terrible
accident of a wayward bomb. Instead, the predominant narrative from U.S.
sources and their Afghan allies is that this attack was justified because
the Taliban were using it as a base.

Fox News
<http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10/03/3-doctors-without-borders-members-k
illed-in-us-airstrikes-in-afghanistan/> yesterday cited anonymous defense
officials that while they regret the loss of innocent life, they say the
incident could have been avoided if the Taliban had not used the hospital as
a base, and the civilians there as human shields. In its
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-happened-when-a-muslim-ran-for
-local-office-in-virginia/2015/10/02/06f52716-66e2-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_st
ory.html?postshare=1851444046458266> first article on the attack, The
Washington Post also previewed this defense, quoting a spokesman for the
Afghan armys 209th Corps in northern Afghanistan as saying that Taliban
fighters are now hiding in peoples houses, mosques and hospitals using
civilians as human shields.' AP
<https://twitter.com/billmon1/status/650873821587767296> yesterday actually
claimed that it looked at a video and saw weaponry in the hospitals
windows, only to
<http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AFGHANISTAN_ASOL-?SITE=AP&SECTION
=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-10-04-11-39-32> delete that claim with
this correction:
 <https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/10/ap.jpg> Description:
https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/10/ap-540x202.jpg

The New York Times today  in a
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/world/asia/doctors-without-borders-says-i
t-is-leaving-kunduz-after-strike-on-hospital.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Hom
epage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0> story
ostensibly about the impact on area residents from the hospitals
destruction  printed paragraphs from anonymous officials justifying this
strike: there was heavy gunfire in the area around the hospital at the time
of the airstrike, and that initial reports indicated that the Americans and
Afghans on the ground near the hospital could not safely pull back without
being dangerously exposed. American forces on the ground then called for air
support, senior officials said. It also claimed that many residents of
Kunduz, as well as people in Kabul, seemed willing to believe the
accusations of some Afghan officials that there were Taliban fighters in the
hospital shooting at American troops. And this:

Still, some Afghan officials continued to suggest that the attack was
justified. I know that there were civilian casualties in the hospital, but
a lot of senior Taliban were also killed, said Abdul Wadud Paiman, a member
of Parliament from Kunduz.

So now were into full-on justification mode: yes, we did it; yes, we did it
on purpose; and were not sorry because we were right to do so since we
think some Taliban fighters were at the hospital, perhaps even shooting at
us. In response to the emergence of this justification claim,
<http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/msf-response-spurious-claims-k
unduz-hospital-was-taliban-base> MSF expressed the exact level of revulsion
appropriate (emphasis added):

MSF is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan
government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz.
These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to
raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and
patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present.

This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the
initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as collateral
damage.

There can be no justification for this abhorrent attack on our hospital
that resulted in the deaths of MSF staff as they worked and patients as they
lay in their beds. MSF reiterates its demand for a full transparent and
independent international investigation.

>From the start, MSF made clear that none of its staff at the hospital heard
or saw Taliban fighters engaging U.S. or Afghan forces:

But even if there were, only the most savage barbarians would decide that
its justified to raze a hospital filled with doctors, nurses and patients
to the ground. Yet mounting evidence suggests that this is exactly what the
U.S. military did  either because it chose to do so or because its Afghan
allies fed them the coordinates of this hospital which they have long
disliked. As a result, we now have U.S. and Afghan officials expressly
justifying the consummate war crime: deliberately attacking a hospital
filled with doctors, nurses and wounded patients. And whatever else is true,
the story of what happened here has been changing rapidly as facts emerge
proving the initial claims to be false.

* * * * *

Just as this article was being published,
<http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pentagon-afghan-forces-asked-airstrike-ho
spital-n438626?cid=sm_tw&hootPostID=96eee0f105373c4aa97d7c183a1de670> NBC
News published a report making clear that even the latest claims from the
U.S. and Afghan governments are now falling apart. The Pentagons top
four-star commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. John Campbell, now claims that
local Afghans forces asked for air support and U.S. forces were not under
direct fire just prior to the U.S. bombardment of the hospital. As NBC
notes, this directly contradicts prior claims: The Pentagon had previously
said U.S. troops were under direct fire.

See also from today:
<https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/cnn-and-the-nyt-are-deliberately-obscur
ing-who-perpetrated-the-afghan-hospital-attack/> CNN and the NYT Are
Deliberately Obscuring Who Perpetrated the Afghan Hospital Attack

UPDATE: Responding to the above-referenced admission, MSF has issued
<http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/msf-response-pentagon-claim-af
ghan-forces-called-kunduz-airstrike?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm
_campaign=social> this statement:

Today the US government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit
our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff. Their
description of the attack keeps changingfrom collateral damage, to a tragic
incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan
government. The reality is the US dropped those bombs. The US hit a huge
hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The US military remains
responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition.
There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant
discrepancies in the US and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a
full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical.

The U.S. seems to have picked the wrong group this time to attack from the
air.

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