[Peace-discuss] News-Gazette LTE: Why no apologies for airstrikes?

[Robert Naiman]

[This was in today's print edition.]

http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letters-the-editor/2019-03-25/letter-the-editor-why-no-apologies-airstrikes.html

Mon, 03/25/2019 - 11:40pm | The News-Gazette

The News-Gazette published a March 16 article about the mosque shooting in
New Zealand, writing that "Trump tweeted Friday that his 'warmest sympathy
and best wishes go out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible
massacre in the Mosques.'"

I hope that Trump, and indeed all Americans, will also condemn the horrible
massacres in mosques carried out by the United States itself.

On March 16, 2017, the United States conducted airstrikes on the Omar Ibn
al-Khatab Mosque near al-Jinah, Syria. According to the Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights, "the airstrike had killed at least 49 people and wounded
dozens, mostly civilians who were attending a religious lesson."

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis, however, said that "dozens of al-Qaida
fighters were killed in the Thursday strike by manned and unmanned U.S.
aircraft on an al-Qaida meeting place in the village of al-Jina, Aleppo."

But Human Rights Watch disputes this in a report on the airstrikes from
April 2017, writing that, after its own investigation, it "has not found
evidence to support the allegations that the mosque was a meeting place for
members of al-Qaida in Syria or other armed groups."

The Pentagon's position is implausible. We massacred civilians in a mosque.
We readily condemn the massacres carried out by others, but refuse even to
think about the massacres we carry out ourselves. It seems that, yet again,
we find that we Americans are a nation radically consumed by hypocrisy.

ANDREW SMITH

Champaign
===

Robert Reuel Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
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