Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticized a US promise to restrict airstrikes as insufficient, saying that he is demending an immediate and complete ban on all strikes against all civilian homes nationwide.
Karzai insists that the US agreement with his government, which governs the US occupation through the end of 2024, mandates such a ban. US officials have insisted that they would only restrict the strikes but never ban them.
The US “restriction” pledge was vague, saying that they would only launch strikes in the event that other means of attacks on homes were not available. This presumably meant that the US would only bomb houses if they felt they couldn’t launch a ground raid on them.
Karzai insisted that this was a ridiculous move, and that there was no good reason for the US to bomb known civilian homes, even if they were coming under attack from militants that they thought might be in those homes. Last week a NATO airstrike in Logar destroyed several homes in a village, killing 18 civilians.
NATO downplayed the significance of the killings, with Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparroti saying that the number of civilians bombed is actually comparatively rare if one considers that NATO launches dozens of bombings every single day. The Pentagon data, as reported by the general, was that of the 3,531 airstrikes launched so far this year, only 19 actually hit civilians and that “it’s never intentional.”
I never saw a servant demanding the Master to do anything.
Demand Sir. And then DEMAND again. If you are ignored then take some action to protect YOUR PEOPLES.
Shawn Hannity today mentioned the press leaks by Obama insiders concerning the drone campaign. Rather than mention the fact that Philip Alston, the UN Special Raporteur on Extra Judisal Killings is considering the possibility of war crimes for the Obama drone campaign, Hannity instead made some weak comparison to the Valerie Plame incident during the Bush years. Obama commits international war crimes and the tough guys on the right can't touch him because they are ideologically in sync with the current policy.
This illustrates vividly the bankruptcy of international law. What protections are offered innocent victims of war by the Geneva and Hague conventions when they are routinely ignored. The US is signatory to the many conventions drafted to protect the innocent in a time of war yet are in constant breach of said conventions. While international law provides for enforcement, who for example, would be charged with bringing the US into the I(nternational Criminal Court's (ICC) courtroom? Under Bush and Obama, the US Congress has immunized all from prosecution for war crimes.
Using Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparroti's logic, the US may actually get civilian death percentages down (not actual body count), by bombing greater numbers of homes.