Drone strikes in Afghanistan are regularly carried out by the Pentagon, but officials today revealed that international partners are present and make “kill decisions” on whether or not to attack targets, with Sweden and Germany explicitly named as being involved in deciding when to launch strikes.
According to officials, there is a roundtable discussion during which drone surveillance footage is shown, and the various nations’ representatives are asked to raise their hands if they oppose the strike. This is meant to limit the risk of civilian deaths in the strikes.
It could set the stage for a huge constitutional crisis in Germany, as the nation is explicitly forbidden since WW2 from carrying out offensive military operations. Indeed, the German military was already facing lawsuits from human rights groups even on allegations of being involved in an indirect support role for the drone strikes. Direct “kill decisions” would be a much bigger issue.
Officials described the roundtable as “giving thumbs up or down like gladiators in a stadium,” and confirmed it made several nations uncomfortable “particularly the Germans.” They also said of that targeting process that “a lot of NATO officials are pretty upset by it.”
Tellingly, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Konrad Lax issued a statement initially denying the claims, saying no German personnel were anywhere near the facility where the roundtable was held. He later withdrew his denial, however, saying he may have been “misinformed” and saying the Defense Ministry would be the one to ask. He followed this up with a third statement confirming that the German military did in fact have personnel at the site.
Germany’s involvement in the Afghan War has been extremely controversial, and the military had mostly tried to limit themselves to support and peacekeeping roles. The times when civilian casualties have resulted have sparked significant backlashes in the nation.
Now that Germany has rejoined the ranks of killers, there is nothing holding it back from opening c-c-c-c-camps to process the hordes of war refugees.
They're probably 'kill decisions' like those depicted in the recent US drone epic "Good Kill" – where the heroic drone jockey bucks protocol to 'take out' a serial rapist. Cause we know this is, still, for their own good and so the little girls can go to school.
Nobody in Europe has ever seen the point of the Afghanistan war. European countriesare only there, I suspect, in the hope that if they stand by the US elsewhere, the US will deal firmly with Putin in Ukraine.
Time for Germany and the rest of the EU to stand up to the world's biggest bully.
Good, about time for Germany to stop these dismal foreign adventures. The German people are entirely against this nonsense but in Germany as everywhere else, the people have no say in what the establishment does. The "most powerful woman in the world" is just a puppet who follows orders from the New World Order (can we call it that now?) and has little effective power in her own administration. Ever since someone of the caliber of former defense minister Zu Guttenberg was sacked for…plagiarism…by the establishment for wanting a smaller less involved German armed forces, it was clear that Germany had lost its way and was just another pawn for the masters of the universe.
Sweden always been involved in Afghanistan since the beginning, the Swedish social democrats people objects the Swedish government Involvement in Afghanistan but the government always argue that they are following the UN mandates, which is a only a argument, beside that Sweden and its governments, either far right or social democrats always been following the U.S policies, in Yugoslavia, in Iraq, in Libya and also in Syria. The swedes, although not being the member state of NATO but been engaged in NATO bombing Libya, so as they been involved in killing moments in Afghanistan. The time when Swedish social democrats seriously were against USG foreign policies and Israel policies toward Palestinians was back in 1970s to late 1990 after that swedes are sold to USG and NATO policies.