Pentagon officials are trying to spin the aftermath of Wednesday’s Bagram attack, in which US airstrikes did major damage to an under renovation hospital near the air base. They are now saying they had no choice but to bomb the hospital to get the Taliban.
The attack saw the Taliban use a suicide car bomb to force their way onto the site, and they dug in defensively for a 10 hour battle. Airstrikes were clearly the most convenient way for the US to kill those Taliban, but given the damage inflicted, it may not have been the most ideal for the construction project.
That’s why the Pentagon is now so eager to blame the Taliban for what happened, which is a go-to reaction, but very much beside the point. The Afghanistan Papers reports about failures in US reconstruction in Afghanistan, after all, wasn’t just lacking a scapegoat. The inability to construct sites without getting the unbearable urge to airstrike them is part and parcel to why nothing ever gets built in US-occupied Afghanistan.
Moreover, the problems don’t stop at the destruction of the site. The Pentagon emphasized how valuable to hospital would’ve eventually been to locals, but it was built right on the outskirts of a US military base, which probably wasn’t the most convenient for the locals, and also made the site a particular target for the Taliban to occupy, and one for US forces to airstrike.
The first US response was to further delay the peace process by pausing the Doha talks to protest the attack, and the second response is to blame the Taliban for the damage done. Neither of these is a solution to a problem, and rather reflect why the Afghan War has gone on so long with no progress.
You have to pass the bill to know what’s in it.
Does anyone really think 4,000 US troops are coming home anytime soon?
This schtick started in Syria and is going nowhere fast.
Just because someone says they are leaving, in no way implies that they are coming home. They will be going wherever Israel tells Trump to put them….as always.
Sounds familiar. We sang the same song in Nam–about having to destroy a village to save it.
Sounds like what the Russians say, when we get all outraged by their bombing hospitals in Syria.
Except that in Syria such claims are purely our invention. In the regions held by either ISIS or Al-Qaeda for any amount of time, hospitals were abandoned, or repurposed for militant courts, command centers, jails.
We have plenty of evidence. After those places have been taken over, they are opened up for review by journalists, aid agencies, medical teams. Immediately after de-mining, it is open for anyone to get in. In Aleppo, for example, it was abundantly clear what hospitals were used for. And what was left of medical facilities were used for treating militants.
For anyone who cared to know all there was to know — thousands upon thousands of witnesses were there to tell of the years they spent in captivity to Al-Qaeda iIslamists. The SAME ones we defended to the bitter end, as we lied shamelessly how people of Aleppo supported them, conjuring up images of civilians manning barricades.
The SAME arguments and defending the same, disgusting Al-Qaeda head choppers is replaying now in Idlib.
Russia snd Syria are accused — every time they hit back at militants — of hitting schools and hospitals. Such places as Idlib, even before the war never had so many hospitals as claimed now. Islamists have closed all schools there ling time ago. Boys older then 7 are expected to help militants in daily chores, not go to school.
And the whole performance called White Helmets is something even Roman Empire Amphitheaters of death would have been proud off.
But comparing assaults on militants holding civilian hostages, to expediency that resulted in a destruction of renovated hospital, makes zero sense.
Fighting Taliban is also not same as fighting militants that are not from Idlib region, and are holding civilians as hostages. Taliban tribes have support of their clans, and are defending their own patch of land, and having animosity towards US supported Kabul government.
Of course they did. What else would you expect from the Empire of Chomos.
Thanks to the Epstein saga, that’s what it can comfortably be called.
Of course. US actions are NEVER responsible for bad results.
Bombing a hospital is a war crime. There was a time when the US pretended that they thought war crimes were bad.
To be fair, they only pretended that war crimes committed by the enemy were bad.
And yet there are still gormless knuckleheads who will read this Pentagon propaganda, and will defend it against all comers.
They need to think of the logical corollaries of their position. After all:
• If it’s defensible to bomb a hospital in furtherance of a tactical objective, then it’s defensible to fly a couple of planes into a buildings in furtherance of a strategic objective.
• If it’s defensible to imprison and torture men and film the proceedings… it’s defensible to cut a journalist’s head off and upload the video.
• If it’s defensible to devastate VietNam because you don’t like their decisions on the ownership of the means of production, it’s defensible for China to nuke major US cities for the same reason.
.
See how despicable that sounds? You would have to be an especially depraved psychopath to believe it, and an especially thick imbecile to defend it.
Then again, there are plenty of imbeciles around – people who will stand for a song, salute a piece of coloured cloth, or refer to anyone in uniform as a ‘warrior’ (whether they’re a cook or a convicted war criminal JSOCiopath).
They had them surrounded I suppose. Why not wait them out? 4 or 5 days probably would have done it. Now you have a destroyed hospital courtesy of Uncle Sam the locals won’t forget that.