Oct. 3, Doctors Without Borders stated, “Today the U.S. government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz [Afghanistan] and killed 22 patients and MSF staff. Their description of the attack keeps changing — from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government.”
The United States military has admitted to bombing the hospital. However, Gen. John Campbell had this to say: “We have now learned that on Oct. 3, Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from U.S. forces. An airstrike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat and several civilians were accidentally struck. This is different from the initial reports, which indicated that U.S. forces were threatened and that the airstrike was called on their behalf.”
According to CNN, 12 medical staff members and 10 patients, including three children, were killed by the U.S. air strike. An additional 37 others were wounded.
Doctors Without Borders also reported that the hospital had provided its GPS coordinates to all fighting parties in the area. Furthermore, the attack was a sustained bombing, meaning that the hospital was hit several times and was very badly damaged, according to the organization.
The Washington Post said, “Afghan officials said Taliban fighters were in the hospital at the time of the airstrike, but that is in dispute.”
Taking into account that the U.S. military knew the location of the hospital and still ordered the bombing indicates negligence of the civilian population in the area. According to The Washington Post, “Campbell’s revised account does not clarify whether the clinic was targeted in error or whether U.S. military personnel followed procedure. They are required to verify that the target of the requested airstrike is valid before firing. Asked about those procedures, Campbell said he would not discuss the rules of engagement under which U.S. forces operate.”
If the U.S. military were required to validate the target before launching the attack, there should have been a way to see that the coordinates given to it by the hospital fell inside the strike zone. Moreover, the U.S. military is trying to blame the Afghans for calling in the strike, but this cannot excuse them for being the ones who actually fired on a hospital and killed 22 people.
According to CNN, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “There is no country in the world and no military in the world that goes to greater lengths and places a higher premium on avoiding civilian casualties than the United States Department of Defense.”
The U.S.’ attitude toward harming civilians must have changed since decimating Fallujah during the Iraq War and the 2013 drone strike on a marriage procession in Yemen.
As for investigating the hospital bombardment, there will be three investigations conducted by the Department of Defense, a U.S.-Afghan Military cooperative effort and NATO respectively. When asked if there were a need for some outside party not directly related to the massacre to perform its own independent investigation, Earnest replied, “The president obviously has confidence in these three investigations to provide that full accounting that he seeks.”
While Earnest claims the expectation is that the details will not be “whitewashed,” there has been no independent party commissioned to investigate what is being called a war crime by Doctors Without Borders, according to National Public Radio.
This is the face of war. U.S. intervention in the Middle East has gone on far too long. The government’s interference in foreign governments has led to violent civil wars, the death of many soldiers, declining international relations, anti-Muslim sentiment, anti-Christian sentiment and the deaths of innocent civilians such as those working or healing in the Kunduz hospital.
