5 ms·

It's war. Shit happens in war. It's terrible, of course, but I don't think anybody in the military intends things like this to happen (aside from a few legitim

It's war. Shit happens in war. It's terrible, of course, but I don't think anybody in the military intends things like this to happen (aside from a few legitimate psychopaths who use the chaos for their own ends). It's 'just' a horrifying side effect of using war and military power as a blunt instrument for statecraft.

tinco 13y ago
> It's war. Shit happens in war. Fuck that, the U.S. has a huge dominant army with superior technology and well trained personnel. They bombard a village because it's easy and effective. Someone made a decision that the lives of American soldiers were worth more than an entire Afghan village. That's a war crime, and someone should pay for that. And that person should not be Bradley Manning..
- darkarmani 13y ago
  What do you think used to happen with artillery strikes? It doesn't make it ok, but in war when under fire, they would call in air-strikes or artillery and clear a whole ridge. The difference is "the heat of battle" versus intelligence that 3 terrorist operatives where staying in a village of 300 people. Military operations are not law enforcement. They aren't required to prevent all deaths other than combatants. I don't know where you draw the line on collateral damage, but to say that you can't kill any "innocents" is not practical.
  - angersock 13y ago
    " but to say that you can't kill any "innocents" is not practical." Yes, by all means, let us not burden our efficiency at slaughtering our fellow man with morality!
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Why should the soldiers on the ground consider it moral that 5 of them die so that 1 less civilian dies? Certainly that's an easy choice for you to make; you're not the one bearing the brunt of that decision.
      - angersock 13y ago
        It would seem that the civilians would be the ones bearing the brunt of those decisions. More importantly, the issue at hand is that we don't know whether that decision was as clean-cut as you suggest, precisely because of the lack of transparency of our .gov and .mil. Now, there are very sound opsec reasons for not making that information public, but when we are the foreign aggressor I believe that it is not an unreasonable burden to place on ourselves; indeed, it may help encourage caution when considering military adventures abroad.
      - lostlogin 13y ago
        Because they signed up for it and are paid to risk their lives. They then get another choice - they can refuse to go there. The civilians don't get that choice. There isn't much fair in the situation, but I sure dont think many people would argue that the civilians are in the position of strength.
      - tinco 13y ago
        First, because they are soldiers and that is what they signed up for to do. Second, it was not 5 soldier lives versus 1 civilian, more likely it was 5 soldier lives versus 140 civilian lives. Third, yes I myself would probably also make the same decision, favouring the lives of my friends over a bunch of foreigners who are probably on the enemies side. That doesn't make it less wrong, if I was in that position, and I made that decision, I would still have to be tried for committing a war crime, because that's what it is.
    - darkarmani 13y ago
      Why don't we keep pretending that there is a way to wage war without innocents dying? Why don't we mention the morality of terrorists using villagers as body shields? There is some complicity for both the villagers and the terrorists in all of this as well.
  - ucee054 13y ago
    Military operations are not law enforcement. A side that operates like this doesn't get to call itself the "Good Guys" or call its opponents "Terrorists".
- smsm42 13y ago
  >>> Someone made a decision that the lives of American soldiers were worth more than an entire Afghan village Nobody made this decision. American soldiers were already engaged in the fight with large Taliban force and suffering casualties when the strike was called in. They most probably had no idea where civilians are, since it wasn't exactly home terrain for them (they were called in from Farah when Afghans came under attack) and finding out where civilians are in the conditions of active urban warfare is next to impossible. They only target that makes sense to call air strike on is where the shooting at you originates. Turned out, it was also where the civilians were hiding (read: Taliban was probably firing either from the same or from the nearby places). Common tactics, Hamas is Gaza places rocket launchers near mosques, on the roofs of hospitals and in the school yards for exactly the same reason. If the army new that, they could probably do something else - retreat, regroup and try to resolve it in some other way, but I don't see where could they know it from.
- theorique 13y ago
  Someone made a decision that the lives of American soldiers were worth more than an entire Afghan village. That's a war crime, and someone should pay for that. Is that true? I mean, it could be, but I'm wondering if anyone determined this to be the case, or is this just speculation based on descriptions of the video of the attack.
ekianjo 13y ago
CHeck the links at the bottom of the wikipedia page.　Similar bombings happened for TWO weddings, where mainly women and children were attending. Seriously, how can justify these kind of mistakes when you have military satellites, surveillance drones, intelligence and all the stuff that goes with it. I don't buy in it being just "collateral damage".
- mpyne 13y ago
  > Seriously, how can justify these kind of mistakes when you have military satellites, surveillance drones, intelligence and all the stuff that goes with it. I don't buy in it being just "collateral damage". Satellites and even drones don't have that kind of resolution. And what kind of intelligence do you think they have? Even the NSA, even with PRISM, requires a warrant on specific foreign persons to be signed by judge to milk data on them, unless they're dumb enough to communicate over a net NSA is able to monitor. (They're not that dumb). Do you think it's like FourSquare where KSM says he's checking into a wedding? It's not, and it's also not like they can send the white/black/Hispanic guy in on the ground to check it out.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    If your intelligence and evidence is so piss poor that you don't know something is a wedding, then you have no right to drop bombs on it. "I am a macho cowboy who shoots first and questions later." is not an acceptable excuse.
  - ryanac 13y ago
    I think the resolution and real-time power of government satellites and the commercial satellites they have access to is debatable unless you've actually seen it. I recently had to look into this and was pretty surprised at the level of sophistication that's commercially available. GeoEye is one example of a commercial company with the capability of producing high res close up "real time" satellite information. http://www.geoeye.com/Industries/defense%26intelligence#defense-intelligence http://www.geoeye.com/Industries/defense%26intelligence#defe... These are low resolution (50cm res) sample photos that the public can gain access to, consider how close they can actually get for military application. http://www.geoeye.com/gallery#!/album/defense-solutions/exmouth-naval-comms-australia http://www.geoeye.com/gallery#!/album/defense-solutions/exmo... Papers on GeoEye's latest capabilities: http://www.digitalglobe.com/sites/default/files/DG-8SPECTRAL-WP.pdf http://www.digitalglobe.com/sites/default/files/DG-8SPECTRAL... http://www.digitalglobe.com/sites/default/files/MyDigitalGlobe-DS-MYDG-PROD.pdf http://www.digitalglobe.com/sites/default/files/MyDigitalGlo... The 50cm res is (afaik) a commercial limitation; "Because of federal regulations, the publicly-available images are slightly lower resolution -- approximately 50 cm)" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090526183858.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090526183858.ht... -- "And what kind of intelligence do you think they have?" With the massive amount of data gathering combined with information from satellites (that we know about) like these, who knows...
angersock 13y ago
This is rubbish. Let us consult a dead Prussian who had a great deal to say on the topic: "We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means. What remains peculiar to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means." -- Carl von Clausewitz Now, the past decade of war has been against enemies which do not have the authority, power, or will to be dealt with politically. The obvious question, then, is how we can be fighting a war--we are going after the criminals that hit us, no? Even a defense wherein we say "Aha! But the Taliban and Saddam regime were opposed to us, politically!" is flawed, for we had successfully conducted combat operations against their regular forces and won by any reasonable definition of the phrase. We now find ourselves in a long and bloody occupation---for that is what this is, and an occupation is not a war. To be even more blunt about this, we cannot simply ascribe the bombing of an Afghan village as an unfortunate side-effect of total war. We are not engaged in total war, we are not engaging an enemy which has hills and manufacturing capacity worth our bombs and weapons--this is no Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Hiding behind "War is hell" at the very least requires us to be engaged in an honest war, and this we are not.
- theorique 13y ago
  I think we're using the instrument of 'war' for an end which it is not suited for. As you point out, we're not engaged in total war, at least not any more. The lines are clearer in that case: kill or capture all soldiers, do your best not to kill civilians but recognize that mistakes are made. And maybe that was the case in 2001-2002, but this has morphed into a sort of hazy nation-building / police-action kind of thing. But the tools and methods more suited to total war are still being employed, with the same brutal side-effects.
  - angersock 13y ago
    Minor nit-pick: total war is exactly about killing civilians. It is about the total mobilization of your nation's resources and assets--military and otherwise--in support of a violent enforcement of your political policies. Civilians are fair game, because they are assumed to be working in direct support of your opponents war-making capabilities. That said, I submit that we were never engaged with an opponent capable of conducting meaningful total war against our nation, and as such any loss of civilian life is unjustifiable.
gridmaths 13y ago
"shit happens in war" ... and when it does, it needs to be investigated properly, the results published [ subject to sane censorship ] so we can learn from those mistakes and prevent them in future. I don't think that would happen without someone leaking.
- smsm42 13y ago
  How you would learn from mistakes made by somebody deep inside Army operations and help prevent them in the future? I can see where investigation is needed to aid the Army to do better, but publishing this has nothing to do with preventing such mistakes in the future, since the public has no control and no input on Army operations in any case.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    > "but publishing this has nothing to do with preventing such mistakes in the future" It does, if enabling the public to realize the reality of war (and more importantly, the fallibility of their beloved military) results a society that is less bloodthirsty and eager to start wars.
    - smsm42 13y ago
      This has nothing to do with investigating anything. First, the public would never actually realize the reality of war without actually experiencing it, what it can only realize is what the press would choose to tell them and in a way that the press chooses to report it, and there's a real lot of wiggle room in reporting and choosing how to present events. But more importantly, this would be the same with and without investigation - the tragedy already happened, and if you plan to exploit it in anti-war propaganda, you can exploit it regardless of why it happened, who is to blame and any other investigation results. In fact, investigating may only make it less useful for for anti-war purposes - what if after investigation it turns out Taliban deliberately placed their fighters in the midst of the civilians so that the response fire would hit most of them and thus achieve the best propaganda effect? It might only make the society more determined to get those bastards. The most tragic and most shocking part already happened - people died. If you want to say war is evil because people die - no further investigation necessary. Further investigation is needed only if you intend to wage war in the future but want to do it differently - but then it is useful mostly for people that actually wage war.
pfortuny 13y ago
Then why was it not published, acknowledged and made known?
drivebyacct2 13y ago
Not today.

tinco 13y ago

> It's war. Shit happens in war. Fuck that, the U.S. has a huge dominant army with superior technology and well trained personnel. They bombard a village because it's easy and effective. Someone made a decision that the lives of American soldiers were worth more than an entire Afghan village. That's a war crime, and someone should pay for that. And that person should not be Bradley Manning..

darkarmani 13y ago
What do you think used to happen with artillery strikes? It doesn't make it ok, but in war when under fire, they would call in air-strikes or artillery and clear a whole ridge. The difference is "the heat of battle" versus intelligence that 3 terrorist operatives where staying in a village of 300 people. Military operations are not law enforcement. They aren't required to prevent all deaths other than combatants. I don't know where you draw the line on collateral damage, but to say that you can't kill any "innocents" is not practical.
- angersock 13y ago
  " but to say that you can't kill any "innocents" is not practical." Yes, by all means, let us not burden our efficiency at slaughtering our fellow man with morality!
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Why should the soldiers on the ground consider it moral that 5 of them die so that 1 less civilian dies? Certainly that's an easy choice for you to make; you're not the one bearing the brunt of that decision.
    - angersock 13y ago
      It would seem that the civilians would be the ones bearing the brunt of those decisions. More importantly, the issue at hand is that we don't know whether that decision was as clean-cut as you suggest, precisely because of the lack of transparency of our .gov and .mil. Now, there are very sound opsec reasons for not making that information public, but when we are the foreign aggressor I believe that it is not an unreasonable burden to place on ourselves; indeed, it may help encourage caution when considering military adventures abroad.
    - lostlogin 13y ago
      Because they signed up for it and are paid to risk their lives. They then get another choice - they can refuse to go there. The civilians don't get that choice. There isn't much fair in the situation, but I sure dont think many people would argue that the civilians are in the position of strength.
    - tinco 13y ago
      First, because they are soldiers and that is what they signed up for to do. Second, it was not 5 soldier lives versus 1 civilian, more likely it was 5 soldier lives versus 140 civilian lives. Third, yes I myself would probably also make the same decision, favouring the lives of my friends over a bunch of foreigners who are probably on the enemies side. That doesn't make it less wrong, if I was in that position, and I made that decision, I would still have to be tried for committing a war crime, because that's what it is.
  - darkarmani 13y ago
    Why don't we keep pretending that there is a way to wage war without innocents dying? Why don't we mention the morality of terrorists using villagers as body shields? There is some complicity for both the villagers and the terrorists in all of this as well.
- ucee054 13y ago
  Military operations are not law enforcement. A side that operates like this doesn't get to call itself the "Good Guys" or call its opponents "Terrorists".
smsm42 13y ago
>>> Someone made a decision that the lives of American soldiers were worth more than an entire Afghan village Nobody made this decision. American soldiers were already engaged in the fight with large Taliban force and suffering casualties when the strike was called in. They most probably had no idea where civilians are, since it wasn't exactly home terrain for them (they were called in from Farah when Afghans came under attack) and finding out where civilians are in the conditions of active urban warfare is next to impossible. They only target that makes sense to call air strike on is where the shooting at you originates. Turned out, it was also where the civilians were hiding (read: Taliban was probably firing either from the same or from the nearby places). Common tactics, Hamas is Gaza places rocket launchers near mosques, on the roofs of hospitals and in the school yards for exactly the same reason. If the army new that, they could probably do something else - retreat, regroup and try to resolve it in some other way, but I don't see where could they know it from.
theorique 13y ago
Someone made a decision that the lives of American soldiers were worth more than an entire Afghan village. That's a war crime, and someone should pay for that. Is that true? I mean, it could be, but I'm wondering if anyone determined this to be the case, or is this just speculation based on descriptions of the video of the attack.

ekianjo 13y ago

CHeck the links at the bottom of the wikipedia page.　Similar bombings happened for TWO weddings, where mainly women and children were attending. Seriously, how can justify these kind of mistakes when you have military satellites, surveillance drones, intelligence and all the stuff that goes with it. I don't buy in it being just "collateral damage".

mpyne 13y ago
> Seriously, how can justify these kind of mistakes when you have military satellites, surveillance drones, intelligence and all the stuff that goes with it. I don't buy in it being just "collateral damage". Satellites and even drones don't have that kind of resolution. And what kind of intelligence do you think they have? Even the NSA, even with PRISM, requires a warrant on specific foreign persons to be signed by judge to milk data on them, unless they're dumb enough to communicate over a net NSA is able to monitor. (They're not that dumb). Do you think it's like FourSquare where KSM says he's checking into a wedding? It's not, and it's also not like they can send the white/black/Hispanic guy in on the ground to check it out.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  If your intelligence and evidence is so piss poor that you don't know something is a wedding, then you have no right to drop bombs on it. "I am a macho cowboy who shoots first and questions later." is not an acceptable excuse.
- ryanac 13y ago
  I think the resolution and real-time power of government satellites and the commercial satellites they have access to is debatable unless you've actually seen it. I recently had to look into this and was pretty surprised at the level of sophistication that's commercially available. GeoEye is one example of a commercial company with the capability of producing high res close up "real time" satellite information. http://www.geoeye.com/Industries/defense%26intelligence#defense-intelligence http://www.geoeye.com/Industries/defense%26intelligence#defe... These are low resolution (50cm res) sample photos that the public can gain access to, consider how close they can actually get for military application. http://www.geoeye.com/gallery#!/album/defense-solutions/exmouth-naval-comms-australia http://www.geoeye.com/gallery#!/album/defense-solutions/exmo... Papers on GeoEye's latest capabilities: http://www.digitalglobe.com/sites/default/files/DG-8SPECTRAL-WP.pdf http://www.digitalglobe.com/sites/default/files/DG-8SPECTRAL... http://www.digitalglobe.com/sites/default/files/MyDigitalGlobe-DS-MYDG-PROD.pdf http://www.digitalglobe.com/sites/default/files/MyDigitalGlo... The 50cm res is (afaik) a commercial limitation; "Because of federal regulations, the publicly-available images are slightly lower resolution -- approximately 50 cm)" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090526183858.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090526183858.ht... -- "And what kind of intelligence do you think they have?" With the massive amount of data gathering combined with information from satellites (that we know about) like these, who knows...

angersock 13y ago

This is rubbish. Let us consult a dead Prussian who had a great deal to say on the topic: "We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means. What remains peculiar to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means." -- Carl von Clausewitz Now, the past decade of war has been against enemies which do not have the authority, power, or will to be dealt with politically. The obvious question, then, is how we can be fighting a war--we are going after the criminals that hit us, no? Even a defense wherein we say "Aha! But the Taliban and Saddam regime were opposed to us, politically!" is flawed, for we had successfully conducted combat operations against their regular forces and won by any reasonable definition of the phrase. We now find ourselves in a long and bloody occupation---for that is what this is, and an occupation is not a war. To be even more blunt about this, we cannot simply ascribe the bombing of an Afghan village as an unfortunate side-effect of total war. We are not engaged in total war, we are not engaging an enemy which has hills and manufacturing capacity worth our bombs and weapons--this is no Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Hiding behind "War is hell" at the very least requires us to be engaged in an honest war, and this we are not.

theorique 13y ago
I think we're using the instrument of 'war' for an end which it is not suited for. As you point out, we're not engaged in total war, at least not any more. The lines are clearer in that case: kill or capture all soldiers, do your best not to kill civilians but recognize that mistakes are made. And maybe that was the case in 2001-2002, but this has morphed into a sort of hazy nation-building / police-action kind of thing. But the tools and methods more suited to total war are still being employed, with the same brutal side-effects.
- angersock 13y ago
  Minor nit-pick: total war is exactly about killing civilians. It is about the total mobilization of your nation's resources and assets--military and otherwise--in support of a violent enforcement of your political policies. Civilians are fair game, because they are assumed to be working in direct support of your opponents war-making capabilities. That said, I submit that we were never engaged with an opponent capable of conducting meaningful total war against our nation, and as such any loss of civilian life is unjustifiable.

gridmaths 13y ago

"shit happens in war" ... and when it does, it needs to be investigated properly, the results published [ subject to sane censorship ] so we can learn from those mistakes and prevent them in future. I don't think that would happen without someone leaking.

smsm42 13y ago
How you would learn from mistakes made by somebody deep inside Army operations and help prevent them in the future? I can see where investigation is needed to aid the Army to do better, but publishing this has nothing to do with preventing such mistakes in the future, since the public has no control and no input on Army operations in any case.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  > "but publishing this has nothing to do with preventing such mistakes in the future" It does, if enabling the public to realize the reality of war (and more importantly, the fallibility of their beloved military) results a society that is less bloodthirsty and eager to start wars.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    This has nothing to do with investigating anything. First, the public would never actually realize the reality of war without actually experiencing it, what it can only realize is what the press would choose to tell them and in a way that the press chooses to report it, and there's a real lot of wiggle room in reporting and choosing how to present events. But more importantly, this would be the same with and without investigation - the tragedy already happened, and if you plan to exploit it in anti-war propaganda, you can exploit it regardless of why it happened, who is to blame and any other investigation results. In fact, investigating may only make it less useful for for anti-war purposes - what if after investigation it turns out Taliban deliberately placed their fighters in the midst of the civilians so that the response fire would hit most of them and thus achieve the best propaganda effect? It might only make the society more determined to get those bastards. The most tragic and most shocking part already happened - people died. If you want to say war is evil because people die - no further investigation necessary. Further investigation is needed only if you intend to wage war in the future but want to do it differently - but then it is useful mostly for people that actually wage war.

pfortuny 13y ago

Then why was it not published, acknowledged and made known?

drivebyacct2 13y ago

Not today.