"He Made Me Do It"

The US Army is embroiled in yet another “did not, did too” argument with the officials of another nation over who caused civilian deaths in a firefight. This time it is in Afghanistan and the body count seems to be well over 100 although that, of course, is in dispute.

The Army is maintaining that not that many were killed, that all of the people killed were Taliban fighters, and that if any of the dead were civilians then the Taliban killed them. As a backup justification, the Army claims that if the US did kill any civilians then it was the Taliban’s fault because they were using the civilians as human shields.

I have searched the Avalon Project for any laws against firing upon civilians who are being used as human shields, and as far as I can tell it is not covered by any of the conventions and is perfectly legal. That doesn’t, in my opinion, justify doing it at all, let alone in a counterinsurgency where we are supposed to be winning the support of the local population. Just my opinion.

If it does justify it, then take responsibility. It was not the insurgents who made the decision to fire, it was our forces that opened fire. If that was justifiable, then justify it; go ahead and state that our ends are more important than their lives. That was the decision that was made when the order was given to open fire. Man up and admit it.

I am not comfortable with that decision, but I am not in harm’s way. I am not in the firefight faced with the decision. It may be the right decision and if it is, then make it and defend it. If it is the wrong decision then do not make it. But do not take the coward’s way out after the fact by making the decision and then blaming the outcome of that decision on somebody else.

Afghanistan officials are unhappy because the people being sent to investigate the killings are from the same organization that did the killings. That seems to me like a fairly reasonable objection.

We have heard all of this before. The Army claims, basically, that it wasn’t even at the scene of the killings and was as innocent as a newborn babe. It turns out later that the Army was lying through its teeth. The Army promises never to lie again and, the next time civilians are killed, lies through its teeth again. Perhaps it is telling the truth this time but, having been told so many self-serving lies by the Army, I am not prepared to believe them at this point.

While the investigation is still ongoing Obama’s National Security Advisor, Jim Jones, says the outcome of the investigation doesn’t matter; that we are going to continue making that kind of airstrike because they are in our best interest. “We do not want to be fighting with one hand tied behind our back,” he says.

It all sounds a lot like what we have been doing for the past eight years.