The US Military Approves Bombing Children

[Omaha Steve]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Rhiannon12866 (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: The Nation

Robert Dreyfuss

In October, I blogged about an incident in Afghanistan in which three small children were killed in a US airstrike.

In that one small incident, which drew little attention at the time and since, three children aged 12, 10 and 8 were blown to smithereens in a NATO bombing while they were out gathering dung for fuel.

Now, in a despicable article in Military Times, the US military says that children are legitimate targets in the war in Afghanistan because sometimes the Taliban and other insurgents use kids.

In the original incident, which I cited in October, The New York Times reported it this way:

The…case of three children allegedly killed in a coalition strike was reported by local officials in Helmand Province’s Nawa district. The officials said that the children were killed in a NATO strike on Sunday afternoon as they were gathering dung to burn as fuel, a common practice in the desert reaches of southern Afghanistan where there are few trees.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.thenation.com/blog/171582/us-military-approves-bombing-children?rel=emailNation#

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The story covers : Now, in a despicable article in Military Times.

[msongs]

1. not just bombing them...killing them. those kids are not as precious as our kids nt

[pasto76]

9. its a fact. their lives are worth less than ours

killing is killing. But in Iraq, the lives of my soldiers were much more valuable than any iraqi. Trying to reconcile that is a mindfuck

[Ken Burch]

20. "their lives are worth LESS than ours"?

That's the mindset that gave us My Lai.

[thelordofhell]

2. Not the first time something like this happened........and it won't be the last

Just to note----This is a protest song

[ejbr]

3. To claim this is infuriating would be an understatement n/t

[woo me with science]

4. Enough yet?

Enough?

[GeorgeGist]

5. Seems like only yesterday ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021917765

[RC]

16. The true nature of giving does not include the taking of innocent lives.

That is what war does.
That picture glorifies war. That soldier died in someone else's country, not here. A country that was in reality, not a threat to this county. He was sent there to kill the citizens of that country. They fought back and a wife lost her husband. A child lost a father. Parents lost their son. Brothers and sisters lost a sibling.

[libdem4life]

6. Lest we forget ... the graphic Vietnamese girl's photo that ended the Vietnam War.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2153091/Napalm-girl-photo-Vietnam-War-turns-40.html

Ironically and in addition, the story has an another happy ending. What is sad is that we even have to ask the question, let alone answer in the affirmative.

Peace.

[heaven05]

7. ???

In every war it is the same and it is tragic. Sad indeed for the innocents. No matter their reason for being in harms way. Vietnam, same thing. Sometimes the viet cong used kids and if war were to reach these shore for whatever reason, our kids would end up just like these kids, a part of a war. It is inevitable.

[sabrina 1]

11. The solution is simple. Stay out of other people's countries. It doesn't matter much how we

try to rationalize 'war'. There was never a reason for these wars other than pure greed.

I really don't care much about how we have been thought to chalk it up to 'well, that's how war is'. The fact is no one IS bombing our children, it is we who are killing children from Iraq to Afghanistan to Yemen, to Pakistan and Somalia and wherever else we are interfering in other people's countries.

I will worry about our children when it happens to us. But we seem to have a huge appetite for war, we love it, we cheer it on without a thought for the lives wasted. And no one much cares about our blase attitude that 'well, it's war'.

End these wars and stop the slaughter, there is zero excuse for any of them.

[polly7]

17. +1000 nt.

[Prometheus Bound]

13. This is not a war. It's Operation Enduring Freedom.

I know the media calls it a war. I guess it helps excuse these horror stories.

part of war
collateral damage
happens in all wars

blah blah

[Purveyor]

8. And we proceed 'arm and arm' with israel... No surprise here. Karma will catch up with our asses

someday, indeed!

The rest of the world watches...

We are about broke with our military endeavors and hell is to be paid in due time.

[Vattel]

10. Killing children digging holes for IEDs is bad enough

but the military also has no moral qualms about killing children that are clearly innocent bystanders if that is deemed an effective way to achieve even relatively trivial military objectives. Thus, Peter Singer writes in "The President of Good and Evil:"

"U.S. planes bombed a civilian neighborhood in the town of Basra, killing a number of civilians. The New York Times reported, particularly, on a family called Hamudi, a family of fourteen that had been living in a house in that area. Ten members of that family of fourteen were killed in the raid. Children, teenagers, older people. Ten out of fourteen of the family. They were not Baathists or anything of the sort.

"Why was that area bombed? Because it was believed that the man called Chemical Ali, the Iraqi general who had ordered the use of poison gas in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was in that neighborhood. Well, it turns out he wasn't in that neighborhood, because four months later he was captured alive. Or if he was, certainly the bombing didn't get him. But even if he had been, was that so important that it was worth bombing a civilian neighborhood and killing civilians? There was no evidence that he was in control of any particular military forces at that time. The fighting in Basra was really over. The British were already around the city. So what was really the point of trying to kill him at the cost of almost certainly taking civilian lives?"

[sabrina 1]

12. There was no point. But we will hear the irrational and imo, completely mad claims

that we were forced to do it because, fill in the incredibly insane excuses we hear and that no one is buying except for the insane mad men responsible for all this brutality.

[patrice]

14. Shame!

[kath]

15. Hey, don'cha know that as long as there's a so-called "Democrat" in the White House, we're all

supposed to be okay with this shit?

It was only bad when one of the Bushes was doing it.

[OnyxCollie]

18. Jospeh Schumpeter believed a democratic society

would act in a rationalized fashion and be opposed to war, in particular wars of imperialism to satisfy a minority interest, i.e., Big Oil.

Instead, the hyper-nationalism after 9/11 was used to subsidize the opening of a closed market.

The bombing of children is just the cost of doing business.

[trouble.smith]

19. Welcome to hell everybody. Enjoy your stay. nt

[DeSwiss]

21. What?!?!

- You couldn't be talking about our heroes doing such a thing, could you?!?!?

K&R

[Rhiannon12866]

22. Locking, sorry, this is analysis/opinion, not breaking news. n/t