Syrians evacuate an injured man amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following an airstrike on a rebel-held area of Aleppo, April 29, 2016. (photo: AFP/Getty)
The
Joke of US Justice and "Accountability" When They Bomb a Hospital
By Glenn Greenwald, The
Intercept
29 April 16
Ever
since the U.S. last October bombed a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders
(MSF) in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the U.S. vehemently denied guilt while acting
exactly like a guilty party would. First, it changed its story repeatedly.
Then, it blocked every effort –
including repeated demands from MSF – to have an independent investigation
determine what really happened. As May Jeong documented in a richly reported story for The
Intercept yesterday, the Afghan government consistently admitted that
the hospital was targeted, claiming that doing so was justified, and
they wanted to publicly endorse calls for an independent investigation, which
the U.S. refused to let them do; what is beyond dispute, as Jeong wrote, is
that the “211 shells that were fired . . . were felt by the 42 men,
women, and children who were killed.” MSF insisted the bombing
was “deliberate,” and ample evidence supports that
charge.
Despite
all this, the U.S. military is about to release a report that, so predictably,
exonerates itself from all guilt; it was, of course, all just a terribly tragic
mistake. Worse, reports The Los Angeles Times‘
W.J. Hennigan, “no one will face criminal charges.” Instead, this is
the “justice” being meted out to those responsible:
One officer was suspended from command and ordered out of
Afghanistan. The others were given lesser punishments: Six were sent to
counseling, seven were issued letters of reprimand, and two were ordered to
retraining courses.
MSF
continues to insist that the attack was a “war crime” and must be investigated
by an independent tribunal under the Geneva Conventions. In a statement this week,
Amnesty International said that it has “serious concerns about the Department
of Defense’s questionable track record of policing itself.” The LA
Times story notes that Physicians for Human Rights said in a letter to
the White House that “the gravity of harm caused by the reported failures to
follow protocol in Kunduz appears to constitute gross negligence that warrants
active pursuit of criminal liability.”
But
none of that matters. The only law to which the U.S. government is subject is
its own interests. U.S. officials scoffed at global demands for a real
investigation into what took place here, and then doled out “punishments” of
counseling, training classes, and letters of reprimand for those responsible
for this carnage. That’s almost a worse insult, a more extreme expression of
self-exoneration and indifference, than no sanctions at all. But that’s par for
the course in a country that has granted full-scale legal immunity for those
who perpetrated the most egregious crimes: from the systemic fraud that caused the
2008 financial crisis to theworldwide regime of torture the
U.S. government officially implemented.
Yesterday
in Syria, an MSF-run hospital was targeted with an airstrike,
almost certainly deliberately, by what was very likely the Syrian government or
the Russians, killing at least 50 patients and doctors, including one of
the last pediatricians in Aleppo. On behalf of the U.S. government, Secretary
of State John Kerry pronounced: “We are
outraged by yesterday’s airstrikes in Aleppo on the al Quds hospital supported
by both Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee of the Red
Cross, which killed dozens of people, including children, patients and medical
personnel.” On the list of those with even minimal credibility to denounce
that horrific airstrike, Kerry and his fellow American officials do not appear.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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