from Hacker News

How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

by AndrewBissell on 11/14/21, 5:26 PM with 121 comments

  • by photochemsyn on 11/14/21, 6:54 PM

    The US record in Afghanistan is arguably even more ridiculous (and psychotic) than in Iraq. We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) - although to be honest, the argument for doing the regime change op in Saudi Arabia was far more robust, as members of the Saudi government aided the hijackers and Saudi Royal family members were a key funding source.

    Everything since then has been ridiculous. Getting in bed with heroin-shipping warlords because they were anti-Taliban? Not that the Taliban got over $100 million from the USA in 1999-2001 for opium poppy eradication efforts, which were quite successful, although TAPI pipeline talks didn't go as well in this period.

    The whole 'Special Forces' fetishization is also pretty ridiculous. The best of the best of the best, la-dee-dah. Lots of nightime raids, which only pissed off the local population and made them quite willing to hand over power to the Taliban without a fight this year. Didn't 'US leaders' learn that from Vietnam? If the locals all hate you they're not going to support your remotely installed puppet government.

    Oh, and the "Afghan Army Training Program" - at a cost of something like $10 billion to train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members who'd be the nucleus of the new independent government... all that cash just went into Dubai bank accounts, didn't it? Or McMansions in Kabul. Gross blatant corruption (and the 'infrastructure projects' oh god... for a million bucks you get a chain of ten subcontractors backed up by one guy digging a ditch with a worn-out shovel... get used to it, that's coming here now).

    American foreign policy in the 21st century - what an absolute disaster. Reminiscent of say, France and Britain in the Middle East from oh 1945-1954. Similar long-term results are to be expected.

  • by stunt on 11/14/21, 7:13 PM

    Most of the civilian casualties aren't even documented in a war. If you think the military you support invades a country and only kills the bad guys, you are watching too many hollywood movies.

  • by vmception on 11/14/21, 6:02 PM

    How long until people realize that any authority saying “justified” is not using a definition found in any dictionary.

    The term used by any American imbued with the option of extrajudicial killings is only to - at best - match your pre-existing agreement with the action or your likelihood of agreeing with authority. “Justified”, for these people, does not mean “other actions were evaluated in a hierarchy and we were in a circumstance that this greater level of force was necessary” such as how a civilian is evaluated, it means “this choice was in a catalog of equally weighted choices, any of the choices including inaction would be justified”. I don’t view this as good enough, as it makes investigations and courts a waste of time and energy, when the only resolution can be to say “and now I present as evidence: the catalogue of choices that happens to list the choice taken” acquitting all.

  • by csee on 11/14/21, 6:23 PM

    Highlights:

    - Special task force ordered strike. They didn't have to go through normal checks and balances because they were doing it under emergency provisions apparently due to an emergency request from arab allies on the ground.

    - They claim they didn't see the civilians because they were relying on SD quality drone feed.

    - The group is accused of falsifying log records afterwards.

  • by deanCommie on 11/14/21, 8:07 PM

    If the Nuremberg principles were applied, every post-World War 2 president would be indictable. [0]

    [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXtgq0Nhsc

  • by chernevik on 11/14/21, 5:58 PM

  • by tyingq on 11/14/21, 8:05 PM

    It is encouraging to see this kind of in-depth reporting on the incident. I wonder for how much longer that's possible, given the declining revenue possible for news organizations.

  • by dd444fgdfg on 11/15/21, 12:42 AM

    the US political system is completely broken, and it's destroying a great country. it's a leadership problem, and needs someone who is capable of detaching and acting in the best interest of the country, not themselves or their party.

    they need a complete reboot. rewrite the constitution (it's overdue). rebuild the democratic voting functions (they're a mess and don't work).

    time for democracy 2.0

  • by lenkite on 11/15/21, 7:14 AM

    As a non-american, for all the lauded military professionalism of the USAF, I personally find them to be a bumbling organisation that can't seem to even do basic research before dropping bombs on people.

    There have been dozens of incidents of non-combatants bombed to paste over the last decade and it seems USAF will just simply not fix what it is doing wrong.

  • by trasz on 11/15/21, 8:37 AM

    Interestingly, despite a large number of upvotes this article is nowhere to be found on HN listing anymore.

  • by GaryTang on 11/14/21, 5:58 PM