{"id":73160,"date":"2016-05-09T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-05-09T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=73160"},"modified":"2016-05-08T13:41:50","modified_gmt":"2016-05-08T12:41:50","slug":"cowardice-and-exoneration-in-kunduz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/cowardice-and-exoneration-in-kunduz\/","title":{"rendered":"Cowardice and Exoneration in Kunduz"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"robert<\/a>4 May 2016 – <\/em>\u201cThe people are being reduced to blood and dust. They are in pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

The doctor who uttered these words still thought the hospital itself was a safe zone. He was with Doctors Without Borders, working in Kunduz, Afghanistan, where the Taliban and government forces were engaged in hellish fighting and civilians, as always, were caught in the middle. The wounded, including children, had been flowing in all week, and the staff were unrelieved in their duties, working an unending shift.<\/p>\n

Their week ended at 2 a.m. last Oct. 3 when \u2013 as the world knows \u2013 a U.S. AC-130 gunship began strafing the hospital, the crew apparently acting on the mistaken belief that this was a Taliban compound. The strike lasted for an hour, continuing even though the humanitarian organization contacted the Pentagon and pleaded that it stop.<\/p>\n

A total of 211 shells hit the hospital. The Intensive Care Unit was wiped out. Every patient in the unit except for a 3-year-old girl was killed, some burning to death in their beds. A total of 42 people \u2013 patients, staff and doctors \u2013 died because of this lethal mistake.<\/p>\n

One of the dead was Dr. Osmani, the young doctor quoted above, who had just begun ophthalmology training in Kabul but still worked at the MSF facility in Kunduz on weekends, according to an eyewitness account by Kathleen Thomas<\/a>, another doctor there, an Australian, who survived.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur colleagues didn\u2019t die peacefully like in the movies,\u201d she wrote last month in The Guardian. \u201cThey died painfully, slowly, some of them screaming out for help that never came, alone and terrified, knowing the extent of their own injuries and aware of their impending death. Countless other staff and patients were injured; limbs blown off, shrapnel rocketed through them, burns, pressure-wave injuries of the lungs, eyes and ears. Many of these injuries have left permanent disability. It was a scene of nightmarish horror that will be forever etched in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some mistake.<\/p>\n

This is all news again, of course, because the U.S. government, having investigated the incident, has just released a 3,000-page, mostly classified report, uh, exonerating itself. This comes as no surprise.<\/p>\n

Well, it admitted the bombing was an unfortunate mistake and 16 military personnel involved in the incident have received \u201cadministrative actions\u201d as punishment. Also, since the tragedy, the U.S. has made \u201ccondolence payments\u201d to the victims: $6,000<\/a> to families of the dead, $3,000 to the injured.<\/p>\n

It seems to me all this requires a moment or two of profound silence, as we try to absorb both the tragedy and the absurdity of these events, which unite in a sort of horrific shrug of indifference to the predictable consequences of war.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>, for instance, informs us: \u201cStill, the release of the investigation\u2019s findings and the announcement of the disciplinary measures were unlikely to satisfy Doctors Without Borders and other human rights groups, which on Friday reiterated their calls for an independent criminal investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course Doctors Without Borders will not be \u201csatisfied\u201d with these findings, as though, my God, any finding or any action whatsoever by the U.S. military \u2013 gosh, the payout of six grand per dead Afghan or the stern punishment of a few scapegoats \u2013 could bring balance and resolution to the horror Kathleen Thomas describes. Just the use of that word \u2013 \u201csatisfied\u201d \u2013 trivializes the infliction of suffering, whether intentional or merely recklessly accidental, beyond comprehension.<\/p>\n

But this is the language of war, as spoken by those who wage it and those who uncritically report it: a language of implicit moral relativism.<\/p>\n

The same Times story, describing the report\u2019s account of what happened, explained: \u201cThe aircrew appeared to be confused by the directions from the Americans on the ground in the minutes leading up to the attack. At one point, the crew was told it would need to hit a second target after the strike it was about to commence, and \u2018we will also be doing the same thing of softening the target for partner forces,\u2019 that is, Afghans.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the reality: An action that wound up killing 42 hospital workers and patients \u2013men, women and children, some of whom were burned alive in their beds \u2013 was instigated in order to \u201csoften the target\u201d . . . which is nothing less than linguistic exoneration of murder. Or rather, pre-exoneration.<\/p>\n

And this is war. This is what the United States allots 54 percent<\/a> of its annual discretionary spending \u2013 some $600 billion \u2013 to perpetuate. I\u2019m quite certain this money would be unspendable, and the game called war would be unplayable, if it weren\u2019t for the linguistic pre-exoneration that removes all humanity from those who will die (think: collateral damage) and all responsibility from those who will kill.<\/p>\n

But with the exoneration solidly in place, anything goes. Every side in war plays with the instruments of hell. The Times also recently reported that war zone hospitals<\/a> everywhere are more vulnerable than they\u2019ve ever been and the \u201crules of war\u201d seem to be in tatters.<\/p>\n

Maybe this is because war can\u2019t be contained by \u201crules.\u201d<\/p>\n

For instance, not only have there been six attacks on hospitals in Aleppo, Syria \u2013 perpetrated by both government and rebel forces \u2013 in the past week, but also: \u201cIn 11 of the world\u2019s war zones, between 2011 and 2014, the International Committee of the Red Cross tallied nearly 2,400 acts of violence against those who were trying to provide health care. That works out to two attacks a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

What might \u201csatisfy\u201d Doctors Without Borders or the maimed and grieving victims of the Kunduz tragedy? In my view, nothing less than an American commitment to global demilitarization.<\/p>\n

This is called atonement.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe aircrew appeared to be confused by the directions from the Americans on the ground. At one point, the crew was told it would need to hit a second target after the strike it was about to commence, and \u2018we will also be doing the same thing of softening the target for partner forces.\u2019\u201d This is the reality: An action that wound up killing 42 hospital workers and patients \u2013men, women and children, some of whom were burned alive in their beds \u2013 was instigated in order to \u201csoften the target\u201d . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}