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Comment by aha_throwaway | Hacker News Reader

It's always like that.

The last days in Afghan they kill 10 people, and no one hell accountable. All they do is labeled them as ISIS members.

(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-strike-...)

didn't they report like 90% of people killed in drone strikes are civilians... now the person who leaked this information is in prison for showing us that. They also commit war crimes like targeting first responders after initial strike, something terrorists like doing, US calls it a "double tap".

hopefully one day US will be held responsible for the death and destruction it has caused world wide, maybe we could have a version of the Nuremberg trials for the US.

instead US leaves the international criminal court and pardons war criminals, so the world has no way to get justice.

What would you like to be done about it?

Tried as a war crime, perhaps? Murdering an aid worker and seven children, then trying to cover it up, seems pretty horrific to me.

Who specifically should be tried?

Let's start with the person who pushed without verifying that the targets were truly ISIS and work our way upwards

What does that mean? The person who pulled the trigger to release the Hellfire from the drone?

Yup, they'll know who told them not to do it, and being ordered to do something is no defense against war crimes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

Lets start with the people who physically killed them.

With a missile strike, who would that be?

At least the party who ordered the missile strike. The Navy servicemen mainly launch the missiles to coordinates X, Y without questioning the order, so they're an accessory to murder.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)

I don't necessarily disagree, but how would they have effectively questioned that order? If they asked for confirmation for who they were striking, they would have received the US's faulty intel. And it's not like they had any power to independently verify it.

If there were a massive amount of charges filed for everyone involved with the strike, I'd agree that the servicemen should also be charged. I'm not sure that's where we should start, as I feel it's too likely that's also where we would end and they are the least responsible of the related parties.

They don't have any choice but to follow orders once they're part of a military org. That's why the parties ordering the strike should carry most of the responsibility.

no wrong... you can not commit war crimes and use that as a excuse why you did it, following orders is what the Nazis tried to uses as a excuse... if you see you are bombing a hospital,a school,open market or first responders and you still bomb them then you and the people ordering it are responsible.

True, but I was arguing the missile operators only get the order with the coordinates and may not know what the target is or may get misleading intel, like the drone operator who was told that their target were ISIS operatives when in reality they were aid workers associated with the US. The nazis knowingky took people to the concentration camps and executed them.

If you're referring to the "people who physically killed them" as the individual(s) who operated the drone(s), I imagine they are the ones who need the most (mental) help, after learning their superiors provided faulty intelligence and allegedly killed innocent people.[0]

The two(+) that are perhaps the most relevant are those that provided the intelligence (framing), and those that made the decision to act on it.

[0] I don't know how much liberty drone operators have to make live decisions in the .. "field" about whether to engage or not, but I suspect this case involved some level of abstraction.

Okay? Who is that? Who specifically? The drone pilot?

Not to get too deep into it, but there must be some difference between casualties of war, even if those casualties come from horrific mistakes and literal war crimes right? There must be some gradation in our reproach. War doesn't really provide good options. You end up a bit too careful and hundreds of people die, a bit too little and you kill tens of people. I'm not going to say an investigation shouldn't happen, but to say anything less then perfection equals war crime really devalues that term

But I remember watching the video where about 10 people were killed from kilometres away. The people responsible were clearly having fun. I also remember a few people getting in big trouble over releasing just a small piece of an enormous pile.

It's clear where stand: "Things happen in war"

Sounds like you're referring to the Wikileaks leaked 'Collateral murder' video [0]. Note, pretty grim material.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYTxuW2vmzk

I thought this was referring to the seemingly tragic killing of a man and some of his family who the military claims was planning to drive a bomb up to the airport. I'm not claiming the US has not committed war crimes in Afghanistan

Many on this site struggle when it comes to reasoning about civilian casualties, war, war crimes, collateral damage, etc. War is not black and white, it's a shitty gray nuanced hell for all involved.

Is killing an aid worker registered as working with a US NGO as he was surrounded by 7 kids really just shy of perfection?

That was 1000% preventable. You don't get to kill people based on circumstantial evidence without even counting the number of bystanders, without verifying their identity, without doing any level of human intelligence, all easily accomplished tasks, and then claim that you did everything you could.

It's absolutely clear the US did not give a single shit about civilians. Many US and coalition soldiers were even happy to kill civilians. You don't authorize a policy of systematically killing first responders ("double tap strikes") and then claim you were trying to minimize civilians casualties. It wasn't a mistake, it was knowingly just not giving a shit.

Just try the responsible parties so that others will act responsibly? The US's withdrawal of support for the ICC is quite telling. The Trump administration even authorized sanctions against the ICC. The US is quite on par with Russia regarding this matter, as in "we support the court as long as it doesn't come after us".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Intern...

Yeah I was shocked to read that too. Sounds like if it's true an epic intelligence failure and maybe a reason not to put death by drone control into lower level field decision makers.

But I would think murder war crime implies intent not negligence.

Nobody even cares much when they do it to American citizens.

Anwar al-Awlaki was a American citizen born in New Mexico.

Didn't stop several US administrations from hunting down him and his family to the other side of the planet to systematically assassinate them.

He was killed by a drone strike in September 2011 [0], in October 2011 his 16 years old son, also a American citizen, was killed in another drone strike in Yemen.

One of his surviving daughters, was killed during a NAVY Seal raid in 2017, when she was only 8 years old. It was the first mission greenlit under Trump, the Pentagon and US press claimed "no civilian casulties" [1], while local sources later reported dozens of dead women and children [2].

For over a decade this family of Americans has been targeted and hunted down with the full might of the American military and Five Eyes surveillance apparatus, but it's all okay because they are "terrorists".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/29/politics/us-servicemember...

[2] https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-killed-a-16-year-o...

It seems like Anwar al-Awlaki was what the US call a terrorist. I don't know why the CIA killed his kids though. It's too much of a coincidence that two of his kids were killed.

Statistically, is it?

Yeah that's why the constitution gives your rights 'except when some burocrates think you are a terrorist or related to a terrorist.

edit: I am completely missing the mark

The US hasn't been (officially) at war since WW2 ended.

The War on Terror is a gift that keeps on giving.

pretty sure USA has been in like 20+ wars since WW2,what do you mean? since WW2 they have destroyed countless countries.. how is doing war not war?

Because Article One of the constitution requires congress to approve declarations of war, and they haven't done that. Whatever has happened in the meantime, it has been hasn't been considered a "war" in the US legal framework.

>What evidence do you have that it was not done by ISIS members?

The US openly admits firing the missile. That seems more likely than ISIS acquiring and launching a missile at an Afghanistan home then the US taking "credit" for it.

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