Hawaii Political Info introduction: A U.S. airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan over the weekend killed 22: 12 staffers and 10 patients, including 3 children, and injured 37. After a delay, the U.S. owned up to its responsibility for the hour-long attack, saying it was a mistake. Many suspect on the contrary that it was deliberate.
As a precaution against being bombed, the hospital had given all combatants, including the U.S., their GPS coordinates.
Why would the U.S. and its allies want to bomb a hospital? Some think it was because the hospital accepted all who needed their help–including those combatants who oppose the U.S. and its allies. It's thought that the U.S. took exception to help extended to enemies.
President Obama apologized today for the airstrike, promising a full investigation. The White House had previously said that the Department of Defense and NATO would conduct an investigation, which didn't inspire much confidence since both are part of the U.S. military and would amount to a self-investigation.
Afghan forces said that the hospital was used by the Taliban for military purposes, which was strongly denied by Doctors Without Borders, aka Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Update: Glenn Greenwald lays out the unfolding of events in his usual highly competent way:
All of these facts make it extremely difficult – even for U.S. media outlets – to sell the “accident” story. At least as likely is that the hospital was deliberately targeted, chosen either by Afghan military officials who fed the coordinates to their U.S. military allies and/or by the U.S. military itself. —The Intercept
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The Guardian [U.K.]
Doctors Without Borders airstrike: US alters story for fourth time in four days
Commander of war in Afghanistan tells Senate panel that US forces had called in airstrike at Afghan request – ‘an admission of a war crime’ says MSF chief
October 6, 2015
US special operations forces – not their Afghan allies – called in the deadly airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, the US commander has conceded.
Shortly before General John Campbell, the commander of the US and Nato war in Afghanistan, testified to a Senate panel, the president of Doctors Without Borders – also known as Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) – said the US and Afghanistan had made an “admission of a war crime”.
Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning airstrike for the fourth time in as many days, Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a “tenacious fight” to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban. But, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead.
Read more . . .
Link:
Doctors Without Borders Factsheet
