Don’t let the airstrike fall under the radar

“Mistake” and “airstrike” should never share a headline. But earlier this month, the biggest military error of the Obama administration brought them together.

On Oct. 3, an American AC-130 gunship bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The attack killed 12 staff members and 10 patients and left 37 people wounded. Most of those killed were hospital workers, and three of the killed patients were children.

This was a tragic accident, but even accidents should have consequences. Unfortunately, the people behind this incident will likely face none. Military negligence like this has become systemic, and the only solution is recognition of our own flaws.

Aside from military officials expressing regret for the bombing, the U.S. government has remained largely silent. President Obama did not start the next day with a press conference committing to make things right. He waited a few days to make a private phone call to the head of Doctors Without Borders.

“If necessary,” Press Secretary Josh Earnest read last Wednesday at the White House, “the President [said he] would implement changes that would make tragedies like this one less likely to occur.”

This need to question the necessity for change speaks to the problem.

After the bombing, Doctors Without Borders pulled all remaining personnel from Kunduz. Now, people in one of the most turbulent, dangerous cities in Afghanistan will have nowhere to turn for help. According to Doctors Without Borders, the hospital stationed in Kunduz was the only free trauma care hospital in northern Afghanistan.

While the Obama administration has agreed to compensate the organization, we have abandoned the people we are supposedly fighting for. We have thrown phrases like “deeply regret” around, but at the end of the day, they add up to nothing. And without the administration’s support, there is nobody capable of legitimately pushing for more accountability.

We saw the same series of events play out after the mistaken bombings of numerous Afghan weddings throughout the war and the destruction of entire villages. Since 2008, anti-government forces, government/international forces and undetermined forces have killed 22,849 civilians, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Attackers often blame these errors on enemy fighters when they take shelter near civilian populations. Part of the United States assuming the role of global protector entails making difficult moral choices, including placing preserving innocent lives above killing opposed forces.

This means not killing civilians and chalking it up as a simple casualty of war.

We assume that position of global protector because we believe that we are better equipped to enforce justice than any other nation. In some cases, like when the U.S. supported the Contra rebels in Nicaragua and set up a protected state in Cuba, we have decided that we know better than them, influencing their policies with our own forced ideals.  When you declare yourself to be above the jurisdiction of anybody willing to hold you to an identifiable standard, the police officer can become the bully.

We have helped remove dictators like Muammar Gaddafi and supported humanitarian relief in Somalia. But we have also helped destabilize the entire Middle East and supported dictators like Hosni Mubarak — when convenient. Nobody has ever made us answer for any of it.

To qualify as a war crime under International Criminal Court policy — as Doctors Without Borders has accused the attack on the hospital of being — an attack on civilians must be intentional. For me, this incident is not a question of intent. I truly believe that this was an accident. But I also believe that nothing will change.

While both the United Nations and the Department of Defense have launched investigations, neither of these entities has much power to do anything. Although we act as the world’s moral compass, the United States has consistently rejected joining the ICC, the only multinational institution dedicated to prosecuting international crimes of aggression.

According to Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, wounded combatants and the medical officials treating them are off limits of attack in the event of armed conflict. Despite the Afghan claims that Taliban members were firing on the Afghans from the hospital, Doctors Without Borders has insisted that the hospital was operating normally and was never involved in an exchange of fire. The organization has admitted to treating wounded Taliban fighters, but it shouldn’t matter. Doctors treat the injured. That’s that.

As Vickie Hawkins, executive director for Doctors Without Borders, told the BBC World Service, the hospital had been in Kunduz for more than four years. Both NATO and Afghan forces have the precise coordinates of all Doctors Without Borders facilities, and the building was clearly marked on GPS images.

We knew it was there. We had the ability to look at a map of the area and notice that the intended target was a medical building. Somehow, though, the strike occurred before the Special Operations Force could “positively identify” the exact location, according to its  commander, Gen. John F. Campbell.

To avoid repeating these errors, our political elites need to loudly announce that these actions are unacceptable.

No Republican leader has said a word about the hospital bombing because criticizing President Obama’s use of our military comes a bit too close to criticizing the military itself. It was under Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush that policing the world became our primary foreign policy. Presidential candidates like Jeb Bush and Donald Trump continue to say we never should have left Iraq.

Expecting Republicans to speak out against careless intervention is probably unrealistic. They have preferred to focus on less consequential issues like the president’s birthplace and the short, useless warning periods instituted in the Iran nuclear deal.

Democrats have also played a passive role in holding the Obama administration accountable. While they have blocked several spending bills that do not cut defense spending, they generally favor the president’s drone program. They are comfortable criticizing the size of our military but stop short of attacking their own management of it.

If the opposition and the base are so publicly apathetic, who is going to hold the country accountable for its detrimental actions?

Matt Moret primarily writes on politics and rhetoric for The Pitt News.

Write to Matt at mdm123@pitt.edu