Not all civilians are equal: Mosul vs. Aleppo

230 innocent civilians were killed in Mosul in a single night from U.S. bombs. The American media barely noticed.
It's not like we were responsible. Those hundreds of dead women and children were “human shields” for ISIS snipers, so it was their fault.

That would be an awful lot of human shields, of course, and there wouldn’t be much point of stashing them inside buildings where the US forces clearly either didn’t know where they were or didn’t feel it amounted to a deterrent to bombing those buildings anyhow.

According to Airwars, this bombing was just the topper for a really bad week for the women and children of Mosul.

So many civilians are being killed by U.S. bombs that Air Force Brig. Gen. Matthew Isler had to publicly deny that our bombing weren't "indiscriminate".
So when we bomb hospitals and slaughter civilians while "liberating" Mosul, it's "tragic".
When Russia bombed hospitals and slaughtered civilians in Aleppo it was a "massacre".

Just three months ago, on the eve of Aleppo’s fall to the Syrian regime, the New York Times declared that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Iran were “Aleppo’s destroyers,” and decried the slaughter of civilians and intense shelling of residential neighborhoods. There was little discussion of the rebels, many of which had received U.S. funding or weapons at some point during the conflict — and almost all of which had engaged in severe violations of human rights of their own.
The Times assigned complete responsibility for the disaster to the Syrian government, which it said had “ignored the demands of peaceful protesters and unleashed a terrifying war.” That position unsurprisingly mimicked the U.S. government’s. (The U.S. ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, even compared the fall of Aleppo to the Rwandan genocide and the massacre at Srebrenica.)

To be fair, the Russian bombing of Aleppo was a human rights crime, so the Times is not at fault there.
The "crime" of the Times is one of omission. Specifically, our crimes in Mosul.

The State Department rejects any comparison to Aleppo, an Obama-era spokesman said, since “in Mosul you have an entire coalition of some 66 nations who have planned for months” with “the vast support and legitimacy of the international community.”

This statement is absurd. War crimes don’t get a pass when more nations participate in them.

And the use of the word “legitimacy,” which has precisely no legal meaning, is meant to distract from the fact that Russia’s intervention in Aleppo was also legal under international law — no less so than Washington’s in Iraq, since both countries have welcomed by the respective regimes they’re fighting to preserve. However, the legality of the intervention does not absolve one from the obligations imposed by international humanitarian law in the course of the intervention.

Around 60% of Mosul has been taken back from ISIS, although the offensive has stalled again.
A question needs to be answered: what happens after?
In Fallujah, the army "destroyed everything that the eye can see."
In Ramadi, the destruction is even worse.
What will happen after Mosul?

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

Arrow's picture

On to war with Syria cuz we can't let the government win...

up
0 users have voted.

I want a Pony!

SnappleBC's picture

Just three months ago, on the eve of Aleppo’s fall to the Syrian regime

Unless I'm mistaken, that sentence should be re-written as:

Just three months ago, on the eve of the Syrian government regaining civil control of Aleppo after it's been bombed to rubble by outside forces...

up
0 users have voted.

A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

Scene of destruction in Mosul on August 15th 2016, after a reported Coalition strike targeting an ISIL-occupied office building also severely damaged surrounding areas (NRN News via Al A’Amaq propaganda)

An October 27th picture of bombs aboard the US aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower – which is supporting the ongoing Mosul operation (US Navy/ Petty Officer 3rd Class Andrew J. Sneeringer)

up
0 users have voted.
CB's picture

@Linda Wood @Linda Wood
crappy barrel bombs. The ones in the photo look like they can do some real serious damage - right down to the basement.

Edit: The bombs appear to be Mark 84 bombs (if they are about 10ft long) made by General Dynamics Corp. These babies can cause a real hurt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_84_bomb
The Mark 84 is capable of forming a crater 50 feet (15.2 m) wide and 36 ft (11.0 m) deep. It can penetrate up to 15 inches (381.0 mm) of metal or 11 ft (3.4 m) of concrete, depending on the height from which it is dropped, and causes lethal fragmentation to a radius of 400 yards (365.8 m).

up
0 users have voted.

@Linda Wood

(/extreme snark on)
Looking at the image of all of that military hardware I'm so glad that we can put to use our powerhouse of technology, engineering and manufacturing to this use. I am feeling so much safer now that we destroyed of all of those nasty, secular governments in the Middle East. The cost for them is well worth it. I'm sure that the Middle Eastern Arab world will reward us for centuries to come.
(/extreme snark off)

Seriously I don't understand why we treat violence against people as a very unacceptable, except when it comes to killing people with bullets and bombs by our military. For me, the visual image of those high tech bombs on the deck of the aircraft carrier makes me sick to my stomach.

up
0 users have voted.

Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

@The Wizard thanks for saying Technological Powerhouse it made me LOL. Here is TheRegister being snarkily truthful about the monopolist billionaire oligarch Gates, most wealthy bag of water on the planet: Microsoft delivers secure China-only cut of Windows 10

China used Edward Snowden's revelations to question whether western technology products could compromise its security. Policy responses included source code reviews for foreign vendors and requiring Chinese buyers to shop from an approved list of products. Microsoft, IBM and Intel all refused to submit source code for inspection, but Redmond and Big Blue have found other ways to get their code into China.

IBM's route is a partnership with Dalian Wanda to bring its cloud behind the Great Firewall. Microsoft last year revealed its intention to build a version of Windows 10 for Chinese government users in partnership with state-owned company China Electronics Technology Group Corp.
...

Not feeling too well toward the Great American cloud business, never did.
Free Software, Free Society
LibrePlanet Program Speakers This weekend March 25-26.
LibrePlanet 2017 - Live Stream links for those who might care, and can.

Our conference streaming web interface requires JavaScript, but all of our streams are readily available on live2.fsf.org and can be played with the video client of your choice, such as VLC or mplayer.
You can watch the streams directly by using vlc or some other media players with the following URLs:

Thanks

up
0 users have voted.
divineorder's picture

Oregon killed in London. Sharing this essay can help educate people about US failed policy in the ME. No more important work could you be doing imo.

up
0 users have voted.

A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

in Iraq so that ISIL can get out, resupply and regroup... oops I mean that the refugees can get out and be safe?

up
0 users have voted.

Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

@The Wizard
your ironic comment. And I thank you.

up
0 users have voted.

https://theintercept.com/2017/03/22/war-correspondents-describe-recent-u...

... “There are American special forces on the ground but much more important than that is U.S. airpower, without which the Iraqi forces would not be able to get very far,” explained author and journalist Anand Gopal.

“And they’ve been hitting pretty much everything in sight and there’s been an extraordinary number of civilian casualties — just kind of gone through the roof in the last couple of months especially coming into Mosul.”

Gopal explained that the western half of the city, where the fighting is now, is the older part, with densely packed neighborhoods.

The “houses are really close together and so you can have a case where an ISIS sniper is on a house and the Americans are dropping bombs on the house and killing everybody inside including families that are cowering in the basement, people who are being shot on the street in sight. It’s a real humanitarian disaster that’s unfolding as we speak.

up
0 users have voted.

https://theintercept.com/2017/03/22/war-correspondents-describe-recent-u...

WAR CORRESPONDENTS DESCRIBE RECENT U.S. AIRSTRIKES IN IRAQ, SYRIA, AND YEMEN
Malak Habbak
March 22 2017

… To complicate matters further, the United States has been also fueling a Saudi Arabian campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen, and is now attacking alleged al Qaeda targets there directly. This month, independent war reporter Iona Craig covered a tragically botched Navy SEAL raid in Yemen for The Intercept. Craig interviewed survivors of the raid, which Trump called a success despite the death of one Navy SEAL, at least six women, and 10 children under the age of 13.

Craig said that a spate of airstrikes followed the raid. “In the space of 36 hours [the U.S.] carried as many strikes as they had done in the whole of last year [across] three provinces,” she said.

... “They saw it as revenge — a revenge for killing a Navy SEAL basically — that the Americans were coming back to destroy their village entirely and to make sure that everybody was gone.”

… Gopal said that the United States harbors a “fantasy” of creating a Sunni force to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, while reducing reliance on Iranian-backed forces in the region.

... “Already it’s a bloodbath in the Middle East and already there [are] hundreds of different forces fighting,” he said. “Any attempt to try to either create Sunni proxy force or push onto Iran would be just an even greater disaster, and there we’re talking world war three level of disaster.”

Craig said the only winner is the defense industry. “Well, it’s good business,” she said. “In the first year of the war [in Yemen], the U.S. sold $20 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia has been buying more and more weapons as a result of this war, and the same goes for the British government as well,” she said. “Really it all boils down to financial gain and that’s the greatest win really for the U.S., but it’s an extremely costly one obviously for the civilian population of Yemen.”

up
0 users have voted.
edg's picture

[Read this in the voice of Ralphie Wiggum from The Simpsons]

Our bombs are friendly bombs!

up
0 users have voted.
SnappleBC's picture

I've been able to refer this article and the ensuing comments to 4 different communities today. My message has been, "So you're suddenly upset about civilian casualties? When did this start? Let me introduce you to the reality of US foreign policy."

up
0 users have voted.

A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard