An \u201chonest mistake\u201d is buying your partner the wrong perfume or copying someone into an email chain by accident. It is not firing a drone missile at a car, killing 10 civilians \u2013 and doing so when a small child was clearly visible moments earlier.<\/p>\n
And yet, a supposedly \u201cindependent\u201d Pentagon inquiry this month claimed just such a good-faith mistake<\/a> after US commanders authorised a drone strike in late August that killed an Afghan family, including seven children.\u00a0A US air force general concluded that there was no negligence or misconduct, and that no disciplinary action should be taken.<\/p>\n At the weekend, the Pentagon exonerated itself again. It called a 2019 air strike on Baghuz in Syria that killed dozens of women and children<\/a> \u201cjustified\u201d. It did so even after an investigation by the New York Times<\/em> showed that the group of civilians who were bombed had already been identified as fleeing fighting between US-backed militias and the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n A US military lawyer, Dean Korsak, flagged<\/a> the incident at the time as a potential war crime but the Pentagon never carried out an investigation. It came to public attention only because Korsak sent details to a Senate oversight committee.<\/p>\n In announcing the conclusions of its Afghanistan inquiry, the Pentagon made clear what its true priorities are in the wake of its hurried, Saigon-style exit from Afghanistan following two decades of failed occupation. It cares about image management<\/a>, not accountability.<\/p>\n Contrast its refusal to take action against the drone operators and commanders who fired on a civilian vehicle with the Pentagon\u2019s immediate crackdown on one of its soldiers who criticised the handling of the withdrawal. Veteran marine Stuart Scheller was court-martialled last month<\/a> after he used social media to publicly berate his bosses.<\/p>\n Which of the two \u2013 Scheller\u2019s comment or the impunity of those who killed an innocent family \u2013 is likely to do more to discredit the role of the US military, in Afghanistan or in other theatres around the globe in which it operates?<\/p>\n Colonial narrative<\/strong><\/p>\n The Pentagon is far from alone in expecting to be exempted from scrutiny for its war crimes.<\/p>\n The \u201chonest mistake\u201d is a continuing colonial narrative western nations tell themselves, and the rest of us, when they kill civilians.\u00a0When western troops invade and occupy other people\u2019s lands \u2013 and maybe help themselves to some of the resources they find along the way \u2013 it is done in the name of bringing security or spreading democracy<\/a>. We are always the Good Guys, they are the Evil Ones. We make mistakes, they commit crimes.<\/p>\n This self-righteousness is the source of western indignation at any suggestion that the International Criminal Court at The Hague should investigate, let alone prosecute, US<\/a>, European and Israeli<\/a> commanders or politicians for carrying out or overseeing war crimes.<\/p>\n It is only African leaders<\/a> or enemies of Nato who need to be dragged before tribunals and made to pay a price. But nothing in the latest Pentagon inquiry confirms the narrative of an \u201chonest mistake\u201d, despite indulgent coverage in western media referring to the drone strike as \u201cbotched\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even the establishment of the inquiry was not honest. How is it \u201cindependent\u201d for a Pentagon general to investigate an incident involving US troops?<\/p>\n The drone operators who killed the family of Zemerai Ahmadi, an employee of a US aid organisation, were authorised to do so because his white Toyota Corolla was mistaken for a similar vehicle reported as belonging to the local franchise of Islamic State. But that make is one of the most common vehicles in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n The head of the aid organisation where he worked told reporters pointedly<\/a>: \u201cI do not understand how the most powerful military in the world could follow [Mr Ahmadi], an aid worker, in a commonly used car for eight hours, and not figure out who he was, and why he was at a US aid organisation\u2019s headquarters.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision was, at best, recklessly indifferent as to whether Ahmadi was a genuine target and whether children would die as a result. But more likely, when it attacked Ahmadi\u2019s vehicle, the entire US military system was in the grip of a blinding thirst for revenge. Three days earlier, 13 American soldiers and 169 Afghan civilians had been killed when a bomb exploded close to Kabul airport<\/a>, as Afghans massed there in the hope of gaining a place on one of the last evacuation flights.<\/p>\n That airport explosion was the final military humiliation \u2013 this one inflicted by Islamic State \u2013 after the Taliban effectively chased American troops out of Afghanistan. Revenge \u2013 even when it is dressed up as restoring \u201cdeterrence\u201d or \u201cmilitary honour\u201d \u2013 is not an \u201chonest mistake\u201d.<\/p>\n Pattern of behaviour<\/strong><\/p>\n But there is an even deeper reason to be sceptical of the Pentagon inquiry. There is no \u201chonest mistake\u201d defence when the same mistakes keep happening. \u201cHonest mistakes\u201d can\u2019t be a pattern of behaviour.<\/p>\n And yet the long years of US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and meddling in Syria, have been pockmarked with air strikes that obliterated families or slammed into wedding parties<\/a>. That information rarely makes headlines, eclipsed by the Pentagon\u2019s earlier, faulty claims of the successful \u201cneutralisation of terrorists\u201d.<\/p>\n But just such \u201cmistakes\u201d were the reason why the US occupation of Afghanistan ultimately imploded. The Pentagon\u2019s scatter-gun killing of Afghans created so many enemies<\/a> among the local population that US-backed local rulers lost all legitimacy.<\/p>\n Something similar happened during the US and UK\u2019s occupation of Iraq. Anyone who believes the Pentagon commits \u201chonest mistakes\u201d when it kills civilians needs to watch the video, Collateral Murder<\/em><\/a>, issued by WikiLeaks in 2012.<\/p>\n It shows the aerial view of helicopter pilots in 2007 as they discuss with a mix of technical indifference and gruesome glee their missile strikes on a crowd of Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists, moving about on the streets of Baghdad below.<\/p>\n When a passing van tries to come to the aid of one of wounded, the pilots fire again, even though a child is visible in the front seat. In fact, two children were found inside the van. US soldiers arriving at the scene made the decision to deny both treatment from US physicians.<\/p>\n As the pilots were told of the casualties, one commented: \u201cWell, it\u2019s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.\u201d The other responded: \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the video was leaked, the military claimed that the civilians killed that day had been caught in the crossfire of a gun battle<\/a>. \u201cThere is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,\u201d a statement read.<\/p>\n The video, however, shows that there was nothing honest or mistaken about the way those Iraqis died, even if there was no specific intention to kill civilians. They were killed because US commanders were uninterested in the safety of those it occupied, because they were indifferent to whether Iraqis, even Iraqi children, lived or died.<\/p>\n Killing innocents<\/strong><\/p>\n The states that cry loudest that they kill innocents \u201cby accident\u201d or \u201cunintentionally\u201d or because \u201cthe terrorists shield behind them\u201d are also the ones that keep killing innocents.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s version of this is the “tragic mistake<\/a>” \u2013 the excuse it used in 2014 when its navy fired two precision missiles at a beach in Gaza at exactly the spot where four boys were playing football. They were killed instantly. In seven weeks of pummelling Gaza in 2014, Israel killed more than 500 Palestinian children and more than 850 adult civilians<\/a>. And yet all were apparently \u201chonest mistakes\u201d because no soldiers, commanders or politicians were ever held to account for those deaths.<\/p>\n Palestinian civilians keep dying year after year, decade after decade, and yet they are always killed by an \u201chonest mistake\u201d.\u00a0Israel\u2019s excuses are entirely unconvincing for the same reason the Pentagon\u2019s carry no weight.<\/p>\n Both have committed their crimes in another people\u2019s territory to which they have not been invited. Both militaries rule over those people without good cause, treating the local population as \u201chostiles\u201d. And both act in the knowledge that their soldiers enjoy absolute impunity.<\/p>\n In reaching its decision on the killing of the Afghan family this month, the Pentagon stated that it had not “broken the law<\/a>“. That verdict too is not honest. What the US military means is that it did not break its own self-serving rules of engagement, rules that permit anything the US military decides it wants to do. It behaves as if no laws apply to it when it invades others\u2019 lands, not even the laws of the territories it occupies.<\/p>\n That argument is dishonest too. There are the laws of war and the laws of occupation. There is international law. The US has broken those laws over and over again in Afghanistan and Iraq, as has Israel in ruling over the Palestinians for more than five decades and blockading parts of their territory.<\/p>\n The problem is that there is no appetite to enforce international law against the planet\u2019s sole military superpower and its allies. Instead it is allowed to claim the role of benevolent global policeman.<\/p>\n No scrutiny<\/strong><\/p>\n Both the US and Israel declined to ratify the Rome Statute<\/a>, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) that judges war crimes. That refusal was no \u201chonest mistake\u201d either. Each expected to avoid the court\u2019s scrutiny<\/a>.<\/p>\n US and Israeli leaders know their soldiers commit war crimes, and that they themselves commit war crimes by approving either the wars of aggression these soldiers are expected to wage or the messy, long-term belligerent occupations they are supposed to enforce.\u00a0 But whatever they hope, the failure to ratify the statute does not serve as a stay-out-of-jail card. US and Israeli leaders still risk falling under the ICC\u2019s jurisdiction if the countries they invade or occupy have ratified the statute, as is the case with Afghanistan and Palestine.<\/p>\n The catch is that the Hague court can be used only as a last resort \u2013 in other words, it has to be shown first that any country accused of war crimes failed to seriously investigate those crimes itself.<\/p>\n The chorus from the US and Israel of \u201chonest mistake\u201d every time they kill civilians is just such proof. It demonstrates that the US and Israeli legal systems are entirely incapable of upholding the laws of war, or holding their own political and military officials to account. That must be the job of the ICC instead.<\/p>\n But the court is fearful. The Trump administration launched a mafia-style campaign against it last year<\/a> to stop its officials investigating US war crimes in Afghanistan. The assets of the court\u2019s officials were blocked and they were denied the right to enter the US.<\/p>\n That is the reason why the court keeps failing to stand up for the victims of western war crimes like Zemerai Ahmadi and his children.\u00a0The ICC had spent 15 years dragging its feet before it finally announced last year that it would investigate allegations of US war crimes in Afghanistan. That resolve quickly dissolved under the subsequent campaign of pressure.<\/p>\n In September, shortly after Ahmadi\u2019s family was killed by US drone operators, the court\u2019s chief prosecutor declared that investigations into US actions in Afghanistan, including widespread claims of torture of Afghans, would be “deprioritised<\/a>.” The investigation would focus instead on the Taliban and Islamic State.<\/p>\n Once again, enemies of the US, but not the US itself, will be called to account. That too is no \u201chonest mistake\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2022 First published in Middle East Eye<\/a><\/em><\/p>The post \u201cHonest mistakes\u201d: How the US and Israel justify the targeting and killing of civilians<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An \u201chonest mistake\u201d is buying your partner the wrong perfume or copying someone into an email chain by accident. It is not firing a drone missile at a car, killing 10 civilians \u2013 and doing so when a small child was clearly visible moments earlier. And yet, a supposedly \u201cindependent\u201d Pentagon inquiry this month claimed [\u2026]<\/p>\n The post \u201cHonest mistakes\u201d: How the US and Israel justify the targeting and killing of civilians<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,48,287,1217,3049,377,192,82,747,53,290,473,196,615,36,202,166,294],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":396652,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396534\/revisions\/396652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}