Obama Bombs a Hospital: War Crime, or Historic Achievement?
If the U.S. is actually responsible for bombing a hospital full of volunteer doctors and maimed Afghanis — and there's still no way to know for certain —
it would mark the first time in human history that a Nobel Peace Prize winner bombed a fellow Peace Prize recipient. That counts for something, right?
Historians agree that the historic murder of peace prize winners by a peace prize winner would have been even more historic if it had been done with a baseball bat. Next time?
For anyone vaguely familiar with U.S. foreign policy, October 3, 2015 was much like any other day: Some bombs were dropped, some people died, and yadda yadda yadda. In the annals of U.S. hospital/school/wedding bombings, the massacre which occurred in Kunduz, Afghanistan was more or less standard operating procedure.
Except this particular hospital was operated by English-speaking volunteer doctors who
were once awarded the same peace prize that Barack Obama currently keeps in his desk drawer. To make matters
slightly more difficult to sweep under the rug,
the volunteer doctors repeatedly advised the U.S. military of the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital. They did so most recently on September 29, just five days before the strike. Beyond that, MSF personnel at the facility “frantically” called U.S. military officials during the strike to advise them that the hospital was being hit and to plead with them to stop, but the strikes continued in a “sustained” manner for 30 more minutes.
How would the Pentagon normally respond to a “regrettable boo-boo” such as this? Let us consult the best-selling U.S. Army field manual, So You Committed a War Crime. Now What?
1. Plausible deniability. For example: “It could have been the Taliban Air Force”. If this doesn't work, then:
2. Blame the brown-people government of the brown-people country that you are currently occupying. If this doesn't work, then:
3. Weapons were actually being stashed at the hospital, so it was a legitimate target. If this doesn't work, then:
4. Hey, look. Another school shooting.
You would think that considering the extraordinary circumstances the Pentagon would go “off script” to handle a PR nightmare like this.
Think again.
In its
first article on the attack,
The Washington Post also previewed this defense, quoting a “spokesman for the Afghan army’s 209th Corps in northern Afghanistan” as saying that “Taliban fighters are now hiding in ‘people’s houses, mosques and hospitals using civilians as human shields.'” AP
yesterday actually claimed that it looked at a video and saw weaponry in the hospital’s windows, only to
delete that claim with this correction.
Doctors Without Borders is now publicly stating that this is a war crime. Meanwhile, the U.S. military
is changing its story every 30 minutes.
As you probably recall, Barack Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize for being the first half African American leader of a global empire. And now he has blown up a hospital full of actual peace-spreaders, while simultaneously bad-mouthing Russia for launching air strikes against terrorists. What more can be said of this sad episode? It reminds us of Obama's other stunning contributions to history:
Cool
And who could forget the time he used his peace trophy to advocate for more war?
