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Comment by dmos62 | Hacker News Reader

Checkout Ben Anderson's 2 part ~30 minute report from Afghanistan for Vice from around 10 years ago [0][1]. He was embedded with British troops and ANA during a patrol with a lot of gun fights. The British strafed an empty field, almost bombed themselves twice and once an Apache launched a Hellfire missile into a compound with British and ANA troops in it and hit a building where a family with small children were hiding. Noone was hurt luckily. My point being, it's not always malice: sometimes it's just a chain of people making small mistakes and bad decisions that end up adding up.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_yOI_WVGdY

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1JNuFPiTbs

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It's never malice. Nobody goes, "hey, this compound is 100% only women and children, let's bomb it."

Reality: "A patrol nearby said they took fire from the compound at such and such grid coordinates" It gets bombed. Turns out the unit on the ground was mistaken.

War is hell. War criminals should be punished. But it's not a war crime to make a mistake. I love seeing these posts because it's clear that almost nobody here has experienced war. My ROEs were ridiculously strict on the ground in southern Afghanistan.

It's important to have some context as well:

> According to the United Nations, the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011.

So sure. Both sides have killed civilians. But one side tries it's best to be accountable and limit human suffering while still carrying out missions. The alternative is to not be there at all.

Thank you for this perspective.

> But it's not a war crime to make a mistake.

I suppose that you are from the USA and your family is living there. Imagine that some afghan-controlled drone intended to kill some U.S. soldiers (a legitimate target because they are enemy combatants). But instead they kill your family. If it was a mistake, by the own account of the drone operator, would you still maintain that the killing of your whole family was not a war crime? Would you defend the drone operator in that case? Please notice that at the moment when they were killed, they were just enjoying a picnic in a field, minding their own business, unbeknownst that in another valley a few miles away there was a secret military training camp. I need to hear from you if you honestly think that the murderer of your family would be innocent in that case.

There is such a thing as criminal negligence in choosing and attacking enemy targets.

But no, adding a whole bunch of emotional baggage to the act does not suddenly make any collateral death a war crime as you imply here.

Bombing runs are woefully innarcurate though, so the good thing is when we have better weapons we'll start using those instead. Unlike insurgency groups who will often kill civilians as a means. Think that was partly the above poster's point.

I'm going to be a little dismissive of the question, but that's how the laws work in the united states. If someone was drunk that's a little different, but from the perspective of someone making a mistake on the road, and a family ends up dead - the person that made the mistake (assuming they prove that in court) does not end up with a murder charge. It may still end up being manslaughter and jail time.

Now to more specifically reply. So in the United States we may certainly have war on our doorstep at some point in the future. But our country tries to prevent that at ALL COSTS. We do so by making sure other countries are stable. We may fuck up by inserting into the wrong countries. but if ALL COUNTRIES just stabilize themselves we would NEVER have to go. And by the way, that's why the united nations was created. It would (or should) never allow the united states to insert themselves in a war that was not just. It may end up in an unjust position, but that's not where we started.

> that's not where we started.

This is just wishful thinking. The difference between the Afghanistan when Bush decided to invade it and now is that the Taliban are stronger, have more equipment, and basically sure nobody will ever invade them again after the lessons they gave to the USSR and the USA.

Same when you look at Irak or Libya. Your idea of stabilizing is completely at odds with what happens in reality.

> But our country tries to prevent that at ALL COSTS.

I agree. Allcaps included.

> We do so by making sure other countries are stable.

Ehh... that part is more dubious. For example see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Central_Intelligence_...

What am I supposed to be looking at here. I see an operation to capture Osama. Black sites, some weird other stuff. But I am not finding a specific example of something causing instability (at least on purpose).

I counted at least three (successful) coup d'état, and I'm not sure if I should count also the operations in Cuba. Also, there are many items about guerrilla and anti-guerrilla support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponso...

Why would I defend an enemy combatant? The issue is whether it is a war crime, it is not. That in no way diminishes the horrible hellscape that is war.

>>>If it was a mistake, by the own account of the drone operator, would you still maintain that the killing of your whole family was not a war crime?

That's not a war CRIME, that's just war. If/when the shooting eventually starts with the Chinese (or the North Koreans), I and my family live down the street from some of the likeliest theater ballistic missile targets in the region. If an errant TBM levels my apartment building, I'll absolutely do everything I can to terminate the enemy soldiers with extreme prejudice...but I recognize that they are doing their jobs, and unless it is proven they were clearly aiming for a civilian target (such as a sports event), then no, I wouldn't consider their acts CRIMINAL.

No one else would be given such a charitable viewpoint. Especially since it was a freaking radio that set off the kill process.

Nestled in between "malice" and "honest mistake" is "criminal negligence". When you put yourself in that position - when you invade a country - every resulting civilian casualty is on you. You do not have the moral standing to decide what is and is not acceptable "collateral damage". War is hell, but you chose to make war there. The civilians didn't.

>the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009

Or to phrase it another way, allied forces killed a third as many civilians as the actual Taliban, a regime noted for its extreme brutality and callous attitude to human life. I'm not impressed.

> to phrase it another way, allied forces killed a third as many civilians as the actual Taliban

> According to the United Nations, the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011.

Interesting. How do you get one third out of those numbers?

>>>How do you get one third out of those numbers?

25% / 75% = 1/3.

Strange phrasing. Sounds worse than: America and its allies were responsible for 20-25% of civilian casualties. The UN doesn't use that phrasing.

And every time we slaughtered a family in the middle east over the last 20+ years we've given a man or a son or an uncle with no remaining family a reason to hate the US and to revolt against it. There are almost certainly more Taliban and other terrorist group members who have a legitimate reason to dislike the US than there were 20 years ago.

The “war on terror” was not meant to stop terrorism. It was meant to fan the flames and give the US an endless war that can be fought for generations. And it worked.

Source please.

Seems like plain old common sense to me. You’re never going to hear the US government say it. But that doesn’t make it untrue. It’s just an inconvenient truth.

>>> The “war on terror” was not meant to stop terrorism. It was meant to fan the flames and give the US an endless war that can be fought for generations. And it worked.

>> Source please.

> Seems like plain old common sense to me. You’re never going to hear the US government say it. But that doesn’t make it untrue. It’s just an inconvenient truth.

If that's "plain old common sense," so is QAnon.

In reality they're both conspiracy theory lies that have the psychological advantage of making the world comic-book simple for their adherents.

Framed another way “plain old common sense” could be better worded as “using critical thinking to form an opinion about the root cause of a geopolitical clusterfuck”.

If people who have an opinion that differs from “sources” is now a Qanon believer then we’re in for a very rocky road ahead. It’s almost like we’re only allowed to have same opinion as our overlords who own the “sources” we venerate. That’s a problem.

It’s not much of a stretch to believe that defense contractors lobbied lawmakers to extend a war that made them so much money. Certainly not enough of a stretch to compare it to Qanon.

> Framed another way “plain old common sense” could be better worded as “using critical thinking to form an opinion about the root cause of a geopolitical clusterfuck”.

Except that the opinion is question was not formed by critical thinking.

> If people who have an opinion that differs from “sources” is now a Qanon believer then we’re in for a very rocky road ahead. It’s almost like we’re only allowed to have same opinion as our overlords who own the “sources” we venerate. That’s a problem.

No, there's an important difference between having an a different opinion than "our overlords" and having an opinion that's a paranoid comic book fantasy.

> It’s not much of a stretch to believe that defense contractors lobbied lawmakers to extend a war that made them so much money. Certainly not enough of a stretch to compare it to Qanon.

That's the kind of claim you need evidence for, it's not something you just get to assume (unless you're fine with defective reasoning processes). Furthermore, even if it is true, it doesn't support the original outlandish claim that "The 'war on terror' was not meant to stop terrorism. It was meant to fan the flames and give the US an endless war that can be fought for generations." I wouldn't be surprised if that claim spawned from "9/11 truther" conspiracy theories.

> That's the kind of claim you need evidence for

Where exactly would such “evidence” come from? Do you think the CEO of Raytheon would ever utter such a statement even if it were 100% true?

> Furthermore, even if it is true, it doesn't support the original outlandish claim that "The 'war on terror' was not meant to stop terrorism. It was meant to fan the flames and give the US an endless war that can be fought for generations."

I fail to see how anyone could believe that bombing people from the sky and invading a couple countries would win over favor from potential terrorists. In fact, it would seem the exact opposite is true. We should’ve spent the trillions of dollars using economic diplomacy instead. Now, one could argue honestly that our leaders are just complete idiots. I just happen to think they knew exactly what we were doing.

> Where exactly would such “evidence” come from? Do you think the CEO of Raytheon would ever utter such a statement even if it were 100% true?

Just some examples: a leak or confession. People do sometimes have changes of heart. But until you can actually provide evidence, you're just making up "facts" that are convenient to you.

Also, the CEO of Raytheon is very unlikely to be the person that determined what the "war on terror" was meant to do.

> I fail to see how anyone could believe that bombing people from the sky and invading a couple countries would win over favor from potential terrorists. We should’ve...

That failing is yours. There seems to be a lot of hindsight bias there, as well as some weird misunderstandings.

> Now, one could argue honestly that our leaders are just complete idiots. I just happen to think they knew exactly what we were doing.

It's far more likely that "our leaders" were high on "end of history" idealism, and spurred to hasty action by a traumatic attack, and are nearly as unable to accurately predict how a complex world will behave as the rest of us.

You're still making a very big claim without evidence.

Isn't that often the thing with conspiracy theorists? They always have a reason why they don't have evidence and somehow that means they can claim anything that they want.

> Source please.

Maybe not a bullseye, but these are the folks behind "the war on terror." They had a plan for the war prior to 9/11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...

The Patriot Act was sitting in a drawer waiting to be pulled out when the opportunity presented itself. 9/11 gave them the opportunity. Thousands of pages of laws got passed within months, with virtually no review.

I would think that deploying lethal force without positive target ID is against ROE.

Maybe not malice but also not just simply accidents - more like negligence. We can't dismiss mistakes in war as simply a cost of doing business.

> But one side tries it's best to be accountable and limit human suffering while still carrying out missions.

Is that side really doing their "best"? I feel like a lot of these mistakes are avoidable with better procedures, training, and reducing being in situations where mistakes are even possible. I'm not expecting a war to go perfectly but is tens of thousands of accidental civilian killings the best we can do?

>>>We can't dismiss mistakes in war as simply a cost of doing business.

When you are putting fallible human beings into the most stressful and demanding situations imaginable, it's unreasonable to NOT factor in a baseline level of human error.

>>>I feel like a lot of these mistakes are avoidable with better procedures, training,

What specific procedures would you like to adjust? Escalation of Force? Rules of Engagement? The entire Joint fires killchain?

https://warontherocks.com/2017/05/its-about-time-the-pressin...

>>>I'm not expecting a war to go perfectly but is tens of thousands of accidental civilian killings the best we can do?

Against adversaries that actively use the civilian population as human shields, or who pretend to be civilians themselves to exploit our ROE? Yeah, that's a decently low casualty rate for TWO DECADES of dropping bombs on a country, across countless thousands of aircraft sorties.

It's still led to some technical solutions to the problem of collateral damage, which is why we have the Small Diameter Bomb family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-39_Small_Diameter_Bomb

and also the R9X variant of the Hellfire missile: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/ag...

> it's unreasonable to NOT factor in a baseline level of human error.

I'm not saying human error doesn't exist, but that the amount we tolerate is too high.

> Yeah, that's a decently low casualty rate for TWO DECADES of dropping bombs on a country, across countless thousands of aircraft sorties.

It's easy to reduce that casualty rate: stop dropping bombs on a country for two decades. My point is that the cost of a civilian death is too low. If we considered the moral cost and not just the strategic cost, our calculations would conclude that we can't afford to start this war. The dubious moral reasons for doing it are not outweighed by the moral harm that would result.

I get that you're addressing the technical aspects of collateral damage in a war, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In a justified war, we can tolerate civilian deaths as a necessary evil, but if the war is not just, then aren't all such deaths an unnecessary evil?

We're talking about drone attacks, not invitations to our lemonade social. It is always malice.

This might help clear it up: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malice

> Nobody goes, "hey, this compound is 100% only women and children, let's bomb it."

Actually, people do. That happens fairly regularly in conflicts. Civilians are often a target by policy. Plus, by neglect - superiors not caring what this or that sociopath does.

In Afghanistan case, there was period when per policy anyone with walkie talkie counted as valid target. Phones did not worked. So there is fair chance some attacks hit civilians and it was policy.

Didn't they knowingly bomb weddings? Is he saying the US was surprised that innocent women and children were at weddings?

But in this case it is malice. The Taliban destroyed cell phone towers so walkie-talkies were extremely common. Then the US declared every man with a walkie-talkie was a legitimate target.

>Then the US declared every man with a walkie-talkie was a legitimate target.

Anywhere I can find info on this?

https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/news/inside-america-fa...

This link was posted in another thread and seems to be the source that broke the news today.

Yea but you said the US "declared" "every" person w/ a radio a "target".

This story doesn't show any of the 3 words I put in quotes.

Edit: can I get an explainer on the downvotes to both my comments?

You could try to explain what you think the difference between

> US declared every man with a walkie-talkie was a legitimate target.

and the policy described in the article is, attempting that will likely lead you to why you are downvoted.

1. The US did not make any sort of declaration 2. Not everyone with a walkie talkie will have this new guideline applied to them. Even just going off the article, someone with a radio could be treated with suspicion by these new guidelines, as they could be a spotter. 3. They are not defacto a "target" as described above^, although that is what the poster claimed.

The poster's statement was hyperbole to the point of being an outright lie.

they said "a legitimate target", not "everyone was targeted".

That's not the US military's position and the linked article doesn't even make that claim.

(Had to wait since I was silently barred from posting due to 'karma'/downvotes. Not a great algo for public discussion imo, although I acknowledge this thread is now in the weeds. At the very least it should be made public and obvious that I cannot reply.)

> My point being, it's not always malice

Correct, yet the malice lies on said situations being allowed to continue time and time again, and fester

it's not malice. it's more the recklessness and carefree attitude towards collateral damage just because of the war mindset. like "looks like a threat, let's bomb it in case. if any innocents get hurt everyone will understand it's just a casualty of war"

If it's a choice between malice and incompetence then I say incompetence is malice.

Sounds very much like "Generation kill". Soldiers are happy when one day, finally, they kill more enemy combatants than civilians!

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