Item — HN Reader

Members of the military absolutely can be prosecuted under the UCMJ if they commit crimes, including murder of innocent Afghan civilians. There have been numerous prosecutions -- in fact, the "guncam" footage from Iraq was actually recovered, allegedly, from JAG, the legal arm of the military, which was reviewing it to see if crimes had occurred which would need to be prosecuted.

The standards for use of force in a war zone are different from other places, but fundamentally, members of the military must obey the rules of engagement set by the military (at the direction of the civilian leadership, i.e. the President).

There is a much stronger argument about contractors, especially in Iraq from 2003-2006, using unlawful force and not being prosecuted, than military.

2 comments

>The standards for use of force in a war zone are different from other places, but fundamentally, members of the military must obey the rules of engagement set by the military

This doesn't preclude the death of innocent civilians. And from the point of view of the people who's country you've invaded that would be murder.

That's a useful skill, to be able to speak for all the people of Afghanistan like that.

I guess you have the objectivity of distance working in your favour.

FFS man, who on earth would be happy for some military power to invade their country and setup shop wherever they like? No one wants to be occupied. Talk about "objectivity of distance", you apparently have no concept of what being occupied means.

If some military super power invaded your country but a base in your neighborhood and a member of your family was killed during one of their operations would you say "well, my brother was innocent but the army was within their own self defined rules for legitimate engagement. Bad luck for us" or would you say he was murdered?

It depends entirely on the context.

Obviously, I would be unhappy if someone I liked got killed.

However, if my house were on fire with 10 of my family trapped inside, and the firefighters racing to the scene accidentally ran over one family member in putting out the fire, I would not consider this to be "murder".

There are definitely people in Iraq and Afghanistan who have had family members killed, but who overall are still happy the US invaded. There was one report about a guy who had a US bomb hit his house, killing several family members, who then went to the US commander, told him what had happened, and asked that we be more careful and continue to get rid of the Taliban.

It's not like we invaded Canada. Afghanistan and Iraq were fairly horrible places to begin with (especially Afghanistan), and in a lot of ways, even at the peak of badness in each place, outside of localized areas, quality of life is better for most civilians.

The US has killed maybe 200 Afghan civilians in about a decade of operations. The Taliban would kill more than 200 Afghan civilians in a single month.

US medical assistance provided to Afghans (not injured by NATO/US), e.g. kids in car accidents, has probably saved more Afghans than have been killed by the US.

There are definitely grounds for not wanting the US to be there, but they're more "moral" or "honor" than practical quality of life, for most people.

> There are definitely people in Iraq and Afghanistan who have had family members killed, but who overall are still happy the US invaded. There was one report ...

Very dangerous statement to make. Unless you're citing something, please don't... I'm not saying such report is a lie, but it's a risky thing to say if it wasn't true. There are many stories which need a lot of context to understand properly. There isn't much more that person could do, is there?

There are a lot of examples. Afghan society is generally willing to sacrifice individuals for their tribe, so it's not that hard to understand.

Example: Kandahar, Marines under MajGen Mattis, late Dec 2001/Early Jan 2002. ODA 574 enroute from Tarin Kowt, Dec 2001.

For a more recent example: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Afghanistan/special-forces-apologiz...

>However, if my house were on fire with 10 of my family trapped inside, and the firefighters racing to the scene accidentally ran over one family member in putting out the fire, I would not consider this to be "murder".

What does this example have to do with occupation? Likening an invading military force (especially when there was no reason for the invasion as is the case in Iraq) is pretty insulting to everyone involved except, of course, the invading force.

>There are definitely people in Iraq and Afghanistan who have had family members killed, but who overall are still happy the US invaded.

This might be the case in Afghanistan (I can buy that you might find someone somewhere, but I doubt the average Joe is very happy about it) but you're going to have a hard time finding someone "better off" in Iraq after the invasion. The country is less stable, less safe. There are extremist roaming around kidnapping and killing that were not doing so before. I've met several families that had decent lives in Iraq that had to leave after the invasion.

> There was one report about a guy who had a US bomb hit his house, killing several family members, who then went to the US commander, told him what had happened, and asked that we be more careful and continue to get rid of the Taliban.

Were they two such reports? What was the source of this story? Was due diligence done on the story? Sounds too patriotic/"feel good" for me to take it at face value.

>and in a lot of ways, even at the peak of badness in each place, outside of localized areas, quality of life is better for most civilians.

In the case of Iraq this is demonstrably not true. In fact the situation is almost exactly the opposite. What do you think Sadam was doing exactly? He was for sure a bad person and not someone who's radar you want to be on but for the average citizen there were definitely worse people to have as a ruler (e.g. Kim Jong-il).

>The US has killed maybe 200 Afghan civilians in about a decade of operations.

Based on what definition? The one you gave elsewhere about following US military protocol? My definition of civilian death is if a non-American who isn't a terrorist gets killed, regardless if the people who killed him where within their protocols or not. If they hadn't been there the person would likely still be alive. Given that definition your "200 in 10 years" sounds impossibly low.

>There are definitely grounds for not wanting the US to be there, but they're more "moral" or "honor" than practical quality of life, for most people.

This statement could only possibly hold for Afghanistan. Clearly it doesn't apply to Iraq.

I was trying to use an example/scenario which might be more relevant to 99.999% of HN which does not live in a war zone.

More precisely, "If I lived in a town where a criminal gang would kill members of my family, confiscate my property, and oppress everyone, and someone came in to kill the gang and stray gunfire killed my family". In the case of a legal invasion (pretty clear in the case of Afghanistan), that someone would be the police; in the case of Iraq, that someone might be a random concerned citizen.. I would definitely be upset, but it would not be murder -- it would be anywhere from purely accidental to some form of manslaughter. During a legal war, it is clearly legal, provided the belligerent obeys the law of war. Depending on the exact situation, I would be more or less upset; there are definitely situations where I would remain very upset (i.e. if the shooting was highly negligent).

Under pashtunwali, accidental death during a conflict, if you take responsibility for it and apologize, is not the same level of offense that it is in western culture.

The quality of life in Afghanistan is probably better today for 90% of Afghans than it was in 2000, although definitely worse than it was in 1954.

In Iraq, the quality of life is absolutely better for the Kurds, and quite possibly better for most Shia, than it was under Saddam. Around 2009 and 2010, it's probably reached the turning point of being better on a daily basis than it was in the past, at least for those who didn't leave Iraq; there are definitely displaced persons who are worse off. I don't think the decrease in quality of life from 2003-2007 was inherent to the invasion, but to incompetence during the occupation -- if the military vs. state department were doing the same thing today, it would have been a lot less bad. Perhaps still not worthwhile, but definitely less bad.

>a legal invasion

From who's point of view? I don't care if the invading force claims it is legal or necessary.

> I would definitely be upset, but it would not be murder

Well what if it was the mafia who "saved" you?

>During a legal war, it is clearly legal, provided the belligerent obeys the law of war.

The problem with this line of thinking is it's completely one sided. If an entity declares war on another entity the second entity can't simply say "we don't accept". They are at war at this point and now all sorts of nasty and immoral things become technically "legal".

This is compounded even more with the US' current "war", the ludicrous "war on terror".

>The quality of life in Afghanistan is probably better today for 90% of Afghans than it was in 2000,

I need some citations on that. And non-US military (or pro-US military) ones.

>In Iraq, the quality of life is absolutely better for the Kurds, and quite possibly better for most Shia, than it was under Saddam. Around 2009 and 2010, it's probably reached the turning point of being better on a daily basis than it was in the past, at least for those who didn't leave Iraq; there are definitely displaced persons who are worse off.

I disagree. And my "displaced" friends would also disagree. The people I know who do mission work there would also disagree. I wish I could somehow inspire you to get your news from sources that aren't so... sympathetic to the US' imperialistic causes because the picture your sources are painting seem to be particularly rosy.

>I don't think the decrease in quality of life from 2003-2007 was inherent to the invasion, but to incompetence during the occupation

It was a direct result of the invasion. Sadam was gone, extremists who were afraid to do certain crimes became free to do them. It's very clear.

Three other points:

1) The other reason why Iraq was moral was that the sanctions in Iraq from 1991-2003 were actually more genocidal than the US invasion of 2003. If the invasion was a precondition to end the sanctions, it was less bad than allowing them to continue. (Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died due to sanctions! Plus, huge quality of life impairment)

2) The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan is tricky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_the_War_... is a decent compilation

In the wikileaks information, there were about 200 civilian deaths reported from US ground actions. On top of that, there were many due to air strikes. The estimates various sources publish are about 5-10k direct deaths, and up to 30k indirect deaths. That is 10x less than during the Afghan civil war of the 1990s, and far less (2+ orders of magnitude) than the Soviet invasion.

3) If I lived in South Sudan, Somalia, or Eastern Congo, I would welcome a US/international invasion and occupation, even if it meant a 5-10% chance of death for me of my family.

>The other reason why Iraq was moral was that the sanctions in Iraq from 1991-2003 were actually more genocidal than the US invasion of 2003.

The US played a big role in these sanctions so your statement amounts to: "This one evil thing the US did was ok because it wasn't as bad as this other evil thing they were involved in before".

>nd up to 30k indirect deaths. That is 10x less than during the Afghan civil war of the 1990s, and far less (2+ orders of magnitude) than the Soviet invasion.

Are these comparative numbers meant to excuse the unnecessary 30k deaths caused by US interference? Because I assume you must know that it doesn't work like that. If it did hostage situations would be a great deal easier. Just kill everyone involved because the hostage taker would have likely caused more damage then we did anyway, right?

> If I lived in South Sudan, Somalia, or Eastern Congo, I would welcome a US/international invasion and occupation, even if it meant a 5-10% chance of death for me of my family.

Those are some bad places to be sure, but I don't think you comprehend what an occupation is exactly. Do you remember the L.A. riots? Everything was out of control, innocent people were dying, the police were powerless. A news anchor asked a member of the military who was on the show "at what point should the military get involved" to which the military person replied "Please don't bring in the military". He knew that as bad as things were, bringing in the military would make it much worse because they are not a police force.

Ignoring your distorted characterisation of the situation in Afghanistan, one can think of many situations where people would tolerate and support the presence of foreign forces in their country, even if inevitably civilians are killed as a result (not a war-crime or 'murder' by the laws of war).

All one needs to do is avoid naively modelling the thought processes of brown people in a couple of lines of chomskyscript. Really, give it a try some time.

Don't you find your view a little bit too convenient? "We can still be the good guys even though we're engaging in multiple occupations, because they.. um.. want us there!"

EDIT: P.S. It's pretty low for you to pull the race card on me. Thinking like "brown people"? Wtf is that garbage supposed to mean? My view comes from how I would react in their situation (i.e. they are just as smart/capable/etc. as I am). You are the one who seems to suggest that they can't cope without the help of the US.

Bullshit. It doesn't matter one inch. These people are still dead and the war is still going on.

Who the hell cares about procedures and rules when your loved ones are getting murdered?

What? What are you arguing against? Are you saying that all deaths in war are unlawful? Because if you are you're obviously wrong. I guess you're trying to make a pacifist point trying to say that all deaths in war are immoral, but it's hard to tell.