On Oct. 3, the United States military bombed a hospital in the city of Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan, killing 22 patients and staff. The hospital was operated by the charity Doctors Without Borders. Our executive branch, and more specifically our Commander in Chief, needs to hold itself to the same levels of responsibility that we expect of our allies.
Prior to the attack on the hospital, officials working for the charity sent out the coordinates of the hospital to government officials on all sides of the conflict. This includes the rebel groups of Afghanistan as well as the United States government, because hospitals are historically not targeted in formal warfare.
While the United States government maintains that they were unaware that the targeted area was a hospital and insist that it was a mistake, formal investigations are underway with the mission of uncovering the truth. The U.S. has an internal military investigation that began shortly after the news was released; both NATO and the Afghan government also have investigations under way to see if the action constituted a war crime. The US has also vowed to financially compensate families of the victims of the bombing.
Reckless bombings on information that turns out to be incorrect is not the only area of Obama’s national defense program that needs to be revamped. Since 2001 there have been over 400 drone strikes, and the number is set to increase by about 50 percent in the next three years. Although Obama tells the public that every drone strike is analyzed for civilian security before being approved, these claims are at best exaggerations, and more likely are lies.
In one of the best examples, Operation Haymaker, 35 military fighters were targeted and killed. In addition to these 35 military operatives, 200 civilians were killed. This was not an accident, or unintentional side effects of drone strikes. These 200 civilians were written off as military suspects simply because the majority of them were military age and male. There was no evidence to support them ever having taken part in military operations against the United States, but their lives were still viewed as a worthy sacrifice to secure the deaths of the enemy.
When the military begins targeting innocent civilians, charitable doctors volunteering time to help the less fortunate or anyone whom we do not have evidence to support as an enemy, something must be done. Rather than using drone strikes as a way to sidestep military accidents on land, we should reserve them for missions that we know with the utmost confidence to be true. If we allow one American, the Commander in Chief, to kill innocent civilians in other countries, our enemy will target us as a country, not the one man whose finger is on the trigger.