Yeah this story is terrible, but not as simple as are making it out to be.
US confirms their air strike on ISIS killed 105 civilians, the target was 2 snipers
- Thread starter AcademicSaucer
- Start date
Yeah this story is terrible, but not as simple as are making it out to be.
Wenger'sBakedBaguettes
Member
This thread is a perfect example of how westerners are bothered when their side are the ones bombing brown civilians. They'll find any reason and excuse to say "it's okay, we're never really the bad guys" because they are completely incapable of ever seeing themselves as the bad guys all while they keep electing and supporting leaders that repeat the cycle of killing brown people and their families half across the world. One just need to look at the contrast between the reactions in a thread like this and one where civilians were killed by a strike from the RuAf to see what a joke this is. No matter how many non-white civilians that gets killed directly/indirectly by the elected war criminals in the west, whether it's in the hundreds of thousands or millions, much of the white population will always be supportive of the actions in one way or another. Really, all this thread does it to perfectly demonstrate the subconscious white supremacist monopoly on concepts like violence many white westerners have. No wonder a lot of black people keep being treated worse than second class citizens and more like subhumans in shitholes like US.
Golden_Pigeon
Banned
You forget something: it's not about saving lives but saving americans and westerners lives.
I don't think american military right now is taking civilians from ISIS controlled area into consideration for their long-term policy, they are happily sending the sectarian iraqi army to "liberate" them with US weapons. They just want the problem over, anyway they can, with the minimum loss of lives on their side.
If ISIS wouldn't not been a threat to the West and it's allies, we wouldn't even been talking about them. Just look at the Congo civil war, the Central African Republic conflict... where militia act like ISIS on a daily basis with 0.01 % the publicity.
AppleBlade
Member
Fox News is reporting this with the headline: "ISIS tricked US into bombing building where 100 innocents held captive."
Were they really held captive?
Were they really held captive?
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
If it was your mother, brother, or sister in that building, do you really think you'd respond by saying, "oh well, at least they tried."
hanspampel
Banned
Comments in topics like this are always the worst.
He is saying it is primarily the responsibility of the one calling the airstrike to know if there are civilians in the area. The air crew carry out the request unless the air crew themselves know there are civilians in the area.
Air crew are not going to know if a building has civilians in it by themselves, that is where ground intel comes in.
For people who are saying that the US should not have bombed the building without knowing exactly what was inside: how exactly are they supposed to do that?
Has NeoGAF invented a Star Trek Life Signs Detector? Because the US military do not have Science Fiction Bullshit universal scanners that can penetrate layers of concrete from hundreds of meters away.
Furthermore, people realize that the alternative to precision airstrikes when it comes to killing snipers are armored vehicles (not always available, and still might set off stored explosives that noone could know are there) and artillery? Or do GAFers think that dozens of armed men storming a building is safer for civilians in the lower levels? I'm fairly certain that errant Iraqi bullets can do just as good a job of killing a noncombatant as anything else.
This is urban warfare in a city with a population of hundreds of thousands of people. It is inherently tragic. What happened was such an unlikely and unforeseeable sequence of events, and the wringing of hands and shaming of America over inadvertently killing a group of civilians due to circumstances completely out of its control is pretty bullshit.
Has NeoGAF invented a Star Trek Life Signs Detector? Because the US military do not have Science Fiction Bullshit universal scanners that can penetrate layers of concrete from hundreds of meters away.
Furthermore, people realize that the alternative to precision airstrikes when it comes to killing snipers are armored vehicles (not always available, and still might set off stored explosives that noone could know are there) and artillery? Or do GAFers think that dozens of armed men storming a building is safer for civilians in the lower levels? I'm fairly certain that errant Iraqi bullets can do just as good a job of killing a noncombatant as anything else.
This is urban warfare in a city with a population of hundreds of thousands of people. It is inherently tragic. What happened was such an unlikely and unforeseeable sequence of events, and the wringing of hands and shaming of America over inadvertently killing a group of civilians due to circumstances completely out of its control is pretty bullshit.
polyh3dron
Banned
Seriously. Read the fucking OP, people.
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
Try to wave it away all you want, it's no comfort to the dead or their families. It is, however, great propaganda for ISIS.
TheRealTalker
Banned
the OP said that the US striked a building that they received intel of from Iraqi Security forces
people will say bad intel and what not but these are the Iraqi Security forces
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1378275
AcademicSaucer
Member
Its not the first time it happens, the US is always killing civilians, be it Nicaragua, Vietnam, Pakistan, Afganistan, Iraq, Syria, Lybia, Yemen, you name it.
Mohonky
Member
That might be a little optimistic; we havent gone into those regions because we've nothing to gain from it, whether its lives OR resources. In actuality many big companies are getting oil resources from those regions because of paramilitary groups while civilians are being killed, we arent losing lives or even spending money to do it, so of course we are turning a blind eye.
NeoGaf is a a very liberal forum; a lot of young, intelligent people with good intentions amd very idealistic; but reality isnt quite so clear cut or easily defined. We get a lot of news here about horrible things happening in the Middle East, but we dont really talk shit all about South America, Africa and Eastern Europe because it doesnt pop up in our news feeds.
The problem with this incident is it sets a precedent. If ISIS notices less air offensives on the back of this incident, they'll know why and you know what will come after that; there wont be a single battlefront not loaded with civilians.
"The dirty crusaders hit one of our explosives depot, knowingly stored in a place with 100+ civilians were taking refuge."
I know this can be twisted many ways, but I don't think it's the propaganda win people in here think it was.
Thelonelykoopa
Member
It's super problematic. Almost all the terrorist groups we fight are of our own creation and they originated from us trying to fighting terrorist groups /dictators. Right now terrorist organizations are like a hydra and so it's impossible to really get anywhere in a fight with them without creation a exponentially more. Yet if we give up on the middle east than we might reduce the amount of terrorist groups but the ones that are still around are going to become really big and statelike and at that point they become an issue to areas outside the middle east. The current states within the middle east are also not able to handle them as their are already too weaken from the terrorist organizations in them for our aid to strengthen their defensive without also leading to a stronger terrorist organizations. As far as projections are going the middle east is going to be perpetual conflict for centuries unless some futuristic technology makes terrorism obsolete which is unlikely.
The Iraqi forces do not want US troops on the ground. Also don't underestimate the damage 2 snipers in a decent position can do to forces on the ground.
There's a reason ISIS doesn't evacuate civilians before a conflict. One of the worst things that can happen in urban warfare is for civilians to be in the middle of it. People that actually give a fuck, get them out even before the conflict. ISIS doesn't give a fuck, but they know everyone else does so they take advantage of that.
No matter how advanced the military or whether there are troops on the ground or not, the fog of war is always there, and it's worse in urban conflict.
Anyone thinking that battling ISIS could ever be free of civilian casualties hasn't been paying attention. It's a tragedy, but the people giving ISIS a fucking pass, are disgusting. Those civilians wouldn't have been there if not for those pieces of shit in the first place.
If they knew about the bombs then the US is as implicit in the civillian deaths as ISIS were. It would mean that they knew full well there'd be collateral damage and a lot of it, yet they didn't care.
The sad thing is in all this is it's moments like this that create more terrorists. It's how America and European forces acted in both Afghanistan and Iraq which led to people signing up to things like ISIS in the first place.
Same goes for the Hamas and how Israel acts.
Sunster
Member
na they will understand that it wasn't our fault this time.
xDUMPWEEDx
Banned
The intel is going to have to improve. Any known ISIS target is going to have to be heavily scrutinized to determine whether ISIS has trapped said target with explosives and civilians to deter airstrikes against them.
If a supposed ISIS target for an airstrike looks too good to be true, it just might be a setup to bait the airstrike.
If a supposed ISIS target for an airstrike looks too good to be true, it just might be a setup to bait the airstrike.
Skellig Gra
Member
so I wonder how high the real number is
Sho_Nuff82
Member
This analogy would make sense if the Manchester bomber was aiming for Ariana Grande and accidentally blew up 50 people they didn't know were outside her dressing room.
And Ariana surrounded herself by those 50 people to dissuade people from bombing her.
They didn't know. Again, Iraq security asked us to drop the bombs there. It was low-yield ordinance that caused a chain reaction, because ISIS was storing explosive devices near civilians. Because ISIS does not give a single fuck about civilian casualties. Everyone in that city is a hostage.
Yup, they'll just read the GAF thread OP and will surely understand.
We're never the baddies. It was all the Iraqi intelligence/security force's fault!
To Far Away Times
Member
Yup. Just imagine if the shoe was on the other foot. If someone other country bombed a supermarket or public place and killed your family, what would you do?
I'll be more cynical and say most people don't even really care about what happened (as indicated by the fact three or so paragraphs in the op were too much of a hassle to read), they just want to take a shit on the war effort and the US in general for other reasons and this gave them an easy target.
This is an insanely simplistic view, and ignores the context that ISIS has been occupying Mosul for over 2 years. And we know what kind of treatment residents of ISIS held settlements experience under their occupiers. It's not pretty.
If that supermarket was in an active war zone, with a battle being fought over the city and my family and I had been hunkering down amidst bombs and explosives for months?
This is pretty much exactly what is happening. Hell, it doesn't seem like many of these humanitarian-minded posters care much about the civilian deaths caused by ISIS, or the various armed forces battling throughout Iraq and Syria. But it's a US bomb that triggered that explosives stockpile and not an Iraqi tank or mortar shell, so this is worthy of condemnation.
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
Apparently we don't care that much about civilian casualties either if we're willing to bomb a building without knowing what's inside it. You gonna burn your neighbors house down trying to kill a wasp nest and claim it's not your responsibility that 3 people burned alive because you didn't know they stored a gasoline drum under the hive? I mean, those hornets were stinging people!
They targeted a building that had civilians on the bottom floors. They blame the explosive cache going off. But how about DON'T BOMB BUILDINGS FILLED WITH CIVILIANS?
That many people shouldn't be difficult to detect. That's some shitty fucking intelligence/scouting work.
So the alternatives from Gaf are:
1) Leave ISIS alone (That was a weird one)
2) Boots on the ground against Iraq's wishes and basically becoming an invading force.
Reading the article, it looks like it was some really shitty luck and I feel awful for the people stuck in there. But again, bad things happens in war. Looks like the US forces were using a weapon to only hit a subsection of the building to only hit the sniper nest and the goal was to minimize collateral damage. It hitting the munitions cache was total bad luck, and dealing with an enemy who doesn't give one damn about the civilian population and willing to put weapons in places they know could kill hundreds of people.
My suggestion to anyone else is, what would you do instead? (Not knowing the result) If you were a military commander who has received a request from the Iraqi forces and intel to take out some snipers that were probably causing some serious damage to troops or assets on the front. You have a weapon to hit only a section of the building where they are at. The reports say there are little to no civilians in the area, as it seems like ISIS has pushed people out of their homes in the neighborhood. What do you do? Mind you, you are also working to liberate this city from ISIS, trying to make a push into the city with coalition forces.
1) Leave ISIS alone (That was a weird one)
2) Boots on the ground against Iraq's wishes and basically becoming an invading force.
Reading the article, it looks like it was some really shitty luck and I feel awful for the people stuck in there. But again, bad things happens in war. Looks like the US forces were using a weapon to only hit a subsection of the building to only hit the sniper nest and the goal was to minimize collateral damage. It hitting the munitions cache was total bad luck, and dealing with an enemy who doesn't give one damn about the civilian population and willing to put weapons in places they know could kill hundreds of people.
My suggestion to anyone else is, what would you do instead? (Not knowing the result) If you were a military commander who has received a request from the Iraqi forces and intel to take out some snipers that were probably causing some serious damage to troops or assets on the front. You have a weapon to hit only a section of the building where they are at. The reports say there are little to no civilians in the area, as it seems like ISIS has pushed people out of their homes in the neighborhood. What do you do? Mind you, you are also working to liberate this city from ISIS, trying to make a push into the city with coalition forces.
IchigoSharingan
Member
maybe not USe bombs?
Not sure if the is a popular opinion here on GAF. But lets assume the report from the military is correct and they couldn't have known of the civilians there.
It's just a shitty situation. You have snipers that are very dangerous to counter with ground forces. And you have an option to kill them from above. But these cowards use civilians as human shields and purposely set up the building with explosives.
Just awful all around. And only helps ISIS. Which is why they need to be VERY vigilant with explosive force.
It's just a shitty situation. You have snipers that are very dangerous to counter with ground forces. And you have an option to kill them from above. But these cowards use civilians as human shields and purposely set up the building with explosives.
Just awful all around. And only helps ISIS. Which is why they need to be VERY vigilant with explosive force.
youdontsay?.gif
Mohonky
Member
ISIS - hook, line & sinker.
MisterFalcon
Member
Yeah, just keep sending in troops into the meatgrinder of IED's and suicide bombers. They probably don't have families and if they do they will totally understand how the death of their sons was better then US bombs being dropped.
It's perfectly acceptable to suggest maybe not constantly using bombs in heavily populated areas.
Lil'DigiOp
Member
Jesus fucking christ....
And you wonder why you can't defeat ISIS
And you wonder why you can't defeat ISIS