Why Did the U.S. Launch a Sustained Aerial Bombardment of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital?

In the latest in an unending series of U.S. atrocities (a series that goes back to the nation's founding, actually), the U.S. military launched an hour-long aerial bombardment of a hospital run by the French humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The aerial bombardment, which lasted an hour, commenced in the middle of the night around 2 am local time on October 3rd. The duration and repetitive nature of the attack is important to keep in mind, as the Western media is using the words“bombed” and “bombing,” which implies a single strike, even a single munition. This misimpression slides right into the “accident” alibi lie, which is sure to come next.

After days of evasions and lies in which the U.S. military denied it bombed the hospital, while simultaneously contradicting itself by saying maybe the hospital was “collateral damage,” and putting it about that there was fighting with the Taliban “in the area of the hospital,” a claim seized on and repeated by media, implying right next to the hospital, by noon (Washington, D.C. time) on October 5 the U.S. government domestic propaganda radio network NPR announced that the U.S. military admitted it bombed the hospital, justifying it by saying that their Afghan proteges had requested the strike. The Afghans have been falsely claiming that the Taliban were firing from the hospital. (None other than NPR's own Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman pointed out the day before that even if true, attacking the hospital would still be illegal and possibly a war crime. MSF has vigorously denied the claim. If armed men took over one of their facilities they would have ceased operations there, they explained.) [1]

The Afghans propped up by the West as a putative government apparently have it in for MSF, Several years ago they arranged to plant a couple of pistols in an MSF hospital in Helmand province, which they then proceeded to raid along with British troops, arresting staff. Maybe they can't stand the example MSF sets of providing medical services to the Afghan population, something the “government” utterly fails to do. (Hell, they don't even provide care for their own wounded troops! And the scum who run the military hospitals steals the medicines and supplies and sell them, according to bourgeois media reports.)

The U.S. media luckily has a useful distraction they can focus on- the killings of 9 people last week in Oregon by an unhappy asshole. This, 5 days later, is still a much bigger story than the story of the MSF hospital bombing, done not by a lone malcontent, but by the United States Government.

[Another egregious atrocity barely mentioned at all in the U.S. was the Saudi bombing of a wedding party in Yemen last week, killing 130 people, In fact it was bombed twice- with U.S.-supplied warplanes and munitions. This is part of a more than 6 month old terror campaign which has targeted markets, mosques, and homes, killing over 1,000 civilians so far, with U.S. support and virtual silence by the U.S. media. The Iran bogeyman is invoked as justification. But man, we're getting the full sad violin treatment for 9 people shot in Oregon.]

Meanwhile, the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military, Barack Obama, acts as if he is a mere bystander to all this, with no responsibility. This is a common dodge with him. He did the same with climate change, granting Shell Oil drilling rights in the Arctic while simultaneously giving a speech about how something must be done about climate change. Or decrying mass incarceration as if he himself has no power or responsibility for how many people are locked up. The pattern is he commits a crime or immoral act, and then exhorts others to remedy the “problem,”

His War Secretary, Ashton Carter, has been uttering vague and anodyne statements.

But let us back up and review the evidence that from the start demonstrated this was obviously a premeditated, deliberate assault, and not an “accident” or “mistake,” words already being bandied about (such as by the New York Times, still the premiere voice of the American bourgeois establishment).

The following facts are all from early BBC reports, which dribbled in over the first few hours after the crime. NPR and most U.S. media ignored these facts, at least at first:

-MSF repeatedly provided the precise GPS coordinates of the hospital to all sides in the conflict prior to the attack, including on September 27. Once the bombing commenced, frantic calls were made to NATO in Kabul and even to Washington. The bombing continued for another half hour anyway.

-The bombing occurred for an hour at 15 minute intervals.

-The U.S. military provided no explanation or apology to MSF.

-The U.S. military issued smarmy, ambiguous statements about them bombing “in the area” and “there may have been collateral damage,” obviously hedging and keeping their options open about whether they would go with a full-fledged, brazen denial, or an “oops, sorry, it was an accident” cover story. In fact, NPR reported just hours after the attack that “the U.S. is investigating whether” the U.S. bombed the hospital. What, you don't even know what you bomb? With all your “precision” targeting and “surgical” bombing? In fact, if you're doing close-in air support of ground operations, you're going to be quite accurate.

It looked at first as if the U.S. took advantage of the “cover of war” to attack an institution it has some beef against. My immediate suspicion was that the U.S. thought (or feared) that MSF was treating wounded Taliban. This hunch had added weight later by part of a New York Times article on the attack. [2] Here are paragraphs 20 and 21 of the article, a safe place to relegate a possible motive to:

“Accounts differed as to whether there had been fighting around the hospital that might have precipitated the strike. Three hospital employees, an aide who was wounded in the bombing and two nurses who emerged unscathed, said that there had been no fighting in the hospital’s immediate vicinity and no Taliban fighters in the hospital.

“But a Kunduz police spokesman, Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, said Taliban fighters had entered the hospital and were using it as a firing position. The hospital treated the wounded from all sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked Afghan security forces. In a Twitter post, Arjan Hehenkamp, director of Doctors Without Borders in the Netherlands, denied that Taliban fighters had been in the hospital, saying that only staff, patients and caretakers had been inside. [My emphasis.]”

The article also mentions that the Afghans used attack helicopters in Kunduz, so it's possible the Afghans were the criminal attackers. But paragraph five cites an anonymous U.S. official saying that “the attack may have been carried out by an American AC-130 gunship that was supporting Special Operations forces on the ground in Kunduz,” in the Times words. And U.S. Special Forces are notorious for their unrestrained, immoral violence and ruthlessness. And the scale of damage, coupled with the duration of the attack, would point towards the AC-130 gunship, an extremely destructive “weapons platform.”

Moreover, the fact that the U.S. wasn't vociferously denying that they did it, and instead pointed their fingers at the Afghans, was in and of itself almost proof positive that the U.S. military were the culprits.

In this context it bears remembering the times the U.S. attacked al-Jazeera offices from the air. George Bush was even going to bomb their headquarters in Doha, Qatar, until Tony Blair (British prime minister at the time and accomplice to Bush's invasion of Iraq) talked him out of it.

Oh, just thought I'd mention; bombing a hospital is a war crime. It's even prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, a treaty the U.S. is a signatory to. On the other hand, the U.S.' signature on a piece of paper is worth the same as a piece of paper- namely zilch. We see that constantly, for example in its violation of the anti-torture treaty it signed. And its conduct during its Indochina war. And its atrocites against civilians just about whenever it wages war. All that is so routine and unremarked upon that it is actually forgotten. Indeed, I saw no mention of the statutorily criminal nature of attacking a hospital in any establishment media reporting- not BBC, NY Times, Reuters, etc. They don't want people to know it's a war crime.

But what a nitpicking cavil that all is, eh?

But the NY Times should get credit for another article that describes what actually happened inside the hospital as the bombs rained down and burned people alive in their beds, the “human story” that is essential to get through to people and provoke the necessary emotional reaction. [3]

The story quotes the local head of MSF in that part of Afghanistan:

“Over the next hour, witnesses said, what unfolded was a relentless air assault that put patients, doctors and the Kunduz hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders at the center of a bull’s-eye, leaving no possibility of escape.

“The bombing began at 2:08 a.m. and continued until 3:15, Mr. Nagarathnam said. 'The bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle around,' he added. 'There was a pause, and then more bombs hit. The main hospital building was engulfed in flames,' he said.”

Meanwhile, Obama Sheds Crocodile Tears

 The adept politician Barack Obama immediately made the obvious (and cynical) political move one would expect from a competent political boss. He issued a statement (didn't show his face) referring to “the tragic incident” and announced he would say nothing more pending the U.S. military's own verdict on what it did or didn't do: “we will await the results of that inquiry before making a definitive judgment as to the circumstances of this tragedy,” the statement emitted from the White House in his name read.

So the U.S. military, the probably perpetrators of the attack, will be investigating itself. I would venture to say, just as a general principle, that having the accused do the investigating of the allegations against themselves, is probably not the best way to arrive at the truth. Wouldn't you agree?

But self-investigating by guilty state parties is standard procedure in the U.S., whether its police murders of citizens, U.S. war crimes, or whatever. The only exceptions arise out of the competition for power between the Democratic Party faction of the political elite and the Republican Party one. So there you can get a partisan inquisition type investigation with a political motive, such as the Benghazi “investigations” by the Republicans in Congress.

That's not to say there are never useful genuine investigations here. But the results of those are generally put on a shelf to gather dust, such as the investigation into the Attica prison massacre ordered by then-New York State Governor and plutocrat Nelson Rockefeller (of the Rockefeller oil fortune) or the Kerner Commission report on racial unrest, or the report that rightly called the police repression around the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago a “police riot.” Those don't matter because they are ignored. By the time they come out, the issue is cold, at least in the establishment media's eyes.

Finally, here are accounts from MSF's website:

Twelve staff members and at least seven patients, including three children, were killed; 37 people were injured including 19 staff members. This attack constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law. [The death toll is now 22.]

The bombing took place despite the fact that MSF had provided the GPS coordinates of the trauma hospital to Coalition and Afghan military and civilian officials as recently as Tuesday 29 September, to avoid that the hospital be hit. As is routine practice for MSF in conflict areas, MSF had communicated the exact location of the hospital to all parties to the conflict.

 

From 2:08 AM until 3:15 AM local time today, MSF’s trauma hospital in Kunduz was hit by a series of aerial bombing raids at approximately 15 minute intervals. The main central hospital building, housing the intensive care unit, emergency rooms, and physiotherapy ward, was repeatedly hit very precisely during each aerial raid, while surrounding buildings were left mostly untouched.

 

“The bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle round,” said Heman Nagarathnam, MSF Head of Programmes in northern Afghanistan. “There was a pause, and then more bombs hit. This happened again and again. When I made it out from the office, the main hospital building was engulfed in flames. Those people that could had moved quickly to the building’s two bunkers to seek safety. But patients who were unable to escape burned to death as they lay in their beds.” [4]

In fact, MSF probably provides more health care for Afghans than their so-called government, or the foreign “nation builders.” Here's their brief description:

MSF is an international medical organisation and first worked in Afghanistan in 1980. MSF opened Kunduz Trauma Centre in August 2011 to provide high quality, free medical and surgical care to victims of trauma such as traffic accidents, as well as those with conflict related injuries from bomb blasts or gunshots. In Afghanistan, MSF supports the Ministry of Public Health in Ahmad Shah Baba hospital in eastern Kabul, Dasht-e-Barchi maternity in western Kabul and Boost hospital in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province. In Khost, in the east of the country, MSF runs a maternity hospital. MSF relies only on private funding for its work in Afghanistan and does not accept money from any government.

 

As for the tremendous harm the U.S. has done to the populace by attacking the hospital in Kunduz, MSF notes:

MSF’s hospital is the only facility of its kind in the north-eastern region of Afghanistan. For four years it has been providing free high level life- and limb-saving trauma care. In 2014, more than 22,000 patients received care at the hospital and more than 5,900 surgeries were performed.

So the U.S. just took out “the only facility” in an entire region of the country where critical trauma care can be had. (Perhaps they meant the only free facility- but knowing Afghanistan, probably not. Outside of Kabul, Afghanistan is a very primitive society in every respect.)

But if you're wondering what MSF's crime was, here it is, in their own statement:

“MSF treats all people according to their medical needs and does not make any distinctions based on a patient’s ethnicity, religious beliefs or political affiliation.”
Which of course is unacceptable to the U.S. Because in the immortal words of the former Emperor Bush: “Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists.” And being “with us” requires that you be hostile to all those the U.S. is hostile to.

If you know what's good for you.

That is the ethos of a gangster empire.


1] The New York Times published a map showing the location of the hospital and the locations of fighting that we were intended to be duped were “near” the hospital. Even though the Times omitted a scale of distance on the left hand map, you can see by counting the blocks that the skirmishes were quite far from the hospital. As the map makes clear, the Taliban were nowhere near the hospital. Judging by the block lines visible on the map on the left, it appears they were at least a half mile away.

 The New York Times|Source: Doctors Without Borders (Location of hospital); Satellite image by DigitalGlobe via Bing Maps

2] “Airstrike Hits Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan,” New York Times website, October 3, 2015.

3] “Survivors Tell of Kunduz Hospital in Flames,” New York Times website, October 3, 2015.

4] “Afghanistan: 'I have no words to express this. It is unspeakable.'” Médecins Sans Frontières,

"Afghanistan: MSF demands explanations after deadly airstrikes hit hospital in Kunduz."

"Afghanistan: MSF staff killed and hospital partially destroyed in Kunduz,”