What's The Difference Between Bombing A Hospital In Ukraine And Bombing One In Afghanistan?

The level of moral outrage in Western Media, is the difference.

In the case of Ukraine, where the Russians are the culprits, Maximum Outrage. In the case of Afghanistan, where the guilty party was the U.S., a yawn. Or more precisely,  curt, clinical reports,  devoid of emotion, completely neutral morally, with the most damning details omitted.

In addition to Western propagandists whipping up outrage against the Russian crime, add furious denunciations by Western politicians and government apparatchiks. You don't see that when the U.S. commits war crimes and lies through its teeth about it.

The Russians are accused to bombing a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The U.S., during the regime of Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, attacked the Medicins Sans Frontieres  (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, with a U.S. gunship. And "gunship" understates the power of the weapon used, an AC-130 outfitted with cannons and machine guns and much else, capable of directing hugely destructive attacks on the ground, massacring large numbers of people.

There are significant differences between the two attacks. In the case of the Russian attack, based on Western media reports, there is no clue as to whether the hospital was deliberately targeted or the victim of Russian random area bombardment by artillery and missiles fired from miles away. In the case of the MSF hospital destroyed by the U.S., MSF had REPEATEDLY given the exact location coordinates of the hospital to the U.S. military so it wouldn't accidentally attack it. Unfortunately this helped the criminal U.S. deliberately attack it.

The MSF hospital had giant red crosses on the roofs, clearly visible to the pilots of the attacking flying warship. That plane also carries numerous magnification equipment for suveillance, aiming, targeting, firing, and recording evidence of the military's own crimes. (Or "actions," if you prefer euphemisms.)

There is also a difference in the deaths that resulted. The total death toll in the Mariupol attack, as reported by the Kyiv regime and Western media, is 3. Two adults, and one child. A tragedy.

The number murdered in the deliberate U.S. attack in Kunduz- 22, plus dozens more maimed and wounded. More than 7 deaths in Kunduz for each one in Mariupol. Both staff and patients were casualties of the vicious U.S. attack.

Western media harped on the Mariupol attack for several days. But the later reports omitted the number of casualties. Apparently the propagandists decided 3 deaths wouldn't be shocking in the context of a war.

MSF described the attack on their hospital, which was actually a series of repeated bombings lasting an hour in the dead of night:

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. [In contrast, apparently the Mariupol hospital was hit with a single munition.]

The U.S. then followed its usual playbook when caught dead to rights committing an atrocity that ends up publicly visible in "the West." (The people in the victim countries know all about U.S. war crimes. It is the Western publics that are blissfully unaware.) It insists the target was legitimate, a "terrorist" hit. Then when that lie loses all credibility, it switches to "oops, sorry, it was an accident." Apparently the U.S. didn't like the fact that MSF treats all comers, indeed HAS to do so to maintain neutrality and be tolerated by all sides. So Taliban combatants were among the patients there.

The MSF hospital was the ONLY hospital for the city of Kunduz. The U.S. forced its closing, a crimes against all the inhabitants of that city.

For good measure, while issuing soothing, evasive unctuous verbiage publicly, Obama had a U.S. army tank smash through the gates of the hopital days after the aerial attack, an act of intimidation intended to silence MSF. Obama could have a second career as a Mafia don.

For its part, Russia issued this excuse for attacking the Mariupol hospital, through foreign minister Sergey Lavrov: Lavrov said the hospital was being used by fighters. In other words, Russia used the standard Israeli justification for blowing up civilian targets. When Israel periodically devastates the open air concentration camp of Gaza,  "mows the lawn," as the Israeli rulers cynically refer to their periodic wars on the trapped population of Gaza, they claim Hamas fighters are hiding in the targets, using the population as "human shields." (So of course they are justified in murdering the "shields.") 

But the excuse doesn't work for Enemies of The West. Only for the West and its colonial settler implant in Palestine, Israel.

The current U.S. president, the grinning and semi-senile Joseph R. Biden, now has the unmitigated gall to call for war crimes investigations of Russian actions in Ukraine. This guy was vice president for 8 years during the Obama regime, a regime that committed thousands of war crimes and violations of the rules of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places such as Libya where it targeted civilian targets such as homes and infrastructure. He's the absolutely wrong guy for that task.

Except in the morally-inverted world of Western power politics.

The Western elites expressing outrage over the Ukraine attack are either guilty of selective outrage and applying a double standard, which makes their arrogation of moral judgship an act of insolence, or are flat out putting on an act, which is outrageous, cynical, and disgusting. It can be hard to tell who among them are "sincere," that is to say, feeling actual emotions, which are method actors getting into it, and which are totally feigned in their outrage.

One way to tell if a person or organization  genuine in its denunciations is to test for consistency in their behavior. In this case, we can go back and check if they denounced the U.S. bombing of the MSF hospital. If not, they are phonies. At best, they are self-indulgent poseurs. 

Well, do you really need to check if any Western "leader" (political boss) or major media or government apparatchik or favored house intellectual morally condemned the Obama-Biden regime and the U.S. military for the Kunduz atrocity? Do they EVER condemn ANY U.S. atrocity? Hell, they cooperated in CIA kidnappings and torture of "terrorism suspects"! For those of us with memories, who pay attention, there is no need to check. Feel free to do so as a research project. It would be useful to publish such a study.

I wrote four essays on the Kunduz atrocity by the U.S. in 2015, when it occurred. I wrote at the same time condemning Russia for bombing hospitals in Syria. So I am not motivated by "anti-Americanism," an invented ideology used to dismiss out of hand any critique of U.S. Imperialism and its crimes. I am motivated by NORMAL HUMAN MORALITY!

If you click this link, you will get a page with the four essays on the Kunduz atrocity, the one on Russia, and several other related articles. For details about the attack, see in particular "Why Did the U.S. Launch a Sustained Aerial Bombardment of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital?"
To learn about the murderous AC-130 warplane in particular, see "WikiLeaks Invites Obama to Bomb It," and  "What Happens When One Nobel Peace Prize Winner Bombs Another Nobel Peace Prize Winner?"