Source: Overseas Network
Screenshot of The New York Times
The U.S. military has once again been exposed to scandal. On December 18, the New York Times published a lengthy report, citing more than 1,300 confidential documents it had recently obtained about the Pentagon, saying that since 2014, U.S. airstrikes in multiple countries in the Middle East had been labeled as "serious intelligence deficiencies," characterized by hasty reconnaissance, hasty conduct, and unclear targeting of missile launches, killing thousands of civilians, including many children. However, the Pentagon has covered up the events for many years, exposing the barbarism, hegemony and hypocrisy of the United States in the face of war responsibility.
These more than 1,300 documents tore apart the lie of the United States about "precision strikes against terrorists." For years now, the U.S. government has claimed that the use of drones and precision-guided weapons has allowed the U.S. military to avoid innocent civilian casualties in air strikes in the Middle East to the greatest extent. According to the U.S. military's own statistics, 1,417 civilians died in airstrikes during the fight against extremist groups in Iraq and Syria; since 2018, U.S. airstrikes have killed at least 188 civilians in Afghanistan. But the latest disclosures suggest that the Pentagon has been downplaying civilian casualties caused by U.S. forces in places like Iraq and Syria over the years. The New York Times cited specific cases in its report, including one that occurred in an airstrike on July 19, 2016, in which the U.S. military reported that 85 militants had been killed and 7 to 24 civilians had died in the attack. In fact, they attacked civilian homes far from the front lines, resulting in the accidental killing of more than 120 civilians.
In fact, this is not the first time that the data reported by the US military has been suspected of being fraudulent. Just in August, the U.S. military launched an airstrike in Kabul that killed 10 people, including children. The U.S. government initially insisted that the attack was intended to combat the extremist group's affiliates in Afghanistan, however, as the media quickly interviewed survivors and more and more details were revealed, the Pentagon had to admit that innocent people were killed, but still decided not to impose any form of punishment on the military personnel involved in the attack. The New York Times revealed in November that a U.S. airstrike in Baguz, Syria, killed dozens of Syrian civilians, and the U.S. military buried the evidence with a bulldozer as soon as the attack occurred. All this shows that the United States has long been a "habitual offender" on the issue of downplaying or even covering up the innocent civilian casualties caused by the US military's actions, and the so-called "precision strike" of the United States is simply a big lie.
These more than 1,300 documents are new evidence of the United States' disregard for human rights. Since the Obama administration declared the end of U.S. ground warfare in the Middle East in 2014, the U.S. has launched more than 50,000 airstrikes in countries such as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan in 2019, most of which were unplanned, according to the documents. In the absence of intelligence and hasty action, the US military cannot guarantee whether the bombing is civilians or so-called terrorists, let alone whether the operation is illegal. The New York Times noted that of the 1,311 documents, only 216 allegations were finally found "credible" by the military, and even only one document was found to be "likely to violate" the rules of engagement. Turning a blind eye to the innocent people in the Middle East who died at the gunpoint of the US military and turning a deaf ear to the grievances of the victims' families, the US military is thinking about how to cover up the crime and how to exonerate. In response to The New York Times, U.S. Central Command spokesman Bill Urban "glorified" the jaw-dropping maneuver by saying that the U.S. military's downplay of civilian casualties was a "strategic, legal, and moral imperative" because "civilian casualties would be a booster for terrorist and extremist groups to recruit new people."
The United States, which shouts "human rights," has never thought of being responsible for its own human rights abuses. In 2002, the United States enacted the United States Servicemen Protection Act in an attempt to protect U.S. military personnel from international prosecution. In March 2020, the ICC announced an investigation into U.S. forces in Afghanistan for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In September of that year, the U.S. State Department announced unilateral sanctions against The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fathu Bensuda, who initiated the investigation. By arbitrarily swinging the stick of sanctions at officials of the International Criminal Court, American hegemony has refreshed the lower limit of ignoring international rules.
Facts have repeatedly proved that the United States never launched foreign wars to "defend human rights", bringing only pain and blood and tears to the people of other countries: during the 20-year-long War in Afghanistan, 47,245 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and policemen unrelated to the "9/11" incident lost their lives in the US military operations, and more than 10 million people were displaced; the Iraq War caused the deaths of 200,000 to 250,000 civilians and the homelessness of more than 1 million people From 2016 to 2019, 33,584 civilians were recorded to have died in the war in Syria; in March 1999, the US-led NATO began to bomb the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia indiscriminately, bombing 12,000 times in more than 50 days, dropping more than 10,000 tons of explosives, firing more than 3,000 missiles, causing thousands of innocent civilians to be brutally killed and countless families and relatives to be separated... This is only the "tip of the iceberg" of the United States trampling on human rights with power, behind the cold statistics, there are countless living lives lost, and it is a psychological wound that is difficult to repair for generations or even generations.
How much blood debt does American "democracy" and "human rights" owe? How many more wronged souls will be added in the future? The more than 1,300 documents are yet another wake-up call: It's time to liquidate the war crimes of the U.S. military. (Nie Shuyi)