For many years, the United States has continued to carry out military operations around the world, resulting in a large number of innocent civilian casualties. In August, the Pentagon released its so-called "Civilian Harm Reduction and Response Action Plan," which vowed to "protect civilians" in armed conflict.
However, the US political news website "Politico" reported on October 20 local time that the Pentagon's plan is a "forward-looking" document and will not repeat the old case. Several professionals questioned how one could learn from past mistakes without re-examining old cases.
Screenshot of the "Politico" report
The New York Times previously reported that the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan is designed to help commanders "better understand the presence of noncombatants" before military operations begin and requires combatants to consider potential consequences for civilians during combat operations.
Specific measures include placing officers responsible for reducing civilian casualties at the operational command and the Pentagon's policy office; Launch a new system to reduce the risk of misidentification of targets; Formation of a centre with 30 staff to provide training and analysis on the protection of civilians, among other things.
The cover of the Pentagon's "Civilian Harm Reduction and Response Action Plan" report released in August
"Politico" reported on the 20th that Pentagon spokesman Cesar Santiago-Santini said in a statement that the new plan does not include re-investigating past cases, including those that confirmed civilian casualties but the Pentagon did not provide compensation to victims. If new evidence emerges, they will continue to implement the existing policy of reviewing cases.
Santini said the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, released in August, is a "forward-looking" document "focused on how the Department of Defense will further refine our capabilities and procedures to better mitigate and respond to civilian harm." Therefore, provisions relating to the reassessment of past incidents of civilian harm are outside the scope of this plan. ”
Many institutions and people concerned about the Pentagon's attitude expressed disappointment with the prevention of civilian casualties.
Emily Tripp, head of Airwars, a London-based nonprofit that has been monitoring civilian casualties in military operations against Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, said: "If you don't revisit these cases, you can't really understand what's going wrong." If you didn't know what the problem was in the first place, would you really learn your lesson? ”
Airwars estimates that the U.S. military may have killed 13,247 civilians in the ISIS strike alone, but the U.S. has only acknowledged 1,417 civilian deaths. Tripp said the U.S. rejected 2,647 claims for civilian casualties as "not credible."
"According to our methodology, all sources believe that the United States is responsible, there is clear evidence that civilians have been harmed." Tripp said.
On September 2, 2021 local time, Afghan citizen Ahmadi showed photos of family members killed in a US drone attack Source: Visual China
Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and director of the Middle East Security Program, argues that the Pentagon should "take an iterative, methodical approach that first ensures that it has the capacity to mitigate and respond to future civilian harm," and that systematically reviewing and responding to old cases that have not been investigated according to the new standards can help heal the wounds and restore the "credibility" of the U.S. military everywhere for more than 20 years.
Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon official and military adviser to the Dutch NGO PAX, agrees that the U.S. should re-investigate the old case, "If they don't look at the problems of the past 20 years and learn from them, how can they not repeat them?" Why 'start from scratch'? ”
In recent years, incidents involving the killing of civilians by US forces have been frequently exposed. In August 2021, the U.S. military launched a drone strike within days of the Taliban takeover of Kabul in Afghanistan, killing 10 civilians, including seven children. The Pentagon later said it would not punish anyone.
An investigative report published by The New York Times last November noted that a U.S. airstrike in Syria in March 2019 resulted in mass civilian deaths, including many women and children. A secure chat system that monitors drones at the time shows an analyst asking "Who dropped (the bomb)?" Another replied: "We just dropped bombs on 50 women and children." ”
On August 30, 2021 local time, Kabul, Afghanistan, the US military drone attacked the local area, causing deaths Source: Visual China
The New York Times published a report on December 18 last year by investigating more than 1,300 documents, pointing out that the US military claimed to have killed 1,605 civilians in airstrikes in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, but the actual number was much higher.
On December 17, 2021, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, in response to the news of the US military's drone attack on Afghan civilians, pointed out that the US military should be held accountable for its indiscriminate killing of civilians around the world. We call on the international community to take action to investigate the crimes of the US military in deliberately undermining the international rule of law and killing innocent civilians, so that the perpetrators can be severely punished, justice can be upheld, and the human rights of the peoples of all countries, especially those in developing countries, can be effectively safeguarded and guaranteed.
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