This is a tale of two air strikes that went wrong.
In one case, an air strike most probably by Saudi aircraft (although Riyadh isn’t admitting culpability) hit a wedding party in Yemen and killed at least 130 people.
In another case, an air strike launched by the U.S. hit a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing at least 19 people.
Both incidents were tragic and my heart goes out to all the victims and their families. Which one do you think is generating all of the international news coverage and outrage?
You guessed it. Civilian casualties only become an international cause celebre when inflicted by Israel or America. Everyone else, it seems, gets a free pass.
That’s not a defense of what happened in Kunduz — whatever it is. The U.S. military is still investigating how an airstrike, apparently from an AC-130 gunship supporting U.S. Special Operations Forces, came to pulverize a hospital. The New York Times offers a tantalizing clue: “A Kunduz police spokesman, Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, said Taliban fighters had entered the hospital and were using it as a firing position.” That’s not an excuse for firing on the hospital, but it’s an explanation of how it could have happened — U.S. Special Operations Forces may well have called in the air strike to suppress the fire they were taking from that position.
Yet the international chorus is not waiting for any clarification of the facts before launching into condemnations of the U.S. and its military. According to the Times, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, called the airstrike “utterly tragic, inexcusable, and possibly even criminal,” while Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, also condemned the air strike and called for a “thorough and impartial investigation.”
By all means let’s launch that investigation, but let’s not prejudge the case before the facts are in. And let’s end the double standard when Muslim states such as Saudi Arabia can cause massive collateral damage with nary a peep of international protest, whereas American or Israeli actions are subject to minute scrutiny from critics who make no allowance for the fact that errors are inevitable in the “fog of war.”
In reality, of course, both Israel and America are generally far more discriminating and precise in their application of firepower — and show far more regard for avoiding civilian casualties — than any other armed forces on the planet. But instead of receiving any appreciation for their restraint, they are pilloried all the more when they find themselves unable to live up to the standards of perfection that are now expected from them.
