On Bombing Civilians

ON BOMBING CIVILIANS AS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com

July 29, 2012

                Al Jazeera has just run an interview with US Secretary of Defense Panetta, where Mr. Panetta proclaims that the Syrian government-ordered aerial bombardment in Aleppo that has indiscriminately killed civilians is a crime against humanity.  Meanwhile, Mr. Panetta unabashedly carries out orders for drones to fire on enemy targets that indiscriminately kill civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Mr. Panetta emphasizes that the Syrian government is killing “its own people.”  I doubt that Syrian resistance fighters and their families would agree on sectarian grounds for starters.  I assume that Mr. Panetta that we are targeting enemy forces with drones as friends of the Afghan and Pakistani people, but the civilians they kill are Afghan and Pakistani themselves.  Besides the US refuses to accept jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court over its own citizens , or, for our military, of any “sovereign” nation which US forces formally occupy (comparable to the extra-territoriality which Britain claimed over Chinese harbors that led to the Opium Wars of the mid-19^th century).  And to come full circle, the Syrian government spokespersons say they are bombing forces supplied inter alia by the US Government.

                The Koran tells us that indiscriminately killing civilians as a war expedient constitutes premeditated murder, period.  Syria, the US, what’s the difference between us government supporters and theirs?  Love and peace, hal