US airstrikes allegedly kill at least 73 civilians in northern Syria - Polidicks

[t]http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/834/cpsprodpb/14086/production/_90445028_mediaitem90445021.jpg[/t] eidt: pic from article - not actually related to news [quote=guardian] US military investigates activists’ claims of deaths in Manbij in what would be deadliest coalition attack on non-combatants in campaign against Isis ... US airstrikes on a Syrian village have killed at least 73 civilians, a majority of them women and children, activists say, in the deadliest coalition attack on non-combatants since the start of the bombing campaign against the Islamic State. ... Anti-Isis activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently warned on Twitter that airstrikes which kill civilians undermine the fight against Isis, and gave an even higher toll for the Tuesday attack.[/quote] [url]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/20/us-airstrike-allegedly-kills-56-civilians-in-northern-syria[/url] [url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36835671[/url] Didn't see a post about this yet. Best approach with scepticism considering the source, I guess the investigation will reveal more details.

All info I have seen on this indicates that roughly this number of civilians were killed in a mistaken airstrike which confused them for militants. This is, I should point out, highly unusual in this campaign, in which coalition airstrikes have been extremely accurate and killed minimal numbers of civilians given their quantity.

Article makes it seem like coalition forces were provided with bad Intel on the whereabouts of militants. Also for those that won't bother looking at the links, the picture is of an unrelated air strike.

This really sucks all around because it might mean that orphans left behind by deceased civilians will likely be easier for ISIS to brainwash and recruit, unless they have a stronger hatred for the atrocities committed by ISIS. People might say that collateral damage is a natural occurrence in war, but that really isn't enough to comfort someone who just lost a loved one to a random airstrike.

[QUOTE=OvB;50771346]Article makes it seem like coalition forces were provided with bad Intel on the whereabouts of militants. Also for those that won't bother looking at the links, the picture is of an unrelated air strike.[/QUOTE] Ah sorry yeah thats just the image from the article. Want me to change it?

[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;50771376]Ah sorry yeah thats just the image from the article. Want me to change it?[/QUOTE] Just edit and put a little *Picture not related* notice under it perhaps

Alright, so the initial incident and pretty much the most credible source on this is as followed; "US Planes were targetting an ISIS gun truck that was passing through the area and had to been to that village." ISIS also within that region has forced civilians to STAY in their homes are areas where they live so they can limit the number of airstrikes on them. Opposed to what the Russians do, the US doesn't indiscriminately bomb targets in Syria and Iraq if there is a significant civilian present. Hence why Raqqa and Mosul haven't been leveled by air strikes. ISIS forces many civilians to stay with in the area to limit airstrikes, because they want to be able to flee with the civilians if things get too hairy, specifically dressing up in burqas to escape as women. So on top of shooting civilians who flee and blend into, they force them to take up fighting positions, they won't have weapons or anything but they'll be pressed against walls,prone,group in specific areas to try and fool air strikes. It doesn't work all the time, seeing as this seems to be the first case of it actually working. [editline]25th July 2016[/editline] Sad as this may be, it's literally the one if not the only serve incident where coalition bombs have caused massive civilian casualties despite it being a complete accident. But blaming the coalition is retarded because they're not the ones who forced civilians to stay in their homes at the threat of death and made them take of fake fighting positions.

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[QUOTE=RG4ORDR;50771439]Alright, so the initial incident and pretty much the most credible source on this is as followed; "US Planes were targetting an ISIS gun truck that was passing through the area and had to been to that village." ISIS also within that region has forced civilians to STAY in their homes are areas where they live so they can limit the number of airstrikes on them. Opposed to what the Russians do, the US doesn't indiscriminately bomb targets in Syria and Iraq if there is a significant civilian present. Hence why Raqqa and Mosul haven't been leveled by air strikes. ISIS forces many civilians to stay with in the area to limit airstrikes, because they want to be able to flee with the civilians if things get too hairy, specifically dressing up in burqas to escape as women. So on top of shooting civilians who flee and blend into, they force them to take up fighting positions, they won't have weapons or anything but they'll be pressed against walls,prone,group in specific areas to try and fool air strikes. It doesn't work all the time, seeing as this seems to be the first case of it actually working. [editline]25th July 2016[/editline] Sad as this may be, it's literally the one if not the only serve incident where coalition bombs have caused massive civilian casualties despite it being a complete accident. But blaming the coalition is retarded because they're not the ones who forced civilians to stay in their homes at the threat of death and made them take of fake fighting positions.[/QUOTE] Even taking all that into account, innocent people lost their lives. Not blaming the coalition would not just be foolish, but a road to moral bankruptcy to the same degree as russia has shown, and have not been seen since the snowden leaks.

horrible

[QUOTE=Rainboo;50771351]This really sucks all around because it might mean that orphans left behind by deceased civilians will likely be easier for ISIS to brainwash and recruit, unless they have a stronger hatred for the atrocities committed by ISIS. People might say that collateral damage is a natural occurrence in war, but that really isn't enough to comfort someone who just lost a loved one to a random airstrike.[/QUOTE] This thinking is a common mistake in analysing terrorism and foreign policy. Just so its clear, I'm not trying to minimise the fact that over seventy innocent people lost their lives in a mistaken air strike. We should seek to minimise civilian casualties, and whilst in this conflict we have mostly done very well at this, and there will inevitably be some collateral damage in conflict (and refusing to recognise this reality will result in our armies being able to do nothing), especially against enemies like ISIS, Hamas and (formerly) AQI who purposefully put civilians in danger because they realise our care around civilians limits us, there is always room for improvement. We often try to mistakenly rationalise terror by understanding it through our own mindset as liberals and democrats. We think that for people to commit terrorist attacks and to kill civilians they must have rational grievances by our own standards. As such, we look towards what makes [I]us[/I] angry, rather than what actually motivates militants. At the most extreme ends of this tendency people turn their explanations for terror into shopping lists for what they want politically. Usually it isn't malicious however, and is a genuine mistaken way of thinking, where lack of economic opportunity, or Western foreign policy is blamed instead of the true very much ideological motivations of terrorists. As I have [URL="https://laeffyblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/the-second-longest-post-ever-on-extremism/"]argued[/URL] in the past I think there is strong evidence that people are motivated specifically by an ideology, and that there is very strong evidence that traditional (and especially typical left-wing) explanations for terror have major holes in them. This air strike likely won't motivate people directly to fight against the West. This is because the idea that people fight because of the idea 'get hit, you hit back' is untrue, as seen by the declining attacks after military intervention (even very unpopular intervention among the local population, such as the Israeli intervention in Gaza). In reality it isn't people having their [I]own[/I] family members being killed that is a motivation. It should be obvious that the young Londoner has never been bombed or had family members killed. Instead they sympathise with Muslims globally through the concept of the ummah, which primarily calls ideological allies across the globe, not ordinary Muslims in conflict zones themselves, to take arms in revenge, as part of their many grievances (limitless, I would argue). There are some interesting statistics showing that most terror groups are very much global and not local. There are some exceptions, of course. I believe the Taliban is much more local given that it is also a nationalist movement. However, it may even be a majority of ISIS who are foreign fighters. Just over half of Al Shabaab's leadership council is foreign. 90% of suicide bombings under AQI were carried out by foreign fighters. The key point is this: local fighters are not particularly important to Jihadis, particularly those who take a primarily internationalist rather than a nationalist approach. Regardless of this air strike being a tragedy, it won't be locals taking up arms in anger against us, but rather unrelated ideological allies across the world.

[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;50771330]All info I have seen on this indicates that roughly this number of civilians were killed in a mistaken airstrike which confused them for militants. This is, I should point out, highly unusual in this campaign, in which coalition airstrikes have been extremely accurate and killed minimal numbers of civilians given their quantity.[/QUOTE] ya convoys of vehicles have been mistaken for IS militants several times now, theres really no way to tell without stopping the convoy unfortunatly