Is it really hard to fathom why many people despise the US?

[UndercoverElephant]

I can get my head round the "worse than NK" bit because NK just sits there, not doing anybody else's countries any harm.

Point taken.

[tpals]

I had hoped that someone would challenge UE's call for genocide from his position of cultural superiority, but that isn't happening.

This forum has changed into something dark and unhealthy.

[Lurkalot]

The US also believe that when people like myself accuse the US of being f*cked up, we are actually motivated by jealousy of their "freedom" and "quality of life."

We can't own the guns they can but try asking how many have the freedom to grow potatoes in their front gardens.

[Little John]

I had hoped that someone would challenge UE's call for genocide from his position of cultural superiority, but that isn't happening.

This forum has changed into something dark and unhealthy.

Tpals, I know UE well enough to know that he doesn't, in his heart of hearts, hate individual Americans any more than I do. But, you have to understand that what your ruling class are perpetrating in your name around the world is unadulteratedly evil. There really is no other word for it. And, as long as your population carry on with their somnambulistic march to hell in silent, tacit, implicit (and often explicit) support of this evil, the rest of the world grows ever more desperate in its response to it.

A lot of the world is currently in flames Tpals, if you hadn't noticed. And most of those flames have been ignited by your country's murderous genocidal foreign policies (aided and abetted, of course, by compliant vassal states such as the UK and much of the EU).

We reap what we sow.

[snow hope]

I had hoped that someone would challenge UE's call for genocide from his position of cultural superiority, but that isn't happening.

This forum has changed into something dark and unhealthy.

Tpals, I know UE well enough to know that he doesn't, in his heart of hearts, hate individual Americans any more than I do. But, you have to understand that what your ruling class are perpetrating in your name around the world is unadulteratedly evil. There really is no other word for it. And, as long as your population carry on with their somnambulistic march to hell in silent, tacit, implicit (and often explicit) support of this evil, the rest of the world grows ever more desperate in its response to it.

A lot of the world is currently in flames Tpals, if you hadn't noticed. And most of those flames have been ignited by your country's murderous genocidal foreign policies (aided and abetted, of course, by compliant vassal states such as the UK and much of the EU).

We reap what we sow.

Shocking truth that many will find hard to accept or even unacceptable according to their world view, but that doesn't make it untrue....

[biffvernon]

So what is the American's excuse this time?

[UndercoverElephant]

So what is the American's excuse this time?

They aren't even offering excuses. It was intentional, and it does indeed fall into the category of "war crimes". They bombed a hospital because it was treating injured fighters of other side in what is effectively a war. Not so long ago, even the United States provided hospital treatment for injured enemy soldiers during wars. Now they are murdering neutral medical staff working for a charity.

Words fail me. I thought the behaviour of the United States couldn't get any more evil. I was wrong.

[emordnilap]

It was intentional

Again.

[UndercoverElephant]

Just to make crystal clear to our American members what has happened here...

It was the United States, back in the mid 19th century, which campaigned for the introduction of a set of rules for warfare - the Geneva Convention - designed to protect persons who were no longer combatants - especially enemy prisoners and injured persons. Thanks to Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange (the former's human rights being consistently abused in a US prison, and the latter being effectively imprisoned without trial or access to justice having been granted asylum to protect him from abuse by the US authorities), we now know that US armed forces committed multiple breaches of the convention in Iraq, but at least they tried to hide it. "Camp X-ray" was another breach, and marked a new phase of this descent into evil, because it was an open breach - effectively sending out the message "we can and will do whatever we like; f*** the Geneva Convention". This was with respect to enemy prisoners. What we are now seeing with this attack on an MSF hospital is a logical extension of this strategy - the US is now openly attacking injured enemy soldiers, and neutral medical staff who are treating them, flagrantly, deliberately and openly breaching the Geneva Convention.

And the reaction of most of the American people is "So what?". Why? Because as far as they are concerned, it is only their enemies who are expected to abide by the convention - only their enemies who shouldn't commit war crimes. War crimes committed by the United States are perfectly acceptable because...because...because they genuinely believe that there are one set of rules for them, and another set of rules for everybody else. It is OK for the US to commit war crimes because it's our side and we are the good guys by default. They see no ethical problem with this behaviour and cannot understand why other people view it as evil.

It is a shame hell doesn't exist, because that is where these people belong.

[biffvernon]

[raspberry-blower]

Very interesting video that is worth nearly 90 minutes of your time:

Lawrence Wilkerson: The Empire is in Deep, Deep Trouble

Highlights the ever widening wealth gap, the financiers taking centre stage, resource depletion and why the DoD is the organisation that takes Climate Change most seriously in the US.

He also states in the Q & A session that Israel is "an Apartheid State"

[biffvernon]

The American military’s “description of the attack keeps changing — from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government,” said Christopher Stokes, the general director of Doctors Without Borders, in the statement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/world ... liban.html

[raspberry-blower]

Glenn Greenwald: From Mistake to Justification: The Radically Changing Story of the US Airstrike on Afghan Hospital

When news first broke of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the response from the U.S. military was predictable and familiar. It was all just a big, terrible mistake, its official statement suggested: an airstrike it carried out in Kunduz “may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” Oops: our bad. Fog of war, errant bombs, and all that.

This obfuscation tactic is the standard one the U.S. and Israel both use whenever they blow up civilian structures and slaughter large numbers of innocent people with airstrikes. Citizens of both countries are well-trained – like some tough, war-weary, cigar-chomping general – to reflexively spout the phrase “collateral damage,” which lets them forget about the whole thing and sleep soundly, telling themselves that these sorts of innocent little mistakes are inevitable even among the noblest and most well-intentioned war-fighters, such as their own governments. The phrase itself is beautifully technocratic: it requires no awareness of how many lives get extinguished, let alone acceptance of culpability. Just invoke that phrase and throw enough doubt on what happened in the first 48 hours and the media will quickly lose interest.

But there’s something significantly different about this incident that has caused this “mistake” claim to fail. Usually, the only voices protesting or challenging the claims of the U.S. military are the foreign, non-western victims who live in the cities and villages where the bombs fall. Those are easily ignored, or dismissed as either ignorant or dishonest. Those voices barely find their way into U.S. news stories, and when they do, they are stream-rolled by the official and/or anonymous claims of the U.S. military, which are typically treated by U.S. media outlets as unassailable authority.

In this case, though, the U.S. military bombed the hospital of an organization – Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)) – run by western-based physicians and other medical care professionals. They are not so easily ignored. Doctors who travel to dangerous war zones to treat injured human beings are regarded as noble and trustworthy. They’re difficult to marginalize and demonize. They give compelling, articulate interviews in English to U.S. media outlets. They are heard, and listened to.

Meanwhile, to reiterate some of the points that Lawrence Wilkerson was making: Finian Cunningham: Mass Killing is the American Way

But America’s endemic violence goes much deeper and is far more insidious. President Obama may deplore the “sickness” of individuals going into a classroom and murdering innocent students.

However, what about the thousands of innocent people who are killed each year around the world from American warplanes and aerial drones? In the bombing of the Kunduz hospital by US forces this week, the medical staff said they had repeatedly phoned through to the American military to tell them that the hospital had been hit. But the air strikes continued for another 30 minutes, repeatedly. The United Nations has since condemned the attack as a war crime.
Obama has previously even bragged that his military forces have bombed seven countries since he took office. They include Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya where American military have killed tens of thousands of civilians in a so-called “war on terror” over the past 14 years.

Obama has arrogated the executive power to draw up assassination targets in any part of the world. Under his orders and without any judicial oversight, US drones have killed hundreds of terror “suspects” in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Many of the victims have been later found to be innocent civilians.

Tallies with Wilkerson's assertions that the US is a failing country, being bleed dry by endless war and financial malpractice

[UndercoverElephant]

Even cynical critics of the U.S. have a hard time believing that the U.S. military would deliberately target a hospital with an airstrike (despite how many times the U.S. has destroyed hospitals with airstrikes). But in this case, there is long-standing tension between the Afghan military and this specific MSF hospital, grounded in the fact that the MSF – true to its name – treats all wounded human beings without first determining on which side they fight. That they provide medical treatment to wounded civilians and Taliban fighters alike has made them a target before.

Yep. It is abundantly clear what happened. This hospital was a humanitarian mission treating both civilians and Taliban casualties, and as such was unarguably protected by international law and the Geneva Convention. The Americans bombed it because it was offering medical aid to injured Taliban, which is unarguably a war crime.

tpals and VTsnowedin, your silence is noted. It is at this point that in order to show that not all Americans are as bad as vile individuals responsible for this evil war crime, you need to condemn it utterly and without qualification, and declare that you are deeply ashamed of what your country has done. Your silence speaks volumes.

[vtsnowedin]

[
tpals and VTsnowedin, your silence is noted. It is at this point that in order to show that not all Americans are as bad as vile individuals responsible for this evil war crime, you need to condemn it utterly and without qualification, and declare that you are deeply ashamed of what your country has done. Your silence speaks volumes.

Sorry old chap but you do not get to tell me what to think or say, or when to say it.
As the story is indeed changing by the hour I'm waiting for the facts to get sorted out from the spin.
Why anybody in command would deliberately do something that would be such a public relations disaster is beyond me so the evil empire attacks ring false. This is war after all and it has never been a precise by the rules business.