Fatal Guesswork: Why the U.S. Military Attacked that Afghan Hospital
Fatal Guesswork: Why the U.S. Military Attacked that Afghan Hospital by Mark Thompson, Time
Army General John Campbell looked stricken Thanksgiving Eve as he detailed how U.S. troops blasted away at an Afghan hospital last month, killing 30. His grim visage made clear that he’d rather have been any place in the world other than that podium in Kabul. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the first American commander to face second-guessing spotlights, highlighting in hindsight what now seems so obvious: how could such a snafu have happened?
The Oct. 3 attack on the Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders in English) hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz has disturbing echoes of two other mistaken attacks by the U.S. military: the 1988 shoot down of Iran Air 655, killing 290 innocent civilians over the Persian Gulf, and the 1994 destruction of a pair of U.S. UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters over northern Iraq, killing 26, including 15 Americans.
None of these occurred amid the so-called “fog of war.” Each happened in what might be called the “haze of war,” where one additional check, carried out correctly, should have averted catastrophe. To be sure, each mistake in that trio of tragedies had unique elements that make them risky to lump together. But they also share a similarity that needs to be acknowledged to reduce the chance of another one happening again…
