Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 125 - The Kunduz Airstrike

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

During the Battle of Kunduz, the US bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital, one of the worst war crimes of the Afghan War. Nobody has ever been punished for it. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Check out our store: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Sources: https://www.msf.org/kunduz-hospital-attack-depth https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/afghanistan-marking-six-years-us-attack-msf-hospital-kunduz https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pentagon-punish-16-afghan-hospital-airstrike-n564826 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/21/kunduz-hospital-attack-even-in-20-years-we-wont-get-such-a-hospital-again https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/10/03/afghanistan-us-airstrike-hits-kunduz-hospital

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Importantly, the investigation concluded that the personnel involved did not know they were striking a medical facility. The intended target was an insurgent-controlled site, which was approximately 400 meters from the Doctors Without Borders trauma center. The investigation found that an AC-130 gunship aircrew, in support of a U.S. Special Forces element that was supporting an Afghan partner ground force, misidentified and struck the Doctors Without Borders trauma center. The investigation determined that all members of both the ground force and the AC-130 air crew were unaware that the aircraft was firing on a medical facility throughout the engagement. The investigation ultimately concluded that this tragic incident was caused by a combination of human errors compounded by process and...

Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me today is, I don't know, Thursdays are for the podcast boys. No, that's bad. I got Francis in shocks again, because like myself, they're slopping things in the podcast minds the content pit there's nothing else to do i'm i'm looking forward to covet being over because now all the politicians are doing podcasts like when jason candor did it i was like all right man you're kind of horning in on my thing but you're like a local politician so that's's fine. But now Mayor Pete's got one,

and all these other people, like the Obamas have a podcast. And all it is is everybody's just bored. And it's like, look, I was already an incel shut in, God damn it. This is what this is for. For middle class white men to scream their opinions in the microphones and put it on the internet. That's for us.

I'll have you know some of us are lower class. God damn it. I'm, I'm actually really looking forward to like developing a rivalry with a mayor Pete's like CIA, like Navy shit bag. That's what it's called. You know,

like, cause I think like, I think like the rivalry between a pod save America and, uh, you know, Trapo has like been really good for them. So I'm like, I'm looking forward to like, you know, having like this, uh, you know, like, Pod Save America and Trapo has been really good for them. I'm looking forward to having this

... The problems are bad, but the causes are very, very good. Centra's military podcast to be able to butt up against. I think it'll be really good. I think this is a growth opportunity

and I think that we need to embrace it and fix bed prices. Speaking of McKinsey and the CIA and unreported war crimes, we're talking about the Kunduz airstrike today. Are you all familiar with that that have you ever heard of this before i don't know what kunduz is where is it it's a city in northern afghanistan uh i've never been to the city but uh you know we i've dabbled in afghanistan so northern afghanistan was all brits so that's all i remember yeah kunduz is is a city with a hell of a... It's one of the cities, kind of like Masri Sharif, that has a hell of a history when it comes to the Taliban and

various different governments and imperial powers that have floated through Afghanistan through the day. What's up, USSR? Whom's amongst us? Yeah. Who has never been there? Here's a brief thing. You guys know where the Brits were stationed

in Afghanistan, obviously. Was there any ironic placement of the British? Was there any like, oh, you were there during the great game, so we're going to put your ass there again. For that, no. I didn't

give them any shit because in 2004 I had no idea. I didn't know any history of Afghanistan, really. But I have to say, the British soldiers were my favorite because they had booze and they always shared. Their dining halls were not necessarily better but different. But also, there were some... God, there was this British squad that I met. I met them because they were all hanging out smoking cigarettes outside of one of their B-huts. They were blasting D-12.

And when I rolled up on it, they're all having beers, and they all speak with Irish accents. And I was like, what the fuck is happening here? And they said that they had done a two-year rotation in Belfast. And when Brits come out of doing that, apparently, some of the soldiers come back with Irish accents. So they're like, because they just switch back and forth. So they hadn't put their British accents back on. And they were listening to like, you know,

mid-aughts gangster rap and having a beer. And I loved them. They're the best people in the world. Have you ever listened to Northern Irish rap at any point? I only listen to the IRA and the punk stuff. And I have learned, I guess, it just never occurred to me that there would be Irish rap. So I'm excited to get into it. Both normal Irish rap and Northern Irish rap.

My favorite member of D12 growing up in Detroit was Lil Seamus. So this is all rounding out great. In case anybody didn't get my very niche fucking Detroit rap music scene joke, that's not a real person um so they don't they did they also said they really like nelly and they were impressed that i was from st louis and knew all the places that nelly was talking about that just brought him down a peg so nelly was big in 2004 fuck off that's true that's true give st louis this one thing this one thing well he was he was still popular but yeah go okay sorry it's weird that nelly is still a thing but

um so to to talk about the kundas hospital airstrike i have to talk about doctors without borders first are you familiar with doctors? Yeah. Doctors that go and help people in other countries. Yeah. It's an organization. Or the United States. It's not their first time in the US either, but they've pretty much just been everywhere. Now, they're known as MSF. It's their French abbreviation, which I will not try to pronounce because I have been dunked on hard enough about that.

And, you know, almost every like international organization has like some horrible skeletons in its closet at some point, or like, actually this NGO traffics children, like a lot of them end up doing. But, but like MSF is legitimately one of the... One weird trick. It's just market disruption. Now like MSF is legitimately one of the only good organizations in the world, in my opinion. And it pains me to say that because I know someone is going to be like, actually, Joe, and they're going to link this thing.

They're like, actually, MSF is harvesting Adrenochrome or something like, but you know what, please, if you could prove me wrong, do it. I couldn't file it. I was like, you know,

I'm going to Google deep enough and I'm going to find like, I don't know, like trafficking is always really big or like systemic racism where they don't use drugs that they should. I couldn't find anything. So I stand by that until proven otherwise, if they're a good organization, they're the best organization that we've ever talked about on this show. And that's why they now have to be killed with an airstrike.

Yeah, kind of some foreshadowing there, Joe. It is called the Kunduz airstrike. Give it away to game on that one. Really, the question is, well, I mean, we knew a hospital was getting airstriked, but who is inside? And we discover it's not just, you know,

sick kids. It's also like the one maybe good, uh, NGO out there. That's actually how, you know, that they're actually squeaky clean is that, uh,

you know, the United States decided to airstrike them. You know, it's like a bunch of nuns in Guatemala, you know, like we got to, you know, we know how to pick that.

That's why ISIS also never did anything wrong. You do not, in fact, have to hand it to ISIS. MSF has an interesting history into itself. They started in the 1970s after the Biafra succession, not the Jell-O variety in Africa. The one that Jell-O variety in Africa. Yeah. The one that Jell-O's named after? I gave Shox a punk joke.

That's the only one I can think of because I actually know who Jell-O Biafra is. I actually saw him live once on accident. Yeah, I went to a Melvin show in Detroit, which is a really weird early grunge band. Oh, yeah. The Melvin's got a rule um and jilla biafra was there for reasons i am still not sure of i think i was 11 or 12 and i was there with my uncle and he was beside himself with how excited he was and i just did not understand why i had

no fucking idea who this guy was but yeah uh so the so the Nigerian providence of Biafra broke away from the country proper, leading to a war. And Nigeria did just a whole lot of ethnic cleansing and genocide through starvation and just outright murder against the Biafran people. And that's when a group of French doctors joined up with the Red Cross to try to alleviate some of the suffering of the Biafrans, mostly because the French were the only people who would give aid directly to the Biafrans. Unfortunately, what happened is they saw the Red Cross was complicit in handing over supplies to the Nigerian government, which the Nigerian government then withheld, leading to further suffering and horrible starvation and famine. Isn't that literally everything that always happens? That always happens. It happens a lot.

You give the aid directly to the warlord and then you're just like, why did the warlord do that? Yeah, it was literally the reason for Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia. It's like weird we're dealing with some of the worst people on earth how could they do this to us and like i'm not against not giving aid because even like if a little bit of it gets to where it needs to go then in the end it's worth it but at the same time like and doctors without borders

is 100 right that in situations like you know Biafra genocide, and they talk about Rwanda, that aid isn't going to stop this. And they get some shit for that, but at least they're honest. But these doctors who were in Biafra realized the Red Cross kind of sucks, and we need our own completely neutral organization. And that's when MSF was formed. It was formed by doctors, nurses, and a whole bunch of other people, though not paramedics because I tried to get a job with them once. And they would go anywhere in the world, like mostly wars, pandemics, epidemics, pretty much everything,

and do generally good service to people in need. But more importantly they would not turn down literally anyone any gender any race any religion and any political belief could get help through them which was depressingly revolutionary um and and still kind of is um like the the red cross is good donate to the Red Cross. I've recently donated to the Red Cross in Armenia. But they have baggage. So MSF was trying to

exist without that baggage. It boiled down to their belief is you show up to an MSF facility anywhere in the world and you're sick or dying or wounded or whatever, they will treat you, no matter who you are, free of charge to the best of their ability. Which, I mean, in fairness,

is better than the American medical system. That's right. I mean, in comparison to some of their hospitals and some of the worst places on Earth, at least you won't have to pay for it. Now, after their formation, it was rare to find them pretty much. If there was a conflict or a health crisis in the world, you would find them there.

From earthquakes, hurricanes, to wars. For example, in the U.S., it drew from Vietnam. They did very little to help the vulnerable populations in their wake. Them being Chinese, Cambodians, and Montagnards. But one of the biggest problems at the time was Cambodians fleeing the Khmer Rouge into Vietnam. The MSF almost single-handedly set up a series of refugee camps in Thailand for them as they ran. Only later on did the U.S. attempt to help them, which is why a lot of people believe that the Khmer Rouge was propped up by the CIA,

because the CIA tried to infiltrate MSF facilities, and MSF actually found them out out of them and kicked them out so cool notably different than I didn't where was it that the CIA got caught like literally running under the

cover of the Red Cross like a few years ago yeah that's how they found Osama bin Laden yeah yeah and that's why that's why they can't ever get back in there and do polio vaccinations because Al-Qaeda is like, you're a front. We just have to assume you're a front for the CIA. Yeah, they used a fake, well, fake and real polio vaccinations in the Abbottabad region to track down genetic material that could trace back to Osama Bin Laden. And it's not just Al-Qaeda. The Pakistani government does not want

them back in. And the doctor who was taking part in it had no idea that he was working for the CIA. And now he's almost certainly going to die in prison. So, USA! USA! That was the plot of Spy Game it probably it's like it's that Robert Redford uh Brad Pitt

movie where like Robert Redford plays like a spy master for the CIA and uh one of the part one of one of the various different plot devices is Brad Pitt trying to sneak into a Chinese prison and I think giving out fake vaccines. Clearly, not only is it fairly readily practiced, but it's also acknowledged at the level that it made its way up to Hollywood. Or they watched the movie then came up with the idea because spooks are fucking dumb and unoriginal.

One of the problems was eventually the Khmer Rouge fell. Eventually, it was through the invasion of the problems was eventually the Khmer Rouge fell. Eventually, it was through the invasion of the Vietnamese government. Unified Vietnam after they beat us government. Which will eventually be a series

unto itself I'm currently working on. The problem was... You're going to do a Vietnam War overview? Eventually, when I finally want to fucking retire and do a 70 part series yeah i was gonna say how long do you think covid's going on uh forever uh if you live in hawaii and uh so when the problems is like when the khmer rouge fell um that the uh the the cambodian state effectively ceased to exist. There's no infrastructure because it's purposely destroyed.

People were starving to death. There was no medical care because that was also purposely destroyed. And the Khmer Rouge forced people to use leaves and traditional medicine, which does not work. So it was an entire population of at-risk people. Wait, did they try crystals? Chakras realigned. They deployed thousands of chiropractors. What about essential oils?

They tried to rub essential oils on S21 and people just kept being dead. Yeah, it was wild. Oh, weird how that works. Vietnam was like, yes, please come in and help us. We cannot possibly take care of all these people because we just fought a Yeah, it was wild. Oh, weird how that works. And Vietnam was like, yes, please come in and help us. We cannot possibly take care of all these people because we just fought a fucking war for 17 years. So MSF went into Cambodia,

and they were one of the first and only international organizations to help Cambodian people because they were being ignored by the international community for the crime of being liberated by communists. How dare they? Yeah, they also got involved in the Lebanese Civil War running clinics, which if you've ever studied the sides

of the Lebanese Civil War, it's like staring into a chaos room to try to understand it. All of the factions eventually betrayed one another at various points. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Or being a leftist on the internet. Or being a leftist in Lebanon in the 70s.

But yeah. And they had to try to keep track of all the sides. And MSF also got shot at from time to time. And in countries like Sudan and now South Sudan and Liberia, MSF is actually the most stable health system in the entire country to this day. They were the only people who treated the survivors of the Al-Anfal genocide

in Iraq when we helped Saddam gas the Kurds. We talked about that more in our Iran-Iraq series. They were the only people on the ground helping during the Bosnian-Rwandan genocides when the rest of the world kind of turned a blind eye. They were even in Srebrenica when European powers abandoned them.

And it was Rwanda that finally broke their brains a little bit when they said aid alone would not save people and the powers of the world need to use military force to stop genocide. I mean, that's true. Their motto literally became, one cannot stop a genocide with doctors. And I largely agree with that. Yeah. Dark as shit. Um, the problem is,

is, uh, Imperial politicking is still a thing. Whenever governments attempt to get off their ass and do something, especially when it's former colonial properties like France and Rwanda, when they launched operation turquoise. I'm not going to go into it too much because that'll eventually be an episode or series into itself. But what they ended up doing was deploying soldiers that propped up a genocidal Hutu government in Rwanda. But you can't blame MSF for that because

they saw it happening and openly spoke out against it during the time and then turned evidence against them in rwanda when they investigated it um so i i'm explaining all this because this is the situation they're in when they eventually uh led them into the global war on terror and a hefty deployment into afghanistan um now this is mostly our setting for this episode of Law & Order, War Crimes Edition, is Kunduz, Afghanistan, in an MSF facility in Afghanistan, which was known as the Kunduz Trauma Center. It was originally established in September of 2011. of incompetent warlords, governments, and illegal imperial occupation forces. It was the only functioning medical facility for the entire city of 300,000 people and the only trauma center for all of Northeast Afghanistan. Yeah, this is 2011. So this is 10 years post-invasion.

Now, things are actually worse now in 2020, and we'll get to the point of why. I mean, that's also just kind of a general statement that you can make. I mean, it's like, you know, that's really not specific to like even like, you know, at that point, you already had 10 years of saying, yeah, now in 2020, things are worse. Guess what?

It's not everything. I mean, how many quarters have we turned since violently tokyo drifting in circles at this point we've been like we've been you know like on the verge of killing the last 200 taliban dudes for like the uh you know the last 20 years of my life so i've been told that uh trump beat isis so i mean we've got that going for us, right? ISIS is gone, right? They're not around anymore, right? At this point, the Taliban is going to be monitoring our elections.

Well, I think I saw what today that they're arranging a regime change in Afghanistan to just like actually just hand shit. I mean, that's eventually what's going to happen anyway. There's nothing else we can do other than give the Taliban what they want. I would like to see a change of command where just like ISAF handing the flag over to some Taliban guy. It's like doesn't even hand it over. He just like holds it.

One of Bin Laden's like 50 sons that are like weird, like the one that's like greaser Bin Laden. And then like all of Bin Laden's kids are that are weird. The one that's greaser Bin Laden. All of Bin Laden's kids are weird and different. One of them's a greaser I think. It's got to be that weird Q guy from Europe. It's a girl, but a

weird Bin Laden Q person. Which is impressive. The mega girl. She's like a switchboard or something. Switzerland does not have a history of harboring problematic people with a lot of money. So once MSF got to Kunduz, they kind of hit the ground running. In the year 2014 alone, they cared for over 22,000 people and conducted 6,000 surgeries in just one hospital despite having fewer than 60 beds. And the important part is,

these people would just die without medical care, and people would come from all over Afghanistan to get care at this hospital. Unfortunately for MSF, but more unfortunately for the Afghan people, Kunduz is one of several hotspots for conflict within the country. In case anyone listening is unaware,

Afghanistan is a country that is incredibly factional and there are some of these areas in afghanistan where it's generally peaceful while others had been locked in a near constant state of war like there's places in afghanistan that you wouldn't even know that there's an insurgency going on um shit man in 2004 it was not just us against the taliban it was like warlords still fighting warlords in 2004 that that was so so not only are some of these places like really like when when joseph's factional in in a lot of ways sometimes there would just be like old soviet tanks that were held together going at it and like we had nothing it's just like fucking i can't do anything about that they gotta be they gotta fight that one out yeah and i mean kunduz is it has a bad

reputation for that already like even when the soviets were there um like various afghan generals would just randomly turn against the government um join the mujahideen and stuff like that um like it's it's a very thoroughly bombed out place and it doesn't have a lot of infrastructure or join the Mujahideen and stuff like that. It's a very thoroughly bombed out place and it doesn't have a lot of infrastructure or general happiness. This put the MSF in a very, very weird place. As if a wounded person showed up, regardless of who they were,

they'd be treated. And they would not alert the security forces if that person happened to be the Taliban. This led to an incident where members of the Afghan military kicked open the doors of the hospital and held them at gunpoint while searching for a member of the Taliban that they had heard secondhand was there. He wasn't, and the soldiers finally left after assaulting a few doctors on the way out. This happened in 2015, and unfortunately, it would not be the worst thing that happened to the people of Kundis or the staff of MSF in 2015 also

that's a war crime I feel like I should point that out we'll talk more about what exactly constitutes a war crime that's not our war crime so there's a point for us a war crime happened that the US didn't do it'll be the only one we'll talk about during this podcast

just remember this is Pete Buttigieg didn't do. It'll be the only one we'll talk about during this podcast. Just remember, this is Pete Buttigieg winning the first primary. This is one. Declaring victory. Enjoy it. Francis says, actually, the war in Afghanistan is good, actually.

Just for everyone keeping track at home, mark that down in your, you know, mark that down your scorecard. Like we have one bunt, one war crime. That's not our responsibility. And, you know, now we go home run as much as it's an RBI. I'm not sure if there's a difference between the two. I don't watch baseball. But we'll talk more about what exactly constitutes a war crime within a hospital.

But we'll talk more about what exactly constitutes a war crime within a hospital, because I really want to make a point of attempting some kind of research here. But in September 2015, the Taliban launched a surprise assault on the city, and nobody's entirely sure how many fighters they had brought with them, as the Taliban have yet to provide me any primary sources. And if I email them, I'm pretty sure I'll be murdered via drone strike. Joe, who are you? JoeHadeen at gmail.com. I bet they still use Hotmail. They're a little bit behind the times. Just like they're a fucking mail-all account. I do not understand.

These people, they keep sending me emails about making my dick bigger. One of the one of the things that i have hanging up in my office is an osama bin laden wanted poster that was printed out by the psyops guys that were there and it's great because it's a poster and it's you know all in you know uh dari or posthune i don't know which but it's it's like it's like one of those posters where it's like hey do you need a dog walker you know tear off the my phone number down at the bottom

that's awesome so it's all these things and it's got a do not fasten but below this line but it has an email to email with tips about finding osama bin laden and in 2000 i think like maybe two or three years ago i was looking at it and i was just like i wonder what would happen if i emailed that uh and i got a bounce back unfortunately um sending piggy poop balls in the email right it was but it's still open it's still out there so if you want to register cjtf 180 rewards at hot hotmail.com that might be open and maybe you'll get some Osama Bin Laden tips. Fuck, I need to

claim that for my podcast email now. I did have a guy slide into my DMs claiming to be affiliated with something like the Taliban, though probably in Waziristan, and I could never get confirmation.

Because he... God, you get the weird... I always thought that I would get fucking weird DM slides, but I've never been contacted by a member of the Taliban for... Like, what did he want? He wanted to just talk. He read the hooligans of Kandahar, actually. He wanted a fucking signed copy. He was wondering if you could like imagine getting prosecuted by like the fucking local like u.s attorney for like

aiding and supporting terrorism but it's because you sent a copy of the hooligans of kandahar to like some jackass in afghanistan cash. You know that, right? Dude, I fucking hope so. Somewhere in deep Kyrgyzstan or something, there's going to be a bunch of RPGs found and a dog-eared copy of Hooligans of Kizahar written in Kyrgyzstan. You know, it's...

A lot of strong pornography. If Ben Laden's capture was any guy. And what sucked is he's like, I can't seem to find any of your other books on any services we get here. Can you send them to me? And I was like, dude, I'm pretty sure it's illegal if I send you anything. I'm not sending

material support to a terrorist organization, but it's one of my books. He buys the book for me, but he's like, can you just pre-hollow it out and I don't know like stick some like into the middle of it you know just you know man or or just the imagine the amount of being owned when the cia guy comes to you and it's just like yeah we read your book there's nothing offensive there uh don't don't worry we left a one-star review on amazon god

damn it the fbi interviewing you'd like to you interviewing you is like a part of a counterterrorism investigation, but like, don't worry, we checked into you and we know you're no threat. So like, terrorist DMs aside, some people say that it was between 500 and 1,500 fighters. It's probably

more like 500. Either way, the Afghan security forces, both the army and the various branches of police, because there's a ton of them, which is how you can tell that the U.S. set it up. And they just completely withdrew from the city without much of a fight, despite outnumbering them by the thousands.

Weird how that keeps happening to people that we train. And they quickly retreated to the Kunduz airport because that's where the U.S. was stationed and they could hide behind air support. happening to people that we train. And they quickly retreated to the Kunduz airport because that's where the US was stationed and they could hide behind air support. And it would end up taking the Afghan government about like a week to get their shit together and retake the city. But during that week, Kunduz fell almost entirely under Taliban control. And you're probably thinking like, wow, this must really suck for the staff of MSF, all European people mostly, trapped within the city, or assume they're going to be executed or end up in some tragic video that you'd only be able to find the darkest corners of Reddit or whatever. That did not happen.

The MSF kept working through the entire week of partial Taliban occupation with little to no problem from the Taliban. The only Taliban in the hospital were 20 or so wounded that fell under their care. through the entire week of partial Taliban occupation with little to no problem from the Taliban, the only Taliban in the hospital were 20 or so wounded that fell under their care. The Taliban accepted the MSF request that no armed fighters stay in the hospital. And they left. Um, that also,

they also had dozens of government soldiers and hundreds of civilians. And the Taliban accepted that anybody in the hospital was not to be fucked with. And there was still, how's the Taliban got a better moral code hospital was not to be fucked with. And how the Taliban got a better moral code than the rest of us? It's going to get worse. Somehow the Taliban at the end of this episode will end up being the good guys. I have no doubt.

I have absolutely no doubt. Which is incredible. Because they're fucking assholes and they're bastards. And they've committed multiple war crimes, but like, so have we. And the Lisa Taliban is like understanding what they have here. It's just like, Oh shit,

these guys will take care of our people. And I mean, they got better things to do than fuck with, uh, fuck with some hospital staffs. Like you're going to take care of it. All right, good.

Because we, I mean, this is like you said, a city of 300,000 people. That's not easily held easily held so and they knew what optics were like somehow the the taliban pao was better than ours like guys guys guys don't fuck with the hospital yeah no the the uh yeah stuff like that we we lost so many hearts and minds because we were like coming in like fuck up water supplies and electricity and then the taliban or some other like local you know insurgency group would repair it and then of course like oh people are afraid of the taliban it's like in some places they were

real grateful that the taliban showed up it's like you know it's like getting that new york protection money like the mobster comes by and you got to give them money but like when somebody starts fucking with you the mobsters will come by and like fuck with that fuck that guy up for you so yeah you know we'll give a little take yeah well i mean we were talking about it like a few days ago about you know the the way that you know local populations must have viewed u.s troops in a lot of these circumstances and all that different from like anything we're seeing now with uh you know militarized cops like you know screaming at people in languages they barely understand you know like even in a language you do understand having someone like you know run up to

you scream you threaten to beat you and like point a gun at you is like really not you know gonna win anyone's hearts and minds and that's just in you know st louis or you know boston or you know fucking portland much. Much less in a foreign country where you don't speak the name and you don't understand what the fuck Wouldn't it be great if American people were like, wow, so this is what this feels like and then stopped being so happy about imperialism, but that won't happen.

Not all introspection leads to good things, unfortunately. In fact, now we just need more cops. Well, that's the problem. America only sees violence as the way to solve things, as I'm sure we're about to be reminded of. That is unfortunately true. So during the battle and fighting in Kunduz,

around 1,000 civilians would be killed or wounded, mostly due to American airstrikes, because in lieu of any competent military force, that's pretty much just what we rely on. Now, during this time, the MSF hospital was in constant contact with US forces, mostly special forces stationed nearby at the airport. They kept telling them and reassuring them everything in the hospital was fine, that fighting was going on around them, but none of the fighters had come to the hospital unless they were wounded, at which point, per MSF request, they would be unarmed. The same rule applied for government soldiers. The weapons had to be left outside. It was a 35,000 square meter

compound, was secure, and there was nothing to worry about. Now, at some point, the U.S. asked multiple times for the MSF hospital to confirm what their location was. So they did. And they gave them exact GPS grid locations, as well as a picture of the hospital, which was clearly marked on the roof above that it was a hospital, which is what you're supposed to do. And they sent this all via email. When the, when the nice things about email is it's evidence and there's plenty of it. Um,

Joe, we know evidence doesn't fucking matter, but go on. you, you're right. Now, one of these people that the MSF was in contact with was the unfortunately named Carter Malkisian.

Yep. Bad, bastard ass Armenians are also in the U.S. government. We did it, guys. We assimilated. Malkijian was the advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and they were speaking to him via email, confirming their location,

and telling him multiple times that the hospital had not in fact been taken over by the Taliban, which was a rumor that was going on on the ground. But they kept saying like, no, there's no Taliban in here. Unless they're shot. Yeah. And the hospital director who was based out of an office in Kabul had remained in contact with members of the Taliban at the same time, constantly telling them they were just doctors

and regardless of what was going on in the city or who was in control of the city, they're just going to keep on doing doctor stuff. And the Taliban was perfectly happy with that. They requested they stay within their compound and did not leave it. And they agreed. The director was not done, however. He knew that his hospital was in a shitty spot and should contact as many people as possible just to make sure everybody in the hospital stayed safe. And everybody who was pulling triggers and dropping bombs knew exactly where and what the hospital was. So he did. Just to underline this, I'm going to list all the people he emailed. I know this because he saved the emails. The U.S. did not. So the Afghan National Security Council, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Foreign

Affairs, Ministry of Public Health, the U.S. Embassy, U.S. Aid, the U.N. Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which was. Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which was in charge of the agency's body when responding to complex emergencies. The U.N. then forwarded this email to Colonel Paul Surratt, the deputy commander of NATO's mission in the north, as well as Major General Abdul Hamid, the head of the 209th Corps of the Afghan National Army, which was responsible for the north of Afghanistan. Figuring he did everything that he could, he went back to doing his job in Kabul, figuring he did enough to secure the safety of his hospital. By October 2nd, the city had

fallen silent. Hospital staff noted that it was very strange and the area seemed to not be in the middle of a war. They could hear fighting in the distance, but it sounded like it was very strange and the area seemed to not be in the middle of a war. They could hear fighting in the distance, but it sounded like it was outside the city. Friday was uncharacteristically normal. No fighting nearby, no gunshots, no explosions.

Quote, I remember seeing a child fly a kite recalled that Dr. Kathleen Thomas. And I thought to myself, today is very strangely calm. The same went. Sorry, go ahead.

And just so we're clear, what, around what, like exactly what time is this strangely calm. The same went... Sorry, go ahead. Just so we're clear, around what... This is the middle of the day. Well, no, I mean the year. Alright, because you were saying a particular week, so I was just trying to get an idea of I know what you said in 2011. I was just trying to get exactly where in there.

This would be considered solidly infighting season territory to go by Afghan war terminology. That's shooting time. Yeah, yeah. That same night, the MSF noticed that it was still very calm. The staff had a tendency to sleep in the basement of the hospital because they didn't have air conditioning and the basement was much cooler. It was also safe in case they got hit with an air strike or whatever though a night shift remained awake

caring for the around 105 patients that were still in the hospital mostly laying on the floor because they only had 60 beds as well as prepping the emergency room and emergency operating room for wounded if they got rushed in, which normally happened at night. At this point, they've been treating so many people that their morgue had literally overflowed with the dead. One of their more pressing needs was trying to find religious leaders so they could bury them because in Islamic belief, people need to be buried within, I believe, 24 hours. And they were quickly running out of time. But as the staff slept, 7,000 feet above them, an AC-130 gunship piloted by the U.S. Air Force

circled them. At some point around 2 a.m., it opened fire. You can go ahead and wipe that one off the board, Francis. Like, what? How do you fuck that up, man? Like, seriously. Oh, I got news. Like how do you fuck that up, man? Like seriously. Oh, I got news. Like the one thing that you're not supposed to hit.

Don't worry. We investigated ourselves and found out we did nothing wrong. Of course we did. Of course not. It actually gets worse. Um, and that's why I'm, I'm one of the, one of the things I'm arguing with myself with was this negligence, incompetence, or on purpose. And that's something we're going to, we're going to argue at the end.

Once I have to roll out all my evidence. All right, go for it. So the first thing hit was the ICU, an immediately vaporized staff and immobile patients. Others were trapped to their beds and burned to death. Other bombs sent shrapnel cartwheeling through the hospital, dismembering anybody who happened to be in its way. People on other wings of the hospital sprang to their feet and ran. But as soon as they got outside, the gunship opened fire on them as well with small

arms, sending them fleeing back into the burning hospital where they were continued to be pounded by cannons. Now, for people who are unaware, the AC-130 is a monster of an aircraft. It has a 105 millimeter cannon, Gatling guns, auto cannons, and other weapon systems on it. It's staffed by a crew of 14, and that staff used everything it had on board to pour fire into this hospital. MSF staff had a policy or a procedure for evacuation to try to save their patients if they were under attack, but they found that that evacuation was cut off because everybody who ran outside would immediately be targeted by smaller weapons from the AC-130. Hospital staff also had a procedure where they had to call someone, namely the office in Kabul to get in contact with the partner militaries to get the attack to stop. So they called a director who was in Kabul and he was already on the phone begging anybody who would

listen, both in the U.S. and Afghan militaries and government, to stop the attack. They both denied anything was taking place. The staff in the hospital made 18 separate attempts to contact either the U.S. and Afghan militaries within the city that went unanswered, despite the fact they're only a half mile away in some cases. When they contacted other elements of the U.S. government, they were told there was no bombing going on in the city at all at the time.

Now, some of this is... Which, I mean, I guess was technically accurate in a way. This is because most AC-130s fall under the Special Operations Command. So they're like, nope, don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Well, it's also just because it's an AC-130. So technically, we're not bombing them.

We're just shooting them. Technically correct. The best kind of correct. Now, the attack went on for over an hour, which is a long time on station for an AC-130 in general, let alone for one target. By the time it was over, the hospital was in ruins, while the surrounding buildings remained entirely untouched.

The hospital had been targeted on its own. The hospital's tin roof had been peeled back by explosions in the heat of the fire, and the buildings themselves still burned. In the end, the AC-130 fired 211 shells from its main gun, as well as uncountable shots from other guns. And 42 people had been killed,

six of whom refused to their hospital beds by the heat of the fire they were trapped in. Now, this is where we get to a play, Law & Order War Crime Edition. It's undeniable what happened in the Kunduz hospitals is horrible and unconscious, but is it technically a war crime? Now this is where I have to say what is considered a war crime in this

circumstance is my opinion that you cannot commit a war crime on accident. There's no involuntary manslaughter of war crimes in this situation. If no parties are involved in the, if no parties involved in the battle knew the location was a hospital, a war crime had not been committed. Intention is one of the keystones of committing a war crime. This is obviously murder, but was it more? Now, thankfully, the U.S. happens to be the signatory of multiple international treaties that covers this exact thing, hospital protections during a time of war. One of those things is the 1949 Geneva Convention,

Article 19, which says, fixed establishments and mobile medical units of the medical service may in no circumstance be attacked, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the parties of the conflict. Should they fall into the hands of the adverse party, their personnel shall be free to pursue their duties as long as the capturing power has not itself ensured the necessary care of the wounded and sick found in such establishments and units. So congratulations, Taliban, you follow the Geneva Convention. They literally follow that to a T. Now, Article 21 also says, the protection of this fixed establishment and mobile medical units shall not cease unless they are used to commit outside their humanitarian duties acts harmful to the enemy. Protections may, however, cease only due to warning has been given,

naming in all appropriate cases a reasonable time limit after which such warning has remained unheeded. Article 18 says, civilian hospitals organized to give care to the sick or wounded, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall all times be respected and protected by the parties of the conflict. So, this begs the question, did they purposefully target a hospital? Well, this first part is mostly hearsay the location of the first impact of the ac-130 strike according to msf staff that survived landed almost directly where they pinned their gps location that they sent to the u.s forces

kind of damning uh yeah that's i mean because it's and and at that point, it's like, okay, well, did somebody, you know, when they printed it out, the GPS location in the picture, did they try to write, you know, do not bomb, and then somebody wrote erase do not? Just put a big red X through it? Right. Like, no, no,

I actually bombed this. I hate when somebody crosses out an initials next to it. The do not part. You know, it just happens every fucking time. No, no, no, we meant actually bomb that. No, I know you heard do not, but it was actually do that.

Do that bomb is what we sent across to you. The famous international law principle of opposite day. You know, it gets you every fucking time. I had my fingers crossed behind my back. I was saying, do not bomb. There's a lot of hints that everybody involved in this war knew what this hospital was. Obviously, the Afghan soldiers had already raided the hospital once. But throughout the course of the battle like when the taliban was actively

in control of it that hospital remained the main drop-off point for afghan government casualties which so that means they had to know the taliban was not in control of the hospital um so there there's that uh now but that also would kind of tell you that they wouldn't call it in themselves. Like the Afghan National Army understood the importance of that hospital, so they wouldn't have it targeted either. And, well, maybe. But, you know, there's also something to be said that, especially in 2015 when this took place, we were not dropping airstrikes at the command of the Afghan National Army.

No fucking way. Well, I know not at the commandrikes at the command of the afghan national army okay no fucking way well i know not at the command but at the you know hey we got this intel as a area to hit that could have been part of it um right so we can rest but i don't think they would do that if they have their own people and there's what i was getting to you would imagine not uh yeah i know i said that out loud and then i heard it and I was like, maybe they're still committed to Soviet doctrine. Who knows? Right. So we can rest our arguments that the Afghan government and militaries absolutely knew the location was an MSF hospital. But the Afghans weren't piloting the AC-130. As far as I know, their air force largely consists of helicopters and small prop planes and various degrees of disrepair.

So why is the knowledge of the Afghans important? That brings us to the first of many excuses laid out by American Commanding General John Campbell in the wake of the bombings or gunning, whatever. I've been lawyered. The first explanation is the attacks could be disregarded outright and that the hospital was just, quote, collateral damage from other bombings in the area. So for people who are unaware of what that incredibly inhumane word means, that means that they were targeting something else and accidentally shot the hospital.

Right. It's the World Trade Center 7 building. You know, it just got hit with some things and it fell down. What do you want? Yeah. Except, you know, we were just leveling the entire city and it just happened there was a hospital. Also, Bush did this too. No, I'm just kidding.

He kind of did. He did kind of. Yeah, you're right. You're right. This is immediately proven false by the physical evidence that the AC-13 did not target any other building, nor was there any splash over damage. The target was clearly the hospital. Now, another explanation put forward by Campbell, and one that he has been sticking with, is that the AC-130 was immediately rushed into the air to support troops in contact in the

immediate vicinity of the hospital. Now, if you remember, the hospital was strangely quiet with no combat going on nearby. I mean, the survivors all say that the night was strangely calm and the nearest gunfight sounded like it was on the outskirts of the city. Or like even if it was, like you're telling me you just poured fire into a building for like a solid, you know. Hour. Yeah, an hour. An hour.

You know, like that, you know, with just hour hour for you know like that you know with just like unprompted no one else around like you just like decided and you just blew up you know you said fuck this one particular building in the middle of the city i almost would believe that if the survivors hadn't said like no there'd been no fighting around the hospital for days uh if they're like no like the shit is going sideways everywhere i'd be like yeah, yeah, the US is so bad at this, we probably would do that. It's not even the first time we've done something like that. We're not good at picking targets or wars for that matter. But remember, the survive...

Generals, presidents, Congress. We're not good at military or government, statecraft, infrastructure. We're not good at things. We're just not good. But this theory melts in with others as it requires the hospital to be a Taliban fighting position, but also an accidental target. So we'll talk a little bit more about that.

To go further than I just wrote, it would require us to ask other questions. Was the U.S. familiar with the location of the MSF hospital? If you believe the MSF staff, yes, they absolutely were. I don't want to be accused of only taking one side on this because I'm going to do an investigative journalism here. So good thing the US also left reports about the MSF hospital stretching back weeks before the bombing and all the way up until the bombs fell. Several special forces soldiers operating with the city were under the impression that the hospital had been taken over by the Taliban,

with one report saying from one special forces team leader suggesting at least a dozen Taliban fighters, not the unarmed wounded ones that we know were inside, were held up inside of it, along with civilians. They got this from some random Afghan soldiers with no

evidence whatsoever. There's also a belief that the hospital was somehow a command center for some kind of pakistani taliban commander who's running the whole offensive in the city from that hospital there's no evidence for that either um this is just that sounds like some solid scuttlebutt just like you know i heard it from a guy i heard it from a guy like it literally it boils down to some sf guy heard this from an afghan soldier which like not to shit talk the brave soldiers of the republic of afghanistan or whatever but like you would never use that as intel fucking ever now that's and not even like we'll make fun of of special forces all day but like special forces wouldn't run with that either.

They would be like, yeah, man, all right, whatever. And maybe they'd look into it or they'd tell them to fuck off. If anything, they would pass it up and be like, maybe we'll get into this. Like, I can't see special forces calling for an AC-130 based on that alone. What I remember you saying even like back in the your um afghan war series with the soviets i mean you know the the tendency of someone to just say oh yeah no that guy's uh you know that guy's a rebel and it's just like some dude that he has a beef with in the village so they drop him out of a helicopter i mean that's like a it was a well-documented thing for like a solid like you

know 30 to 40 years at the point that this show went on. I mean, that still occurs. Neighbors still up, people they don't like all the time. Right. So this is what led, that special forces report, is what led to the Joint Chiefs Advisor calling the staff of the hospital and asking, quote, do you have any Taliban holed up inside? To which they said, no, we don't. No armed group of any kind had ever taken over any part of the hospital. The bombing occurred anyway.

So does that mean the AC-130 was operating on bad intelligence? Maybe. But this is important. Even if the Taliban had taken over the hospital, it was still operating as a hospital. And they knew it because Afghan soldiers were routinely being dumped there, wounded and unarmed. That means it's still a war crime under Article 19. That does not make this okay. There could have been a Taliban fucking flag flying from this hospital. It does not make it legally okay, or ethically okay, for that matter. Now, a small piece of evidence that supports the

bad intelligence theory came out via the Afghan government itself because they honestly can't help themselves. The Interior Ministry confirmed the strikes immediately afterwards, saying, quote, 10 to 15 terrorists were hiding in the hospital. This number is strangely close to that of the actual number of wounded Taliban fighters that the MSF was caring for and that the Afghan forces had already shown themselves very comfortable violating human rights in regards to medical care previously in order to get to. Yeah, I buy that. Now I'm back around to blaming it on the Afghans.

I fully believe that both are at fault. I fully believe both are 100% at fault. I just don't see... I mean, look, America's definitely at fault for being um i don't i just don't see i mean look america is definitely at fault for like being dumb as shit i just don't see like i mean look call america what you will but we are a capitalist society i don't see like why the government the american government would be like yeah we need to blow that up to kill 15 wounded taliban and this is in 2015 right yeah like this isn't height of the war

this isn't 2002 2003 where we're just leveling everything this is like way you know further down the road when we've already been in like you know 900 peace talks with the taliban in one way or another so like i just don't see why the government would be like, yeah, we need to just dump an entire AC-130 onto this hospital. Like, there are literally 100 other buildings if you need to just get your rocks off. But it just seems weird why they would do it here. So, that leans me, like, because I don't think that the government would do it for no reason in 2015. Right. That leads me to believe that we're just stupid, not malicious.

In this one moment, I'm not, trust me, this is not a, you know, and that's why the U.S. is great. Just in this one moment, I think that we were just fucking stupid instead of fucking evil. Now, I normally would agree with you. Now, let me read this next paragraph. Okay, next thing. We're going to revamp this. read this next paragraph okay next thing we're gonna revamp this every time joe says two sentences we're gonna revamp the entire theory go so this begs the question did the crew of the ac-130 know as a hospital like we knew the u.s military did

in general in some abstract but did the 14 people a crew uh 14 people that made up the crew knows the hospital. We don't fully know because the DOD refused to tell anyone. Uh, now radios, uh, board. Sounds good. I mean, normally when you have a exonerating material in a, uh, you know, well-publicized international incident, um, if you have, you know, stuff that tells you that, uh, you know, you are innocent, you usually don't release that to the outside world. Yeah, you got to put those cards close to your chest. Now, normally, radio traffic is recorded aboard AC-130s for mission purposes, whatever. And it's normally top secret. But those recordings have not been made public to anybody outside a few

select peoples in the government. Though, though thankfully one of those people kind of leaked something uh what can be gleaned from the recording is that suggested that the ac-130 pilots were very unsure of their target and asked multiple times i'm pretty sure that's a hospital is this legal and they were they were uh reassured multiple times by their commander back at base to continue the mission yeah they were they were uh reassured multiple times by their commander back at base to continue the mission yeah they were they were pretty certain it was a hospital um and admittedly like i'm not going to hand it to the pilots for not being sure than doing it anyway um it's certain that they couldn't see the um the the visual symbols of a hospital from flying the plane but the gunners certainly could um because ac-130 sites are world renowned for being crystal fucking clear

uh like that's why they're made into video games and movies and shit like they could absolutely see this um but yeah they questioned it multiple times like is this a hospital I'm pretty sure this is a hospital hey there's a big fucking cross on it is it a hospital or you know or like whatever you know like I mean I don't know if it was like a crescent I mean was it a crescent or was it a cross it's an internationally recognized symbol

for a hospital okay yeah I mean you know hey there's a cross on it you know is it a hospital hey there's a big fucking cross on the thing that I'm shooting is it a hospital I mean, you know, hey, there's a cross on it. You know, is it a hospital? Hey, there's a big fucking cross on the thing that I'm shooting. Is it a hospital? I mean, also, you said like, you know, like what? It's like thirty five thousand square feet.

Like we're not talking like, you know, like a small neighborhood clinic that, you know, like might have like a red cross flag, like flying above it on like a small flagpole. You know, like even at, you know, at a level of level of like you know shooting this thing with a fucking minigun like you're going to be able to see a pretty apparent reminder of the fact that this is like something that is not just like a normal and this is a little weirder even this um like so ac-130s have like email capabilities uh on board they can get like teletypes and things like that there's a lot of different ways to quickly communicate with whoever's commanding the overall mission during flight. There's so many different ways that this can happen. Well, especially Andy said, this is 2015.

This isn't even at the beginning of the conflict in 2002. The communication system is obviously going to be a lot different. One of the ways that they can get to a target is actually the pilot can just punch in GPS coordinates and takes them directly there, which is what they did. The GPS coordinates they were given were to the hospital

in flight. Their original target was supposed to be the nearby office of the National Directorate of Security, which is kind of like the Afghan CIA, which had been taken over by the Taliban. But during the flight, all electronic

systems malfunctioned, including essential command and control capabilities, which eliminated the ability of the aircraft to transmit video, send and receive email, and receive any kind of electronic message other than radio traffic. It's funny how that happens.

Yeah, and they just decided that, hey, we should probably continue the mission. Right. I hate it when my body cam turns off right before my arrestee pulls a gun on me and I have to shoot him 15 times in the back. Now, what's interesting is almost immediately when the GPS took them to this wrong building,

the pilot's like, that doesn't look like the NDS building at all. And an internal NATO investigation actually found the air crew did not observe hostile activity whatsoever. Yep. So if there was no hostile activity, why was the hospital bombed? Well, it's because they're answering a fire mission from someone who literally did not understand what a war crime was.

And I say that because he admitted to it. And I say that because he admitted to it. Major General, so sorry, not Major General, Major Abdul Kabir, he told the investigator that nobody had briefed government force on specific no-strike list in the city, meaning, like, don't bomb this. A NATO official who worked with the joint Afghan-NATO

investigation said that previous rules of engagement did not include a no-strike list, but that the item had since been added. Kabir and others said they had no difference to the rules of engagement after the Kunduz airstrike. So, literally the guy who could have possibly

pulled the trigger on this, his excuses, nobody told me not to do war crimes, so we thought it was cool. So they, but he does understand that it was a war crime. No, he does not. He just didn't care. Okay. Now that's his excuse that he didn't know. Right.

That you don't bomb a civilian. And that's a real glaring problem in the online learning of the Afghan National Army. They're not keeping up on their yearly certificates of law of war and accident avoidance and shit. So that's going in NCOER. Because this guy's a major, meaning he was almost certainly trained by either the United States or the UK. A lot of Afghan officers go to Sandhurst. Some of them come to the US. Some of them come to the U.S. So this meant that somehow a major made it through all of this training without ever being briefed even slightly about what the Geneva Conventions are.

Don't talk as if you're surprised that the United States created a dumb major. Fair. That's fucking half of the book. I mean, our own majors can be dumb as hell like imagine us training a major in a different military that's that's that's not on that's not uh not a surprise i mean look how how well the iraqi army functioned so i mean clearly we're good at this um so i mean really what this boils down to is that every party involved knew this was a hospital and then bombed it anyway. There's no way around that.

Everybody knew this was a hospital. There's no evidence that anybody didn't know it was a hospital. The closest bit of evidence I could find that anybody didn't know this was a hospital is like, yes, we knew it was a hospital, but we also didn't know it was illegal to blow up. So, this is where we get to the investigation, right? You're assuming there's an investigation. And NATO did investigate the bombing and found multiple layers of negligence. I assume this is easy to find due to all of the negligence.

One thing they did purposely leave out during their conclusion of, no, no, this happened because we suck at our jobs, is malicious intent, which is a point I find very hard to believe. In short, the US investigated the US and found that we had not done anything bad because we don't do those things. Quite literally, one of the most darkly humorous things I found was a Reuters article headline when the investigation was complete that this is just what the article's headline was quote u.s strike on kundu's hospital not a war crime pentagon like it's like of course

of course that's what i would say uh like this this reads exactly like when those countless articles like local police officer cleared of shooting that killed unarmed black man we investigated ourselves and found out we did nothing wrong. Now don't worry though. The US we acknowledge when we do something wrong. So President Obama offered the families of the dead $6,000

as an apology. $6,000 which was less than my re-enlistment bonus. Like to and I'm guessing that was per person. which was less than my re-enlistment bonus like like to and I'm guessing that was per person I mean that's still bullshit

I mean even like at a level of like when you're doing tort work or workers comp or other things you're trying to estimate lifetime earnings of an individual and along with small things like you know emotional distress and whatever else and the

family members and the rest of it you know if you're trying to come to some sort of you know overall settlement and the idea that you know even in afghanistan that you would offer someone a total of six thousand dollars for you know their you know dead you know son or father or brother or whatever the fuck else. It's just so deeply insulting. I'm worth a million dead. Only to my wife, though, so don't get any ideas. That's why I've been emailing your wife. What's telling is, altogether,

if you count all the money they spent on this, you couldn't even afford a mid-ranged home in Washington State for how much money they paid to try to shut this up. In fairness, a mid-raged home in Washington State is a lot of money. I guess the other way is

that's how cheaply we value human life. What's really shocking is these are white people, which is normally what makes people mad is when you kill white people, but not when the US government does it, I guess. Normally, whenever we cover war crimes on this show, I always point out that they're the less than dead. And I mean that because the

American public generally doesn't care when Americans kill people that look differently than them. Most of the staff of MSF are white people from Europe. And still, shockingly, nobody seemed to give a fuck. I guess that's just what happens when you have a weird military cult that even transcends the racism, which is impressive. I don't think I've ever seen the U.S. transcend its own racism before, just to give a war crime a pass. But credit where credit's due. Obama gave them enough money to buy a shitty used car. So there's that. You know, Campbell, the General Campbell, that is,

blames all of this on human error. You know, like you do when someone shoots up a school or blows up a federal building. Oh, no, you don't say that when that happens because that's a fucking crazy thing to say. What is murder but a human error with a body count, am I right? Now, to this day, the U.S. and Afghan government blame one another but refuse to take part in any independent investigation, like the one that MSF has been demanding from the very beginning. 16 members of the U.S. military were punished for their role in this, but none of them with criminal charges. According to the New York Times,

12 personnel involved in the strikes were punished with, quote, suspension, removal from command, letters of reprimand, formal counseling, and extensive training. I've seen people be punished harsher for getting a DUI. Now, to close on this, I will quote the MSF. Quote, the view from inside the hospital is that this attack was conducted with the purpose to kill and destroy us. We don't know why, but we cannot accept this horrific loss of life will simply be dismissed as collateral damage. And then I have to agree with them. I don't see anything else other than this being a war crime.

Like this, this reads incredibly like, you know, if you crack a book from one of the other wars that we've taken part in, it's like, well, you see, there was a sniper nearby. So that meant putting a sabo into that mosque was completely fine um also a war crime but it's like one of those things that we try to explain away with like mechanical failures or just we we can't possibly be malicious we're stupid like that's what the explanation is like that's what i mean like this could this couldn't possibly have been a war crime we're just dumb uh which i think which like honestly is like even worse i don't know i mean like i mean you know not in like a legal sense but just this idea that you know we can level an entire hospital in another country and like just you know like lay waste to

like the medical staff and the patients and additional collateral damage. And we do it not because it was malicious, but rather out of sheer bureaucratic inertia and an inability to get out of our own fucking way in any circumstance. And even when it's literally a matter of life and death, it's just such an allegory for the way that the federal government ends up functioning under a militarized polity. The United States is basically

Lenny from Of Mice and Men in this situation. But if you're not familiar, Lenny was big and dumb and accidentally killed the lady because he's big and dumb. And it's like, you feel sorry for him.

But in the end, Lenny still gets shot in the back of the head. He still has to be put down. That's normally what we do with war criminals when it's not us. Yeah. We loved it. We, uh,

I saw, I saw some more like African warlords got brought up for war crimes of some kind. It's like, man, we loved it. I saw some more African warlords got brought up for war crimes of some kind. It's like, man, we sure do love throwing those guys in prison and not anybody else ever. Oh, yeah. When the ICC wanted to investigate American war crimes in Afghanistan, we simply sanctioned them. Yeah. And stripped their passports or their visas, which is a huge like, are we the bad guys moment? And like admittedly, there is something to be said about the ICC being, I would say, unfairly criticized for being racist, mostly because the ICC was formed rather recently.

The ICC was formed rather recently, and most conflicts during its existence have been in Africa. Though, I mean, we'll see what happens in regards to Syria and Afghanistan, Iraq, and what have you. But they certainly tried to break that by literally investigating the entire United States military. But it's important to point out that the U.S isn't actually a signatory to the icc uh but that doesn't in my opinion that doesn't mean that they should be independent of its jurisdiction because like they're sanctioned by the un uh which we are a member of but you know it's it's one of those things it's like uh crimes against humanity for thee not for me which is the darkest way i've ever heard anybody use that term uh because like if this was any other nation you know like post-world war ii when you know this is absolutely

something that like uh well we would have done this in world war ii as well because we did all sorts of war crimes then too but we won so it's different uh that like we would have done this in World War II as well because we did all sorts of war crimes then too, but we won, so it's different. We would have used a half-drunken idiot from Nebraska or wherever that hangman was from to fuck up the execution of General Campbell or whatever. We would have done that because he was German or whatever, or more likely Japanese because we let a lot of Germans go as long as they were useful to us. But since it's us, it's a whoopsie

whoopsie doodle we we we did a crime against humanity um anyway uh let's pay attention to our esports team um which is so funny story i found out which which is also accidentally uh endorsing i found out that the game that i stream on this podcast stream uh called squad now has an official us army esports server so guess what i'm doing later uh but francis shocks we do a thing on the show called questions from the legion and i figured i should bring some levity to this awful, terrible fucking episode. And that is, what is your least favorite vet bro guy?

Like, you know, we have types of guys we talk about all the time. Not necessarily, like, who's the most malicious, because obviously those are all the weird three-per guys who end up, you know, blowing up federal buildings or shooting up high schools or whatever. But, like, who's your personal least favorite that just irks you in an interesting way i got i got a

buddy who all he ever wants to talk about is our time in the army and like he and i never even deployed together we've done a couple of trainings and whatnot i love him to death but like he always just wants to talk and that that vet guy who like when you meet somebody and you talk about the army for a minute but like they don't talk about anything else you're like you were in for like 10 years man do you not have a personality outside of this that's just like that's that's my that's my most annoying vet bro my most annoying vet bro is the one that almost gets it you know i mean like uh i i guess uh pete budaj is to bring him up for the upteenth time whenever we record together whenever he's talking about like uh assault weapons in the united states like weapons

of war don't belong on the streets of the united states like motherfucker they don't belong in kabul either like uh like the ones that are like vehemently against uh like any kind of of anything stateside and they're like well in afghanistan we wouldn't be able to get away with that or like you know like they they compare like cops to to soldiers uh like roe because like they know they're doing that in bad taste but they know that it appeals to people in a unique way like well i've been conditioned to respect soldiers but also we all know someone who absolutely would have fucking killed someone if they could have got away with it like you're you're almost there dude you're so close and it's so aggravating because if you just took your head out of your own fucking ass for a second you'd get it but you won't and instead you'll turn to amy mcgrath or something

um my my least favorite vet bro is the like and i can't think of any other term for it but it's like the linkedin vet bro and i don't mean that in the way that like you know where you have like a you know feel great officer who's talking about how he's good at like running large teams. But I just mean like anyone who's like the kind of guy who, and I only say this because I experienced a few of them in law school and I know that like they're out there, but where, you know, they just kind of have this weird chip on their shoulder because they ever served. And like, normally they served as officers, like, you know, they, you know, so they, it's kind of like this carryover, like kind of like bravado. But it's, it's, they kind of like have that, you know, carry over all the bullshit from military life into that like linkedin like you know listen

to a podcast at two times speed you know i hired a guy because he stopped on the way and like you know uh did chest compressions on an old lady who was having a heart attack those are the guys that also always right there like 10 things being an officer in the army taught me about business leadership right it's like and they're all stupid little war stories every one of them ugh and like they all

end up getting a masters degree at some program and everyone kisses their fucking ass because they made a lot of powerpoint presentations while sitting down this is what getting blown up by some rando taught me about disrupting the economy yeah i mean i guess i was i would describe it and like you know and i say this even after he was my congressman but like you know and i met him in person he's not a bad guy but like the kind of set for lack of better

term the seth molton veteran like where you like you're parlaying that shit in like a political career or like a job at some like you know at like Raytheon or like some other Fortune 500 company those guys just like you know they're kind of like on the other side of the guy who almost gets it the guy who could probably could get it but they choose not

to because they just decide that you know the payday is so good and they'd rather go down that path I think that guy is like the worst one we talked about. For sure. That's the type of guy who ends up like the general officer who got in an argument with me about generals working for security contractors.

Like, you fucking piece of shit. There's that fucking shitbag Air Force officer who works for not like Tom Cotton, but he's force officer who like works for, it's not like Tom Cotton, but he's like one, like,

I don't know, Ted Cruz or Mitch McConnell, like one of those sorts of fucking guys. And, uh, you know, like all those sorts of guys where they just like end up on some congressional staff and like, you know,

have their like little dual flag, like American flag and service flag pin that they wear all the time. Like those guys are just like it just yeah like you can like viscerally shudder at those i mean that's eric gritens you know or or duncan hunter that kind of yeah or or even you know tammy duckworth you know i'm not gonna just shit on the the ones on the right it's always just like leaning on that veteran thing and it's just tiresome and then other veterans like think that you're supposed to be into that and just no yeah not i know i didn't

like the army that much in a lot of ways in some ways it was cool and i have some cool stories but i also have a garden and a kid and a store like i have other things going on now i don't what was that or that uh i mean you know this is like a topic for another time but that like fucking I have other things going on now I don't I mean this is like a topic for another time but that like fucking cringeworthy like Avengers like GOP congressman ad that came out a couple days ago like all of the

everyone who looks at that and it is like you know and it like makes him like have a semi all those fucking assholes are just the worst kind of fucking veterans the guy that really thought that was cool is actually an addendum type of guy I want to bring into this. And that's the Rise and Grind veteran. He probably has a 22 a day shirt. And he was the most toxic motherfucking asshole that you worked with.

A great example is this guy named Derek Weta. Are you familiar with him? No. He's an epic bacon beard guy. He lost his leg in iraq or something i'm not entirely sure what happened um and he was one of those making fun of snowflakes things um uh like yeah he's a he was a ben shapiro type when it's like you're too worried about your own feelings but he didn't have the mental wherewithal to actually make an argument. And he made fun of people who have mental disabilities for being upset when people

made fun of them because he lost his leg and he's not mad about people making, I don't know, disability jokes or whatever. And he did all these 22 a day things. And then he attempted suicide. And obviously that's not a punchline. But also, you've just been making fun of people with mental health problems all this time. Sometimes it's a cry for help. Yeah. And it absolutely is. But that's why without an exception, when I had a Facebook, which I no longer do,

I finally separated myself from that every single person that i that was still on my friends list from when i was in the military that was wearing like those 22 a day um bracelets or shirts or whatever were the biggest fucking assholes that i personally knew while i was in when i was trying to get help and stuff like that it's like oh interesting that you care now for the fucking clout, dude. They're really into kettlebells and shit too. I fucking hate them so much. What is it with kettlebells, man?

We could do an entire episode on veteran guys. Yeah, I have another four or five right now that I can think of that I'm ready for. We'll write them all down and we'll do a podcast about it. Fuck yeah, let's do it. We'll do it next week. Again, thanks for joining me on this fucking downer episode.

I'll try to make a better one for next time. This show, we vacillate wildly between like talking about seven hours of of war history but then we'll talk about something awful like this and I had to bring you guys with me on that roller coaster that I normally

put Nick through and just so now you know how he feels at the end of all of our recording sessions does this mean we get to like the man like a cuddly animal episode? That is true, and I am working on doing another one of those, so if anybody

is listening and you have a cuddly animal, they don't necessarily have to be a cuddly animal. It could be one that killed people too, but animals are cooler than people in general. Do that. That's fine. You can send them to me. We now have an email that I'll put in the show notes because I can't remember what it is,

but you can also DM us or Patreon message us. Obviously, I'm a professional and not a hack and a fraud. Email us the location of your hospital. I painted a red cross on top of my house to make sure that I get bombed from the next flight that leaves Pearl Harbor. Email that Hotmail account. So email that hotmail account. Tell them where Bin Laden is.

Fuck yeah. I need a polio vaccine while I'm at it. Thank you for joining me. You can find Francis' show at Hell of a Way to Die. You probably already know that. If you don't, welcome to the first episode of the show that you've listened to. But until next time, everybody, don't join the Air Force. I don't know.

Don't shoot a hospital. Don't blow up a hospital. Don't blow up hospitals. Don't war crime.