On Saturday, October 3rd, the US Government ordered an airstrike that inadvertently hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. This hospital provided trauma care for Afghani victims of war. It is also one of the only medical centers left in this region of Afghanistan. In its response to this negligence, the Pentagon stated that “there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility,” according to the New York Times. The hospital had released their GPS coordinates, prior to the strike, to all active parties in the region. How does this happen? At the highest levels of government, how can such flagrant “errors” occur, and why have we, as a nation, accepted the rationalization of ‘collateral damage’?
This kind of thing has happened before and it will continue to happen as long as the public passively accepts the so-called “realities of warfare”. Reports about drones, airstrikes, and civilian casualties are so common, it is hard to feel outraged anymore. In the news cycle, there is an unspoken rating scale for tragedies. There’s a VIP list of who was killed: “how many?” and “were any US citizens killed?” On such a scale, this incident in Kunduz falls pretty low.
To counter this kind of hierarchy, I won’t tell you how many people died, or their individual nationalities—our guilt and grief shouldn’t be tied to numbers—it belongs to the fact that a hospital was bombed and our government representatives basically said, “Oops.” Patients burned to death in their hospital beds. Innocent civilians seeking medical treatment should not have to fear hospital-bombings. The United States should not be paying lip-service to peacekeeping while simultaneously hindering the work of international doctors who are giving their time and expertise to treat individuals with limited medical access. Days after the airstrike, Doctors Without Borders evacuated northern Afghanistan because of severely damaged facilities and staff casualties. Afghans from the Kunduz region will now have to travel hours to be treated.
I am by no means a journalist, so if you would like to know more about the airstrike, the New York Times has a number of informative articles on their website. Please read more about this!
Believe it or not, we are the voice of our government, and while our national attention has been focused on the election, this is what has actually been happening. I’m worried about the national election outcome; and (I think) like a lot of people, I follow the daily gaffes, comments, and pronouncements of both the Republican and Democratic candidates. I worry about who the future president might be, but this is just one office, of one branch of government. In comparison, so little of my time, thought, and outrage is given to the daily actions of the Pentagon, the top military officers, or the Department of Defense.
As citizens, we have the privilege and responsibility to stay informed and to speak out about all areas of government. Examine how you spend your political efficacy: Staying politically active is more than just voting. Keep our government accountable: email your state representatives and stay informed on international events. Through your political activity, force the presidential candidates to address these issues. As citizens of a democracy, we have intrinsic political power. When we don’t take action as citizens, I believe we are, in part, responsible for the consequences of our complacencies and indifferences. We have an obligation to ourselves, to our country, and the world to do more than just vote. Government decisions are made every day, every hour, that radically affect the world—who could honestly believe that just voting once every four years makes a difference?