[iamzack]

Well assuming those two kids survive, there's some more enemies that'll show up in a decade or so right there. Might as well kill them now. Show no mercy.

[zookeeper]

And this is reason enough to fire on civilians? That is how are civilians supposed to do that?

You conveniently ignored the rest of my post. Try reading it again and pretending you don't have an axe to grind.

There was nothing relevant to that in the rest of your post. You clearly said that you think firing at someone carrying a weapon is "the right thing to do" regardless of the collateral damage, and then you tried to hint that the civilians were not operating within international accords and thus weren't protected by them.

However expecting a soldier to offer mercy to a percieved enemy who isn't at the least wearing a Red Cross armband and not armed is basically madness.

I don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness"...

[NGTM-1R]

There was nothing relevant to that in the rest of your post. You clearly said that you think firing at someone carrying a weapon is "the right thing to do" regardless of the collateral damage, and then you tried to hint that the civilians were not operating within international accords and thus weren't protected by them.

On the contrary, what I said had everything to do with it. If they thought they were engaging insurgents, then they had every reason to fire because that violates no law and it's exactly what they're trained to do.

I don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness"...

These are soldiers. Their purpose, their very existence, is predicated on confronting armed threats and dealing with them in the most violent way possible. If you don't want people killed and things broken, don't use soldiers.

[Wanderer]

Besides how should the people in van have understood that they were designated as 'potential insurgents'. There were no combatants in sight apart from the Apaches circling nearly a kilometer away (according to CNN) - which is easily far enough so that it would have been ignored. How should civilians have perceived that helicopter as something that is threatening them? They saw carnage where one man was desperate trying to claw his way somewhere away from the site. Killing unknown people just because they were suspected insurgents without any warning makes the US troops there no better than the presumed insurgents they were facing.

Hell Apache crews certainly didn't bother to warn (ever heard of warning shot?) of their intent. They just kept spraying.

And they have right to engage if the know they are engaging insurgents. In the first shooting this was somewhat suspected (some weapons were seen) - however there was no shooting, nothing explicitly marking that group of men as insurgents. In the second shooting there was nothing indicating that people in the van would have been insurgents.

If US soldiers are trained to shoot - without warning - unarmed men helping a wounded man then perhaps there might be something slightly wrong in their training.

[zookeeper]

There was nothing relevant to that in the rest of your post. You clearly said that you think firing at someone carrying a weapon is "the right thing to do" regardless of the collateral damage, and then you tried to hint that the civilians were not operating within international accords and thus weren't protected by them.

On the contrary, what I said had everything to do with it. If they thought they were engaging insurgents, then they had every reason to fire because that violates no law and it's exactly what they're trained to do.

That has absolutely nothing to do with whether the civilians in question were not operating within international accords or not. So, do you indeed think the civilians in question were not operating within international accords and thus weren't protected by them? Yes or no?

I don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness"...

These are soldiers. Their purpose, their very existence, is predicated on confronting armed threats and dealing with them in the most violent way possible.

What are you going on about? I said I still don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness". That was in response to you saying that it does count. Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.

If you don't want people killed and things broken, don't use soldiers.

Yeah, I don't use soldiers.

[General Battuta]

Attitude of the pilots bad or not it wasn't their call to pull the trigger.

...what? Of course it was. They made the call to pull the trigger, and you're trying to say it wasn't their call to pull the trigger. Duh.

No, it actually wasn't; by rules of engagement they have to get permission to fire.

They did, however, receive that permission.

Permission to fire isn't an order to fire, so pulling the trigger was still their call. Were they ordered to or were they simply given permission to fire on all those people?

And even if they were ordered to fire, nothing would force them to do it, so it'd still be their call. You can't threated me into shooting someone else in such a way that it wouldn't still be my call to shoot or not shoot that someone else, assuming I don't turn all non compos mentis. And we're actually talking of a situation where the repercussions of choosing to not fire would likely have been "none" and the pilots don't exactly seem like they're panicking either.

That's a good point.

Richard Morgan once made an interesting argument that 'soldier' is one of the least honorable professions in existence because it involves giving up your right to make moral decisions. One of his characters, an ex-soldier, said something along the lines of "I'm trying to become something better...a paid killer, maybe." The idea being that at least when you're a mercenary you get to choose what you're going to fight for.

I found it compelling.

[Dilmah G]

Okay, watched the video, and am disgusted by it. But I have to say, I would've mistaken the cameras for weapons at the first pass as well. However, when the helo moves around the building, and the RPG guy doesn't make an attempt to track the helo, as well as there being a bloody congregation going on with the supposed Tangos including RPG boy, I would've highly doubted they were making an attempt to down the helo at that point/were hostile forces, if I was the WSO. And the camera doesn't even look like an RPG at that point of the footage.

What are you going on about? I said I still don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness". That was in response to you saying that it does count. Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.

You seemed to have missed the part where he talked about the tools they were dealing with, and do deal with, in modern warfare. It is not the job of a soldier to 'be nice', especially not to an enemy that'd string their body through a street if they had the opportunity (not literally here, but you get the idea). As long as the soldier's still alive, he's still a threat (depending on the case, but usually). Ergo, it is necessary to shoot the **** out of some bastard that very likely hates your guts. Unfortunately, they slaughtered someone's father, husband, brother, etc. Which is absolutely ****ing disgusting. But they could easily have been, and were, mistaken as insurgents.

And even if they were ordered to fire, nothing would force them to do it, so it'd still be their call.

You've obviously never spoken to someone in the military. When a superior officer says, "Pull the trigger," You bloody well pull the trigger unless you have a damn good reason. Without knowing the background to the engagement, it's hard to make educated judgements, but as far as I can pick up, the Apache Crew had little reason to suspect the target was civilian. Thankfully, the way in which US Forces provide CAS and the like has been dramatically revised, as most HLP-ers should know, courtesy of Battuta.

[zookeeper]

What are you going on about? I said I still don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness". That was in response to you saying that it does count. Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.

You seemed to have missed the part where he talked about the tools they were dealing with, and do deal with, in modern warfare.

Nope.

It is not the job of a soldier to 'be nice', especially not to an enemy that'd string their body through a street if they had the opportunity (not literally here, but you get the idea). As long as the soldier's still alive, he's still a threat (depending on the case, but usually). Ergo, it is necessary to shoot the **** out of some bastard that very likely hates your guts. Unfortunately, they slaughtered someone's father, husband, brother, etc. Which is absolutely ****ing disgusting. But they could easily have been, and were, mistaken as insurgents.

It's practically no one's job to 'be nice', yet I expect niceness from people, especially when it's niceness in the form of not shooting other people. As for the rest, I don't see how that's relevant to anything I've said. Could you be nice and point to something I've said that is incorrect?

And even if they were ordered to fire, nothing would force them to do it, so it'd still be their call.

You've obviously never spoken to someone in the military. When a superior officer says, "Pull the trigger," You bloody well pull the trigger unless you have a damn good reason.

And that's gonna be your call, not your superior officer's call. Ordering you to pull the trigger or not is his call, pulling the trigger or not is yours.

[Dilmah G]

Yes, I will.

And we're actually talking of a situation where the repercussions of choosing to not fire would likely have been "none" and the pilots don't exactly seem like they're panicking either.

Let's go right back up the thread, shall we? This is correct, in hindsight, but unfortunately in real time, we don't have that wonderful luxury. Those people were deemed to have been insurgents, and IIRC, were confirmed as insurgents. Therefore, there is a likelihood they may have opened fire on the helicopter/mounted some kind of offensive action, if given the opportunity, or called some mates in. You don't want to leave anything to chance.

And that's gonna be your call, not your superior officer's call. Ordering you to pull the trigger or not is his call, pulling the trigger or not is yours.

Yes, well if you don't pull the trigger and don't have a good reason for it, have fun having the **** yelled out of you by the CO, and losing any possibility of being promoted.

But I don't believe the Apache crew were told that the target may not have been hostile, therefore, acting on the information they were given, had no reason to treat the target as a possible civilian congregation, thus the problem lies right up the line with whoever the hell ID'd the target as hostile. I don't condone slaughtering of civilians by any means, I found that video disgusting, but in terms of the crew's accordance to procedure, I don't see a lot of fault. (not to say they were fault-less, however.)

[NGTM-1R]

That has absolutely nothing to do with whether the civilians in question were not operating within international accords or not.

Because that's a stupid question. I mean seriously, what are you on about? What are you trying to cite? I'm not even talking about the civilians, as you should easily be able to tell from context, I'm talking about the pilots.

Or are you being dense just for the sake of trying to make it look like I'm attacking the victims?

What are you going on about? I said I still don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness".

And what gives you the right to define "necessary" at the possible cost of others lives? Granted I have no more right, neither of us has ever been in combat, but at least I'm taking a posistion that was devised by those who have. You're off over in your happy never-never land pretending you have some kind of moral authority that is wiser than a great many people who actually do know what they're talking about.

Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.

So basically, you're saying all that training, stuff about fighting wars, bunch of malarky. They're absolutely normal people doing absolutely normal stuff!

Bull****.

Besides how should the people in van have understood that they were designated as 'potential insurgents'.  There were no combatants in sight apart from the Apaches circling nearly a kilometer away (according to CNN) - which is easily far enough so that it would have been ignored. How should civilians have perceived that helicopter as something that is threatening them?

Not relevant to the discussion of why they were shot.

They saw carnage where one man was desperate trying to claw his way somewhere away from the site. Killing unknown people just because they were suspected insurgents without any warning makes the US troops there no better than the presumed insurgents they were facing. Hell Apache crews certainly didn't bother to warn (ever heard of warning shot?) of their intent. They just kept spraying.

A warning shot is giving the guy who's believed to have an RPG a chance to turn around and nail you. It's not practical, and it's certainly not fair to people who are already being asked to do things pyschologically damaging enough to ask them to put their lives at unnecessary risk. They were told "these are hostile" and that's all they needed to know from their standpoint.

And they have right to engage if the know they are engaging insurgents. In the first shooting this was somewhat suspected (some weapons were seen) - however there was no shooting, nothing explicitly marking that group of men as insurgents. In the second shooting there was nothing indicating that people in the van would have been insurgents.

Except the crew was told by higher command that they were, and in the absence of some way for the man on the scene to prove otherwise without endangering himself, had to act on that information.

If US soldiers are trained to shoot - without warning - unarmed men helping a wounded man then perhaps there might be something slightly wrong in their training.

Warning is not practical from both a military standpoint and a human one, as noted. The cardinal problem with both your reasoning and zookeeper's is that it's the pilot's fault. It's not their fault: they're a part of the weapons system. Whoever told them there were insurgents in the area blew the call. It is patently unfair to blame the sword for the hand that wields it.

[Dilmah G]

Warning is not practical from both a military standpoint and a human one, as noted. The cardinal problem with both your reasoning and zookeeper's is that it's the pilot's fault. It's not their fault: they're a part of the weapons system. Whoever told them there were insurgents in the area blew the call. It is patently unfair to blame the sword for the hand that wields it.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

[General Battuta]

Ugh, this thread is going in the 'let's make it all violently personal' direction. NGTM-1R, I think a better way to approach zookeeper would be with a bit less derision and a bit more diplomacy. Ladling contempt all over your posts only triggers affect responses that guarantee you won't be listened to by your target.

So basically, you're saying all that training, stuff about fighting wars, bunch of malarky. They're absolutely normal people doing absolutely normal stuff!

Halfway right. They're absolutely normal people doing abnormal stuff. They've undergone psychological conditioning. For better or worse, just about anybody can do what a soldier does if given the right training.

Warning is not practical from both a military standpoint and a human one, as noted. The cardinal problem with both your reasoning and zookeeper's is that it's the pilot's fault. It's not their fault: they're a part of the weapons system. Whoever told them there were insurgents in the area blew the call. It is patently unfair to blame the sword for the hand that wields it.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

It is the pilots' fault. It may not be exclusively their fault, but moral responsibility doesn't get passed along. It is borne by each and every person at every step of the decision. The pilots had the ability to make a better decision than they did given the information they had, after all.

Ultimately, the pilots still bear direct responsibility for pulling the trigger, which is why they were so desperate to justify their actions to themselves ("their faults for bringing children into a battle.")

In this case, I think the attitude of the pilots is telling; they had already framed the situation and were only looking for confirmation. I would be more impressed with their conduct if they were actively seeking disconfirmation, just to be sure. It's a tactic that helps combat the kind of heuristics that cause these sorts of situations in the first place.

Reminds me of the time the USS Vincennes shot down an airliner. All the necessary information to prevent the tragedy was present, but it was never assembled appropriately because the people making the call had a conclusion already in mind.

All that said I wouldn't call this a war crime, just a mistake produced by situational factors. It was a combat zone and these people were arguably asking for it. My problems were mostly with the decision process, not the decision outcome - that and the decision to fire on the van.

[Wanderer]

... is that it's the pilot's fault. It's not their fault: they're a part of the weapons system. Whoever told them there were insurgents in the area blew the call. It is patently unfair to blame the sword for the hand that wields it.

Yes. And perfectly true. However the Apache crew also acted as eyes and ears for the 'swinging hand'. And they reported that van arrived to pick up insurgents and weapons.  However this (gathering of weapons) did not happen and the crew never bothered to inform the command of their error instead they repeatedly pressed the command for a clearance to engage.

Had the van indeed arrived to gather the scattered RPGs like the Apache crew claimed then the commands decision to engage would have been understandable.. Excessive perhaps but understandable. Now the Apache crew either lied or made false claims (both of which are serious offenses in military in combat situation) which lead to the destruction of the van.

Of course this is not the first instance US military looks the other way in a case where situation blinds the operators (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 ).

[General Battuta]

Yeah, the technical term is 'scenario fulfillment'.

[Blue Lion]

Did anyone mention the US can't find their copy? I may have missed it.

[Mika]

All that said I wouldn't call this a war crime, just a mistake produced by situational factors. It was a combat zone and these people were arguably asking for it. My problems were mostly with the decision process, not the decision outcome - that and the decision to fire on the van.

Mistake or not, this was intentional killing of a wounded person and opening fire towards civilian population. So I do think it counts. Circumstances might lessen the verdict in court if this case goes there. The fact seems to be that the helicopter crew still destroyed a vehicle without any confirmation of what was inside of it and what it was doing in the area. All they got was that the passengers were helping a wounded. Trusting the superior officer is not an excuse.

By the way, there is a case in Afghanistan of Finnish and Swedish ground forces actually preventing an air strike against the civilian population as Taliban (most likely) staged civilian uprise against their station. Most of the people had only stones as weapons, while there were a small amount of guys carrying AKs. In this case the ROE would have allowed to use air power to repel the attack, but since their situation never got desperate air strike was overruled. According to the comments from the participants the air force pilots had exactly the same attitude as in this video. If I recall it right, the ground forces decided to shoot only those who had a gun.

Later analysis showed that the air strike would have likely killed 300+ civilians. The actions of these ground forces were later commended by NATO. It is no wonder why the usage of Air Force has been made a lot more strict in the current theaters.

[General Battuta]

As I said, I'd consider the decision to fire and the van separate and much more problematic.

[zookeeper]

Yes, I will.

And even if they were ordered to fire, nothing would force them to do it, so it'd still be their call. You can't threated me into shooting someone else in such a way that it wouldn't still be my call to shoot or not shoot that someone else, assuming I don't turn all non compos mentis. And we're actually talking of a situation where the repercussions of choosing to not fire would likely have been "none" and the pilots don't exactly seem like they're panicking either.

Let's go right back up the thread, shall we? This is correct, in hindsight, but unfortunately in real time, we don't have that wonderful luxury. Those people were deemed to have been insurgents, and IIRC, were confirmed as insurgents. Therefore, there is a likelihood they may have opened fire on the helicopter/mounted some kind of offensive action, if given the opportunity, or called some mates in. You don't want to leave anything to chance.

Sure, we can agree that the pilots and their superiors thought they might be insurgents.

And that's gonna be your call, not your superior officer's call. Ordering you to pull the trigger or not is his call, pulling the trigger or not is yours.

Yes, well if you don't pull the trigger and don't have a good reason for it, have fun having the **** yelled out of you by the CO, and losing any possibility of being promoted.

Well, that's tough. Anyone who willingly joins the military (unless they're so stupid they shouldn't be allowed to anyway) knows that they'll going to possibly end up in such a situation where they'll be ordered to kill someone who might very well be an innocent civilian and that they'll get punished if they refuse.

And frankly, I don't think getting yelled at and losing the possibility of being promoted morally justifies shooting people. Something else might, but certainly not that.

[zookeeper]

That has absolutely nothing to do with whether the civilians in question were not operating within international accords or not.

Because that's a stupid question. I mean seriously, what are you on about? What are you trying to cite? I'm not even talking about the civilians, as you should easily be able to tell from context, I'm talking about the pilots.

Or are you being dense just for the sake of trying to make it look like I'm attacking the victims?

All this flows from this bit you said:

Anyone with a weapon in his hand is a valid target by any international accord, and an Apache's own weapons are not precise enough tools to kill one and leave those standing next to him unharmed. If the crew geniunely thought they were carrying weapons, then they did exactly the right thing in firing.

Also considering that the insurgents neither mark their medical personnel (if they have any) nor respect US medics, does it come as any surprise they'd fire on percieved insurgents trying to pull someone to safety? If you want the protection of international accords you have to operate within them.

The first paragraph is quite explicitly saying that killing unarmed civilians (who you know to be unarmed civilians) is ok if you're actually trying to kill an armed insurgent and your weapons are simply too imprecise to avoid the collateral damage.

The second paragraph is quite explicitly saying that an unarmed civilian perceived as an insurgent isn't operating within international accords and thus isn't protected by them.

Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.

So basically, you're saying all that training, stuff about fighting wars, bunch of malarky. They're absolutely normal people doing absolutely normal stuff!

Bull****.

What? Can't figure out what you're trying to argue for or against there.

[Nuclear1]

Of course this is not the first instance US military looks the other way in a case where situation blinds the operators (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 ).

Not sure where you're going here...655 was a little more complex then that.