These are the words no military commander ever wants to announce: “The hospital was mistakenly struck.” But during a senate hearing Monday, Gen. John Campbell, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, admitted last week’s strike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which killed 32 people, including three children, was an accident. “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility,” Campbell said. But Campbell’s admission was not enough to quell international condemnation. U.S. officials were repeatedly asked to explain how and why the airstrike occurred. The narrative changed from day to day — first the U.S. claimed it struck the hospital because it wanted to protect U.S. forces on the ground, then it said the Afghan government requested the airstrike because they were under attack by the Taliban. In the hearing Monday, Campbell altered the U.S. story again. Campbell announced there are now three separate investigations taking place to find out exactly what happened in Kunduz. The U.S. top commander was not to be cowed. “We continue to take extraordinary measures to protect civilians,” he declared. But the strike on the hospital in Kunduz was not the first time the U.S. has killed civilians in Afghanistan. The U.S. has a history of aerial military mistakes not only in Afghanistan, but in other countries including Yemen, Iraq, Syria and the former Yugoslavia. It also mistakenly has killed its own soldiers and loyal Afghan soldiers.
