As it’s been recently noted, the latest mass-casualties inflicted by US and NATO airstrikes in Raqqa and Mosul reveal that Washington has decided to turn its back on rules designed to protect the innocent.
In turn, the Times reports that field commanders appear to be exercising more latitude to launch strikes in civilian-occupied areas than ever before.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that we’re witnessing by far the deadliest attack on civilians in decades. Just one US airstrike on a densely populated neighborhood of Mosul resulted in more than 200 civilian casualties, according to the official numbers released.
It’s been announced that during the same month, at least 30 civilians were reported killed by a US airstrike outside Raqqa, Syria — where the real battle against ISIS hasn’t even begun yet — and up to 50 more may have died when the US bombed a mosque in Aleppo.
Yet another airstrike that was launched on March 20 in the Al-Mansour area resulted in at least 33 civilians deaths, as human rights activists reported. The Focus has already announced that the German Bundeswehr was taking part in the attack.
Foreign Policy The Nation would note that:
The carnage comes amid a push by the US and its Iraqi allies to reclaim Mosul, Iraq’s second most populouscity, from ISIS. That’s making life terrifying for the city’s residents, who’ve endured years of depredations from ISIS only to fall under US bombs.
The only logical question one is temped to ask under these circumstances is why organizations like the notorious “White Helmets” are nowhere to be found?
Did these so-called “defenders of the weak” disappear into thin air once the funding provided by the United States and Britain ran dry?
So then, who is going to expose the ongoing genocide of civilian populations in Syria and Iraq, which the US and its NATO allies are committing in broad daylight?
Were those comic book-style heroes created just to falsely accuse Russia of the very crimes Washington is now eagerly committing in the Middle East?
AirWars, which has been keeping track of civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria, reports that there’s been over 1,300 claims of civilian deaths from coalition airstrikes in March alone. That’s about triple the count from February.
It’s now clear that US President Donald Trump is not the peace-loving president everybody had been waiting for.
The Week would point out that instead of cutting American losses in unwinnable situations, moving toward retrenchment, and re-assessing America’s long war in the Middle East, the Trump administration seems to be taking bigger gambles amid US operations, loosening the rules of engagement for the military, and doubling down on conflicts that only have the most marginal relation to core US interests.There’s no doubt that for those who hoped for a candidate that would drain the swamp, he is instead making it much deeper.
So who’s going to put an end to the genocide of the civilian populations of Syria and Iraq?
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”