It’s come to this–we are bombing hospitals.  MSF (Medicins Sans Frontiers, aka, Doctors Without Borders) reports at least 23 dead from a US airstrike including women, children, nurses and physicians.  Medical staff watched helplessly as 6 patients burned alive in the ICU.  Although the US has admitted the bombing was a mistake, military spokesmen quickly floated a trial balloon alleging that Taliban had occupied and were firing from the hospital.  MSF emphatically denies this is the case.

Whom should we believe?  Should it be the US military, authors of My Lai, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the malicious prosecution of selfless truth teller Edward Snowden.  Or, should we ascribe credibility to MSF, who succeeded in the struggle against Ebola in West Africa in the wake of a pathetic response by the World Health Organization?  Whose 1999 Nobel Prize was totally legit, as compared to the sham sequel given to Obama in 2009?

The US will quickly drop the claims about hostile combatants inside the hospital for the festering pile of bullshit that it is, but that is as far as they will go.  The Air Force will investigate itself, and claim that no harm was intended for the innocent.  “Smart” bombs so routinely hit the unintended that “collateral damage” is just another way of saying “damage”.  If another nation did this to us, we would be breathing fire and demanding accountability for war crimes.

The Middle East air campaign during the Clinton administration, before the birth of my 16 year old son.  Since then, countless sons and daughters have been sacrificed on the altar of American fear/vengeance.  Only a complete idiot would claim that we are more safe today.  US military and foreign policy is predicated on overwhelming force and lopsided victories.  By my accounting, the last such victory we could genuinely celebrate was 70 years ago.

MSF, which stared down Ebola and won, is now leaving Kunduz.  They are the finest medical charity in the world, and one that never, ever proselytizes for a religion.

Give to MSF (Doctors Without Borders) here.