In response to Troops In Iraq Not Eligible For Military Medals in Fight Against ISIS:
The troops may not be eligible for medals in this not-war, but Syrian civilians are eligible to receive errant bombs, as President Obama has exempted himself from President Obama’s “strict standards to prevent civilian deaths,” per Yahoo News:
A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria’s Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.
The village has been described by Syrian rebel commanders as a reported stronghold of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front where U.S officials believed members of the so-called Khorasan group were plotting attacks against international aircraft.
But at a briefing for members and staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee late last week, Syrian rebel commanders described women and children being hauled from the rubble after an errant cruise missile destroyed a home for displaced civilians. Images of badly injured children also appeared on YouTube, helping to fuel anti-U.S. protests in a number of Syrian villages last week.
“They were carrying bodies out of the rubble. … I saw seven or eight ambulances coming out of there,” said Abu Abdo Salabman, a political member of one of the Free Syria Army factions, who attended the briefing for Foreign Affairs Committee members and staff. “We believe this was a big mistake.”
I’m old enough to remember when liberals thought this sort of thing discredited a military operation, and made the President into a war criminal. Having that magic (D) after your name sure does open up a lot of possibilities.
This strike was all part of the attempt to destroy the Khorasan Group, which shouldn’t be that hard to do, since there is no Khorasan Group. It’s just a fiction Obama created to conceal the fact that al-Qaeda, the true target, is very much alive and kicking, despite all that hot gas you may remember emanating from the Obama 2012 campaign. Besides giving the American media something intriguing to talk about, and hiding the status of the al-Qaeda threat, the “Khorasan Group” gambit was supposed to convince al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusra they weren’t the targets of the bombs raining down on their little terrorist heads, because the Administration was kinda hoping they might think about killing some ISIS for us. It didn’t work. Jabhat al-Nusra is now openly discussing rapprochement with ISIS.
We also came pretty close to bombing the “moderate” Syrian rebels, the Free Syrian Army, because their headquarters was right next to Jabhat al-Nusra’s digs. Hopefully the FSA will feel better knowing that Obama has given himself broad latitude to inflict collateral damage.
Jen Rubin at the Washington Post noticed that Obama’s swingin’ new attitude toward civilian casualties is a striking contrast from the load of grief he dumped on the Israelis, back when they were taking rocket fire from behind Hamas human shields. “Perhaps Ben Rhodes, the politically minded national security official who took it upon himself to lecture Israel, should finally apologize,” she suggested. I hope Jen’s not holding her breath waiting for that, or she’s going to be collateral damage.
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