Kunduz Hospital Attack – Surely We’ve Learn’t Something From This?

This is what the Kuduz Hospital looked like when it was a functioning hospital, hardly the epitome of the Patch Adam’s approach to medical care, but a functioning, efficient hospital nevertheless. An air strike on the hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz on October 3 2015, left three Doctors Without Borders staff dead and dozens more unaccounted for, the medical charity said, with NATO conceding US forces may have been behind the bombing.

The MSF facility was seen as a key medical lifeline in the region and was running “beyond capacity” during recent fighting that saw the Taliban seize control of the provincial capital for several days. It was, this is what the hospital looks like after an extensive bit of American precision bombing.

The charity claimed it had circulated the coordinates of the site to all sides engaged in fighting in the country, adding that the bombing continued for 30 minutes after it had raised the alarm with Afghan and US authorities. At the time of the bombing, 105 patients and its carers, and more than 80 MSF international and national staff were in the hospital, the charity said.

In short, despite having had the very precise details of the hospitals whereabouts, they managed to transform it from a place of life and healing to a burial site in a matter of minutes, and all in pursuit of a democratically just cause.

Here is a picture of Syria being bombed from the air by more American, Russian and French ‘precision bombers’ it looks pretty precise doesn’t it?

Precision bombing, the term sounds as oxymoronic as in reality it has turned out to be, and if you still believe in it as a practice, please remember that currently the Russians, French, and yes, us the English, are to some degree adopting this approach towards freeing Syria from the clutches of ‘despotic influences’.

One would think that by now the ‘pious head of the despotic serpent’ we all refer to as ISIS or DAESH would have been thoroughly crushed, but no, instead over 4,000,000 Syrian refugees have fled to Europe. Has that made us and everyone else reflect deeply enough on the lack of success, and think of other more diplomatic ways of resolving the conflict in Syria and dealing with ISIS? Nope, instead Jeremy Corbyn is being castigated for being reluctant to rubber-stamp further bombing, whilst the right-wing of the Labour party plots his departure.

Have they forgotten that of all the Syrian refugees who have fled to Europe, none of them will be received within England’s borders and that the same individuals wishing to go to war in Syria are the reason why? Perhaps they’ve forgotten the civil wars and the power vacuum in Iraq, which in turn has partially aided ISIS rise to power.

I wouldn’t know, these days I’m not even an armchair philosopher, I’m a sitting-in-a-church -hall one, but I know this, Prime Ministers like David Cameron only go to war when they wish to pull a ‘switch & bait’. The bait? A near-fascistic desire to make Britain ‘great again’ by waging a valiant media style war.The switch? Failing to fix core issues of social justice which are the reason so many are left feeling demoralised in the first place.