September 13, 2002

9:44 AM

Nothing Friendly About "Friendly Fire"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two Air National Guard pilots may face criminal charges for their roles in a bombing that killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

A senior defense official said the Air Force is recommending that charges be filed against F-16 pilots Maj. Harry Schmidt and Maj. William Umbach. Pentagon officials were expected to announce the charges Friday after the U.S. Central Command and the Canadian government released additional details from a joint investigation of the April 17 tragedy.

what do you think? will this help prevent similar tragedies, will pilots think twice before they let fly on unsupecting canadian troops or wedding parties?
posted by henriettachicken (20 comments total)

Interesting. Saudis kill civilians, they are terrorists. Americans kill civilians, they are soldiers. Americans kill soldiers, they are criminals?!

It seems that, if anything, these soldiers should be facing criminal charges for killing civilians, (the wedding party is a good example, henrietta). I thought that was the whole point of soldiers; they can be killed and it's not murder. Wierd, wierd, wierd.
posted by zekinskia at 9:52 AM on September 13, 2002

Like this?
posted by CrazyJub at 9:52 AM on September 13, 2002

Zekinskia, there is not much public information available on exactly what happened on April 17, not here in Canada at least, but it does seem fairly clear that the American soldiers WERE ON THE SAME SIDE as the Canadians they bombed. At the very least, that means that what they did was not the duty of a soldier (from a civilized country), to defend one's country or ideals, but an act of gross negligence that resulted in unnecessary deaths. That is what makes it murder.
posted by renderthis at 10:02 AM on September 13, 2002

I certainly don't know all the details, but I think the difference is that the wedding party massacare came as an order from higher ups based on bad information. Whereas, in this case the pilots themselves made the decision to bomb.

That is, in the first case, it would be unfair to blame the pilots since they were following orders (altho, it would be great to find out who the hell screwed up so badly), in the second, the pilots did not wait for confirmation, and therefore it may be reasonable to blame them.
posted by malphigian at 10:04 AM on September 13, 2002

I thought that was the whole point of soldiers; they can be killed and it's not murder. Wierd, wierd, wierd.

If the negligence of the airmen led directly to the deaths of those soldiers then why should they not be charged? The article makes clear they were specifically told not to fire by their controller and they did.
posted by vbfg at 10:06 AM on September 13, 2002

...an act of gross negligence that result[s] in unnecessary deaths

Looks like that's what we're in for.
posted by soyjoy at 10:22 AM on September 13, 2002

Fratricide, it ain't new.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:46 AM on September 13, 2002

"What do you think? will this help prevent similar tragedies, will pilots think twice before they let fly on unsupecting canadian troops or wedding parties?"

Yeah, because previously the pilots thought "Those people might be friendlies or civilians, but what the hell, I'm not going to get in trouble." (That's sarcasm, folks.)
posted by callmejay at 10:49 AM on September 13, 2002

CrazyJub's posted image hits it right on the head. I've seen a few news stories about US Pilots taking (or be prescribed) Amphetamines so they can stay in the air longer.

Someone has to take the fall, and I'm guessing the pilots are getting a sweet deal to take the blame, rather than their superiors.
posted by Starchile at 10:51 AM on September 13, 2002

I wonder if we'll ever find out why neither the ground crew nor the pilots knew about the Canadian live fire exercise.
posted by timeistight at 11:05 AM on September 13, 2002

They're not going to be charged with murder. They're only being charged because they were allegedly negligent, so it's manslaughter. If you improperly and negligently prepared a plane and it crashed etc you could suffer the same consequences.

I would assume and hope that our soldiers in a battle zone would be given the benefit of the doubt. However, it's not impossible to consume that benefit.

Anyone remember what happened to the Marines in Italy? I assume they went down, because they were disobeying orders and fucking around and they killed 20 someodd people. Much much worse, of course because it wasn't a negligent act in fear of danger but just plain old hot dogging.
posted by Wood at 11:11 AM on September 13, 2002

Of course the flip side to the benefit of the doubt is the responsibility that comes with being given a bomb.
posted by Wood at 11:24 AM on September 13, 2002

"What do you think? will this help prevent similar tragedies, will pilots think twice before they let fly on unsupecting canadian troops or wedding parties?"

Or, they might think twice before they take out an important enemy target, thus creating a delay that could cost them and/or their allies thousands of lives..
posted by eas98 at 11:31 AM on September 13, 2002

The Marine pilot in Italy was acquitted.
posted by twitch at 11:36 AM on September 13, 2002

NB: The marine pilot in question, Cpt. Richard Ashby, was later convicted of conspiracy and the obstruction of justice for destroying the on-board tape recording of the flight. He was sentenced to six months in prison and dishonorably discharged. The navigator of the plane, Cpt Joseph Schweitzer, pleaded guilty to the same charges and was dishonorably discharged. [Source: 1, 2]
posted by thewittyname at 11:48 AM on September 13, 2002

At the very least, that means that what they did was not the duty of a soldier (from a civilized country), to defend one's country or ideals, but an act of gross negligence that resulted in unnecessary deaths. That is what makes it murder.

Whereas, of course, innocent civilians who are unfortunate enough to live in Afghanistan don't count as unnecessary deaths. Presumably that makes them necessary deaths? I think you're being a little generous in terming the US a "civilised country" in that context.
posted by zygoticmynci at 11:49 AM on September 13, 2002

Or, they might think twice before they take out an important enemy target, thus creating a delay that could cost them and/or their allies thousands of lives..

...so in summary, fire at everything, just in case.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 12:38 PM on September 13, 2002

Or, they might think twice before they take out an important enemy target,...

If they, somehow, they thought they were under fire, that's one thing. However, if you're taking out what you think is an important enemy target without having taken reasonable precaution to make sure that you're shooting at what we think you're shooting at (Minimally, this entails confirmation from the people who's job it is to know where friendly exercises are) I certainly hope the pilot will think AT LEAST twice.
posted by originalname37 at 12:43 PM on September 13, 2002

As a Canadian I can't help but think that the bigger problem was lack of communication between the Canadian and American forces. The pilots were not told of the live fire exercise even through it was planned ahead of time and seemingly everyone else knew about it.
posted by Coop at 1:01 PM on September 13, 2002

As always, Bruce Rolston (a member of the Canadian military reserves) has excellent information based on personal knowledge of the equipment and procedures; he's been watching it since the beginning and over the summer, especially here. Rolston's analysis has more to do with insubordination and lack of proper oversight by the fire control officials, although I tend to agree with coop (above) that communication was a more important root cause.

The reason that accidental bombing of civilians is legal and deliberate bombing of friendlies isn't is exactly why we have laws of war. If you're bombing a target with a reasonable belief that it presents a threat, longstanding international precedent considers that defensible, even if civilians are among the victims -- or the only victims. If you disobey orders and rules of engagement -- which have been vetted by military lawyers -- and anybody gets killed, whether they are civilians, or friendlies, you are a problem to the military chain of command at the very least, probably an unreliable soldier, and must be dealt with. In any event, fratricide has always been a part of war -- in many ways, modern war as practiced by the West seems to have risks of dramatically higher rates of fratricide even as the risks drop for casualties due to enemy action. In many ways, we're going to have to live with this again and again.
posted by dhartung at 1:22 PM on September 13, 2002