What Accountability, Mr. President?

During his White House press conference
Wednesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, President Obama addressed
the issue of civilian deaths caused by US operations in Afghanistan. "I
take no pleasure in hearing a report that a civilian has been killed,"
said Obama. "That's not why I ran for president, that's not why I'm
Commander in Chief."

"Let me be very clear about what I told President Karazi: When there
is a civilian casualty, that is not just a political problem for me. I
am ultimately accountable, just as Gen. McChrystal is accountable, for
somebody who is not on the battlefield who got killed," said Obama.

That statement is quite remarkable for a number of reasons, not the
least of which is that it is not true. How are President Obama or Gen.
McChrystal accountable? Afghans have little, if any, recourse for
civilian deaths. They cannot press their case in international courts
because the US doesn't recognize an International Criminal Court with
jurisdiction over US forces, Afghan courts have not and will not be
given jurisdiction and Attorney General Eric Holder has made clear that
the Justice Department will not permit cases against US military
officials brought by foreign victims to proceed in US courts to go
forward. So, what does it mean to be accountable for civilian deaths?
Public apology? Press conferences? A handful of courts martial?

Obama praised US forces for their restraint in Afghanistan, saying,
"Because of Gen McChrystal's direction, often times they're holding
fire, they're hesitating, they're being cautious about how they operate
even though it would be safer for them to go ahead and take these
locations out."

But how does that square with recent, heinous instances of civilian
killings in Afghanistan? In February, for example, US special forces
shot and killed five people, including three women who collectively had
16 children. The US military tried to cover
it up and blame it on the
Taliban, saying
coalition forces "found the
bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed." The
New York Times reported
that military officials had
"suggested that the women had all been stabbed to death or had died by
other means before the raid, implying that their own relatives may have
killed them."

Later, General McChrystal's command admitted
US-led forces had done the
killing, saying it was an accident. This was hard to square with reports
that soldiers may have dug bullets out of the dead bodies to try to
cover it up. The head of the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice
Admiral William McRaven, eventually apologized to the family of the dead
Afghans and offered
them two sheep as a
condolence gift. Was this accountability?

Or, what about the incident last May when US warplanes bombed
civilian houses in Farah
province killing more than 100 people? The dead, according to the Red Cross, included an
"Afghan Red Crescent volunteer and 13 members of his family who had been
sheltering from fighting in a house that was bombed" in the air strike.
US Military sources floated the story to NBC and other
outlets that Taliban fighters used grenades to kill three families to
"stage" a massacre and then blame it on the US.

"War is tough and difficult and mistakes are gonna be made,"
President Obama said today. Part of the problem, though, is that when
"mistakes" happen and civilians are killed, attempts are made to cover
them up or to blame them on the Taliban.