“It makes you lose faith in the system”

Did you read this incredible story of the massive civilian deaths that are continually being covered up by the US military:

How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria – The New York Times

I pulled some quotes out of the article that seemed profound to me. But the point of this isn’t that the US military system is cruel and corrupt and meets all the definitions of “evil.” It’s that ALL systems are this way.

Look at what this 22-year-old climate activist, Clover Hogan, recently said:

You can learn more about her here: Clover Hogan | Climate activist, founder Force of Nature

The leaders of our systems fail us time and time again. And the reason is simple: they care more about the system than they do anything else. “Protect the system at all costs.”

I see this fact everywhere in the world. Cover-up after cover-up after cover-up.

But Clover is right. The people in the streets are no joke. They are waking up and change is coming. You must realize that the “leaders” are a tiny group of people that have created an illusion of false power. They can’t stop the people when the people stand up.

Here are the quotes from the NYT article referenced above:

“It makes you lose faith in the system when people are trying to do what’s right but no one in positions of leadership wants to hear it.”

In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank.

Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.

“We just dropped on 50 women and children.”

An initial battle damage assessment quickly found that the number of dead was actually about 70.

The Times investigation found that the bombing had been called in by a classified American special operations unit, Task Force 9, which was in charge of ground operations in Syria.

This week, after The New York Times sent its findings to U.S. Central Command, which oversaw the air war in Syria, the command acknowledged the strikes for the first time, saying 80 people were killed but the airstrikes were justified. It said the bombs killed 16 fighters and four civilians. As for the other 60 people killed, the statement said it was not clear that they were civilians, in part because women and children in the Islamic State sometimes took up arms.

The United States portrayed the air war against the Islamic State as the most precise and humane bombing campaign in its history.

Even in the extraordinary case of Baghuz — which would rank third on the military’s worst civilian casualty events in Syria if 64 civilian deaths were acknowledged — regulations for reporting and investigating the potential crime were not followed, and no one was held accountable.

But there was a quick and easy way to skip much of that oversight: claiming imminent danger.

The law of armed conflict — the rule book that lays out the military’s legal conduct in war — allows troops in life-threatening situations to sidestep the strike team lawyers, analysts and other bureaucracy and call in strikes directly from aircraft under what military regulations call an “inherent right of self-defense.”