Washington has traditionally focused on completing combat missions with minimal US losses and paid no attention to non-American civilian casualties, political analyst Oleg Glazunov of the Moscow-based Plekhanov Russian University of Economics told Radio Sputnik. Mosul, he added, will be no exception.
Glazunov explained that the operation to free the second largest city in Iraq, home to around 1.5 million people, consists mainly of urban combat. “Military aircraft usually do not take part in urban combat since it is hard to tell ally from an enemy,” he said. “But Americans couldn’t care less about these things. … For Washington, there are US citizens and all the rest who present no interest to the US.” Russia’s operation in Syria, including Aleppo, he added, shows that Moscow is making every effort to protect civilians. Humanitarian corridor in northern Aleppo © Sputnik/ Mikhail Alaeddin Humanitarian corridor in northern Aleppo US air force F-16 jet fighter © Flickr/ Expert Infantry US Air Force Jet Struck Girls’ School in Iraq’s Mosul on October 21 – Russian Military “We tried to remove the militants from Aleppo in a bid not to launch air strikes on civilians. It’s better to destroy radicals in rural areas than in the city,” the analyst said, referring to the ongoing moratorium on combat flights over Aleppo and Russia’s humanitarian efforts in the embattled city. Earlier on Thursday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Arab Air Force have refrained from conducting airstrikes in a 10-km (six-mile) zone around Aleppo. In addition, Moscow and Damascus have encouraged civilians and unarmed militants to leave the second largest Syrian city through eight humanitarian corridors. Armed men in uniform identified by Syrian Democratic forces as US special operations forces ride in the back of a pickup truck in the village of Fatisah in the northern Syrian province of Raqa on May 25, 2016 © AFP 2016/ DELIL SOULEIMAN Washington Making ‘Extremely Weird Mistakes’ in Syria On Tuesday, Russian General Staff Chief Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi said the US-led coalition conducted airstrikes on residential areas, schools and other civilian infrastructure in Mosul and the Nineveh province, leaving more than 60 civilians died and 200 were wounded in the US-led coalition’s airstrikes in three days. “Americans don’t care. Mosul is not a US city. Americans have always handled civilian casualties without gloves,” Glazunov lamented. “The key goal for Americans is to carry out a mission with minimal American losses. They don’t care about the rest.” An American soldier takes a selfie at the U.S. army base in Qayyara, south of Mosul October 25, 2016 © REUTERS/ Alaa Al-Marjani An American soldier takes a selfie at the U.S. army base in Qayyara, south of Mosul October 25, 2016 The analyst pointed to other military operations carried out by the US in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. “Take Vietnam, for instance, where they used napalm and carried out carpet bombings. They don’t care how many people die in the process as long as the mission is accomplished,” he said. “They have always gotten away with it. Not a single investigation has been conducted.” An American soldier takes his position at the U.S. army base in Qayyara, south of Mosul October 25, 2016 © REUTERS/ Alaa Al-Marjani Daesh May Bring Unpleasant Surprise to US-Led Coalition in Mosul The situation in Syria is no better. On Wednesday, Neil Sammonds, an Amnesty International researcher, told Sputnik that Washington “does not appear to be making enough of an effort to assess the site that it is going to hit, whether there are civilians in the area.” In some cases, the US military appears to have targeted certain areas without “a clear military objective” or “perhaps as a result of inadequate intelligence.”
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