More details are being dribbled out today about the
“mistake” in November where Paki soldiers firing on a joint American-Afghan
Special Forces task force conducting a midnight raid on an Afghan village that
was a Taliban stronghold, got blown away by a helicopter gunship and a jet
fighter.
According to the report of the U.S. military’s
investigation, the media says, a “NATO” operations officer in Afghanistan
waited 45 minutes to notify higher ups that the Pakis were whining that their
fire base was under attack. That dovetails with my suspicion that the military
forces on the ground knew what they were doing and drew outside the lines to
shoot back at the Pakis. For years they’ve been under orders just to take fire
from the Pakis and not shoot back. Furthermore, they were convinced, with good
reason, that the Pakis were aiding and abetting the terrorists.
The Pakis made the “mistake” (so-called by the New York Times) of supplying an outdated
location list of their positions- obviously deliberately.
Buried two-thirds of the way down in the NY Times article is the information that
the U.S.-Afghan task force were raiding this particular village for the second
time- the first raid, in October, having failed since the Pakis were told in
advance, as per protocol, and tipped off the terrorists. Inexplicably, the NY Times calls the failure to give the
Pakis advance notice of the second raid a “mistake.” No, it was necessary for a
successful operation. The rules imposed from above put the soldiers on the
ground in an impossible position- ordered to fight a war, while being ordered
to in effect warn the enemy in advance of planned operations. Whatever you
think of the war in Afghanistan, it’s unreasonable to handcuff the soldiers you
send in to fight it.
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