Looks like we’ve found an old favorite bad guy upon whom to blame the recent incident that led to a large number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan:
BERLIN — A U.S.-German rift over a deadly airstrike in Afghanistan on Friday escalated, as U.S. commanders accused the German military of undermining guidelines that seek to avoid civilian casualties.
U.S. military officials questioned why the German army had called in an airstrike when German troops weren’t under fire from insurgents, as well as German forces’ intelligence that led them to think civilians wouldn’t be hurt.
German defense officials said Monday that the airstrike on two hijacked fuel trucks in Kunduz Province was necessary to avert a threat to a German army base, and stood by their assessment that the strike killed 56 Taliban insurgents. Afghan and Western officials have said between 70 and 130 people died, including many civilians….
An investigation needs to go where it goes, and place the blame accurately. But it occurs to me that it’s hard enough to get the Germans to come out an fight at all these days, so the more heat we put on them, the more likely the Germans are to just go home — particularly with the trouble Chancellor Merkel is having these days…
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And yes, my headline is meant to evoke Turkish in “Snatch,” when he taunts Tommy for carrying a gun: “Protection from what? Ze Germans?“
Ironically, this controversy reminds me of something I recall reading about WWII: German veterans of the Western front have over the years complained that the Americans didn’t fight fair: Whenever they ran into a Wehrmacht strong point — say, a machine gun nest — the American infantry called in either an airstrike or artillery, rather than fighting it out toe-to-toe.
Looks like maybe they learned from us.
Does “blame” really matter? As long as we continue to pursue a military strategy of “kill first, sort them out later”, these types of events will continue to happen.
It’s downright myopic to think that by killing Afghan civilians as part of the collateral damage of killing terrorists that somehow we will win the hearts and minds of the country as a whole.
Oh, and did the U.S. collapse when we left Vietnam — another unwinnable war ? It’s too simplistic to say A caused B. There are far more variables involved to try and claim some sort of precedent.
Ah, but you see, Doug, that’s NOT our strategy. If that were our strategy, we’d be patting the Germans on the back right now for killing as many as possible.
You see, we try NOT to kill civilians, which means we fight with one, and sometimes two, hands tied behind our backs — tied by us. That’s the price of being the good guys in the modern world.
And Doug, you’re right, there are a lot of variables — too many to compare this to Vietnam, for instance.
And yes, we did collapse in a lot of ways. Our military was demoralized, and took about a decade and a half to recover. It also took us about that long to get over our national allergy to intervention, because we treated everything as “another Vietnam,” which the national consensus had decided was a bad thing…
Maybe so, but if we’re hoping to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the Afghans, we need to make us look like better people than the Taliban. I thought that the whole idea of this war was to run out the Taliban (and al-Quaida), not to completely subdue Afghanistan. If completely conquoring the country is what we’re trying to do, lets go in with the big bombs and as many troops as we can scare up. At that point there are no civilians; we’re at war with the country. If that’s not what we’re trying to do, then we have a problem; I suspect that the window for winning the war against the Taliban/al-Quaida closed when Mr. Bush decided that he’d rather invade Iraq than finish business in Afghanistan.
If you can’t define victory, how can you know when you’ve won?
Karen, remember that W. isn’t president any more. We’ve got a president now who got elected saying he was going to do what it took to succeed in Afghanistan. I intend to hold him to that.
Define “succeed”.
What’s the objective, what’s the time schedule, what’s the maximum cost we’re willing to pay (dollars and lives) to achieve your definition of success?
Here’s a simple equation for you… would you pay $500 billion dollars and allow 10,000 soldiers to die if it would prevent another 9/11? How about twice as much and twice as many lives to lower the risk of 9/11 by 50%? Still do it?
These are some of the questions from the new gameshow “Are You A Warmonger?”
And Doug, I’ll know victory when I see it — and usually you don’t see it until several years after the conflict is over.
For instance, in the early 20s you might have been forgiven for believing we WON The Great War. But we just had to continue fighting two decades later. It wasn’t just unconditional surrender that meant we “won” in WWII. It was that the peace that followed was successful. Rather than continuing to be militaristic societies that were a threat to their neighbors, Germany and Japan became thriving trade partners. (In fact, Germany is so pacifistic today that I worry what this continuing controversy over civilian casualties will do to that nation’s political commitment to the war effort, such as it is). That resulted as much from the policies we followed after 1945 as did our conclusive, Clausewitzian military victories.
So did we “lose” Vietnam or are you still waiting to see how that one turns out?
You can’t win the war on terror if there are still terrorists. Twenty guys with box cutters can pop up anywhere, any time.
In the good ol’ days of empires, wars were about acquiring real estate and hegemony. Easy to tell when you’ve won. Like playing RISK.
Now wars are about ideas and beliefs and security. The word “crusade” isn’t that far off. The finish line is damn near invisible.
Good, not dood! Brad please fix.
Right. We’re up against people who don’t play by Clausewitzian rules…
In addition to George Will, here’s another smart guy who explains why staying in Afghanistan is a fool’s game.
Andrew Sullivan:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/conservatism-and-afghanistan.html#more
Does it get any simpler than this explanation?
“I mean: if you were to come up with a country least likely to be amenable to imperial improvement and edification, it would be hard to come up (outside much of Africa) with any place less propitious than Afghanistan, a tribal alien place with almost no record of central governance whatsoever. We also have historical precedent for imperial and neo-imperial failure: the British failed in Afghanistan over many decades; the Russian empire was defeated in Afghanistan in one. Does anyone believe that Russia would be stronger today by remaining in Afghanistan? Yes, the Taliban hosted al Qaeda, and we were right to evict them. But al Qaeda can move to many failed states, and we cannot occupy or civilize all of them. Moreover, the war is showing signs of becoming a self-licking ice-cream: the insurgency is now only united by opposition to foreign troops, we have pushed it into Pakistan thereby actually increasing the odds of an Islamist state that already has nukes getting even more unstable. And yet the calls for repeating what cannot work – because the war is too big to fail – remain.”
The so-called “civilians” killed in the air strike were helping those who hijacked the fuel tanker trucks transfer the fuel to jerry cans. They weren’t innocent, and our government should state, not apologize.
Lee,
How about the kids who were severely burned? Hopefully you don’t think they are justifiable casualties.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/05/AR2009090502832.html?wprss=rss_world
“A NATO fact-finding team estimated Saturday that about 125 people were killed in the bombing, at least two dozen of whom — but perhaps many more — were not insurgents. To the team, which is trying to sort out this complicated incident, mindful that the fallout could further sap public support in Afghanistan for NATO’s security mission here, the target appeared to be far less clear-cut than it had to the Germans. ”
“But McChrystal still had a message to deliver. Even if the Afghan officials were not angry, he certainly did not seem pleased.
After fording the muddy river to see the bombing site — getting his pants wet up to his knees — he addressed a small group of journalists at the reconstruction team headquarters and said it was “clear there were some civilians harmed at that site.” He said NATO would fully investigate the incident.
“It’s a serious event that’s going to be a test of whether we are willing to be transparent and whether we are willing to show that we are going to protect the Afghan people,” he said. ”
So, Lee, even the General admits civilians were killed.
That’s just it. You cannot fight a war on foreign soil without risking their civilians (if it’s on our soil it risks our civilians). That’s the nature of war. Brad, I hope we can find a successful solution to Afghanistan. I agree with President Obama to the extent that I think this was the important, ethically acceptable war (insofar as any war is acceptable to a Christian). My concern is that the one opportunity for a win that doesn’t involve all-out-forget the civilians-complete subjegation has been lost. If we are willing to engage in such a real war, let’s get with it. If not, let’s get out. Just let’s not make our armed forces again try to fight a war while simultaneously refusing to let them actually fight a war. If there is any true comparison to Nam this is it. We can putter around as we did in Nam, racking up troop losses and unintended civilian deaths, we can get out, or we can engage fully in war with the intent of winning it. Those are the choices I see. If we choose the last, we can win this war. Will conquoring Afghanistan followed by nation building such as we did following WW II work, or is Afghanixtan too culturally foreign to us for that to be possible? Will the rest of the region come to see that it is better to be our friend than our enemy (or at least that it is very unwise to mess with us), thus stablizing the area, or will such a win breed a hatred and mistrust that will last a millenium (consider what a row the use of the word “crusade” causes)?
You cannot fight guerrilla war without the support of the civilian population, or at least keeping them in a state of intimidation through the use of terror.
An guerrilla army cannot be defeated without ending their civilian support and making those who do not support them afraid of being associated with the guerrillas in any manner.
That is why and how civilians, or non-combatants, will be killed while killing combatants in their midst.
Non-combatants need to learn that if the Taliban shows up with hijacked trucks, you had better not get anywhere near them, because a bomb or missile is on the way.