Afghanistan
Two stories from Afghanistan provide a very ugly confluence regarding our tactics in Afghanistan and how effective our leadership is,
The first is about our troops killing an Afghan civilian on Friday. The CanWest headline reads:
Canadian soldiers shoot Afghan civilian in self-defence, ISAF says
That alone should tell you there's a problem, since civilians are by definition supposed to be non-combatants. You can't defend yourself from someone who isn't attacking you.
Canadian troops shot and killed an Afghan civilian and wounded another, the International Security Assistance Force and Canadian military said late Friday.
. . .
ISAF said a taxi had approached a patrol convoy Thursday, and had ignored visual signs to stop.
"Warning shots were fired and the ISAF troops then carried on with their patrol," a news release late Friday said.
So they fired "warning" shots directly into the cab, killing and wounding its occupants, and drove on without stopping to see what effect their "warning" shots might have had.
This is not the first such incident, and the patrol was following what appears to be standard operating procedures. The reason this is so ugly, beyond the immediate deaths of innocent Afghans, is because when things like this happen, it makes the local population far more supportive of things like this:
Two Canadian soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed Saturday after the vehicle they were travelling in struck a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, a military official said.
And what truly rankles me is the crass stupidity of the military spokesperson:
"The area is fairly active in terms of insurgent activities," Juneau said. "However, you have to understand that the insurgents are desperate for a spectacular event or spectacular victory that would help them finish the fighting season on a high note.
"They haven't been very successful so far this season," he added.
I'll leave it to salvage whether or not he needs to add this to his desperation watch, but seeing our military spout the same tired talking points of the Americans in Iraq is as disheartening as the fact that our military seems to have decided to copy their tactics.
And given the fact that the Afghan insurgency has killed more coalition troops this year than any other since the US invaded in 2001, in a trend of steady increases, would Col. Juneau mind telling us just what he thinks "successful" would be? Guerillas win so long as they don't lose, and its pretty clear that the Afghan forces are far from defeated.
When our leadership is more interested in PR than proper strategy, there is no chance that things are going to turn out well.
