Friday, June 25, 2010

Yesterday, I mentioned the bizarre Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan.

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In yesterday's episode, I made mention of the truly bizarre Rules of Engagement in place in Aghanistan:

To win this war, we are going to have to kill a lot of people. Some of them will be innocents. We will never set out to kill innocents, but some innocents are going to die. Sorry about that.

As a nation, that reality should have been our guiding principle from day one.

Unfortunately, we are led by someone apparently incapable of understanding or appreciating that truism. So, we get Rules of Engagement that were written as if OBL had signed off on them.

People can shoot at us; throw their weapons down and run away, knowing full well that we can’t return fire against unarmed people… even if they were shooting at us moments before.


I don't, for one second, believe that McChrystal implemented moronic ROE's like this while living in a bubble. This kind of stupidity likely came from the fevered brow of the community organizer in chief.

The fine folks at This Ain't Hell, who are a lot closer to this than I am, have come up with this hopeful sign:


Petraeus to review ROE

I picked this article up from Ace of Spades from the Telegraph which claims that the new commander in Afghanistan, General Petraeus is going to review the Rules of ENgagement that the troops there have been laboring under for the past year;

“There will be no change in overall policy but all aspects of tactics and implementation will be looked at afresh,” a Pentagon official told The Daily Telegraph. “The issue of ‘courageous restraint’ is a controversial one on the ground and there may be ways it can be modified.”

Changes to allow soldiers more flexibility in using lethal force are likely to be welcomed by both American and British troops.

This month became the bloodiest of the nine-year war yesterday after four British were killed when their Ridgeback vehicle rolled into a canal in Helmand.

Yeah, Petraeus had better put a more flexible ROE in place before that dick Eikenberry gets his greasy, ham-handed paws on them. Knowing Eikenberry like I do, he’d rather have the troops shoot each other than the Taliban.

This is the trouble with the current command philosophy at the White House level. And GEN McChrystal's career self-immolation appears to be responsible for this.

Uh-Rah.

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