Why we're losing the war
Why we're losing the war
It's been a while since I posted here, but sometimes you read something just becomes such a concise statement of the problem.
In this story, a marine unit stands accused of being overly defensive after a car bomber attacked them, causing the deaths of civilians. Discussion includes the potential that some marines will be prosecuted for homicide.
This is an outrageous burden to place upon our young people in harms way. They were attacked, and during that attack, they are required to be careful about who they kill. That, my friends, is not a path to victory.
If the marines had killed ever single Afghani within 500 meters, that might have been in some abstract sense unnecessary, but if such a reaction decreased their chance of death, it's an option they should have available. It's an option which American troops had available to them during WWII, a war we were intent on winning. That it is the difference between winning a war and losing a war.
It's been a while since I posted here, but sometimes you read something just becomes such a concise statement of the problem.
In this story, a marine unit stands accused of being overly defensive after a car bomber attacked them, causing the deaths of civilians. Discussion includes the potential that some marines will be prosecuted for homicide.
This is an outrageous burden to place upon our young people in harms way. They were attacked, and during that attack, they are required to be careful about who they kill. That, my friends, is not a path to victory.
If the marines had killed ever single Afghani within 500 meters, that might have been in some abstract sense unnecessary, but if such a reaction decreased their chance of death, it's an option they should have available. It's an option which American troops had available to them during WWII, a war we were intent on winning. That it is the difference between winning a war and losing a war.
posted by dwshelf at 10:26 AM
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