I remember night raids and carpet bombing in Afghanistan. Don't remember protecting of civilians

[bigtree]

...at any rate, any protection from American troops has been even less apparent since the troops pulled back to the green zone of defense around Kabul. Afghani deaths, most at the hands of the Taliban, have continued throughout, mostly unabated. Looking at over 30k Afghani deaths over the term of our occupation, its hard to accept the U.S. is some erstwhile or future savior of the Afghan citizenry.

What utter crap to suppose the U.S. occupation has been keeping the Taliban from their destruction of Afghani lives and livelihoods. For over a decade now, the U.S. security response outside the capital has been airstrikes or drone attacks which are collateral in nature, and do more to bind the countryfolk to the Taliban and against the U.S. interests than any violence they perpetrate on their own.

Refresher from Human Rights Watch:

Role of US Personnel in Kill-or-Capture Operations

Kill-or-capture operations conducted at night (“night raids”) have long been a controversial military tactic in Afghanistan. Soon after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency recruited forces from among existing anti-Taliban militias to conduct kill-or-capture operations as an early feature of US special forces operations after 2001.

Such raids increased during the “surge” of 2009-2010 that brought 50,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan. Between December 2010 and February 2011, US special forces, often accompanying Afghan government forces, carried out on average 19 night raids per night. Following public protests in Afghanistan and criticism from human rights organizations about rising civilian casualties in these operations, as well as concerns for rising numbers of deaths of US special forces personnel, the US military in 2011 cut back the involvement of its special forces in night raids. In subsequent years, however, the CIA expanded its recruitment and training of Afghan paramilitary units to work with CIA operatives to carry out kill-or-capture operations.

https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/10/31/theyve-shot-many/abusive-night-raids-cia-backed-afghan-strike-forces





from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan


...bang up job protecting Afghani civilians.

[Irish_Dem]

1. You have to bomb the village to save it.

At least that is what the military told us during the Viet Nam War.

[bigtree]

2. If you can't solve a problem, make it bigger.

--Donald Rumsfeld

[leftstreet]

3. DURec

[haele]

4. I remember hearing about a lot of wedding parties being bombed

I also remember some Afghanis would satisfy their vendettas on neighbors or other tribes by falsely no identifying a person or household as being Al Qaeda to get the US to bomb, or later drone strike, on them.
It was a mistake from the beginning.

Haele

[bigtree]

6. yep, that was a frequent thing

...frickin weddings.

Remember how the military would deny, then end up apologizing? There was an actual slush fund to buy off grieving families.

There was also the 2003 massacre by US troops in Fallujah where a crowd was fired on.

It was wild west shite.

[stillcool]

5. I question my sanity..

watching people freak out over what I'm not sure, but my god, they are pissed off at one man, and only one man. Something slid right by me sometime over the last 20 years when I obviously wasn't paying attention. This stuff is like mob mentality. Scary stuff.