The Airstrike: Protecting the People or Destroying the Enemy?

[laststeamtrain]

September 4, 2009, 11:04 am
The Airstrike: Protecting the People or Destroying the Enemy?
By Ian Fisher

In June, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal tightened the rules for calling in airstrikes in Afghanistan. It was a formal recognition of what U.S. military commanders had been saying for months: that airstrikes that killed civilians were undermining the chances of success in the war. “Air power contains the seeds of our own destruction if we do not use it responsibly,” he said announcing the new rules. “We can lose this fight.”


Details are still sparse, but it is unclear whether the huge airstrike near the northern city of Kunduz on Friday that killed between 80 and 90 people conformed with those new rules. Stephen Farrell, a New York Times’s reporter and chief “At War” blogger, made it to the site and reported several civilian casualties, including injured young boys he spoke with at the local hospital. The strike was called in not by Americans but by Germans. So the strike may intensify the debate in Germany, where the war in Afghanistan is unpopular.

Apart from determining exactly what happened — or what went wrong — the strike is also likely to renew attention on the counter-insurgency strategy put in place in Iraq and which General McChrystal wants to expand in the fight in Afghanistan. Late last month, he issued new counter-insurgency guidelines that would seem to suggest that an airstrike would be an absolute last resort. “Protecting people is the mission,” the document reads. “The conflict will be won by persuading the population, not by destroying the enemy.” ... http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/the-airstrike-protecting-the-people-or-destroying-the-enemy/

[damntexdem]

1. We had to destroy the village in order to save it.

Old story, nothing new at all.