E.D. Hill, or me. But considering that E.D. censored herself and said “what in the world” are we doing over there, and considering that her head didn’t explode when she was telling the story, and in light of the fact that she didn’t stand up and yell, “THIS IS WHY WE’RE GOING TO LOSE THIS WAR!” and run into the other room, leaving Steve and Brian agog in her wake, it’s possibly me who is angrier about this. BTW, from the picture, there were at least a hundred Taliban honchos.
I’m not sure whom I need to contact. Is it my senators, who aren’t doing anything on illegal immigration? Is it my congressmen, who aren’t doing anything on illegal immigration? Is it my President, who isn’t doing anything on illegal immigration? Because last I heard, they can’t focus on illegal immigration right now, because they have to worry about national security. And they’re not concerned about the airports, because they’re still profiling gatorade, crossstitching implements and Grama, so I’m assuming that national security must mean war abroad. Only they don’t seem to know that fighting war abroad means killing our enemies abroad.
Anyway, here’s the thing. I don’t know if I need to get out my Crayolas and sit the politicians and bureaucrats down with a sippy-cup of Kool-Aid in order to explain this to them, but if you’ve got over a hundred of your enemies gathered up nice and neat, celebrating the death of a guy who died trying to kill one of your guys, and you know for sure that if the tables were turned, their guys would wipe out the funeral and laugh. LAUGH. They would. We should do it and not laugh, but move on to the next target. Finish the job. Good grief, what is it going to take for the bureaucrats to figure out that you can’t win a war if you’re the only one playing nice? We play nice, they don’t? They win. Because they will do anything, including kill INNOCENTS on purpose to win. But that was just a funeral full of Taliban. No innocents. Just enemy.
I don’t see the problem.
Isn’t this why we have “friends” in the area who are not hog tied by old rules.
We should have simply passed the info on to some other power who is not scared of the liberal media.
We are we fighting by restricted, outdated rules that do nothing but tie our hands in the region? Yes, people would have been mad that we fired into a cemetary… but I say “kill now, apologize later”… if at all.
Reminds me of a line in The Path to 9/11.
“Who ever won a ‘law and order’-ly war”
Ok I reread it and I’m madder now.
There was no attack at ALL?
Not even after the funeral was over?
I agree, the rule is dumb but that woudl have followed the rule and still gotten the bad guys.
Lesson: Taliban, the only place you are safe is in a cemetary. Once you get to one plan on staying.
Welcome to the daily frustration that our military faces. All targets, even targets of opportunity, have to be cleared by lawyers before we can take care of them. This isn’t the first time that this has happened, and unfortunately it won’t be the last.
Now now, let’s be rational.
After all, had we attacked in a cemetary, we may have caused collateral damage and killed dozens, maybe hundreds of potential voters in the next Chicago mayor’s race! Americans must always be concerned about killing innocent corpses anywhere in the world.
I could just see it now if we had bombed them. The NY Times would have huge headlines of something like, “US bombs funeral. Thousands of innocent civilians dead.”
it’s just crap. and our guys in uniforms have to live with this crap. who wrote the rules of engagement book? i wanna have a conversation with that dumbass.
Just ridiculous. FUBAR. Just how frustrating is that for all the troops just itching to take out the mother-lode of target rich environments.
The leak of this photo could be a double edged sword. On one hand, it might kick the brass in the kiwis and they may act more aggressively next time.
Of course, there isn’t likely to be a next time, as you know the bad guys have seen this image. They will be both scared that they were almost taken out, but will also be emboldened by yet another example of American hesitation to do the rough work needed to win this war.
Dear Lord, we need Chesty Puller and General Patton. Hell, I’d take Colonel Hackworth. Where are the brass with the big brass ones?
We need a new playbook. This is getting really old and really tired.
Are we afraid our allies are going to leave us? Once Tony Blair is gone, we will be alone anyway. Speaking of the Brits, after one of the wars in the middle east their soldiers soaked bullets in pigs blood. They only had to shoot a few to get cooperation from many more.
I have said for a decade that the Middle East and Northern Ireland need to become glass parking lots. People who can’t play by the rules, don’t get to play. PERMANENTLY!
As a Marine once told me “Kill them all and let God sort it out”
Sara K about the crayons and koolaid. Crayons have sorta sharp points and they might hurt themselves and if you value your carpet get the new clear Kool aid, I doubt if the folks you’ll be entertaining keep all the drink in their cups. Whatever you do don’t let them play with scissors, paperclips, staple guns or marbles. It’s just so hard to get marbles out of the nose.
//All targets, even targets of opportunity, have to be cleared by lawyers before we can take care of them.//
Can’t we just kill all the lawyers first?
I don’t buy any of it. Am I just being jaded or is this news “story” payback for a certain recent docu-drama? Don’t you feel the slightest bit manipulated?
What we really need is MacArthur.
“What do you mean, that was acemetary? It still is, just bigger.”
Asking for permission only gives people the opportunity to say “no”.
Uhhh–ummm–errr–and the kool-aid drinking apologists for this administration who are afraid of their shadows and won’t criticize anything that Bush and Co. does explain this one how? Still waiting–no explanation–what was that–thought so! Idiots and that IS why we ARE going to eventually withdraw from this war! Not because of our military but because of the bone-heads in Washington!!!
Well written Sarah, I couldn’t agree more with your post.
If 100 terrorist showed up for a funural for 1 guy, just think how many would have been there the next time when the were burrying the body parts of 100 dead terrorists. it would have been 10,000!!! and then we could have blown them up and the next time there would be 1 million of them! then the war would be over, see. 3 bombs to end it all.
Maybe Bush saw one of his old buddies from that Pre-9/11 Taliban White House visit. Bush: “Wait that’s good ol’ Tali-Bob. Don’t kill him!”
AlaskaNick,
Your arguement is mathematically sound, yet falls apart when held up to the vagaries of Afghani cemetary size, funeral scheduling and typical American bomb yield.
Suffice it to say it would be be more like one bomb per hundred than one bomb per day. It would take months and turn into a quagmire. Unless nuclear weapons were used. But the question of cemetary size and funeral scheduling still stymie your plan.
Gunga,
I agree the timing of the leaked photo stinks to high heaven. But it also points out legitimate problems with the execution of this war. We simply cannot win until we unleash the troops to do what they do so well. Kill the enemy with as little collateral death as possible. This case is a perfect example of a good kill; all of them bad guys or people rubbing elbows with bad guys. No innocents, no schools.
On the plus side, maybe they were burying Osama.
The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility.
– attributed to Lord John Arbutnoth Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone,
Our troops are trained to kill people and blow stuff up! They are NOT trained (nor should they be) to be police officers or baby sitters (nation builders) and that is the problem! Good grief! We never learn and our best and brightest pay the price! I hate the continual casualty reports on a daily basis!
I once worked with a Vietnam veteran who had been a sniper. He told me that when he had a designated target in his sight that his spotter had to call HQ to get permission to fire. This was often taken up the ladder to DC and up to half-an-hour could elapse before permission to fire was given, if permission was given. You can imagine how many people who had been in the snipers sight might have moved out of sight during that time. I do not know if this is true, it is only what I was told. What I do know is that there does not seem to be much difference between this incident and the Johnson/MacNamara concept of controlled escalation of hostilities. As it currently is evident, there is not a full pair of balls in DC — there might be two but they are so spread out that there is no connection. I agree with the need for a Patton, McArthur, and other people of action (Margaret Thatcher had a really big pair, as did Golda Meir) and not words. On my family crest is the the Latin phrase, Facta non Verba — Deeds not Words! This is what is needed, not hesitation and the luxury of hindsight.
BAH!
I ask you if there is any reason we should not reinstate this organization and de-filth our government so our fighting men & women can do their jobs?
Want to bet that this info was leaked by someone in Intel who was screaming at the top of their lungs in frustration at some ACLU trained bureau lackey who told them “No, no… we must be ‘sensitive to the holy sites of my, er our peace loving benefactors… uh, enemies”?
Folks – Someone inside sent up a signal flare to let the outside world know that something is very VERY wrong inside. They couldn’t hold a press conference – they couldn’t violate orders to kill dead people in a cemetary – they couldn’t do a thousand things… but they took a risk and probably did violate general orders to let us know that their operation has been infiltrated by those who are working to neutralize it from within.
Poor bastard is probably already on a plane to his new duty station on a drifting ice floe in the Arctic Strait… God Bless him/her for the ‘signal flare’.
Amen to Infidel Castrol.
Ok, so as a recovering protest-happy democrat, what exactly can I do about that Infidel Castrol? Personally, I’m thinking about writing to every politician who represents me and demanding an explanation, but can that help to stop it next time? All I can think about is that because we didn’t bomb those 100 jihadi [poopyheads], we’re going to lose 1,000 young military soldiers fighting them.
24 hours later and I still don’t buy the story. Anonymous sorces, a picture of a gathering, lots of finger pointing…no facts. When did supposedly take place? Did we have human intel that these guys were talibanis or just drone photos? Was the drone armed? Was a strike even possible (f-16s don’t materialize out of thin air)? 10:1 that the leaker is an entrenched Clintonista at the Pentagon who got his panties in a bunch over how ‘The Path to 9/11’ Bubba bungled countless Bin Laden take-downs.
Gunga & Phobos,
That is correct, been there, done that. The Rules of Engagement may alter from setting to setting, but such rules do exist as I can confirm from personal experience. Sometimes they are not so stupid, but other times they are even worse.
Dear USSJimmytheTraitor,
Here are a few sage words regarding a good fight. Also am I to take it that you dumbacrats want to surrender in Afganistan too?
“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
Winston Churchill
Mike,
USSJimmyCarter is about the farthest thing from a Democrat that I’ve seen. He is expressing his frustration at the fact that our Republican representatives have Testes like raisins and don’t strike when they should and aren’t doing enough to win the War. He’s great people.
So try not to assume. K, buddy?
Well, I have been in the Army for 13 + yrs and the reason we did not strike was because the Gov did not want the media to show pics of dead terrorists who were trying to bury one of their own.
Do I agree????? Nope…..
But- that is way we are fighting this war. We are trying to win the hearts and minds of these people instead of turning them into future insurgents. The same thing is happening in Iraq. I have been to both and some more than once and I am gearing up for yet another deployment to Iraq next month.