I reformattd this paragraph from Wretchard’s post:
McChrystal has issued some of the strictest directives to avoid civilian casualties that the U.S. military has ever encountered in a war zone.
It’s “insurgent math,” as he calls it – for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.
He has ordered convoys to curtail their reckless driving, put restrictions on the use of air power and severely limited night raids.
He regularly apologizes to Hamid Karzai when civilians are killed, and berates commanders responsible for civilian deaths.
“For a while,” says one U.S. official, “the most dangerous place to be in Afghanistan was in front of McChrystal after a ‘civ cas’ incident.”
The ISAF command has even discussed ways to make not killing into something you can win an award for: There’s talk of creating a new medal for “courageous restraint,” a buzzword that’s unlikely to gain much traction in the gung-ho culture of the U.S. military.
But however strategic they may be, McChrystal’s new marching orders have caused an intense backlash among his own troops.
Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger.
“Bottom line?” says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts.
His rules of engagement put soldiers’ lives in even greater danger.
Every real soldier will tell you the same thing.” …
McChrystal may have sold President Obama on counterinsurgency, but many of his own men aren’t buying it.
—
When I hear praises heaped on this General, I think of the fathers whose young sons were sacrificed in the name of his PC ROE’s
He was great in his previous post, killing AQ Bad Guys.
Not so great in Afghanistan.
Then there was his participation in the coverup of the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman.
In Afghanistan, let U.S. troops be warriors
There was an international uproar when, on Sept. 4, in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, an American fighter jet under NATO command bombed a group of Taliban fighters who had hijacked two fuel tanker trucks. The trucks exploded, the fighters were killed, and so were a still-undetermined number of Afghan civilians.
The civilian deaths sent shudders through the American military command, already fearful that civilian casualties would further alienate the Afghan public. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, was said to be angry and determined to tighten the U.S. force’s already-strict rules of engagement even more to avoid future civilian deaths.
Then something odd happened. When McChrystal met with local leaders in Kunduz, a few days after the bombing, he got an earful — but not what he expected.
According to a detailed account in The Washington Post — a story that has received too little attention in the ongoing debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan — the local Afghan leaders told McChrystal to stop being so fussy and to go ahead and kill the enemy, which they said would help bring stability to the region.
Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran was given extraordinary access to the bombing investigation. According to his account, McChrystal began the meeting with a show of sympathy for those who had been killed or wounded. The general didn’t get very far before he was interrupted by the provincial council chairman, Ahmadullah Wardak.
The security situation has been getting worse in Kunduz, Wardak told McChrystal. American and NATO troops haven’t been aggressive enough in pursuing and killing the Taliban. In Wardak’s view, the bombing of the fuel tankers, rather than a mistake, was the right thing to do.
“If we do three more operations like was done the other night, stability will come to Kunduz,” Wardak said, according to the Post account. “If people do not want to live in peace and harmony, that’s not our fault.”
Chandrasekaran reported that McChrystal “seemed caught off guard.” Wardak clarified a bit more: “We’ve been too nice to the thugs,” he said.
So instead of receiving an angry lecture on America’s disregard for Afghan life, the general received an angry lecture on America’s hesitance to go after the enemy.
—
Now cut again, this time to Sept. 8, when four U.S. Marines were killed when the Taliban ambushed their patrol in Kunar province. The Marines were taken completely by surprise and pinned down under heavy Taliban fire. McClatchy reporter Jonathan Landay was with them and wrote a harrowing account of their desperate battle to survive.
The rules of engagement again played a role. “U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and treelines,” Landay wrote, “despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.”
