Human rights groups have complained that the military's rules of engagement for handling local citizens at checkpoints are too permissive. The groups have accused U.S. forces of making inadequate efforts to safeguard civilians and to comply with laws of war that prohibit the use of excessive or indiscriminate force and permit deadly action only when soldiers' lives are clearly threatened.
Look, I will say it again, I am sorry that an Italian agent died in a hail of gunfire. It is silly, however, to say we did it on purpose. If so, why would our soldiers have stopped firing after the vehicle occupants yelled out that they were Italian? Shouldn't that have been the cue to pour on the fire? Pure anti-Americanism is going on over there to turn an accident into an ambush.
But on to my point. The enemy uses suicide car bombers, which require us to stop cars well short of our positions and which endanger civilians by making it impossible for US forces to identify insurgents as combatants, and the human rights people blame us! Where is the concern over insurgent and terrorist violations of the laws of war?
How can the human rights geniuses complain that our use of force like this fails to protect Iraqi civilians? Would Iraqi civilians be protected if we didn't shoot at speeding cars? Most of these bombs target Iraqis, after all.
And what of their failure to see the bigger picture? What if we let our troops get nailed by car bombs routinely in a misguided effort to avoid offending the human rights lobby, and that led to heavy US casualties, thus convincing the American people that we should get out of Iraq before the Iraqi government could defeat the terrorists and Baathists? Wouldn't that be a failure to protect the Iraqi people? Or do the human rights idiots think that the Iraqi people would be safer under the tender mercies of the Baathists and jihadis?
I know the answer to that question. It was just rhetorical. Screw those bastards that give thugs and terrorists every benefit of the doubt and expect US soldiers to die instead of win.
