These are some of the friendly casualties we suffer:
US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.
Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.
So these troops may have their military careers ended--as effectively out of the war as if they had been shot by the enemy. Not to make light of the Afghans who were killed, but the enemy kills far more civilians and does so on purpose.
Our troops should not have tried to cover up the mistake. But it was a mistake made in the heat of battle. And I imagine they feared the legal consequences of a mistake. And they probably feared they'd fail to get support from their chain of command. That fear may have turned into a crime--covering up the accidental shootings.
I still don't know how our troops are supposed to cope with the problem of fighting under a microscope.
It would help if our troops had confidence in their superiors to back them up when honest mistakes are made. I'm obviously just speculating on the reasons for well-trained troops to cover up an accident. But that fear--and the the reluctance of superiors to offer support to accused subordinates--is a logical consequence of the trends on the battlefield.
UPDATE: Fighting under the microscope. This will only get worse. How do we fight and win under these conditions?
UPDATE: More on the issue. What is normal in combat is obviously highly abnormal in peacetime back on the block. Will our troops be subjected to police standards now whenever they discharge a weapon? Will people who assume our troops commit war crimes all the time have routine access to such film to carry out witch hunts? How are we to get our troops to fight at all when years after the fact some bozos will claim to see a war crime when nothing of the sort happened? I continue to ask, how are we to fight and win wars under such conditions?
