Two Nato soldiers have been shot dead by an Afghan border policeman in Afghanistan's northern Faryab province, local officials say.
They say the victims were Americans, adding that the gunman fled the checkpoint where the shooting happened. Nato is now investigating the incident.
It's possible that it was not as portrayed. But even if it didn't happen this time, this stuff happens. And it is easy to get frustrated and feel that the few who kill our guys represent the hundreds of thousands of Afghans we work with every day to fight our common enemies. Which is part of the objective of these attacks by the Taliban. They want us to get frustrated and just say, "Screw you guys, we're going home."
Of course, fighting with allies in a conventional war can lead to allies accidentally shooting your troops in friendly fire accidents. Heck, your own troops can kill your own troops accidentally. Or on purpose, as our 101st Airborne Division found out as the Iraq War was launched and an American jihadi sympathizer attacked one of the division's command posts. I dare say we suffer fewer casualties from Afghan allies in Afghanistan than the coalition did from friendly fire during the invasion of Iraq.
And don't forget that the enemy loses way more of their people because their erstwhile allies defect to us or stay in place to provide information that leads our people to kill the enemy with ground operations or fire missions (including Predators).
Getting you to throw up your hands and say we are sacrificing our young men and women for untrustworthy people who just want to shoot us in the back is precisely what the enemy wants to achieve with these attacks. Break the bond between our guys and theirs--and our nation's determination to stay the course and win--and it is a quick jump to either withdrawing, or--even worse--Americanizing the war by thinking we can't trust the Afghans enough to work close to them and so try to win the war with our troops alone.
Work the problem. Study what happened and try to minimize the chances it will happen again. But most important, keep on taking the fight to our enemies--in both military and non-kinetic means--alongside our Afghan allies.
