Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
From the newly id'd blogsite: http://www.quattozone.com/ by a US PAO in Afghanistan on the ambush and ROE: http://www.quattozone.com/2009/09/ru...nragement.htmldavidbfpo
From the article:

Eight years of less restrictive ROE have not prevented tragedies such as the ambush in Ganjgal. In fact, more permissive use of firepower may have contributed to the murderous rage of those responsible for the attack
I think there is a problem with causation in this argument. It's like the Army football team saying the only reason the have had losing seasons for the past decade is because they only had a running game so they were going to go to a strickly passing game and no longer run. This argument minimizes and overlooks many other factors most strikingly the long-standing history of Pashtun resistance to central government and propensity to engage in fighting.

In Mike's world, there are a couple of things that I would consider common sense.

1. Bombs dropped from a UAV with no ground observation is mutually exclusive to troops in contact.

2. Dropping precision munitions to close with and destroy the enemy does not equal a scorched earth policy.

Had the troops caught in the ambush been able to level the village - or if Lance Corporal Bernard had been able to summon the full military wrath of his country to his aid - we might be mourning fewer dead Americans today. Tomorrow, though, we would mourn those killed by a larger, stronger insurgency in the next village. The new ROE in Afghanistan rely on a hard but sound calculus: greater risk to our troops now means less risk and a greater chance of success for our troops later
Did the US PAO ask the Taliban if they took this math class?

v/r

Mike