The war rolls on
Check the news lately and you will see it. Afghanistan is a war zone in case anyone did not realize it. The man himself, The Chairman of the JCS whom I met with back in December is asking and looking for more embedded trainers to be with the Afghan Army and Police. You can read the story at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004468688_apusafghanistan.html. In addition to that, there are now daily reports of all types of actions going on. From my experience only 1 in 75 TICs (aka firefights) between Coalition Forces and the enemy is reported in the news. If you head over to http://www.afghanistansun.com you will see the a better scope of all that is happening in country right now.
One of the latest stories to come out is this one, http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/211642,us-airstrikes-kill-33-civilians-says-afghan-lawmaker–summary.html which talks about a US airstrike that killed 33 people. Of course the media is pushing the Taliban propoganda and saying it is all civilian. Let me reassure you that every control measure is taken to positively ID any enemy before calling in something as destructive as an airstrike. In fact, it would get most Americans pissed off to know what we have to go through in order to call in an airstrike (something just short of a congressional act and permission from God himself). What caught my attention about this airstrike is that it is in Mata Khan District which is a place that I was in a lot. The boundary of Mata Khan is only a few miles from the FOB I stayed in and was a place I conducted many, many missions of my tour.
Many at higher levels considered this a “safe” place because they never got shot at there, and took safety in stride when sending soldiers into this area. See, even military members in country don’t even know there is a war going on half the time….and they are stationed there.
DougS
June 11th, 2008 at 3:30 pmWhy do you automatically think it’s Taliban propaganda that civilians have been killed? It’s happened before, and the US has apologized for it, although it’s gotten better this year:
From May 9 2007
U.S. airstrikes killed 21 Afghan civilians in eastern Afghanistan late last night, just hours after the U.S. offered an official apology to the families of 19 killed in a March attack. The civilian deaths—as many as 1,000 in 2006 alone—are stirring unrest against NATO forces, even from on high, the Economist reports.
After a deadly spate of attacks last week left 51 dead, President Hamid Karzai warned that the country, “can no longer accept civilian casualties they way they occur,” the AP reports.