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Vietnam Style Tactical Mistake In Afghanistan
U.S. forces in Afghanistan will "back off" from firing at insurgents if the fighters are using civilian buildings as cover, the U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan told CNN."I've given direct guidance, and so has my boss to me, that if there's any doubt at all that the enemy is firing from a house or building where there might be women and children, that we'll just back off," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, the commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, told CNN's Barbara Starr. "That potentially is something that we did not do before, but now because of this increased emphasis, we are doing," he said in an interview at an outpost in Afghanistan's Paktika province near the Pakistani border. Schloesser spoke the same day the U.S. military announced that fighting last week in Kandahar province left 37 civilians dead and another 35 wounded. During the two-day battle in Kandahar's Shah Wali Kott district, insurgents fired from some villagers' houses, using them as cover, villagers told the U.S. military. Afghan officials said the civilian deaths in Kandahar were the result of a U.S. airstrike. But a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation concluded that the civilians died during a battle that was sparked when insurgents ambushed an Afghan-coalition patrol. The U.S. military released the results of that joint investigation Saturday. Schloesser said that avoiding civilian casualties has always been a priority of the U.S. military, even before Afghan President Hamid Karzai said last week that his "first and main demand" of the next U.S. administration under President-elect Barack Obama will be "to stop civilian casualties" in his country. Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-11-09 |
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