License to kill—given to the Taliban by the U.S. command in Afghanistan

This item was at cnn.com today:

COMBAT OUTPOST MALAKASHY, Afghanistan (CNN)—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,”

Paul T., who sent the item, writes:

Now, class, will this announcement bring about (a) a decrease or (b) an increase of instances in which the Taliban will use civilian buildings for cover?

LA replies:

All that the Taliban has to do is take over a civilian house, shoot and kill American soldiers from that house, and the U.S. forces will “just back off.” Nice work if you can get it. And you can get it … if you’re a Muslim jihadist fighting Western liberals. Western liberals who, in addition to being liberals in the general sense, have adopted the specifically liberal idea that the way to protect the West from Islam is to spread democracy to Muslim countries rather than keep Muslims out of the West.

My line about nice work is from a song I first heard when I was about 12 years old, recorded by Frank Sinatra at his peak: “Nice Work if You Can Get It.”

Speaking of Sinatra, here’s the first Sinatra recording I ever heard, “Learning the Blues,” which I listened to on a 45 RPM record player—I guess they were my older brother’s 45’s—while sitting on the floor of the den my father had just added to our house; we hadn’t yet gotten a stereo set for the new room. I was knocked over by Sinatra’s voice, which had an indescribable quality unlike anything I had ever heard, or have heard since.

Mark Jaws writes:

Ridiculous is the only way I would describe this rule of engagement.

One of the reasons I turned against the so-called War in Iraq was that we are not fighting to win. I am a retired Army intelligence officer who served in Desert Storm. I am currently working on a research, development and experimental program for counterterrorism technology. In testing the effectiveness of various software applications, I have had to build datasets of ground truth consisting of as many as 500 reports. In the course of the past five years I have read over 5000 intelligence reports. All too often I would read interrogation reports concerning terrorists who had been captured previously by the Americans and then released after serving only six months or a year. Silly me. If you are fighting a war, and you catch someone armed with a rifle and with bombmaking devices, you don’t release them six months later. This is part of the reason why I have given up on America.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 09, 2008 07:31 PM | Send