Hot and cold blood

Strategy Page:

Accusations that American troops murdered civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are in the news again. Some of it is the usual propaganda that the enemy has learned is worth tossing out there from time to time. Some of it sticks with someone, somewhere. Even Europeans media sometimes fall for doctored or mislabeled photos of dead civilians, and publish them as "American atrocities". The implication is that American troops are out of control, poorly trained and led. Much of this is fed by those opposed to the removal of Saddam, via a war that did not have to approval of the UN. This is all more about scoring political points than anything else.

What is unusual about the current accusations is that such events are rare. While there are a lot of civilians killed by combat actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, most are clearly just people caught in the cross fire. The enemy knowingly takes cover among civilians, to take advantage of American "Rules of Engagement" (ROE). But at the same time, the American ROE these days puts the safely of American troops above all else. Thus if the enemy hides among civilians and opens fire, U.S. troops will return fire, and the civilians either get out of the way, or get hit. Brutal, but the alternative is dead Americans. The enemy makes the most of the civilians they have caused, through their actions, to get killed. The current atrocity accusations are about "cold blood" killings. The investigation will have to decide when the "heat of battle" turns into "cold blood." That's a tough decision to make, and the large number of imbedded journalists have written stories about it. These are not the kind of pieces editors love, as they are not as headline grabbing as atrocity stories.

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Lebanon rules of engagement are out the window now and there has not bee a repeat of that type of attack since the Khobar Tower bombing in Saudia Arabia. That has been one of the remarkable aspects of the Iraq war, the enemy's lack of capacity to make a devastating attack on US forces. One of the reasons is the no nonsense rules of engagement. We should be very careful that we do not allow criticism of those rules because of Haditha to put our troops at risk of much greater danger.