Lawyers control air strikes in Afghanistan

NY Times:

Dawn was breaking over Afghanistan one day this month as Air Force surveillance planes locked in on a top-ranking insurgent commander as he traveled in secret around Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban.

But as attack aircraft were summoned overhead to strike, according to a recounting of the mission by Air Force commanders, the Taliban leader entered a building. Intelligence specialists scrambled to determine whether civilians were inside. Weapons experts calculated what bomb could destroy the structure with the least damage.

It had taken the American military many days to identify, track and target the senior Taliban officer. But the risk of civilian deaths was deemed too high. Air Force commanders, working with military lawyers, aborted the mission. The Taliban leader escaped.

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In interviews at the air operations headquarters in Southwest Asia, American and allied commanders said that even as orders for air attacks in Afghanistan had increased significantly this year, their ability to strike top insurgent leaders from the air was severely restricted by rules intended to minimize civilian casualties.

The rules that govern dropping bombs and firing missiles are far more restrictive now in Afghanistan than in Iraq, senior Pentagon and military officials say.

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A reporter for The New York Times was given access to the Combined Air and Space Operations Center under a written agreement that neither the name of the base nor its location be published, in deference to the host nation’s concerns.

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Air Force lawyers vet all the airstrikes approved by the operational air commanders. Senior Pentagon officials said the more stringent rules of engagement now in effect for Afghanistan specified the acceptable levels of risk to civilians for a priority attack. They said these more stringent rules required a significantly lower risk of civilian casualties than was acceptable in Iraq. (Emphasis added.)

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I think the lawyers were the ones that caused us to miss a shot at bin Laden before 9-11. While I am a lawyer, I think it is a mistake to have someone wearing a lawyer hat make the decision on a combat mission.

However, putting my lawyer hat back on, I failed to see why the media does not report on the violations of the Geneva Conventions and the rules of armed warfare by the Taliban and al Qaeda that are responsible for these civilian deaths. When an enemy camouflages himself as a civilian and uses civilians as human shields he become an unlawful combatant. He is the one putting the civilians at risk. If the media exposed these blatant violations they would deny the enemy its propaganda attacks when he claims we hit another wedding party.

Because of the nature of the enemy, I have become deeply suspicious of claims of civilian casualties. Too many of them are bogus and if the fighter is killed, it is not like you are going to find a Taliban ID tag on them.

BTW, do you think that base is probably in Pakistan?