Killer rules of engagement

Ralph Peters:

When enemy action kills our troops, it's unfortunate. When our own moral fecklessness murders those in uniform, it's unforgivable.

In Afghanistan, our leaders are complicit in the death of each soldier, Marine or Navy corpsman who falls because politically correct rules of engagement shield our enemies.

Mission-focused, but morally oblivious, Gen. Stan McChrystal conformed to the Obama Way of War by imposing rules of engagement that could have been concocted by Code Pink:

* Unless our troops in combat are absolutely certain that no civilians are present, they're denied artillery or air support.

* If any civilians appear where we meet the Taliban, our troops are to "break contact" -- to retreat.

These ROE are a cave-in to the Taliban's shameless propaganda campaign that claimed innocents were massacred every time our aircraft appeared overhead. (Afghan President Mohammed Karzai and our establishment media backed the terrorists.)

The Taliban's goal was to level the playing field -- to deny our troops their technological edge. Our enemies more than succeeded.

And what has our concern for the lives of Taliban sympathizers accomplished? The Taliban now make damned sure that civilians are present whenever they conduct an ambush or operation.

So they attack -- and we quit the fight, lugging our dead and wounded back to base.

We've been through this b.s. before. In Iraq, we wanted to show respect to our enemies, so the generals announced early on that we wouldn't enter mosques. The result? Hundreds of mosques became terrorist safe houses, bomb factories and weapons caches.

Why is this so hard to figure out? We tell our enemies we won't attack X. So they exploit X. Who wouldn't?

...

There is a better way to deal with Taliban propaganda and that is to call them on their war crimes of using human shields and camouflaging themselves as civilians. That puts the onus on them for the "civilian" deaths. Our reluctance to do so is perplexing and our new rules of engagement are getting our troops killed.