The American Spectator : Point of the Spear

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Point of the Spear

Our special ops are the best assets we have in Afghanistan. Now critics want to put an end to their "night raids."

Ahmed Rashid is the author of the oft-quoted book Descent Into Chaos: How the War Against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. In an August op-ed piece in the Financial Times, Rashid argued that in order for talks to go forward with the Taliban, U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) must cease their highly effective night assassination raids against Taliban commanders (this was before the recent Taliban hit on a SOF-filled Chinook arriving at a combat LZ).

Rashid states that cessation of the gently termed "night raids" will, in turn, create an environment in which Taliban operators will halt their highly professional "hits" on major targets. The problem with that theory is that the Taliban assassins are not responding to actions by U.S. and U.K. spec ops units, but are simply attacking high value targets as the opportunity presents itself.

The Taliban does not need provocation to pursue their normal methods of political intimidation. These are the same tactics they used (with U.S. assistance) when the mujahidin -- the Taliban forefathers -- were fighting the Soviets. The Taliban are the ones on the offensive and the allied SOF responds by taking down their local commanders. Should SOF direct action operations to cease, there would be nothing left to deter the Taliban's political targeting.

American special operations troops are particularly deadly, and deter many Taliban leaders from launching personal assassination attempts. But U.S. politicians find this fact too indelicate. It is not acceptable in many American circles to suggest that their special forces are very good at one-on-one killing of enemies. The Obama Administration said it wants to pull regular forces out of Afghanistan and leave behind SOF to assist the Afghan National Army in creating "security" in key areas. Ahmed Rashid agrees that instead of battling it out in tit-for-tat killing, both special ops and the Taliban should be encouraged to sit down for nice, polite little talks.

The concept of withdrawing the major ISAF (read: American) line units and leaving SOF to babysit the now more-numerous Afghan regulars is unworkable for many reasons. But, most importantly, leaving behind SOF as training cadre and local enforcers is just politically unrealistic. The job could be taken on, of course, though it would be a waste of time and personnel. The Taliban are far more effective in local organization and control in their primarily Pushtun areas than the central government and its representatives. The special operations units would soon find themselves hung out to dry.

Spec ops forces, except when utilized in protected training environments, must maintain their initiative and own force-protection through aggressive action and close logistical, communication and air support. They just can't hang about looking good for visiting politicians, local and foreign. Pressure must be kept on the insurgents in such a manner as to channel and obstruct their ambitions. Only that way can the Taliban leaders be forced into building a cooperative rule -- if such a thing can be done at all. And that so far has not shown progress.

If the program of selective removal of key Taliban leaders continues -- so the argument goes -- it could result in destruction of the existing Karzai government and security structure by Taliban counter-targeting. The logic of this argument is based on the flawed idea that the Taliban in the past have been holding back their ability to kill key Afghan officials and that only now would they unleash it. To prevent this we are told we should restrict our own counter operations. Don't shoot the bad guys because they might shoot back is not much of a strategy. And that's the kernel of Rashid’s position.

The fact is that the killing of various Taliban commanders has been a very discriminating operation. Covert activities in Afghanistan are quite arcane and chances are that some of the more important targets were selected with the assistance of self-interested Taliban with competitive interests. This, after all, is Afghanistan and the good guys and bad guys not only are very difficult to distinguish, but they have the ability to change their colors mid-op!

The ultimate decision that President Obama and the next POTUS will have to make is whether to keep SOF in an active combat role at all in Afghanistan. If the answer to that is affirmative, there will continue to be Taliban leaders who die; that is what special ops forces do. If the answer is to withdraw SOF from everything except a basically non-lethal role such as intelligence reconnaissance and training, it's only a matter of time before the Taliban will gain the initiative and return triumphantly to an influential and eventually controlling role in the Afghan future.

Yes, an aggressive participation of Allied Special Operations Forces remains the key to maintaining any form of even a marginally democratic government in Kabul. SOF and fully coordinated covert intelligence activity has the ability to co-opt key elements of the Taliban. Only that combination can do the job. SOF is not merely a force multiplier; it truly is the point of the spear.

About the Author

George H. Wittman writes a weekly column on international affairs for The American Spectator online. He was the founding chairman of the National Institute for Public Policy.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (55) | Leave a comment

tsd| 8.9.11 @ 7:58AM

Thanks to all the military! They are one of the true bright spots we as Americans have look up too today, with all the mess in Washington. Let them do they're jobs! The last thing we need is Obama messing with anything they do! Some hack writing a book ... gimme a break. Every idiot and their brother has an opinion these days, worthless drivel.

JimH| 8.9.11 @ 8:39AM

These men and women are the best America has to offer. They will not complain but their blood is spilled to no good purpose. Go and read your Kipling to learn all you need to know about Afghanistan. We should leave. But in leaving make it clear to the local leaders that if anything which threatens America comes from their turf we will flatten their miserable villages and destroy whatever business they are conducting.

PCC| 8.9.11 @ 8:39AM

After killing Osama bin Laden, we should have (and should still) declare victory in the AfPak toilet and bring all the troops home, perhaps leaving a few Special Ops personnel and some drones if we feel the need to bounce the rubble. These latest deaths of brave American warriors were for nothing.

Anthony| 8.9.11 @ 9:14AM

Can we speak the real truth here? As long as America is ruled by anti-American leftists, like Obozo and the Ds, or when an R is president, but who bends to every leftist,PC concern, our troops are in mortal danger from their own!!
Moronic rules of engagement, concerns for "innocent" civilians, as opposed to our troops, are rules designed by dispicable pols to satisfy their political whims while these brave souls have to risk their lives under them.
And what does the ruling class care, after all, they hate the military and the folks who join?
We need to rid Washington of these types and stand behind our brave men and women in uniform. We need to protect our military from their own leaders!!!

john| 8.9.11 @ 2:28PM

Ditto Anthony, moronic rules of engagement, talked to one returned soldier returned from Afghanistan, he said he was afraid to use his gun there. do we need say ANYTHING more? this PC BS has got to stop. I would hate to have a sun there.

POST American| 8.9.11 @ 9:27AM

-----Great piece.

NOW back to our mutiple self-inficted, open
seeping wounds right here.

-Collapsed Mexico hemorraging across our
borders, radical elements of which ('La Raza')
are being massively funded by the TAX FREE, 'benny
violent' Rockefeller/Ford capstone creeps

-the hemorraging treasury, the ILLEGAL,
foreign owned, USURY driven, sovereignty destroying, 'Federal' Reserve

-the 1.5 quadrilion in FAKE USURER derivatives
debt

-the truly AWE---some, 4 decades on,
full spectrum RED China sellout and TREASON
OP

-the utter infitration and subversion of our
entire religious estabishment by the EUGENICS
friendly Rockefeller 'Council of Churches'

--------------------ONCE AGAIN-----------------------

Glow--BALL-ism = USURY = TREASON =
DERAVITY = Utimate TREASON = ABOMINATION
= the wrath of GOD

REALLY

TRULY

UTTERLY

Bill| 8.9.11 @ 10:35AM

Assuming it's true that we are employing our special ops troops in individual assassination operations (as might be true, given the circumstances surrounding the shooting-down of the Chinook with the 30 American troops in it), is this project part of some overall plan to win victory in Afghanistan, or is it something else?

I've been vocal in complaining that we should just leave Afghanistan if we don't have the will to define victory and fight to win it, but I also don't want the death of these brave Americans to cause us to tuck our tail between our legs and run unless we don't have a coherent plan to win a fight the winning of which is clearly envisioned and defined.

David| 8.9.11 @ 10:43AM

Funny how a muslim is telling people that by not attacking muslim terrorists that the terrorists would in turn stop attacking high profile targets, etc.

Yeah...

I have some lovely ocean front property for sale in Oklahoma, right on the beach.

FYI - There is no Christian extremists or radicals bombing busses, blowing themselves up to kill innocents, or murdering their Christian brothers and sisters in the name of God. That's Muslims. The largets murderers of muslims are other muslims.

Seek| 8.9.11 @ 5:27PM

Actually, in Uganda there is an avowedly Christian terrorist group called the Lord's Resistance Army. It's been responsible for numerous massacres over the last decade or two. I'll admit, though, that race "might" have something to do with this.

Occam's Tool| 8.9.11 @ 9:47PM

The LRA was also associated with Islam, as well.

Elgordo| 8.9.11 @ 10:51AM

To COUNTER the UNFAIR DEMONIZATION of the TEA PARTY

The Dems are trying to demonize the Teaparty with generalized, nebulous attacks on them as terrorists

A Teaparty SpokesPerson(s) should clearly list the 4 or 5 itms the Teaparty wants in a discussion of the Debt Negotiations to upgrade our S&P Rating back to AAA

Then demand to know what's terrorist about these demands.

Also, the Teaparty should point out that it was the underlying policies of Obama not the contentiousness of the Debt Ceiling debate that got us to the brink of insolvency.

Nick| 8.9.11 @ 12:11PM

Isn't one of the rules of war to continue to kill your enemy, until he sues for peace?

Whether it is the nazis in May of 1945, the Japs after we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Sunni Awakening; there comes a point when the enemy decides that it is just not worth it to keep fighting.

Why do modern nation-states try so hard to ignore this simple fact of war?

JFGalt| 8.9.11 @ 12:46PM

Follow the M O N E Y !!!

JFGalt| 8.9.11 @ 12:55PM

as a further comment to the above - REMEMBER THIS CLEARLY--- The people involved at this, at the highest levels are in the business of KILLING. It's not defense. It's DEATH. They are Death Merchants, plain and simple. To be in that sort of business you have to set aside certain pieces of morality aside. Once you sell your soul, what do you care about how many people die. From your side or another. You've sold your product and you feel your responsibility is over. What they do with it is their business. It doesn't matter if it's a 9 year old in Africa whose been indoctrinated to kill on command or if its someone firing a rocket into a helicopter full of our own troops. It's the end users problem. This is big business and big money. Money which they freely throw around to get what or who they want. You need to clearly understand that it's not about patriotism to these folks - that's a smokescreen - it's all about the money. Our kids are irrelevent to them. Proof - look at the shoddy body armour that was sent to them. Non-functioning equipment. Poorly armoured vehicles. The Pentagon is one of the first places we need to clean up if you want to save money and do right by our troops.

JFGalt| 8.9.11 @ 12:57PM

Just so you know - I'm not anti-military - I just believe that if you're in the business you need to be doing it right. The costs are too high in terms of irreplaceable lives.

Occam's Tool| 8.9.11 @ 1:33PM

Yes, Nick. The idea is to kill as many of the enemy as necessary to convince him to give up the fight. With Germany and Japan that required saturation bombing; I stronly suspect the same will be true of the Islamics. Read Caliphate by Tom Kratman for a brilliant exposition of this subject. Tom went from Private to Lt. Colonel in his career, and taught Rule of Law at the Army War College. Brilliant, brilliant man.

Occam's Tool| 8.9.11 @ 1:34PM

Sorr, "strongly."

Nick| 8.9.11 @ 11:42PM

Occam's Tool,

Thanks!
I will definitely it check out.

JFGalt| 8.9.11 @ 12:45PM

We need to stop wasting the lives of our troops in Afghanistan. We have no interests there. We are fighting the war in the same style as Vietnam and the outcome will be the same. We went in there for the right reason and then utterly failed to achieve our goals as we put it on the back burner for Iraq. After 10 yrs, we barely control the capital, Kabul. Sound familiar? Our young men and women troopers do an outstanding job at every turn yet we are making no progress. A great deal of the early progress there was made because of extensive use of the SEALs and other SpecOps warriors but then big budget parochial interests stepped in. When OBL was in their sights at Tora Bora who stopped them? NMCC! That's the top brass. It would pretty much have ended there. Too soon and too quick without having justified the big budgets. The pentagon and the MIC are out of control. Time to yank them back on their chains and reign in budgets so huge that they lose trillions of dollars and are clueless as to where it went. If you truly want to honor our troops then do it by doing right by them.

GENE HAUBER| 8.9.11 @ 5:02PM

I AGREE ENTIRELY WITH JFGALT.
AFGHANISTAN IS NOTHING BUT AN ASHTRAY WAITING TO BE TURNED INTO GLASS.
THERE IS NO NATION TO BE BUILT..
NO CIVILIZATION TO BE SAVED.......
NOTHING OF ANY USE TO ANY C OUNTRY EXCEPT AS A TRAINING GROUND FOR TERRORISTS.
AFTER WE LEAVE AND WE SEE ENOUGH OF A POPULATION OR INFRASTRUCTURE TO POSE A THREAT TO US, WE SIMPLY SEND IN AN AIRSTRIKE THAT SENDS A-TOWN BACK TO THE 7TH CENTURY.
I AM MIND-BOGGLED THAT THAT IS NOT THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM ON THIS ISSUE OF WAR IN A-TOWN.

WHO IN THIS WORLD IS LEADING US?.................................it must be an enemy of this great country and he has way too many supporters.

Occam's Tool| 8.11.11 @ 12:35AM

Gene---Correct 100 Percent. Trinitite creation would solve the Afghan situation appropriately.

Con Chef (NB)| 8.9.11 @ 12:58PM

What I want to know is why some dumbshit officer put 20 SEALs, most of whom were Dev Group members, on the same helo. I wanna know why there weren't 2 helos in the QRF for this VERY instance. I also wanna know why the Ragers were sent on the initial raid & the SEALS held behind as the QRF when the OPPOSITE should've been the case. Someone f-ed this up by the numbers. And someone had good intel. So was this f-up by the numbers done on purpose?

Bill| 8.9.11 @ 1:26PM

How do you know it was an officer who made that decision? These guys were all special forces, they could easily have been ordered to board that helo by an NCO.

Occam's Tool| 8.9.11 @ 1:31PM

The NCO should have been able to make a similar decision, then.

Con Chef (NB)| 8.9.11 @ 1:38PM

Point taken. But officer or NCO, whoever gave that order needs to be investigated. And the chain of command should be followed as high as it can go.

Bill| 8.9.11 @ 2:34PM

I just respectfully disagree with you about that part of your post that could be interpreted as a conspiracy theory, although it does seem a bit odd that so many troops of one unit would be aboard. But maybe that Chinook was the only available aircraft. All the accounts I read about Afghanistan talk about how hard it is to come by enough aircraft both for supply and CAS.

Con Chef (NB)| 8.9.11 @ 3:28PM

No conspiracy. I think that op sec has been compromised in some fashion. That's all. Either from inside the military or from our earstwhile "allies." OR from Iranian/Pakistani agents around the base from where the helo was launched.

RAMIII| 8.9.11 @ 5:17PM

Agreed! That was my first thought when I heard about this tragedy: 'Somebody knew who was in that helo'. This operation was a bad deal from the start and I wonder if there wasn't someone who wanted to hurt us bad for killing OBL. This helo shoot-down, imho, was a retaliatory action.

Bill| 8.10.11 @ 9:14AM

I suspect if there was jihadist foreknowledge of who was in the helo, they probably would have used something a bit more reliable than an RPG to shoot it down. It was just happenstance; the special ops guys had too many people in the chopper and some terrorist had Allah on his side and just took a wild shot that hit.

Occam's Tool| 8.11.11 @ 12:18AM

I defer to you, Con Chef. There's a lot of insufficient care for our boys' lives. We must risk, and we must be aggressive, but we must also be careful.

shipley130| 8.9.11 @ 4:56PM

It's a team.

RetUSA1/75| 8.11.11 @ 10:08AM

Go fuck yourself, Con Chef (NB). The decision was made to send in the Ranger's first. In combat, it does not matter how good you are when your team is overwhelmed with firepower. So, you wanted this story to be reversed? A ton of Ranger's smoked and burning in flying around in a flying bus? Asshole. P.S. R.L.T.W.!!

Bill| 8.11.11 @ 3:27PM

In Mogadishu, it was Rangers who short-roped in to pick up the Somali thug before Delta despite the fact that Delta knows a lot more about that kind of operation than the Rangers did.

RetUSA1/75| 8.12.11 @ 11:11AM

Bill, you may have a point, however, what do you think Ranger's do on a regular basis with 160th SOAR? Fast rope. I was the SAR Squad Leader for HHC, and I received my fill of fast roping, enough to make me puke. I am not privy nor have a desire to know what Black Ops are doing, Ranger's are White SOF, and they train constantly in fast roping. If you are interested in a raw view of Ranger's and how they train, Mike Bowden wrote an excellent book called "Black Hawk Down." Pay close attention on how both party's were pinned down. However, my beef with the numbnuts I cussed out on my last post above is his regard in the insinuation if the role's were reversed in that fiasco. Bottom line: Do not put all your apple's in one basket, especially in a low and slow flying bus. Take care.

cicero| 8.9.11 @ 1:34PM

I agree that we should all read or reread Kipling, just so we are aware of who we are dealing with, and the fact that they have not advanced politically since the time of Alexander the Great.
That having been said, we must also ask, "What the hell are we still doing there?" We went in to punish the Talliban for harboring Bin Laden and his roving gang of thugs, as a result of their attack on the U.S. Okay, we did that. What arragance make us think that we were going to change Afg into a liberal democracy?
Now that the Taliban has been driven out, and Bin Laden and the boys have been killed or dispersed, we should be out of there. If the Taliban come back, and are welcomed by the locals, so be it. That is there choice. If they invite the remaining descendants of Bin Laden back in, so be it. If they make any move that looks like it will harm the U.S., or our citizens, we remind them why they should not do that.
We were told that the U.S. was not into nation building. And here we are trying to build a nation out of disparate tribes.

Bob K.| 8.9.11 @ 7:49PM

Afghanistan! Bloody Afghanistan!

From Alexander a linear descent through history and the "Great Game" to Obama and America!

To paraphrase Bolivar's lament: "They have plowed the sea!"

Patrick| 8.9.11 @ 1:50PM

When we go after "alleged" taliban leaders, what level of certainty do we have that the man in the crosshairs is in fact a taliban leader/terrorist? What is the intelligence/how good is it? When we look back on the Phoenix program in Vietnam special forces would go into a village and ask the village chief to point out the vietcong to us. Far too often the chief would point out his wife's lover, his business rival or other people he just didn't like.

Thomas Jefferson said that "all" men have unalienable rights, not just those on the east coast of north America. All men includes those living in Afghanistan too. Those rights can be forfeited but not taken away. Those rights include life and liberty. If we propose in Afghanistan and elsewhere to deprive a man of his god given unalienable rights, we better be absolutely certain he has in fact forfeited those rights. That means being 50 percent certain won't cut it, nor will 60 or 70 or 80 or even 90. If we are not certain beyond a reasonable doubt that the person in the crosshairs deserves to die, then under the unalienable rights doctrine we cannot pull the trigger. And in most cases we don't have that level of certainty. I'm sorry but the intelligence just isn't that good. And we can't violate other people's rights in the name of "defending the country". Show me where the Founders say we can, show me where people who take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution can do so. That oath doesn't end when they get on an airplane. It binds them anywhere in the world. And if you can't show me where the Founders allows us to violate the rights of people in the name of defending the country, where the Constitution allows this, where the unalienable rights doctrine allows it, then these raids need to end. Good intentions, including defending the country, does not justify bad actions.

Con Chef (NB)| 8.9.11 @ 4:15PM

War is exactly that. A violation of rights. We don't conduct war with the "rights" of our enemies foremost. Or, we SHOULDN'T. Doing so gets people dead & us stuck in quagmires.

RAMIII| 8.9.11 @ 5:33PM

Exactly Right!

It's not a world constitution, it's the US Constitution! The people who use this Jihad and hide behind women and children to commit their acts of evil also are the same ones who would commandeer a jetliner to crash inta a skyscraper and kill lots of innocent victims.

***Patrick, your theories are great to talk about around a fireplace, but that is not a luxury our military special ops forces have in the heat of battle.

"If we propose in Afghanistan and elsewhere to deprive a man of his god given unalienable rights, we better be absolutely certain he has in fact forfeited those rights. That means being 50 percent certain won't cut it, nor will 60 or 70 or 80 or even 90. If we are not certain beyond a reasonable doubt that the person in the crosshairs deserves to die, then under the unalienable rights doctrine we cannot pull the trigger."

This statement is just naive. You cannot reason with people who will strap bombs to their own children, or weak members of their society and use them as tools to blow other people up.

Con Chef (NB)| 8.9.11 @ 5:51PM

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."...Churchill

By Patrick's reasoning, we would've never even entered WWII. Hell, by THAT reasoning, we'd still have slavery. If Lincoln was as concerned about "rights" as Patrick is, he'd have tried to "negotiate." And we'd have a neighbor to our south called the CSA. Regressives aren't too sharp when it comes to applying their "noble" ideas to the real world.

GENE HAUBER| 8.9.11 @ 4:48PM

THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED WITH OUR ARMED FORCES IS THE ESTABLISHMENT OF OUR MOST ELITE AND SECRETIVE FORCES, SEALS, 164, AF PJ'S AND THE ONE'S WE NEVER HEAR ABOUT.
GOD BLESS THEM ALL!

LET'S TURN THEM ON THEIR CRITICS .

THEIR "CRITICS" ARE ALSO CRITICS OF THE CITIZENS OF THE USA FOR THE SAME REASON..........WE RESIST , AND WITH FORCE, ISLAM, "THE RELIGION OF PEACE".
WAKE UP WASHINGTON...
ISLAM IS OUR ENEMY!!
ISLAM IS OUR ENEMY!!!
ISLAM IS OUR ENEMY!!!

THEY HATE US FOR WHO AND WHAT WE ARE..........NOT FOR WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO THEM.

Margie| 8.9.11 @ 10:02PM

"THEY HATE US FOR WHO AND WHAT WE ARE..........NOT FOR WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO THEM."

That's right, and they hate us because we are FREE!!

shipley130| 8.9.11 @ 4:54PM

Americans will assist spec ops when we get rid of many marxists democrats in 2012.

Richard Baker| 8.9.11 @ 5:58PM

The ideas of this Rashid character bring to mind Orwell's quote. ""There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them. Yes, I know this is the usually misquoted version but this succinctly states the idea. The Special Forces, be they SEAL, Ranger, or SF, are VERY effective because they know how to effectively "out G the G" as David Hackworth worded it. The babies in DC are upset by this? Fie on them.

POST American| 8.9.11 @ 11:32PM

"We are using MASSIVE third world
immigration to DESTROY British culture
once and for all, beyond repair, FOREVER."
-Fmr PM TONY BLAIR
(Daily Mail interview)

Meanwhile, as we survey the riots in England,
eyewitnesses report police stand downs AND
----full spectrum, no doubt, again like the recent
obviously set up Norway horror, Freemason provocateured.

SO, as the USURY plundered west is brought
down --expect lots n' lots n' lots n' lots more
'benny violence' ----emphasis on the violence.

REALLY

TRULY

IMMINENTLY

Michael Johnston| 8.10.11 @ 2:26AM

The IO (Information Operations) war is being won by the Taliban. The very fact that US Forces are even considering a halt to the most effecitve tool we have to eliminate INS (insurgents) is a win for them. Claims are that the Afghan culture rejects night raids, but if you talk to the locals, they don't know what you're talking about. We OWN the night, and should continue, and even increase the use of night raids to seek out and destroy our enemy. War isn't pretty and there are no "timeouts" in its execution. As a former "night raider" I can tell you that they fear SOF night raids like a mouse fears a snake in a cage, and we need to keep hitting them when and where we choose.

Patrick| 8.10.11 @ 8:30AM

Let me try this again. First let me make myself clear, I'm not talking about an out right combat situation where you're shooting at them and they're shooting at you. People in COMBAT situations have every right, clearly an obligation to fire back. Sgt. York was wrong philosophically in asking not to fight. So let's get away from that issue.

But that's not what this article talks about. What we're talking about here is we the Amercans based on some "intelligence" some "information" belive that an individual is a member of the taliban, or a terrorist and we're going to go out and line him up at night in our crosshairs and pull the trigger, we are going to execute him. That's the scenario. Got it?

All American federal government officials, soldiers, civilians, everyone, takes an oath to uphold and defend what? the Constitution. That oath binds us wherever we are. RAMIII says it's not an world constitution it's American constitution. True, but it is binding on ALL who take the oath no matter where you are at. Show me convincing proof that just because you get on an airplane and leave the three mile limit that the oath you take becomes null and void. Does that mean when any president flies abroad that while he is abroad the oath is not binding while HE is outside the country? Of course not. It binds us all as federal employees. RAM, it is irrelevant how other people act. We are obligated to act in accordance with OUR principles, not theirs. OUR principles bind US at ALL times folks. Show me again where we get to behave like the bad guys because the bad guys are . . . Bad?

Con Chef misunderstands me and Jefferson? All men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights among these life, liberty. So look at what you wrote. Slavery was a violation of those unalienable rights because the south deprived a large percentage of it's population of their liberty. That's simple. WWII? We were attacked at Pearl Harbor. I've been to the Arizona monument, have you? We have every right to fight back when attacked. Simple.

But that's not what we're talking about here. There's a man in a field at night. This is not a fire fight. He has presumably a wife, children. We propose to deprive him of his life, the life that Jefferson says is an unalienable right. Now again, unalienable rights ARE universal. On what basis do we pull that trigger? How certain are we that he is a terrorist? This isn't a fire fight, he's not shooting at the the special ops team, this isn't a combat situation. This is an execution pure and simple. And he may in fact be carrying an AK. So what? In Afghanistan EVERYONE does, doesn't prove anything. We don't have people who speak the language so we have no idea if the people who told the people who told the people who told us, have the faintest idea what they're talking about. For all we know this guy is just a farmer out for an evening stroll.

Remember the vast majority of the people we "captured" as taliban from the Northern Alliance were handed over to us because we offered a bounty on "bad guys". An estimated 70 percent at Gitmo had no ties to the terrorists or the taliban whatsoever. At Abu Ghraib the percentages were the same. At Bagram the numbers are about as bad. Our track record on this frankly sucks. In both wars we have been killing WAY too many innocent civilians and making WAY too many enemies in the process.

And yes I know we burned down whole cities in WWII, but times have changed. What worked 60 years ago isn't acceptable now and possibly wasn't acceptable then. You all will recall that only now is bomber command in Great Britian finally getting its monument. Their raids against civilian targets ended up being frightfully controversial at the end of the war and even within the Eighth Air Force there were discussions about the morality of targetting civilians.

And let's personalize this if you will. What if you're the civilian in the crosshairs of the special ops team? What if that's YOUR brother, your father? When we talk casually about shooting these people, well if we got the wrong guy, who cares, casualties of war. Except they're real people, husbands, fathers, sons who matter as much to their families as your relatives matter to yours. Which is why we CANNOT be casual about this. WE CAN'T casually deprive these people of their UNALIENABLE rights without absolute certainty that they are bad guys. I'm sorry we can't. Show me where any of the FOUNDERS say we can. Sh0w me where any of our founding documents say we can. We're better than this. We are.

Tracy in Judgement at Nuremburg got it didn't he? When the enemy is at your throat that's the time when you most have to hold on to your principles. So very true. I don't care what the other guy does. I care what we do. And if we're lighting people up on 50 percent, we need to stop. Sorry, we do.

Occam's Tool| 8.11.11 @ 12:24AM

We are fighting people who hold to no rules of war. We can kill them. So long as we make our rules of engagement crystal clear that if you are in that field at night you will die, then yes we can shoot him.

It is different for regular troops in uniforms. And, incidentally, Germany's pacifism now is directly due to the firebombing of cities then. I am referencing Andrew Roberts.

Lincoln learned this in 1862.

"The time had come, as he wrote to Cuthbert Bullitt, to stop waging war "with elder-stalk squirts, charged with rose water.'"

Occam's Tool| 8.11.11 @ 12:29AM

It sure as hell was acceptable then. Hitler was a monster and the German people were his instrument. They needed to be stopped by any means necessary. The same is true of the Islamists today.

Our enemies will stop at nothing to get their way. I intend to win, and I don't care how many of them die to accomplish it. Eventually, they will do something so severe that my approach will be the one used, or we will die.

I don't base my survival on what a motion picture actor of questionable values said in a movie. It was a good thing Germany lost, and the bombing speeded it up, and TAUGHT THEM THAT THEY WERE BEATEN, NOT STABBED IN THE BACK.

We will probably need to do the same with these scumbags, then take their oil as payment for the damage they've done to us. We should do these things without pity or remorse---they deserve neither.

Occam's Tool| 8.11.11 @ 12:30AM

It is not their unalienable rights, it is ours. Further, as ILLEGAL COMBATANTS, they are NOT entitled to geneva protections.

Patrick| 8.10.11 @ 12:37PM

Two things. Please, Please don't quote Winston Churchill to me or anyone else. I'm not a huge fan of people who let 1-3 million people die like he did during the West Bengal famine of 42/43. Read Churchill's Secret War folks. The "great Winston Churchill had grain ships from Australia going "past" India on their way to Britain so they could eat "better" in advance of the next election. Not that they were starving, so they could eat eggs for gosh sakes. We note that many of these ships parked themselves in the Mediterranean for a project the Americans were never going to green light. Churchill, consummate racist he was, could care less about the millions of Indians that were dying because of his neglect. Avery, one of this cabinent ministers in his private papers compared him to Hitler. The comparison was all too correct.

As for Ahmed Rashid, he's a well known jounalist, been in the area for like forever, knows all the players. He understands what's happening better than most any of you. He documented the atrocity at Kunuz where Dostom massacred thousands of POW's while American special ops forces watched and did nothing. Having spent years in the region myself, read many of his articles in the old Far Eastern Economic Review, I give him far more credibility than most anyone else.

Occam's Tool| 8.11.11 @ 12:31AM

Churchill was the greatest man of the 20th century. Please.

jesse| 8.10.11 @ 11:07PM

We need to protect our military from their own leaders!!!
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jesse| 8.10.11 @ 11:08PM

The comparison was all too correct.
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Richard Baker| 8.11.11 @ 5:29PM

Was a schoolteacher on 9/11 in Florida. As my kids were frightened and some were crying, one of the asked me what were going to do. I said that it was assumed that 10% of Moslems were these crazies and that we were eventually going to have to kill these folks in numbers that were going to scare us. Still haven't changed my mind.