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July 03, 2009
Orders From Obama:U.S.Troops Told to Stop Taliban Pursuit If Civilians At Risk
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A U.S. Marine checks his equipment before joining other Marines and about 650 Afghan soldiers and national police officers as they prepare to board CH-53D Sea Stallion and CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters on Forward Operating Base Dwyer, Afghanistan, July 2, 2009. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Philippe E. Chasse
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U.S. Marines, military working dog, and about 650 Afghan soldiers and national police officers prepare to board CH-53D Sea Stallion and CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters on Forward Operating Base Dwyer, Afghanistan, July 2, 2009. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Philippe E. Chasse
U.S. troops told to stop Taliban pursuit if civilians are at risk
KABUL
Beginning Thursday, American soldiers in Afghanistan will be under orders to back down when they're chasing Taliban fighters whenever they think that civilians might be at risk.
Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, will issue the directive as part of an effort to cut down on civilian casualties, which have enraged the Afghan government and residents. Instead of calling in air support or firing into civilian homes where Taliban fighters have sought refuge, commanders will be instructed to reach out to tribal elders or undertake other efforts to dislodge the fighters.
The order is consistent with what national security adviser James L. Jones told McClatchy Newspapers in Washington Wednesday was President Barack Obama's concern about civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
"General McChrystal has been given instructions when he left here that, in all military operations, that we redouble our efforts to make sure that innocent loss of life is minimized, with zero being the goal," Jones said, noting that, "In one mishap you can create thousands more terrorists than you had before the mishap."
The new order, however, is likely to draw criticism from some U.S. troops, many of whom feel the rules that govern how they fight the war already are too restrictive.
Many troops here say they depend on air power and heavy weaponry because there aren't enough ground troops to chase Taliban forces on foot. Jones said no additional ground troops will be sent this year, even though some ground commanders want them.
"Everybody had their day in court, so to speak, before the president made his decision," he said. "We signed off on the strategy, and now we're in the implementation phase."
McChrystal's order will instruct soldiers to "think about what else can we do," said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the military's top spokesman in Afghanistan. "We cannot keep going down the path of putting civilians at risk. ... People want to see changes in behavior."
Airstrikes, which Afghans charge kill innocent people, won't be eliminated, Smith said. "Air power will be as valuable after this directive is issued as it ever was," he said.
The new order, however, will require troops to assume that civilians are present and back off when Taliban fighters escape into villagers' houses, Smith said.
"The assumption must be there are civilians in those residences, and in those instances, he is asking commanders to think of other options in front of them," Smith said.
Those options might include gathering intelligence and regrouping to fight another day; reaching out to a tribal leader or encouraging villagers to help coalition forces track down Taliban forces. In some cases, it could mean letting Taliban escape.
McChrystal's order, an unclassified version of which is expected to be made public later this week, comes on the heels of a Pentagon report issued last month that acknowledged that as many as 86 civilians may have been killed in a May airstrike in Farah province.
The strike, by a B-1B strategic bomber, was ordered after Afghan forces came under fire from the Taliban and sought U.S. help. The report faulted Americans on the ground for not determining whether civilians were present before the plane dropped a 2,000-pound bomb.
Since McChrystal took command here last month, he has said reducing civilian casualties would be a top priority.
He repeated that concern Tuesday in an interview Tuesday with Radio Free Europe. "The most important thing is to not hurt the Afghan people because the most important thing is to win their support," he said. "This fight is for the Afghan people, it's not with the Afghan people."
Civilian casualties have become a major source of tension between Afghans and U.S. and other coalition forces here. Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks out frequently against coalition forces and their use of airstrikes on campaign stops as he seeks re-election, and earlier this year, the parliament passed a resolution condemning the use of airstrikes.
"One mistake is OK. But every day there is a mistake. You start to lose sympathy," said Khalid Pashtun, an Afghan-American member of parliament who represents Kandahar province, a Taliban stronghold. "Now, I am an American, and I feel this way. Imagine how the normal Afghan feels. He feels Afghan blood has become very cheap."
McChrystal has briefed Karzai about the new directive and his response was "encouraging," Smith said.
Top military officials here discount concerns that the Taliban will exploit the new order and step up their presence among civilians who often don't reveal Taliban hiding locations, either because they support them or fear retribution.
Military officials, however, said that the Taliban already exploit the way the U.S. has been fighting and purposely flee to villages in anticipation that coalition actions will lead to civilian casualties, exacerbating tensions between the coalition and the civilians.
Wild Thing's comment..........
no NO NO NO NO This is VERY bad. Is this an intercepted communication from LBJ to Westmoreland?
Dear God..this is insanity! It’s bad enough that the order was given..but to broadcast it in ADVANCE..just as we are sending our soldiers into the field?
TREASONOUS!!
"the Taliban already exploit the way the U.S. has been fighting and purposely flee to villages in anticipation that coalition actions will lead to civilian casualties"
THAT is exactly what they do. The do it on purpose and they know since the last time it was a set up too. And then the Coward in Chief Obama apologized and said he would get to the bottom of the civilians deaths and he blamed our military without even checking it all out.
The Taliban hides behind skirts and children. God help and protect our troops. This has me sitting here crying. Damn Obama! to hell!
Notice we don't hear that Obama was concerned about American troop casualties.
This is a purposeful plan to lose our advantage and appease the Muslims, injure and eliminate our dear troops from the battlefield in the process.
Posted by Wild Thing at July 3, 2009 07:55 AM
Comments
The Taliban, like the VC, will not see this as a humane action, but as a failure of will and strategy. I know I'm a contrarian, but this war, in my opinion, is already over and we're not the victors.
We have a Western view of "winning hearts and minds" from an apolitical population whose main pursuit is staying alive. Self-determination in a hyper-religious culture is unknown.
What I fear is another war of attrition - but this time pursued by a megalomaniac pantywaist in the White House who will find brass willing to make his mistakes with the lives of our magnificent troops.
We've seen this before.
Posted by: Rhod at July 3, 2009 08:50 AM
This is insanity at it's best. Barry Barack Soetoro Obama or whatever his real name is thinks he's playing a board game (it's interesting that the only one of those four words not hit by spellcheck is Barry).
"What I fear is another war of attrition - but this time pursued by a megalomaniac pantywaist in the White House who will find brass willing to make his mistakes with the lives of our magnificent troops.
We've seen this before."
I totally agree Rhod.
Posted by: Bob A at July 3, 2009 10:33 AM
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/
Michael Tottens's conversation with Robert D Kaplan is excerpted in the July 2 Sipsey Street and gives a good insight into Obama's long range plans for the Army to establish the ability to put down insurgencies at home. Gen. McChrystal is a man hunter. His first job is to get Osama Bin Laden.
Vanderboegh's additional comments are interesting. He sees McChrystal, rather than Petraeus as the future Chmn. of the Joint Chiefs who will be Obama's in-house soldier to put down internal insurgencies here.
The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka seem to have taught the Taliban and Al Qaeda how to use civilians to defeat government leaders who don't want to kill civilians.
We haven't won any war in Iraq and we aren't ever going to win a war with an Obama in charge--unless it's the war against American civilians.
In the expanded article of Totten's which is linked to in the Sipsey Street article you can see what China is up to in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East. Of course we have our submarines in that area which Obama will never use to nuke any enemies.
Example:
"Sri Lanka defeated, more or less completely, a 26 year-long insurgency. They killed the leader and the leader’s son. But there are no takeaway lessons for the West here. The Sri Lankan government did it by silencing the media, which meant capturing the most prominent media critic of the government and killing him painfully. And they made sure all the other journalists knew about it.
MJT: Wow.
Kaplan: There are a thousand disappearances a year in Sri Lanka separate from the war. Journalists are terrified there. The only journalism you read is pro-government. So that’s one thing they did.
The Tamil Tigers had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the government and say "you have to kill all the people to get to us." So the government obliged them. The government killed thousands of civilians.
MJT: Tamil civilians?
Kaplan: Yes. They killed thousands of civilians in the course of winning this war. It acted in a way so brutal that there are no lessons for the West."
Posted by: horace at July 3, 2009 11:02 AM
Thank you, Bob. You and I and others here have the benefit of hindsight. Our war was so complicated, almost anything you say about it is true. It all depended on what you did, where you were and who you were fighting. But some things are true all the time.
We still had a goal in VN, and the raw material of a "modern" society. VN was an agrarian society, but it had institutional systems in place because of the French. Damn, even the commies wanted to "develop" the place. Our losses due to mismanagement still didn't discredit the mission or the country itself.
We have no mission in Afghanistan anymore because Bush neglected it and Obama is going to prance like Napolean but let Afghanistan fade away, probably under the mascarade that NATO isn't committed (which is true).
What happens until then is always invisible at home...ROE's change, political officer types from bars to stars make life pointless and unbearable for everyone, uniform codes instantly become more important than fighting, a garrison mentality sets in, everyone is on edge and the unit problems start.
You can defeat an army this way, and the enemies outside the wire don't need to fire a shot.
Posted by: Rhod at July 3, 2009 11:09 AM
"U.S. troops told to stop Taliban pursuit if civilians are at risk"
This is Bullshit. What the hell kind of way is this to fight a war. We are going to be playing nursemaid to villiages...Again.
They send troops over there and limit the ROE's to the point where they are endangering troops safety and lives.
As long as the enemy knows this they will continue to use the civilians as shields. They learn real quick what they can get away with.
Posted by: Mark at July 3, 2009 11:13 AM
Wild Thing and the others expressed my thoughts. Vietnam all over again. Except The One will not quit his office like LBJ did.
There will always be military officers who will put their careers before the welfare of their men. They will find their way to the top in this administration.
Under obama, Afghanistan is probably a lost cause. I hope the will of the Iraqis keeps Iraq from reversing course and also becoming a failure.
America is in for some tough times. obama, the Marxist muslim, has an agenda but no apparent idea of how the real world works. He and his administration are going to lead America into a quagmire of economic and diplomatic disasters. At the same time they will be deeply involved in the process of turning our traditional American freedoms over to socialist government control.
Posted by: TomR at July 3, 2009 12:36 PM
Think of it. McNamara in Vietnam, Biden in Iraq.
Ramsey Clarke, Clark Clifford in Vietnam, all we need is Colin Powell and Wesley Clark and another Case-church type of amendment to write off those troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm reminded of when the mediocre emperor had no clothes:
"Look, it's an all volunteer force," Obama complained. "Nobody made these guys go to war. They had to have known and accepted the risks"
He isn't my CIC but!!!! In Obama's eyes the president and Congress didn't send these troops to battle, they volunteered. More of that Bush did it bullshit!!!
Posted by: Jack at July 3, 2009 02:39 PM
My own Marine Helo squadron, is in country right now, flying the CH53. May they always be safe and always flying high and fast, because flying low and slow gets you shot.
Thankfully they aren't flying the old birds we flew in Viet Nam, which only flew low and slow.
God Bless and Protect the Ugly Angels.
Posted by: Billy Ray at July 3, 2009 07:00 PM
Rhod hit the nail on the head. This winning their hears and minds BS is getting out troops killed.
Posted by: BobF at July 3, 2009 07:26 PM
Each one of you means a lot to me, thank you
so much for your input, sharing your
experiences and thoughts on this.
I am honored to know you all.
Posted by: Wild Thing at July 3, 2009 11:52 PM
