I don’t know why the US military keeps thinking it can just bomb insurgencies against a foreign occupation into oblivion, but they do:
KABUL, Afghanistan — A NATO airstrike early Friday killed at least 80 people, many of them civilians, in a once-calm region of northern Afghanistan that has recently slipped under control of insurgents, Afghan officials said.
Hours after the airstrike, NATO officials in the Afghan capital acknowledged that a coalition aircraft had attacked and destroyed two fuel tankers in the tiny village of Omar Kheil, 15 miles south of Kunduz.
The officials said the airstrike had targeted insurgents, but Afghan leaders said the attack killed many civilians who were siphoning fuel from the trucks.
This is cruel, inhumane and it won’t work. But I suspect our generals will just keep doing it anyway. You wonder if they learned anything from the Vietnam War about the limits of air power? All this does is strengthen the hand of the Taliban. What’s the cliche? Penny wise, pound foolish. No doubt we killed a few Taliban fighters. But we also likely created a few more from the families of those we murdered who were not our enemy (until now) and handed another propaganda victory to a radical bunch of religious extremists. In a war against a guerrilla force any “military target” is inevitably a civilian target as well. Unless we intend to kill everyone who lives in those areas of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban such tactics are profoundly stupid. It goes without saying that their inherent immorality is not debatable.
