Tweet
On Wednesday, General Petraeus released an updated tactical directive that offered a fairly nuanced shift in guidelines for on-the-ground action. The unclassified bits were made available.
We must continue – indeed, redouble – our efforts to reduce the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum. Every Afghan civilian death diminishes our cause. If we use excessive force or operate contrary to our counterinsurgency principles, tactical victories may prove to be strategic setbacks.
We must never forget that the center of gravity in this struggle is the Afghan people; it is they who will ultimately determine the future of Afghanistan …
Prior to the use of fires, the commander approving the strike must determine that no civilians are present. If unable to assess the risk of civilian presence, fires are prohibited, except under of the following two conditions (specific conditions deleted due to operational security; however, they have to do with the risk to ISAF and Afghan forces).
Doesn’t sound all that different from before, right? But as sagely wise Greyhawk details, there’s been some conflicting information presented by journalists covering the news. This directive is being interpreted as an issuing of a new ROE, and as the greyest of hawks says:
Confused? Let’s review a point made here a couple days ago. First, understand that in spite of what you may read elsewhere, with the tactical directive, as with the new counterinsurgency guidance, General Petraeus has not issued “new ROEs”…I do know that while ROE haven’t “changed”, something certainly changed in January, 2009 – and most folks who’ve developed an intense interest in ROE over the past year weren’t nearly as concerned about the topic a very few years ago.
Truth. But if anything was made clear by McClusterfuck, it was that some guys on the ground–or at least the guys Michael Hastings got on the record–aren’t happy with the ROE any which way it flies. Does Petraeus’ directive change anything at all? I don’t think so. I think it fine-tunes what was already in place by McChrystal.
And if this whole thing weren’t enough to trip me up, apparently Nelson Mandela has a secret love-child. Whoa.
1 Comment
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About ATTACKERMAN
RSS/XML Feed
To me, the interesting question raised is one of commitment to success. If it is true that the center of gravity is the Afghan people, and a sufficiently high level of civilian casualties will ensure we are unsuccessful in Afghanistan, then the question is simply: Are we willing to accept higher levels of American casualties to achieve those goals? Or, put another way, is our commitment to success in Afghanistan conditioned on a low number of American soldiers killed and wounded?
When you had platoon and company+ sized engagements in past wars, the two sides used similar levels of firepower, typically nothing larger than mortars and machine guns, and you could expect tens or sometimes even hundreds of casualties, just in a single battle. Then, as technology improved and the American armed forces developed a doctrine that depended on calling in massive indirect fire and air support to destroy the enemy, it became less necessary for the infantry rifleman to close with and destroy the enemy. Just fix him in place and let the FO and FAC do the actual destroying.
So now we find ourselves in a position where something has to give. All the heavy firepower is killing civilians, and that, we are told, is preventing us from achieving our objectives. But in order to win the fights without calling in heavy fires, we need to go eyeball to eyeball and that’s just plain, old fashioned deadly for everyone involved.
I think it’s obvious that Petraeus won’t stand for a large preventable increases in American casualties, and I’m very glad that’s the case. But it’s important to remember that leads one directly to the conclusion that there are real, measurable limits to our commitment to success in Afghanistan, in spite of all the flowery “war of necessity” rhetoric…
mikey