11 Afghan civilians killed in air strike?
Stars & Stripes reports that an airstrike called in to relieve beleaguered NATO troops killed 10 children and a woman along with 11 Taliban fighters at a Taliban base Saturday.
The Afghans became surrounded and called in a NATO airstrike, [Wasifullah Wasifi, the spokesman for Kunar’s provincial governor] said. A NATO official, however, said coalition troops called in the strike. If Afghan troops did call in the airstrike it would have been in defiance of a presidential decree forbidding Afghan forces from calling in foreign airstrikes.
“During the operations, the security forces were surrounded by insurgents and the only option was an airstrike,” Wasifi said. “Without the airstrike the security forces would have been wiped out.”
Reuters reports;
A spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), Captain Luca Carniel, said it had provided “air support” during the operation. The air strike had been requested by coalition forces, not their Afghan allies.
Of course, it doesn’t matter who called in the airstrike to anyone except the Taliban’s main lobbyist in Kabul, Hamid Karzai. Anytime the coalition calls in air support, it should appear over the battlefield irrespective of who is asking for it. Maybe Hamid should scold the Taliban for hiding behind women and children in this case, and most of the other cases.
And maybe the media should focus on another aspect of the situation, too;
Category: Terror War
Screw these bastards. None of them are worth one more American life.
Everyone. Home. YESTERDAY.
Talk about your moral relativism!
We need to have already left. Pack it up, bring them home, and blow everything in place that cannot be borught out.
The Afghans who can are already making their escape plans. the same Afghanis who were supposed to be building their nation. That country will once again turn into a 3rd world cess pool once we leave, regardless of when.
Right, the mighty Taliban hides behind children regularly because they know they are a terrible fighting force. They are not capable of a sustained operation against US troops, they hide among the civilians because of that. They were cowards when they were ruling the sh1thole that is Afghanistan and they are cowards now.
The only mistake we are making here is worrying about what their civilians think of us, if your leadership sends planeloads of killers our way your military and civilian population should understand that the US will send planeloads of fire bombs back….we should have burned the place to the ground and killed everything that walks, crawls or flies….declaring a war and fighting it like a Law Enforcement operation never works.
Funny how 10 of 11 were children. I believe it. Not. Regardless of age, everyone is a child of someone. As a descriptor, “children” sucks.
like when the anti-gun zealots claim that the leading cause of children’s detah is gunshot wounds, and it turns out they describe anyone 24 years old and younger as a child. Funnoy how many of those ‘children’ can shave, knock up their girlfriends, and be tried as an adult.
We definitely need more details about the nature of these “children.”
Even by western standards, a 17 year-old is a “child” even if they’re also jihadis.
Until about ten years ago, the U.S. military was still allowing 17 year-old soldiers into combat zones.
Translation: Somebody took the guns and combatants magically became civilians.