A delegation of the Afghan parliament members who visited Kandahar province said at least 15 US troops were behind the assassination of 16 Afghan villagers at Panjwai district in this province.
It appears that the search party sent out to find the missing shooter has been conflated with that shooter. At this time the person in custody as the suspected shooter is Staff Sergeant Robert Bales.
The linked article shows the importance of a military force engaged in the kind of war Afghanistan is having an excellent information operations program.♠ The recent series of events show that our forces have not been able to build a reservoir of good will amongst the various tribes in Afghanistan. That said, the lack of nation-wide reaction to the shooting event suggests we haven't completely failed in that area.
Regards — Cliff
♠ Or whatever Washington is calling it this week. I think it is MISO, or Military Information Support Operations.
2 comments:
Very predictable conspiracy-theory type stuff here.
We like our own conspiracy theories, fables, and narratives in the States here, too, but we're just a way better-educated, more-literate population...so the scale/scope is way different.
You're right to call Khaama out for this nonsense, but the power of "I heard someone say..." is like 100 times more powerful in Afghanistan than it is in the States. Very tough to deal with. The need for IO is paramount, and the best thing we can offer is transparency.
We lost the "hearts and minds" battle years ago....if we were EVER winning it. Afghanistan has been particularly good at holding out their hand in friendship as long as we are greasing it with major amounts of money.
This is just one more chapter in the long book about why we should not be there....and why we should have ended our efforts long, long ago...say.....in the early 80's.
It is a major cock and bull story that we needed to go into Afghanistan to defeat AQ. If they were there in any kind of numbers why didn't Afghanistan warn us before 9/11...since we were already pouring billions into their economy? It is an even worse story that we need to keep Afghanistan free because of the interactions of the middle east.
And BTW....this Army sergeant was on his FOURTH tour in a combat zone...in active combat. In Nam, the tour was generally one time and you were done. These kids have done in some cases nearly 10 years under fire....constantly tense....untrusting of their environment.....and leery of making friends with the enemy.....and yet we find a way to blame this guy....our foreign policy and misuse of the military MADE this guy.
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