Yep, that’s how it goes in the big A, or Afstan, or whatever it is that GIs call Afghanistan. Dan Lamothe and Joe Gould, staff writers with the Military Times, flesh out my brief account:
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — When Marines in Helmand province sized up shadowy figures that appeared to be emplacing an improvised explosive device, it looked like a straightforward mission. They got clearance for an airstrike, a Marine official said, and took out the targets.
It wasn’t that simple, however. Three individuals hit were 12, 10 and 8 years old, leading the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul to say it may have “accidentally killed three innocent Afghan civilians.”
But a Marine official here raised questions about whether the children were “innocent.” Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission.
Brian Doherty of the Nation first spotted this outrage, and Reason’s Brian Doherty passed it along. We’re killing kids in a war that no one cares about, but which the Obama Administration is unwilling to end, for entirely cosmetic purposes. So, Afghan parents, if your kids get blown to pieces, remember that they died trying to protect President Obama’s political ass.
