Now that President Obama has won a significant victory for improving the health of millions of Americans, he might feel secure enough politically to stop, you know, murdering innocent people in Afghanistan.
So far this year, our current “Slaughter the Innocents” policy in the country we are fighting to prevent from having, someday, a government that might, someday, permit someone to attack us has netted 30 dead and 80 wounded, according to this article in the New York Times. This is just from the shooting of “suspicious” characters by American troops riding in convoys and operating check points. But as Gen. McChrystal remarks in wonder, “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” The good, or bad, news, depending on who’s doing the counting, is that the number of innocent deaths from airstrikes and Special Forces operations appears to be declining, according to the Times, though they don’t descend to such trivia as actual numbers. And the bad, or, again, good news is that, according to the Times, “… those numbers [30 dead, 80 wounded] do not include shooting deaths caused by convoys guarded by private security contractors. Some tallies have put the total number of escalation of force deaths far higher.”
I spent a year in Vietnam and I offer it as my opinion that when you give someone a rifle and put them in a combat zone, they are going to pull the trigger fairly often, whatever the supposed rules of engagement. Afghanistan is supposed to be the “good war.” But it looks like good wars are hard to find.
