Killing Innocents

Asymmetrical warfare is the best way to fight a modern army able to control the battlefield completely. Asymmetrical warfare takes away the advantage of technology and forces soldiers to fight mano-a-mano, without the "stand-off and destroy" ability that a computer driven army relies upon. The United States military sucks at asymmetrical warfare.

The US army shot up a bus full of innocents in Kandahar yesterday. That led to riots and "Death to America" chants. This was a major defeat in the war for hearts and minds.

The reason, of course, is that our soldiers were scared. They were scared of a bus that was "driving too fast." They were scared of citizens who are completely unlike them and, God forbid, don't even speak English. They were scared because they were in the middle of a city where death can hid around every corner. Heavily armed scared people generally kill.

The Afghan War is not about defeating an enemy on the battlefield. There is no battlefield and very few identifiable enemies. The Afghan War is about installing a compliant government on the citizenry of a country. Unfortunately, the government we've installed is a criminal enterprise as hated by the citizens as our soldiers are. The Afghan government wants the war to continue forever because they are making a fortune from it.

So we will continue killing innocents forever because that is what scared soldiers do.