With friends like these...
Another friendly fire death confirmed in Afghanistan. It's bad enough when Canadian soldiers are killed by the Taliban, but roughly ten percent of our losses to date have been to the United States military. I know that accidents happen, and that friendly fire deaths have occured in every war, but to lose a tenth of our dead to the people who asked us to go and help them out is unacceptable.
Update: I was having trouble getting this link to work in the comments, it is to a story about an earlier friendly fire incident that killed one Canadian soldier and wounded 30 others. Shooting first and asking questions later when your flying an A-10 against an enemy with no anti-aircraft capability strikes me as a fairly crappy way to fight a war.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
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3 comments:
That's a fair point, but the problem is that we (the Allies) are the only ones who can shoot straight. The AK-47 is a remarkably inaccurate weapon, especially in the hands of untrained psychopaths. This means that (i) Taliban and al Qaeda rarely kill anyone in face-to-face combat (they prefer setting of bombs from a cowardly distance) and (ii) if you come in range of an Allied force who mistakes you for one of them, your chances are 50-50 of either being a freindly fire fatality or causing one.
the problem is that we shoot first and ask questions later. The U.S. jet that strafed the Canadian infantry in January this year is a good example. His navigation was off, so he was in the wrong place. He opened fire on a group of uniformed soldiers camped out (it was just after dawn, they were just getting up and eating breakfast) around an armored vehicle. The Taliban are not in uniforms and don't have armored vehicles, so what the hell did he think he was shooting at?
Sorry, the incident I was thinking of took place in September, not January.
One killed, 30 wounded.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060905.AFGHANMAIN05/TPStory/Afghanistan
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