As I read some of these posts I sometimes wonder about the following:
1) Are the Armed Forces of the United States and Britain the only countries on earth that are required to rigorously adhere to the
laws of land warfare as they were codified by international agreements following the Second World War, while everyone else in the world is allowed to play the "oppressed victim" or "holy warrior" trump card and kill however, whenever, and whomever they see fit?
2) What exactly would our European friends suggest that Coalition forces do with captured Taliban/Al-Qaeda members?
As it is, from what members of my congregation in Afghanistan tell me the vast majority of the armed Taliban they capture in Afghanistan are handed over to the Afghani government which in turn releases the majority of them. One individual reports that his unit has captured many of the same people operating against coalition forces two or more times. They call it the "Catch and Release" program.
Also, before you go spouting off about US attrocities, please keep in mind that several of the men of my congregation have lost friends precisely because they were acting to prevent the loss of "civilian" lives and who frequently put themselves in harms way out of compassion for their enemies. Let me give you just three examples.
First, in his last deployment to Afghanistan one of the SF officers in our congregation lost one of his best men (as well as a friend of the family) because during a raid on a Taliban village, one of the Taliban was using his wife and daughter as human shields and literally firing from behind them. Instead of taking the shot, this man closed the distance between them and was in the process of moving the women out of the way when he was shot twice.
Secondly on a long patrol during which they were "dark" and out of contact a SF medic friend of mine expended most of the contents of his medical kit to save the life of a Taliban who had been firing on his unit from an ambush site with an RPK. He did that knowing that had they taken their own wounded before resupply, he wouldn't have had enough equipment to save them.
Third, all of the guys in Afghanistan have reported that the Taliban now routinely "cache" their weapons, because they know that the Coalition forces will not fire on them if they are not visibly armed. Immediately before and after attacks, they do their best to simply fade into the civilian population.
Incidents like the above happen literally
all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq. On the other hand, all of these Coalition personal know that if
they are captured by the Taliban, or AQ, or a militia they will be hideously tortured and then if they are extremely fortunate, have their heads sawn off.
And yet in the eyes of the international media,
they are the bad guys for the way they treat the enemy. Where is the sense in it?
- SEAGOON
