Why Didn’t We Kill These People?

by Jared Logan, Blerds War-on-Terror Correspondent

Here’s a headline from NBC’s website:

U.S. Passes Up Chance to Strike Taliban

PREDATOR HAD SUSPECTED FIGHTERS IN ITS SIGHTS, BUT MILITARY PASSED ON SHOT

And here’s some excerpts from the article that went with the headlineU.S. military officials tell NBC News they had “high-level” Taliban fighters in their gunsights during a July reconnaissance flight but decided not to fire. The decision to pass on the target angered some in the military, but commanders say they have “no regrets.”

Army intelligence officers say the grainy black-and-white aerial photo taken by a Predator drone and obtained by NBC News on Tuesday shows some 190 suspected Taliban militants standing in several rows outside near a vehicle in Afghanistan.

…Even though U.S. military officials in Afghanistan had positively identified those gathered as Taliban fighters, including some “high-level Taliban leaders,” they told NBC News they have “no regrets” in refusing to give the order to attack the gathering.

…The decision not to fire angered some military officials who said the U.S. passed up an opportunity to strike a valuable target.

So I’m watching the news with my roommate Wednesday night and this is the story they put on the air. Basically, NBC News got their hands on this military reconnaissance photo of a bunch of Taliban soldiers standing around in a field in Afghanistan and the basic gist of the story was “Why didn’t we kill these people?”

“See these people pictured here? Why didn’t we murder them?”

“Who took this picture? Shouldn’t the person who took this picture have tried to murder these guys? Did the person who took this picture have a gun or a bomb on him? A knife? Something? Shouldn’t he have tried to kill these people or something?”

The picture, incidentally, was taken by an unmanned Predator drone plane. Some “Predator”! It didn’t even get one of them! How come these guys aren’t dead? Huh?

On the Nightly News, the reporters kept going “Some military officials are saying that this was a missed opportunity.”

“Some people are saying that these men should have been murdered.”

“Some people are saying that this would have been a perfect opportunity to kill, like, a whole bunch of guys.”

“Some people are saying that. Not us. Not NBC Nightly News. We’re not saying that. We’re just repeating what some people said…over and over and over…on national television.”

This story is so surreal to me. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen a news story where they show you a picture of a crowd of eighty guys and then say “These guys should have been killed. See how they’re standing together like that? They deserved to die. Somebody’s got some ’splainin’ to do!!”

The aired news story eventually explained why the military didn’t take the shot, but you had to wait awhile before they got around to telling you because every news story has to have a twist ending now. It’s like NBC is being directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The news literally taunts you with facts they may or may not reveal by the end of the story just to keep you watching.

“Why didn’t the military strike? We at NBC News were wondering just that. We’ll tell you at the end of the story, but first let’s skirt around that issue for a while to keep you tuned in. By the way, have you driven a Ford lately? Have you tried new Coca-Cola Black? Are you tired of dropped calls?”

So, why didn’t we kill these guys? I was curious. I mean, I’d expect the U.S. Military to take a shot like that one. All those Talibans lined up like that in little rows? I mean, how could you not kill the shit out of them? Why didn’t we explode their heads with a rain of fiery death? Are we Americans or aren’t we?

The reason they weren’t killed has to do with the U.S. Military’s Rules of Engagement. The Rules of Engagement are highly classified, but reporters and analysts can infer some things about them from previous events. It seems clear that the U.S. Military didn’t take the shot in this case because the men in the picture were standing at a burial site, probably engaged in a funeral service. It is against the military rules of engagement to ever attack people in a graveyard.

When I heard this I was pretty surprised. I half expected an army commander to come on the TV screen and say “Yeah, we preferred to wait and try to kill these guys when they were standing in a more heavily-populated area. We wanted to wait until they were spread out among an innocent civilian populace and then drop a bomb or something. You know, when they were standing around with a bunch of living people.

I get the policy. We don’t attack religious sites. We don’t wage war on their religion. Makes sense. But on the other hand, I’d be hard-pressed to come up for a better place to attack an enemy than in a graveyard. If you think about it, it’s really a very polite way to kill a grouping of one hundred guys.

We could say to the people of Afghanistan: “Okay, we killed your husbands, fathers, brothers and lovers by piercing their bodies with hot lead…but then we went ahead and placed them in the graveyard for you. Pretty convenient, huh? No, don’t say thank you. They were actually standing right there when we offed them. Need help burying them? We could probably have a chopper come in and drop some dirt if you want. No?”

Ease of clean-up. That should be the U.S. Army’s priority when they wipe out large groups of people. When you think about it practically, it’s almost more polite than respecting their cultural sites and centers of religious worship.

14/09/2006
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