Replies

The ROE were meant to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic citizenry. How many of our guys died because of the ROE?

We went out of our way to avoid 'collateral' damage. Yet the enemy could care less about collateral damage and is using collateral damage to weaken our resolve. War is not pretty and collateral damage is a part of it.

The real choice boils down to accepting collateral damage in order to get the insurgents or more of our collateral damage here if we don't get serious and ruthless. The ROE must reflect that we NEED to win this now or else we lose there and ultimately here and I do like living, thank you.

The majority of injuries and KIA are because our tactics included, still include, patrolling streets in vehicles that couldn't hold up to IED's (we are getting better at this though). Soldiers could walk around all day long with their selector lever switched to full auto and their fingers on the trigger, but it wouldn't mean much if we were ill equipped to deal with roadside bombs. The militants learned early that it was disastrous to engage Infantry Platoons in gun battles. Sadly, we were slow to adapt.

The ROE were meant to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic citizenry. How many of our guys died because of the ROE?
We went out of our way to avoid 'collateral' damage. Yet the enemy could care less about collateral damage and is using collateral damage to weaken our resolve. War is not pretty and collateral damage is a part of it.

The real choice boils down to accepting collateral damage in order to get the insurgents or more of our collateral damage here if we don't get serious and ruthless. The ROE must reflect that we NEED to win this now or else we lose there and ultimately here and I do like living, thank you.

Well stated, truth! Destroying the enemy, along with the safety and protection of our soldiers, is the number-one priority. Winning the "hearts and minds" of a bunch of 7th century minded, ass-backwards living Muslims (of which do not hold any sort of nationalistic identity) is an impossible task. The only loyalty most of them hold, is to their own particular Sunni or Shia imam, and lord knows how many different sects there are of each.