U.N. LAWYERS TARGET U.S. TROOPS
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=337473733467144
Justice: As if fighting a war in Afghanistan isnt hard enough, ambitious global prosecutors have rolled into Kabul looking to charge U.S. troops. Intentional or not, such legalism will sap U.S. morale as it did in Vietnam.
At about the time NATOs new secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, warned NATOs European members against an early pullout, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, whose body is charged with looking for international war criminals, announced he was looking for new clients from anyone with a grievance in Afghanistan.
At a briefing Wednesday in The Hague, Moreno-Ocampo said he had launched a new war crimes inquiry, seeking information about torture especially a European obsession and had already mined the human rights groups for stories. He added he was also very open to more information from foreign governments.
Oh, hed been evenhanded in his Monday-morning battlefield quarterbacking of course, promising hed prosecute both Taliban and NATO troops as moral equals.
But it doesnt take a genius to know what the spotlight-loving attorney (who once launched his own reality TV show back in Argentina) is really after: Americans in the dock as war criminals.
The atmosphere that makes a prosecutor like Moreno-Ocampo ambitious enough to go after Americans instead of a real monster like, say, Fidel Castro, can only occur when the Wests will has weakened, as Rasmussen warned.
After all, if a war to defend our civilization can be reduced to a series of police-brutality cases, then Afghanistan isnt about victory.
This is underscored by Washingtons conflicting aims.
Though our president has rightly boosted the number of troops in Afghanistan, hes created a climate of doubt by declaring the war on terror an overseas contingency operation and stating he doesnt believe in winning. Its poison for morale and gives momentum to the kind of bureaucratic, legalistic and defeatist thinking that preceded our bitter pullout in Vietnam.
Moreno-Ocampos entry into Afghanistan is a sign that legalism has begun to overtake victory as a goal, at a time when our Taliban foes still believe in victory.
On the battlefield, our troops are increasingly constrained by legalistic rules of engagement.
Case in point: On Tuesday, four U.S. Marines and seven of their Afghani allies walked into a well-planned ambush and were killed in the Kunar province near the Pakistani border.
We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. Weve lost today, Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, told his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latters repeated demands for helicopters, McClatchy Newspapers reported.
Rules of engagement condemned them to die because they couldnt get air cover.
According to McClatchy: U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines despite being told repeatedly that they werent near the village.
Meanwhile, all pullout talk condemned those U.S. troops, too.
Ground intelligence sources who might have warned them were reportedly more fearful of Taliban retaliation than convinced that American troops would be able to defend them, given the weakening will of the West. They opted to survive.
Now, the latest legalistic block against winning is an international prosecutor looking for NATO troops to prosecute.
Back in 2002, President Bush told the ICC that there wouldnt be any of that, and he rescinded the U.S. signature from the Rome Statute that would have opened the door to that. Today, theres a legal battle going on at the ICC to make U.S. troops subject to doing it and theres no signal from the White House that it will stop it.
Dont think Moreno-Ocampo wont do it. His history as a prosecutor suggests an affinity for publicity over justice, which is just what the anti-American crowd wants.
(snip)Someone like that wont hesitate for a minute to make a big show of putting U.S. troops in the dock for war crimes no matter what the impact in Afghanistan. Thats defeat.
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Then there is this little tidbit:
0s Giant Ego is too busy trying to be king of the World. He has no time to be bothered with what could be avoidable deaths of American servicemen.
Besides, hes proving his qualifications to head up the Security Council (excuse my utter hysterical laughter!) to the America hating dweebs at the U.N..:
Obama to seal US-UN relationship
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2334897/posts
*PLEASE NOTE THIS PARAGRAPH IN THIS ARTICLE IN PARTICULAR.*
In preparing his assessment of the Afghan command, McChrystal found an American military culture that showed a great concern for troops protection sometimes at the expense of their relations with Afghan civilians.
To change those relations, McChrystal wants American forces to think twice about basic conduct - for instance no longer pointing their guns at people when they pass in convoy or blocking narrow roads with their convoys, while relegating Afghans to the ditches.
To deal with the most contentious aspect of those shaky relations, McChrystal has already committed to try to reduce civilian casualties by issuing new orders that restrict when troops should call in bombing strikes.
http://www.hotsr.com/news/WireHeadlines/2009/08/02/general-wants-more-troops-for-afghan-war-26.php
From the posted article by McClatchy Were pinned down::
...U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines despite being told repeatedly that they werent near the village.
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/75036.html?storylink=MI_emailed
(snip)..Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.
U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.
“We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We’ve lost today,” Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, said through his translator to his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter’s repeated demands for helicopters.”
(snip)”...The Americans were there to give advice and call for air and artillery support if required.”
(snip)
(snip)”...Several U.S. officers said they suspected that the insurgents had been tipped off by sympathizers in the local Afghan security forces or by the village elders,..”
(snip)”..Lt. Fabayo and several other soldiers later said they’d seen women and children in the village shuttling ammunition to fighters positioned in windows and roofs. Across the valley and from their ridgeline outposts, the Afghans and Americans fired back.
(snip)”...At 5:50 a.m., Army Capt. Will Swenson, of Seattle, WA, the trainer of the Afghan Border Police unit in Shakani, began calling for air support or artillery fire from a unit of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. The responses came back: No helicopters were available.
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NOTE: The women and children running ammo for the insurgents. The village elders undermining the U.S. efforts and siding with the Insurgency.
NOTE: Obama and McChrystal’s new ROE’s are protecting and defending the enemy. Not our troops.
This is the nightmare that every one of us has been fearing.
Thank you for the article. No lunch for me today. my appetite is gone, gone, gone.