BOMBS NOT AWAY…RULES THAT PUT OUR SOLDEIRS AT RISK
http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/bombs_not_away_V6ppdVraYHSl0xTI9mRp8M
Bombs not away By NOAH SHACHTMAN
December 22, 2009
As part of his push to win over the people of Afghanistan, top US Gen. Stanley McChrystal in July abolished air attacks in all but the most dire of circumstances. But that ban is having all kinds of ugly and unexpected consequences.
US troops are paying a tough price for it. Consider the running firefight that Echo Company of the 2nd Batallion, 8th Marines faced in the town of Mian Poshteh in late August.
For 36 hours, the local Taliban did everything they could to kill the Marines of Echo Company. The militants planted improvised bombs. They fired mortar rounds at the adobe compound where the Marines were holed up. And when most of the Americans left to get fresh supplies, the Taliban attacked from three sides, while a sniper took aim at the troops’ heads.
The Marines, on the other hand, had to hold back.
Sure, they could return fire, launching rockets and artillery and Cobra helicopters at the militants. But for a day and a half, Echo Company had no effective access to the most powerful weapons in the US arsenal: bombs dropped from the sky.
McChrystal’s goal was to eliminate the innocent deaths that the Taliban have turned into propaganda victories. But his cautious rules of engagement are not only putting more US troops at risk by taking away America’s most potent advantage in this conflict, they’ve sidelined the tools and processes most likely to keep air strikes from killing innocents.
Which means units like Echo Company aren’t the only ones in greater danger by waging this supposedly more careful air war.
Air campaigns once had a reputation for reckless brutality: the torching of Dresden, the carpetbombing of Vietnam, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But things have changed: Satellite-guided bombs can now be directed into the particular window of a particular building, instead of thrown haphazardly out of the back of a plane.
Air Force “weaponeers” run sophisticated computer models to predict what will happen when a particular bomb strikes a particular building at a certain angle. “Targeteers” scour huge terrain databases for mosques or schools. Spy drones watch battlefields to make sure that militants are really around — and that women and children aren’t.
Bombs still go astray, of course, with terrifying consequences. But this system for employing air power is so precise, even Human Rights Watch praises its “very good record of minimizing harm to civilians.”
Too bad it’s hardly used any more.
Air strikes need to be planned ahead of time, to take advantage of these tools. It takes time to watch silently through a drone’s eyes, pore through those databases and run the simulations. Under McChrystal’s rules, getting advance approval for an air strike has become so cumbersome that hardly anyone bothers any more.
Ground commanders now need to provide the top brass with multiple sources of intelligence showing that a bombing will strike only militants and not civilians, proof that there’s no other way to go after a target and even a plan to justify the bombing to the locals. Not surprisingly, these requirements rarely come together.
Over the summer, I talked to one Marine captain who had a building full of bombs cordoned off; he still couldn’t get approval to blow the place up. When I visited the Air Force’s targeteers, they were bored stiff — they hadn’t worked on a serious strike in weeks.
These days, the only reliable way for a ground commander in Afghanistan to get air support is to declare “troops in contact” — soldiers or Marines under fire. That’s supposed to be an urgent cry for help. But it’s come to mean . . . well, almost anything.
I’ve seen TICs “opened” because rockets were fired in the general vicinity of a large base; the immediate danger to Coalition forces was negligible. Meanwhile, units like Echo Company have grown so used to gunfights that they sometimes won’t even bother reporting a TIC — even though the Taliban are shooting right at them.
The Air Force says it’s working on a fix. But over the last year reporting on the air war, I watched TICs stay open for nine hours, even though bullets stopped flying hours earlier. At the other extreme is the dangerous situation Echo Company faced in its 36-hour siege.
For a day and a half, those Marines were locked in a firefight with militants they could barely see. They desperately needed a spy drone to watch for the Taliban’s approach, and they needed the “air option” to level that sniper’s perch. Instead, the Marines got air cover only when bullets were flying in their direction. As soon as the lead stopped, the planes and helicopters went away.
According to the twisted system for allotting air power under McChrystal’s rules, the siege was just a series of unrelated TICs. Eventually, a Harrier jet zoomed over Echo Company’s battle: The bosses had given their approval to drop a 500-pound bomb. But by then it was too late — the Taliban sniper was gone.
McChrystal’s guidelines have reduced collateral damage: Accidental civilian deaths dropped by 87 percent over the eight weeks following his order. But the toll on US forces has been brutal: Last month, 32 US troops died in Afghanistan — nearly triple the number from November 2008.
America can’t bomb its way to victory in Afghanistan. That’s not how people are persuaded to turn against local thugs. But even with 30,000 more US troops on the way, it’s an open question whether the war can be brought to a successful conclusion without the option to freely strike from above.
WIRED contributing editor Noah Shachtman adapted this for The Post from his story in the magazine’s January issue.
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