Saturday, March 24, 2007
War on Terror - Lawyers & Armchair Generals
I can't help thinking that trying to avoid the collateral damage described "over there" will have the consequence of catastrophic collateral damage "over here", sometime in the future.
But, why worry, there'll be ambulance chasers to help us then, too...
But, why worry, there'll be ambulance chasers to help us then, too...
Michael Franc writes at TownHall.com:
"Get ready for the invasion of the armchair generals. With 535 Capitol Hill generals struggling to define every aspect of when and how our troops in Iraq may be deployed, timetables for their withdrawal and specific requirements for how, when and against whom they may strike, the challenge of winning the war in Iraq is about to get a whole lot tougher.
Historically, micromanaging wars from afar squanders opportunities to defeat the enemy. Consider the well-reported episode late in 2001 when U.S. military leaders had top Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists in the crosshairs of an armed airborne drone, only to allow them to escape thanks to what the Washington Post described as 'a cumbersome approval process.' This process gave military leaders in Tampa, Fla., rather than on-site field commanders, authority to approve strikes against terrorist targets. Not surprisingly, this 'bottleneck' benefited terrorists at least 10 times in one six-week period. 'Imagine', one officer told the Post, 'you have a target in sight [and] you have to wake up people in the middle of the night, and they say, 'Uhhhhhh.'"
Especially when those groggy-eyed decision makers are lawyers. 'The Central Command's top lawyer,' one Air Force official acknowledged, 'repeatedly refused to permit strikes even when the targets were unambiguously military in nature.' These lawyers nixed the attacks out of excessive caution, reasoning that noncombatants might suffer 'collateral damage.'"
