It’s living up to its reputation, apparently:
The U.S. is poised to concede for the first time that it bears significant responsibility for last month’s American airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani troops, U.S. officials said, an admission that is expected to embarrass the American military but points to a way out of the deepening mistrust between the two countries.
A military investigation has found that U.S. and Afghan commandos incorrectly concluded there were no Pakistani forces in the Afghan border area where the coalition was conducting an operation on Nov. 26, according to U.S. officials familiar with the report. That assessment cleared the way for an airstrike that devastated Pakistani positions.
After the initial strike, the U.S. compounded its mistake by providing inaccurate data to a Pakistani military representative at a border-coordination center, missing an opportunity to stop the fighting, these people said.
Two or three possibilities come to mind, none of them particularly palatable: 1) Hanlon’s Razor, 2) front-line forces so accustomed to think of the Pakistanis as their enemy that due diligence is neglected, or 3) the path of least strategic resistance to getting the Pakistani border re-opened is throwing soldiers under the bus.
I really hope it’s not the latter.
Or we could just tell them “TS. Your rulers have tried playing in the middle of the street for too long. When you play in traffic, you may get hit.”
None of the alternatives excludes the other two.
The Paks need to bone up on an english phrase likely not found in their mother tongue: “Fog of War”.
Odd that it’s missing, given that they consider a triple cross child’s play.
The sooner we get out of the region where we have to depend on “friends” like the Paks, and can quit paying ransom to them, the better we will be.
Stand back and watch them kill each other as long as they like, but if any turn threats toward us, then smite them instantly.
The previous reports stated that they were receiving fire from the area. This “concession” does not claim otherwise but merely states that we mistakenly thought there were no Pakistani military in the area. So…that suggests to me that by policy we would NOT have returned fire if we had only known that the fire was coming from the vicinity of the Pakistani forces. This is looking more and more like one of those “clarifying” incidents. Everything is now seen for what it is and the powers-that-be are scrambling to paper everything over again so things can get back to the way they were.
“Fog of War” is right–especially when dealing with elements from three nations in an undefined and ill-surveyed border area involving at least one player/”ally” whose sharing of info/troop movements is often, shall we say, “less than complete.” Almost every “short round” incident I ever knew about in Vietnam involving cas resulted from night action and/or bad wx or loss of good light due to smoke/haze, approaching twilight, insufficient pre-msn coordination and/or the psychological pressures attendant to responding in a timely fashion to TIC situations where friendlies were calling desperate for support–not to mention the distractions incurred by both the gnd and air elements of taking heavy enemy fire. Unless we’re talking gross negligence here involving the handling of the coords at the TOC no one should be hung out to dry beyond non-career-ending admin reprimands–if that. Rather a “lessons learned” moment.
Troops will be thrown under the bus in order to assuage the Pakistanis in return for their dubiious good will.
the first mistake made was the Paki’s opening fire on our troops.
for twenty four of them, it was also their last mistake.
what actually happened and what the report says happened will have little in common.
Option 3 is the one with the bunch now wielding power.