{"id":1362,"date":"2009-11-17T09:33:53","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T09:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1362"},"modified":"2009-11-17T09:33:53","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T09:33:53","slug":"allow_our_soldiers_to_defend_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1362","title":{"rendered":"Allow Our Soldiers To Defend Themselves Or Bring Them Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2009\/nov\/16\/us-troops-battle-taliban-afghan-rules\/\">Washington Times<\/a> posted an article about the rules of engagement set in place by General McChrystal in order to limit civilian casualties.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>According to the article, these are some of the rules:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>No night or surprise searches<\/p>\n<p>ANA or ANP must accompany U.S. units on searches<\/p>\n<p>U.S. soldiers may not fire at the enemy unless the enemy is preparing to fire first<\/p>\n<p>U.S. forces cannot engage the enemy if civilians are present<\/p>\n<p>Troops can fire at an insurgent if they catch him placing an IED but<br \/>\nnot if insurgents are walking away from an area where explosives have<br \/>\nbeen laid<\/p>\n<p>Only women can search women<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The only one of these rules that makes sense to me is the last one.&nbsp; It is a noble concept to want to limit civilian casualties during war, but it makes no sense to have only one side following these rules.&nbsp; In World War II, the allies made decisions that killed civilians in order to win the war.&nbsp; Dresden was one such decision.&nbsp; Allowing the Germans to&nbsp; bomb a British city after the allies had broken the enigma code was another.&nbsp; The military believed that to evacuate the British city would have shown that the allies had broken the code, so they allowed the people to remain in harm&#8217;s way.&nbsp; War is an ugly thing, and innocent people do get killed, but I can guarantee that if the Taliban regains Afghanistan, there will be a greater number of innocent people killed than would be killed in protecting the country.&nbsp; Saddam Hussein killed more innocent people during his time as leader of Iraq than were killed in the Iraq war.<\/p>\n<p>If we are not willing to let our soldiers fight the war we have sent them to fight and to defend themselves against a proven enemy, we need to bring them home.&nbsp; One of the problems of Viet Nam was the rules of engagement.&nbsp; We don&#8217;t need to make that mistake again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s Washington Times posted an article about the rules of engagement set in place by General McChrystal in order to limit civilian casualties.&nbsp; According to the article, these are some of the rules: No night or surprise searches ANA or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1362\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}