Michelle Malkin, who seems to be one of my favorite bloggers these days, has a story on the supposed missed opportunity to kill a group of "Taliban Terror Leaders" at a funeral. My initial reaction was one of frustration with the fact that our rules of engagement do not have sufficient fluidity to allow for variences according to the situation. A perusal of the comments suggest that most experienced this same feeling.
However, upon reflection several issues spring to mind. First, of course, is the validity and nature of the intelligence. Were all of the people who were attending the funeral Taliban fighters? Were there a significant amount of women an children at the funeral? Were the identities of "Taliban Terror Leaders" known and if so were they High Value Targets which justified the amount of known or unknown collateral damage? Was more or better intelligence gained by following the destination of the targets from the funeral? Could this strike, if there were a large number of noncombatants at the scene, have been justified from a public relations standpoint?
Not knowing the answers to these questions forces me to pause before I jump to conclusions. If UBL, Mullah Omar or the likes were present then the justification to shoot drastically increases than if there were lower level leutinants and foot soldiers present. I know that I experienced disgust with the Taliban's recent bombing at the funeral of one of the Afghanistan Provisional Governors and the bombing in Iraq at an assassinated religious leaders funeral (the names escape me at this time). I remember thinking, "Can't they just leave them alone long enough to let them bury their dead?" I also know that some acts by the terrorist actually do cause a backlash, mild as it may be, against them. For instance it appears that the beheadings in Iraq have stopped because of the backlash by the Muslim community. Essentially, it was bad PR for Al Queda so they stopped it. It is possible that the value of the known targets at the funeral did not justify the bad PR from such an action. Remember, this was a funeral. I know that our actions cannot be tied to the prevailing winds of the muslim public but it also cannot be ignored.
More than any other reason I think that the bombs were not released because of military professionalism. Military history is replete with instances in which entire armies ceased hostilities to allow the dead to be collected and buried. Even Achilles overcame his rage and allowed Priam to recover the body of is son, Hektor. While I am the first to yell against the coddling of the terrorist and I do not think that they deserve the protections of the Geneva Conventions, I also think that our own soldiers have to live up to their codes of honor and duty. It is the sense of honor and duty that is instilled in our soldiers that distinguishes them from their enemies. It is possible that bombing a funeral in this instance was due to a sense of military honor and that honor not political correctness ruled the day.
UPDATE: My comments to a post at CounterColumn have been taken to task by its author, Jason. He makes some valid points and as always they are worth reading.
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