Rules Of Engagement

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Yesterday four US Marines were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan.  Today we have this from an inbed:

'We're pinned down:' 4 U.S. Marines die in Afghan ambush

GANJGAL, Afghanistan � We walked into a trap, a killing zone of
relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in
the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and
children were replenishing their ammunition.

"We will do to you what we did to the Russians," the insurgent's leader
boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to
capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.

Dashing
from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone
walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than
an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that
air cover would be five minutes away.

U.S.
commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected
repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the
slopes and tree lines � despite being told repeatedly that they weren't
near the village.

"We are pinned down. We are running low on
ammo. We have no air. We've lost today," Marine Maj. Kevin Williams,
37, said through his translator to his Afghan counterpart, responding
to the latter's repeated demands for helicopters.

Four U.S.
Marines were killed Tuesday, the most U.S. service members assigned as
trainers to the Afghan National Army to be lost in a single incident
since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Eight Afghan troops and police and
the Marine commander's Afghan interpreter also died in the ambush and
the subsequent battle that raged from dawn until 2 p.m. around this
remote hamlet in eastern Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border.

The lesson the war supporters have learned from all of this is that the Rules Of Engagement suck.  This from Landay's report contains  the real lesson:

Several U.S. officers said they suspected that the insurgents had
been tipped off by sympathizers in the local Afghan security forces or
by the village elders, who announced over the weekend that they were
accepting the authority of the local government.

"Whatever we do
always leaks," said Marine Lt. Ademola Fabayo, 28, a New Yorker who was
born in Nigeria and is the operations officer for the trainers from the
3rd Marine Division. "You can't trust even some of their soldiers or
officers."

Sniper rounds snapped off rocks and sizzled overhead.
Explosions of recoilless rifle rounds echoed through the valley, while
bullets inched closer to the rock wall behind which I crouched with a
handful U.S. and Afghan officers.

Lt. Fabayo and several other
soldiers later said they'd seen women and children in the village
shuttling ammunition to fighters positioned in windows and roofs.
Across the valley and from their ridgeline outposts, the Afghans and
Americans fired back.

For the few who still remember Vietnam this should sound very familiar.  Once you got out of the major cities in Vietnam the war wasn't about communism VS western capitalism it was about occupation by foreign troops.  They supported the Viet Cong because they saw them as freedom fighters. 

The lesson should be that we are in another quagmire - fighting another war that can't be won without killing most of the population.