Bad news in Afghanistan - Updated

I did a longer post on this at DetNews yesterday, but I just want to also mention here that bombing runs killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan is not acceptable policy. The details are still sketchy and I've seen some suggestions in various comment sections that maybe this was some kind of trick by the Taliban to make it look like the US was responsible but I doubt if you can fake the destruction of aerial bomb. Even if that is true, it's not a good excuse. The Taliban's tactics are not new and should have been anticipated.

This appears to be part of the new strategy to take the fight to the poppy producing regions and as I said earlier, it's a bad plan. It will surely backfire and only turn the locals against us. As Karzai himself said in a recent speech, "force won't buy you obedience."

Update: Dan Froomkin has some related thoughts on civilian deaths.

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