Word: air
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...deaths in uniform are the easy ones to count: they do not encompass the thousands of Afghan villagers who have been killed by the Taliban or by errant coalition actions. Last year alone, 828 civilians were killed by U.S., allied or Afghan troops, 552 of them in air strikes. (See pictures of the U.S. Marines new offensive in Afghanistan...
...ISAF forces reinforcing the point: "We will not win based on the number of Taliban we kill," McChrystal wrote, "but instead on our ability to separate insurgents from the people." To that end, the directive explicitly enjoined force leaders "to scrutinize and limit the use of force like close air support against residential compounds and other locations likely to produce civilian casualties." In truth, the new policy was already being applied: on July 2, nearly 4,000 Marines and 650 Afghan troops stormed into Helmand province in southern Afghanistan aboard helicopters and armored vehicles. But within hours, the Marines issued...
Unshocked, Unawed The new strategy, with its limits on actions that risk civilian casualties, represents a sea change in U.S. military doctrine. It was only six years ago that Air Force General Richard Myers, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted that a shock-and-awe strategy would bomb Saddam Hussein's Iraq into submission. That - and the tech-heavy force that then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent into Iraq to stumble and falter for four years - hewed to the American way of war, one that was equal parts laser beams and hubris. But the military has rethought...
...general. After graduating from West Point in 1976 - 31 years after his father - McChrystal climbed the Army ladder. He's seen some tragedies. In 1994, McChrystal was a lieutenant colonel with the 82nd Airborne Division when a flaming F-16 jet plowed into a parked C-141 at Pope Air Force Base. The cargo plane's 55,000 gallons of jet fuel erupted into a massive fireball, killing 18 of McChrystal's troops as they prepared for parachute jumps on a sunny North Carolina afternoon. (See pictures of the U.S. Army Reserve...
Success is by no means assured. McChrystal's order to keep Afghan civilian casualties low, for example, may be politically savvy, but in the short term it can be militarily fraught. Before the Helmand offensive began, U.S. troops called in an air strike on a compound after coming under fire from it. A number of civilians died, and McChrystal was not pleased. "I want you all to stop dropping compounds," he quietly told the 100 members of his staff gathered inside his command center and others linked via video. "Yes, sir," responded the commander involved. Three days later, when troops...