I realize that facts are irrelevant to the McCain campaign's messaging at this point, but Sarah Palin's sustained criticisms of Obama as "irresponsible" for his remarks on Afghanistan betray a basic ignorance of how much of a liability civilian casualties are to the the mission there. For the record, Obama said:
We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.
The remark came at a time when an AP count showed that American soldiers had actually been responsible for the deaths of more civilians in Afghanistan than the insurgents they were fighting, something which was a cause for serious concern from Afghan President Hamid Karzai:
As of Aug. 1, the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can't be attributed to one party.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his concern about the civilian deaths during a meeting last week with President Bush.
Bush said he understands the agony that Afghans feel over the loss of innocent lives and that he is doing everything he can to protect them. He said the Taliban are using civilians as human shields and have no regard for their lives.
The idea that the legitimacy of our mission in Afghanistan is jeopardized by civilian casualties shouldn't be beyond the Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard of Alaska. Still, as I said before, this is irrelevant to the McCain campaign's current message, which is that Obama has questionable loyalties and therefore shouldn't be in charge of the armed forces. It isn't exactly ironic that Palin's argument actually puts her judgment of military matters in question, rather than Obama's.
--A. Serwer
