Joshua Foust reads a guest post at Tom Ricks' blog from former Gen. David Petraeus adviser Paula Broadwell recounting the destruction of an Afghan village and is horrified (go to Foust's blog for the pictures, which are really breathtaking):
What baffles me is, why the hell is Broadwell so pleased with this? Will she ever write a follow up post about where these villagers will be able to live while they wait for the magnanimous soldiers to rebuild the town they erased? The callousness of this account is, literally, breathtaking: if soldiers are razing entire villages to avoid a few IEDs and to preserve their momentum, that should be triggering even token expressions of regret or even concern. Instead, it prompts her to mock the Afghans for complaining about it… as well they should. Those soldiers will be damned lucky if they escape their deployment without any suicide bombs or nasty IED incidents. Because they have certainly earned the fatal, burning wrath of every single Afghan living nearby.
I cannot comprehend why the deliberate destruction of villages seems to be an official, sanctioned ISAF policy in the South. Is is abhorrent, an atrocity, and there is no excuse for it (nor are there words for the anger it's stirred in me, reading about it from afar; I suspect Broadwell would sniff at me to stop whining as well, were we to discuss it in person). This should outrage and infuriate everyone who reads about it. But, and this is where I move from rage to despair: how could we ever possibly hope to stop it?
It's one thing for National Review or the Weekly Standard to write about war as though American bombs explode into rainbows and sunshine and that rose petals bloom from the impact of every bullet shot from an ISAF rifle. What's disturbing is that Broadwell's post comes from someone who has advised at the highest levels of military leadership, and she seems utterly mystified by the possibility that Afghans might not appreciate all the effort the U.S. military put into razing their homes, accusing one resident of going into a "fit of theatrics" after his home was destroyed. Imagine someone being angry about that!
Remember this CBS poll asking Americans if violence against the government would ever be justified? Imagine it being taken after the government came into your neighborhood and destroyed it, before promising they'd fix everything eventually.
