Battleland

Sometimes Tough Telling Friend-from-Foe In Current U.S. Wars

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Karzai / Wiki

Gaddafi / Wiki

The Pentagon has long had troubles developing an IFF system — a sophisticated electronics box aboard an aircraft that tells the pilot if the blip on her heads-up display represents a friend or foe many miles away (IFF stands for identification friend or foe). Now it seems to be having the same challenge in the wars it’s fighting: it’s telling foe Muammar Gaddafi the bombs will continue to rain down upon his head, while telling friend Hamid Karzai bombs will continue to rain down on dwellings believed to house Taliban insurgents despite his demand that such strikes stop.

The U.S. and its NATO allies have decided that the whatever-it-is they’re doing over Libya is going to continue for a second three-month period beyond June 27. What had been envisioned as a short-term operation is now projected to last half a year. Further east, in Afghanistan, NATO reacted coolly to President Hamid Karzai’s demand for a halt in air strikes against homes — strikes that keep on killing innocent women and children.

“From this moment,” Karzai told reporters Tuesday in Kabul, “air strikes on the houses of people are not allowed.” Not so fast, NATO countered. “When the insurgents use civilians as a shield and put our forces in a position where their only option is to use air strikes,” Maj. Sunset Belinsky told the AP, “then they will take that option.”

In Brussels, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the agreement to extend the mission “sends a clear message to the Gaddafi regime: We are determined to continue our operation to protect the people of Libya…we will keep up the pressure to see it through.”

The Libyan extension is troubling: there are two basic ways of fighting: brutal and short, or measured and long, and the allies persist in following the latter course, going so far as to repeatedly declare that Gaddafi is not a target of the attacks. That’s choosing futility over utility, and makes scant sense. If that’s the price of admission to waging war alongside our European and Arab allies, maybe we should decline next time.

The Afghan spat is more serious. While the U.S. and its allies are waging war there under a UN mandate — and may not be subject to Karzai’s orders — it’s not politically palatable to try to support his corrupt government while simultaneously ignoring his pleas for restraint.

It puts the U.S. military in a tough position: if it accedes to Karzai’s call to halt the bombings, it could strengthen his standing among his people, which might be a good thing. But if it accedes to Karzai’s call to halt the bombings, it also could imperil U.S. troops. For a U.S. President, it’s not a close call: the bombings will continue, as warranted.