Home of the Brave?

Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians

By DAVE LINDORFF
CounterPunch

"Several years ago, I warned that as the Bush/Cheney administration sought to reduce politically problematic casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would resort to increased use of air attacks to combat the growing insurgency in Iraq and the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

I also predicted that the result of this switch in tactics would lead to higher civilian casualties in those two countries.

We're now seeing those results......

In both countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, the slaughter of civilians by US forces has been so outrageous that even their puppet leaders have been compelled to speak up, demanding that the US stop being so aggressive and indiscriminate......

What would one expect? The rank-and-file troops know that the war is lost in both countries, and that the American public doesn't support what they are doing anyhow, so who's going to want to die for that? You'd have to be a real chump to let yourself be killed just to provide political cover for a politically challenged president and vice president--especially a president and vice-president who famously ducked their own duty during the Vietnam War."