It's been almost a year since I left the AOR, and that sounds to me like a purposly restrictivr reading of the ROE's.
That's close to what they briefed us on except the times leaves out the whole second part which says roughly: "remember however, you can always defend yourself. if you're taking fire, return it and kill the folks shooting at you. PS don't blow up a mosque."
Offensive operations' rules are a lot more restrictive on what you can and can't blow up. They require much more restrictive PID, and more levels of approval for any buiding destruction.
Which actually makes a little sense. We are trying to get the civilians to like us, so making absolutly sure the folks we're killing are actually bad guys, and not folks in the wrong place at the wrong time is a good idea.
Now like I said it's been a little since I was there, so ROE's could have changed, but run down the list of things they list from an enemy propaganda perspective.
Buildings suspected of containing insurgents cannot be targeted unless it is certain that civilians are not also present.
Mess that one up, and the headline in Kabul is "US bombs Day Care, kills 45 children. Insurgent in the basement escapes"
Taliban fighters throwing down their weapons when they were out of ammunition and taunting coalition troops
US executes unarmed boy because he says: Yankee go Home!!"
walking in plain view with women behind them carrying their weapons like caddies
"US guns down young wife while unarmed husband watches in horror"
Now I'm a soldier, so if the civi leadership wants us to go turn Afghanistan into smoking rubble and leave it incapable of projecting terrorists past Pakistan, we can, and happily will do that. It'd be easier. But if you guys want us to leave a semi functioning country then we are going to have to leave folks there that
could be terrorists, so it'd be better if they liked us rather then hated us. The ROE's I saw were there to propigate that end.
