Another accident in Iraq leads military commanders to conclude that knowing the enemy is important. I'm sure they thought that was important before but it seems they've had a rough go so far of getting that much needed understanding.
This difficulty in recognizing the enemy is critical in Iraq. It's causing a public relations nightmare and making it very difficult for the Bush administration to sell the war to the public. At the same time, it will be extremely difficult if not impossible for the military to ever get a firm grip on exactly who the enemy is.
In most of these situations, especially in the case of the story linked above, you have a young soldier, his life on the line, making a split second decision. Add in the fact that the friendlies and enemies are all wearing the same clothes and they all look alike, and you're bound to have a few mistakes. But these mistakes are causing us to lose the PR war.
In my humble opinion, there is no way that the military can maintain a high visibility presence and not have these mistakes. You can give the soldiers all of the cultural sensitivity classes you want but it's not going to help prevent every accident. And even one accident in this Iraq media frenzy is deadly.
The administration and the military must make a choice. Do they want to keep up the large presence at the cost of a few mistakes or scale back operations to appease the public?
Very well said, most of the public will not or will refuse to understand this way of thinking. I applaud you.
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