The United States of America pours billions of dollars each year into military spending. They have one of the most comprehensively equipped armed forces in the world with state of the art military equipment for each arm of the service. If you are in the navy you could be on an aircraft carrier or a submarine that's powered by its own nuclear power plant. If you are in the army or the marines you have at your disposal all the most sophisticated means of either defending yourself or killing others.
The air force claims that it can drop a bomb down somebody's chimney from a thousand feet in the air and has smart bombs that can be programmed to go where you want them to a good percentage of the time. They even have planes that can sneak up on people called stealth bombers because they can elude detection by radar.
It's really quite amazing what money can buy these days when it comes to military hardware, isn't it? It's just too bad so little of that money gets spent on training the troops in how to fight a war. Even kids playing with toy soldiers know that in a war the object is to kill more of the enemy's soldiers than he kills of your soldiers. At the end of the battle, the side with the most soldiers left alive usually wins.
Now I'm not a military strategist and I didn't go to a military academy, so maybe I'm unaware of some of the finer points of tactics. But it would seem to me that killing your allies and reducing their combat effectiveness would be counterproductive to achieving the goal of having the most soldiers left standing at the end of a battle.
For the second time since the beginning of the Afghanistan conflict, Canadian troops suffered injuries and fatalities from American aircraft either bombing or strafing their positions. On Tuesday, September 5, an American A-10 Thunderbolt strafed Canadian troops using its Avenger gun. Firing bullets the size of pop cans, the pilot instantly killed one soldier, former Olympian Private Mark Anthony Graham, and wounded over thirty others, five seriously enough to be evacuated out of the country for treatment.
Article comments
1 - Jared Wright
I'm a little disappointed in how quickly people, this article's author included, are willing to come just short of implying that this incident was intentional. No enhancement of technology can eliminate human error. I'm sure it's something that the American troops that were involved are quite distraught over, and making a mockery of their collective military's skill is simply an irresponsible and unjust reaction. Do you think the men who died would want to find that their death opened the floodgates for more tension between people that are supposedly on the same side? Somehow I doubt it. The accident is unfortunate enough. We don't need folks like Mr. Marcus fanning the flames.
2 - Deano
Blue-on-blue or friendly fire is, unfortunately, a not unexpected byproduct of any war.
While this is basically the nature of the beast, it is also understandable that many Canadians may view this incident with a jaundiced eye. The previous friendly fire incident that resulted in 4 Canadian dead was one that was blatently preventable and was a byproduct of an overeager, overly aggressive pilot who wanted to "get his digs in" and violated procedure in order to get off a shot. This incident and the court martial aftermath severely damaged US military credibility in many Canadian's eyes.
Richard's article, while I believe it overstates the intent and doesn't significantly take into account the genuine "fog of war" that exists on the battlefield, does highlight some of the thoughts and feelings now prevelant. With Canadian casualties in Afghanistan mounting weekly, this new incident (again with some serious procedural questions arising on who, if anyone, called for the close air support from the warthog) is an unsettling reminder of the previous incident. It will renew calls for a serious examination of the Canadian military's involvement in Afghanistan.
There is a sense, however unjustified it might be, that the US is careless and heedless with its allies and too quick with its firepower.