Well, as details come pouring out about the latest “accident” involving United States planes mistakenly bombing civilians in Afghanistan, it seems that we have a couple things afoot:
1. Please, please! Don’t read the first reports that come out about ANYTHING overseas at this point. The articles with so-called confirmations of 250 dead at a wedding, etc. seem grossly overstated.
2. Even with all of our technological advances, smart-bombs, and other devices, we still have human error and spur of the moment judgements being made. Of course, this ends up being our downfall in some circles, but in reality, it just brings us back down to earth with the rest of the world.
I think the problem with incidents like this is that they get minimized with the standing line of “there’s a war going on over there, and these things happen.” which is just bullsh-t. Let’s be realistic here. Towns or villages as a whole are being blown up. Not once or twice, though. This is quite a few times. I’m so surprised that Karzai and the new Afghan regime hasn’t kicked us out of their country yet for these “slip ups”.
I understand that it seemed that our pilots were in danger, shots had been fired into the air in celebration or something, depending on where you read or who you ask, but there comes a point where we have to realize these things are happening more often than not. And they *will* be publicized in a big way, because the newshounds like myself in the U.S. aren’t getting any scoop on finding Osama or destroying al-Qaeda cells or whatever, so whenever there’s a mess up, it makes front page news on the Times.
Fodder for this article here via MSNBC