Canadians in Kandahar fire shots in self-defence

[the 48th regulator]

The troop did a Fantastic job.   And if he had hit and killed the driver, well job still accomplished.

I would rather be judged by twelve than to be carried by six, was a term I heard from a Sgt. in 1RCR, during my pretraining;

"Warning shots?   Fire two in the centre of   mass like you were trained to do, that will warn the other not to *uck around with you!"

Were the finishing remarks when we were done discussing the ROE we would be receiving.

Either way, job well done.  

dileas

tess

 

[bubba]

Troops do your job and come  home if the shit hits the fan GIVE'R.The soldiers followed there roes,that's the end of that story.I don't understand the racist comment,but then again i don't care.P-free can't be right in the head so dude stay under your rock,smokin dubs and watchen for fallin spaceships.Franko keep one in the pipe an watch your 6.

 

[Mineguy]

Its funny looking at p freely respnses. I wonder is he ms parish in desguise ???? Looking back I can remember teaching generic bosnia type challenging procedures   to the troops on order from the ssm after some weaknesses were observed in the field by some individuals in the unit before the   2nd afghan appollo rotation in 2002 was supposed to stand up for training to begin. I can remember teaching exactly as you guys have just said it when its up to you to decide what youre gonna do and not get intertwined with the page long roe on your butt or all the what ifs and a senior corporal in front of the troops and later behind my back getting quite the kick out of the shoot first ( if youre escalating to using self defence in the flash of the moment type deal) and come home alive. This guy in front of all the impressionalble ptes thought making the call like these guys just did here was too aggressive and a little trigger happy and like we shouldnt be doing those things or somthing ridiculous like that even in a volitile place like afghan. Some of these people im sure cant see that when dealing with possible islamic terrorists types in the theatre who are planning on not surviving the day anyhow If you know youre right or are unsure you just need follow the roe drills like happened here with this job well done. I certinly hope people like that have wised up and dont think this is a standard day in sfor that is going on now in afghan. I have no idea if p freely is in the forces but he sure fits that catagory!..Im glad the boys are not afriad to use their weapons like this when theyre in the right and im glad people like gen hillier have said what they said recently. As soon as somebody shoots somebody and is 100% in the right i cant wait to see how the ms parrish typre reeducated society responds.

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

P-Free you might want to consider a change is career plans. Your mindset will get your people with you killed.

 

[Franko]

Ex-Dragoon,

He'll figure it out if and when he gets here and finally realises that there are actually people here who would gladly kill him....

.....just because he is from the West.

They don't care about what colour or religion you are...just a westerner...from Canada. Another infidel to extinguish his/ her life.

Wonder what colour the sky is in his little spaceship......    :

Regards

 

[48Highlander]

You guys are still missing the point...

What I found disturbing, and probably what p-free is commenting on as well, is the attitude that, guilty or innocent, they should have killed the guy anyway.  Frankly, I find it difficult to beleive there are people like that serving in the CF.  I've always attempted to explain to the peacenicks the way escalation of force works, and that we try to use deadly force as a last resort.  For some of you though, that certainly doesn't appear to be the case.  It's not a pleasant feeling knowing that, in addition to worrying about the enemy, I might have to worry about the guys beside me blasting away randomly at innocent civilians.

And fuck off with the "there are people here who will kill you just 'cos you're from the west".  All of us are quite aware of that, thanks.  It still doesn't give you the right to kill civilians.  You follow your ROE's, and you exercise some common sense, you DO NOT shoot a guy in the head just because you think he MIGHT be a threat - at least not untill you've tried other methods to eliminate any possible threat.  The gunner in this case did the exact right thing.  If he had intentionally shot the driver instead, we'd be seing much different media coverage for one thing, and depending on the exact ROE's I wouldn't be surprised if he were facing a court martial.

 

[Britney Spears]

Now, I'm not disagreeing with any of you here, and as far as I can tell, the man behind the gun did the right thing, and I've no reason to doubt him,  but let's not get too carried away with the hand holding/@ss-grabbing and lose track of the mission, shall we? If our sole purpose was to stay alive, we should all just stay home.

The CDS has already outlined our reasons for being there, and ultimately it is for the benefit of Afghanistan and the Aghan people; They and their security and livelyhoods are the bottom line.  He also warned us that we're probably not going to come out of this unscathed every single time (as if there was any need to). That's what makes us the good guys, right?

I know this seems blindingly obvious to most of us, but there are civillian readers here, too. I'd hate for them to get the wrong impression, as one of the less worldy posters here already has.

 

[Armymedic]

I'm going to side with 48H on this one.

The veh is the threat, disable it, and the threat is gone There was a preception of deadly threat, they used deadly force to neutralize it without killing. Job done...

Since culture has been thrown in, one small point that people forget is that Pashtuns are huge on honour and revenge. You kill a member of the family, the entire family will work to avenge the death. By killing one innocent man, we (the greater Coalition we) may have just ostracized a whole region against us.

Its easy to sit here in Canada and say, yeah lets light him up...but there (not just Afghanistan)...and a good portion of you have been there....is not so easy to apply the ROE's while looking thru the sight at another human being.

And as Britney points out...there are civilian who are not familiar with ROE's and the "proper" escalation of deadly force to know what we are talking about.

And P-free, I understand where your coming from, but that was out of line. Proper application of the ROE's has no basis in race. Canadian soldiers have put fire into Bosnians, Somali's, Rwandans, and Afghans, all in the proper application of their ROE's as trained. I am as unbiased as they come, and If I were there in that situation, I may have had him lit up, if not done it myself.

For the rest, he is a one of the civilians BS and I are referring to, so cut him some slack

 

[Franko]

48Highlander,

The guy was obviously up to something and the "guy in the breach" did the right thing...no arguing there. He applied the ROEs properly and the driver is alive and well...mind you his pants are a shade of poo I would think.

I know what I would do....and I'm in Kabul not home, so let's leave it at that. I'm sure there are plenty of troops on this 'grate' site that have been here on previous Rotos that share my thoughts on this matter.

As for the "It still doesn't give you the right to kill civilians." you are quite correct and we don't. The ROEs prevent us from doing so and everyone here knows that.

As for the whole "kill the westerner" thing...you missed the point of my comment towards P-Free. His comments were quite out of his lane and out to lunch and you know it.   :

Everyone is allowed their POV on a subject...and there are lots on this one. Some I agree with, some I don't.

As far as I'm concerned...if you aren't or have been here facing the threats here on a daily basis....

...you don't have a foot to stand on concerning the applicaton of ROEs.

'Nuff said.

Regards

 

[McG]

This thread has fallen appart.  None of us were on the ground with the soldier, and while many of us may have been exposed to generic ROEs (or ROEs from another mission) there are few here that will have been trained in the ROEs for his mission (which we should not confuse with any other current mission in that country).  So, without delving into SECRET material and concocting our imaginary re-enactment, there is nothing of value that can be gained by continuing this mud-slinging contest.

Thread closed.