GREEN on BLUE: Insider Attacks Rising
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12 August 2012
It will be difficult to keep even a small Special Forces footprint in Afghanistan with these increasingly effective insider attacks. And we do not hear a word of apology from Karzai. This whole affair is sad. Time to bring home our main battle force:
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Three United States Marines have been shot dead by an Afghan worker on a military base in southern Afghanistan, in a deadly 24 hours for Nato-led forces during which six American soldiers were killed in rogue attacks.
The shooting took place on Friday night in the Garmsir district of Helmand province, where three US special forces soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman and comrades earlier in the day.
"Let me clearly say that those two incidents clearly do not reflect the overall situation here in Afghanistan," the chief Nato force spokesman, Brigadier-General Gunter Katz, told reporters.
The three Marines were shot by a base employee who turned a gun on them, in the third rogue attack in four days. Foreign military sources said the man had not been wearing a uniform and it was unclear how he got hold of the weapon.
The gunman had been detained and a joint Afghan-Nato investigation team was reviewing security and looking into the reason for the attack.
In the earlier attack, an Afghan police commander and several of his men killed three US Marines in darkness early on Friday after inviting them to a Ramadan breakfast to discuss security.
The three men were all Marine Corps special operations forces and appeared to have been killed in a planned attack by rogue Afghan forces. Nato calls such incidents green on blue attacks.
The Nato force says there have been 26 such attacks on foreign troops since January in which 34 people have been killed. Last year, there were 21 attacks in which 35 people were killed.
But a coalition spokesman said the killings by the Afghan worker would not be included in that tally as it did not involve a member of the Afghan security forces.
Green on blue shootings, in which Afghan police or soldiers turn their guns on their Western colleagues, have seriously eroded trust between the allies as Nato combat soldiers prepare to hand over to Afghan forces by 2014, after which most foreign forces will leave the country.
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Comments
Russians would have erased entire villages in retaliation for these outrages. In fact, Russians did precisely that, during their own occupation of Afghanistan.
Those Muslims around the world who believe that the Taliban are fighting a righteous war against occupation should not rejoice over deaths of this kind.
It is an indicator of the professionalism of the US Armed Forces that so few retaliatory acts are perpetrated by American servicemen. And when it happens, we prosecute the offenders.
To do otherwise would offend our own principles and values. You should not confuse this with weakness. Indeed, it is an indicator of great strength. I hope, for your sake, that you do not provoke the anger of those of us that you characterize as the Great Satan. You see how bluster and impunity worked out for Saddam Hussein. He was hanged, and defiled. And not by us. But we did hunt him down like a sick dog, and we cornered him, hiding in a hole in the ground with a pistol that he failed to use. So much for an Arab warlord.
I marvel at Taliban who would celebrate the murder of guests who came to discuss plans to improve a local area. This is Muslim? This is Pashtun?
Soon, sooner than you realize, the Americans, and all other Westerners, will leave Afghanistan. We will leave you to your land, where you can live without electricity and clean water. You can wrestle with your opium farmers, and with the addictions that subsidizing opium to finance your war effort created. We will leave you to it.
And we will take our aid money with us. We have already spent too much on you. We have already permitted you to steal too much from us, to build too many palaces, to funnel too much of our money to banks in Dubai. You think that we are too stupid to know what you have done with our money? Know this: for us to crush your banks where our money has been secreted is a matter of a pen-stroke for us. I pray that Allah grants us the premise to freeze your accounts, and to seize those funds. You can go back to trading camels.
You will remain mired in the 7th century, as finally, the Americans will realize that attempting to help you and your country is a wasted effort.
We have problems of our own in our own lands. I just hope that Karzai does not come running to us for sanctuary after you evict him. Better that you catch him, and render Islamic justice upon him. Do not forget his brother, and other members of his family. They have a judgement day coming, as well.
God is indeed great, my brothers.
Relations between us could have been so different. But they are not. May Almighty Allah be merciful to you. Because we Americans may not be.
God knows how I got sadness when hear about these kind of attacks.
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