Gosh! It’s seems as though some people in the American Military have become casualties as a result of friendly fire. Shall we call off the war? Is our entire military structure screwed up?
By the fashion that news peeps are protraying this as a giant news-worthy phenom you’d think that wars are pretty tidy. Sorry, but dropping big-ass bombs within 100 meters of friendlies is always going to be dangerous.
An approximate opener from FoxNews speaking to a retired general staff member:
“So, General, what went wrong?”
WTF!? It’s war. A bad thing happened. It just happened in a bigger area than we intended. As an infantry Captain friend of mine put it, “Hot steel knows no friends.”
Why does the media want to protray war as so bloodless? It’s a nasty business that revolts any sane person. And yet the media grab onto any example of nastiness in a conflict. The road from Basra rings a familiar bell. Those Iraqi troops were retreating! That’s a military operation! You want to give up? Put up your hands and walk the other direction and you probably won’t get shot.
We are in a war. We are trying hard to win it. There are more than a few political aspects to this war that make a neat, tidy outcome difficult at best. But in the field there are going to be people dying on both sides no matter what. The fact that some casualties will be caused by friendly fire doesn’t diminish the effort made our troops. It’s part of the bargain. And the way that our armed forces fight, a minimal part.
Why can’t the media, in all their ignorance, realize just a bit of that?
Yeah, i thought it was kinda funny too. Oh my god, we lost some soldiers in a war. No one expected that!
Really, i think America was starting to feel invincible again, because they made such a big deal out of some soldiers dying. What about all the Vietnam soldiers? Where’s their media coverage?
The media know about the Mogadishu Factor. The US public doesn’t want lives lost. By playing this tragedy up, and sensationalising it, the media get more ratings from moms and dads who remember Mogadishu and despair of body counts.
**"I’m sorry that 3 of our guys got it.I served with the Fifth SF for a while and the loss of these guys hits home, but this is War and Shit happens in War. Soldiers walk into combat and some don’t walk home. It’s always been that way and it will always be that way.
My point is, why conduct an investigation and affix blame? All that will happen will be that the AF will tighten their policies and when the grunts need their support “Danger Close” the AF will waffle and not drop their shit where our guys need it.
This loss was fucking unfortunate, but not having the AF punch when you need it will be even more unfortunate. Have the memorial service, give a flag to the next of kin and bomb the crap out of those raghead goat fuckers." **
Also, you have to remember that media outlets like to harp on something that’s “new” to drive up ratings. Remember when “it” was first released? There were dozens of news stories about a stinking scooter. Why? Because it was “new”.
News outlets haven’t been able to talk about our men and women getting hurt in combat for a long time. Some editor must’ve had an orgasm when he heard about deaths (who cares if it was from friendly fire, someone died!).
Call me jaded, but the television industry only cares about ratings.
I’m sorry, but I’m not exactly sure what your point is.
Are you arguing that the news media shouldn’t have reported on the deaths of American military personnel? I believe that these are the first combat fatalities of uniformed American troops in Afghanistan. That makes it by definition newsworthy. Surely you don’t think these deaths are unimportant?
Or are you arguing that there’s too much emphasis on the “friendly fire” aspect? Well, the casualties were a result of friendly fire. And the military certainly does want to minimise friendly fire casualties. And they will, and should re-examine every friendly fire incident to determine if such an event could be avoided in the future, regardless of any media interest, or lack thereof. And, I imagine, the general public will be curious about how the military responds to this issue. So would you prefer that the media simply state that the casualties were a result of friendly fire, and leave people wondering about the more detailed information?
I think part of what makes the OP confusing to me are the little bits at the end. For example, you say. “Why does the media want to protray war as so bloodless? …And yet the media grab onto any example of nastiness in a conflict.” First, these two statements appear mutually contradictory to me. Second, regardless of the contradiction, I’m not sure how they realate to the main thrust of the OP. Is reporting on American casualties an “example of nastiness”? How so?
In addition, the second-to-last paragraph contains a series of truisms. No argument from me at all. But the concluding statement is, “Why can’t the media, in all their ignorance, realize just a bit of that?”, implying that the news media, in general, don’t understand any of the previous statements. I’m not a big fan of the news media, but this seems blatantly unfair. How does reporting on a friendly fire story indicate ignorance on such a grand scale? How does such reporting indicate ignorance of even one of these statements?
Well, they do it in such a big way to make it seem as if they thought none or our soldiers were going to die. Yes, it is unfortunate, but it was bound to happen. If you were suprised by this, then you are ignorant.
It’s kinda odd though, our only losses in the Gulf War were from friendly fire, i think.
Some of our losses were from enemy fire in the Gulf, but I believe more than half of the combat deaths were friendly-fire incidents. I don’t know for certain though.
I find it very frustrating to hear the friendly-fire deaths of US soldiers seemingly waved off with the canard “it’s war, and shit happens in war.”
Well, yeah, it’s war. And shit happens in war. As zut ably put it, the goal is no US deaths. Obviously that’s unrealistic, but any deaths attributable to friendly fire must be examined thoroughly, and immediately.
There was a fuckup. People died as a result of that fuckup. And we’d for damn sure better figure out what caused that fuckup and do everything possible to ensure it does not happen again.
If it makes you feel any better, andros, I know firsthand that the military does consider reducing friendly fire accidents to be a major point in new weapons and CC (command and control) systems. I’ve worked on various military system software projects, and all the promotional literature I’ve seen always play up how such-and-such will reduce battlefield confusion, help friend-or-foe identification, and reduce friendly fire mistakes.
Yeah, sh*t happens in war, and nobody likes it, but the military doesn’t completely brush it off, thank goodness.
Reading this thread reminded me of a story one of my high school teachers told me about his experiences in Vietnam. He and another soldier were cut-off by a large group of VC and had to call for an airstrike in order for them to get out of there. After they radioed it in, they looked at one another and realized that they were in the target zone. So the other soldier layed down covering fire while my teacher did his best to get out of there before the jets showed up. He made it, but the other soldier didn’t, and his death could be counted as a “friendly fire” accident. So these guys who got killed may have been in a similar situation. They had to call in an airstrike, even though it put their own lives at risk because they knew that if they didn’t they’d all be dead.
My principal was in Vietnam. The guys in his squad who were at point got killed by friendly fire.
It is sad, and it may be a fuckup, but it’s only natural that things will happen when you have big bombs exploding so close to US troops. Alot of Alliance members died, too. I think we should also respect them, or at least the media should.
Forgive me if I’m overstepping my bounds here, but I think the OP was complaining about the media’s style of treating the friendly fire incidents. The impression I got from the coverage I saw was somewhat gleeful. May be it’s because they could hardly contain their giggling that they had a piece of real news to report, but the tone didn’t seem appropriate.
