"Courageous Restraint"

Zhari, Kandahar-

Courageous Restraint.  One of the catchphrases that caught my ear.  Another Army euphemism?  More literal it seems.  One 1-502nd Battalion officer described it as the soldier's split second answering of, "Can you shoot, or should your shoot?"

(Spc. Whitehorse reacts to the sound of shots fired near Pierre Mohammed school.)

The solider is given the right to defend himself if he feels he's in danger, but the catch is, he could easily kill an innocent civilian if he goes on pure reaction.  A split second calculus of experience, reaction time and "courageous restraint" is required of a guy who might barely be 20 years old.  Whether he shoots or not could mean lives lost on either side. 

I believe most soldiers will tell you, they'd rather make a mistake by shooting to protect a buddy, rather than losing a buddy because they hesitated.  But in an area like Zahri, where U.S. forces get shot at daily and guys are on a permanent edge, imagine how easily a civilian can be mistaken for an insurgent.  It happened several times with the previous unit- vehicles that wouldn't stop in time at checkpoints, even after warnings, only to find the people wounded or killed were regular Afghans who just didn't stop quick enough or didn't understand. 

Out here in Sanjeray, a maze like city of thick mud walls, a Taliban tactic for the last two months was to lob grenades over the compound walls at U.S. soldiers patrolling by.  In some cases the Taliban paid children to do it.  Would a solider technically have the right to defend himself against a grenade attack?  Yes.  Should he?  No, a battalion officer said, explaining second and third order effects- i.e. killing a child would turn the whole neighborhood against them, it would be playing into the kind of anti-coalition campaign the Taliban was aiming for.

According to a recent McClatchy article, Gen. Petraeus has launched a PR offensive against Taliban killing of innocents.  It's been long known, "The Taliban have been able to win support and recruits by exploiting the accidental killing of civilians by U.S.-led troops — despite the findings by the United Nations and human rights organizations that insurgents are to blame for the vast majority of civilian casualties." The Taliban can win that PR game because they're closer to the population.

On the ground, 1st Battalion has been effective at tracking attackers using electronic signals and cameras, but they need two forms of Positiive Identification (PID) of a man holding weapons in order to shoot.  Part of that is to not make mistakes.

A few nights ago, a lieutenant told me his platoon was lying in the dark over watching a path insurgents travel through.  The lieutenant spotted a man with a long object over his shoulder.  It probably looked all the world like an RPG launcher.  He flicked his rifle to semi-auto, but at the last second realized the man was carrying a shovel and held back.  This to show how hard it is to distinguish a combatant from a night farmer.  The guy was only a few dozen meters away. 

"We shoot a bad guy, but graze a little kid in the leg, we've lost," said 1st Sgt. Bobadilla of Delta Co.