The SODDIT Defense

When I was a kid my sister used to goad my brother and me into fighting and then stood by as some sort of Little Miss Bluebell, smiling innocently, when he and I got into trouble for fighting. Her hands were palms forward at shoulder level, and her halo all nicely polished as the parent was asking how the fight started.

For quite a long time we have been dodging any responsibility for civilian causalities in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in part by re-labeling those casualities as “collateral damage,” and in part by blaming the insurgents for using them as “human shields.” Of course when the insurgents went behind these “human shields” we could have, maybe, withheld firing upon them? Evidently not. Withholding fire in such circumstances was not done when we defeated Hitler, you know.

That was a different time and a different war; a different kind of war. This is a counterinsurgency, where we are supposed to be winning the hearts and minds of the population. You do not do that by killing them and labeling the bodies “collateral damage.”

Then we added the American way out, we pay money to the survivors.

Now we have the “SODDIT” defense. “Some Other Dude Did It.” We actually blame the enemy for the deaths that the Afghan civilians are angry at us for inflicting. Robert Gates, who heretofore has been rather decent about standing up and accepting responsibility, is now claiming that the Taliban throws hand grenades into houses and kills civilians, and then calls airstrikes down on those houses so it will look like we caused the deaths.

I don’t imagine that the Taliban are any kind of military geniuses but, aside from the question of how the Taliban is calling in American airstrikes, just how stupid are they? That purported plan is so full of potential blowback that only a complete moron would employ it. Even if they are employing it, for us to make that claim in the form of supposition, without displaying absolute proof that it is factual, is sheer idiocy.

And then Gates goes on the say that civilian deaths are down 40% while American military deaths are up 75%. News flash Mr. Gates. The Afghan people don’t care about American military deaths, and they don’t want civilian deaths to drop incrementally.

They want us to stop killing Afghan civilians; just stop.