Not Enough Refugees? We Have a Solution!

Those who've been following events in Afghanistan may have noticed the partial walkback by the U.S. military of its claim that few civilians were killed by an American airstrike in August:

WASHINGTON - An investigation by the military has concluded that American airstrikes on Aug. 22 in a village in western Afghanistan killed far more civilians than American commanders there have acknowledged, according to two American military officials.

The military investigator's report found that more than 30 civilians - not 5 to 7 as the military has long insisted - died in the airstrikes against a suspected Taliban compound in Azizabad.

Even now, the military is about 60 below the number the Afghan and UN investigations concluded were killed.

Meanwhile Sarah Palin will continue to claim that Barack Obama hates the troops for asserting that the military is "air raiding villages and killing civilians," which is indisputably true, and lefty bloggers will continue to protest that Obama never said any such thing.

If he never said it, he should, because that is clearly what is happening.

I wonder sometimes what sense there is in a foreign policy that misdiagnoses threats to national security, sends the military to invade based on domestic political machinations, creating a regional humanitarian catastrophe, and then erects barrier upon barrier to resettlement of refugees from those conflicts, all the while claiming to be acting in the interest of said refugees and their families.

But the important thing is not to reexamine this strange approach to interaction with the outside world, it's to explain away civilian deaths caused by U.S. bombs.

General McKiernan told reporters in Washington last week that one of his "top challenges" was "to try to make sure we have the right measures in place to minimize the possibility of civilian casualties."

He said the American military was trying to work with the Afghan authorities to ensure that further allegations involving civilian casualties would be investigated jointly rather than separately.

In other words, there will be much less likelihood of future embarrassing claims from the Afghans if the U.S. can put a lid on investigations from the outset ...