{"id":14207,"date":"2009-09-08T13:47:21","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T18:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=14207"},"modified":"2009-09-08T13:47:21","modified_gmt":"2009-09-08T18:47:21","slug":"a-rock-and-a-hard-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=14207","title":{"rendered":"A Rock and a Hard Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

In talking to Jonn and others in the secret cabal last week, there was a ton of discussion about this:<\/a><\/p>\n

KABUL (AP) – A Swedish charity has accused American troops of storming through a hospital in Afghanistan, breaking down doors and tying up staff. The U.S. military says it is investigating.<\/p>\n

The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan accuses the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division of entering the hospital without permission in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul.<\/p>\n

The charity’s country director, Anders Fange, says the troops kicked in doors and tied up four hospital employees and two family members of patients last week. He says the troops actions are a violation of the sanctity of medical facilities in combat zones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I kind of knew what was really going on, and so the word from the US side <\/a>didn’t surprise me:<\/p>\n

A U.S. military spokesman and a senior adviser to the Army’s 10th Mountain Division are now pushing back against claims made by a Swedish charity group that its soldiers rampaged through a hospital in Wardak province, Afghanistan while searching for insurgents.<\/p>\n

A senior spokesman for Central Command (CENTCOM) Captain Jack Hanzlik said the Army did enter the hospital, but did so in cooperation with the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police, and the staff of the hospital.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only reason I am weighing in is that I have been to that hospital, or rather, been outside it. Back in late 2004 I was part of a group that went to meet a woman who was involved with the Hospital. I don’t even remember what we were doing there, it was outside my lane. But, the CO and I and a few others went to talk to this woman. Only we had to go through a local elder to get to her, and when we showed up she was pissed, and waved us on. We would later meet her down the road.<\/p>\n

On the night of the Presidential election that year a poll worker in Wardak got hit. I remember him being stable, but we took him part of the way to that hospital, and then, we had to take him out of the humvee and transfer him to the back of a civilian truck and let the ANP take him in. If he’d have shown up in a US vehicle the guy wouldn’t have made it through the night, and we would have put the doctors in danger.<\/p>\n

I am always suspicious of NGO’s in general, and the Swedes in particular. They do good things, no doubt. I believe it was also the Swedes who built a school in Srpski Brod when I was in Bosnia. They built this incredible school, they had a big opening, and it was burned and destroyed the next day. But the Swedes also have a tolerance for these savages that drives me nuts. Not as bad as that Norwegian clown Mads Gilbert<\/a>, but also not angels.<\/p>\n

I empathize with the doctors etc there. Imagine you are a doctor there and you let Americans come strolling in one day. You deal with them civally, don’t give up any doctor\/patient info and the Americans leave. What solace would that give when the Talis show up the next day looking to wack anyone that dealt with them? It does little good to have a hospital when you know that horrible men will come and kill your patients if they even suspect you are working with the Americans.<\/p>\n

There probably have been some Talis who got treatment there that my Battalion helped to ventilate. Damn good chance. And believe me, I hope those sonsabitches got the shittiest treatment imagineable. But I am not sure in this specific case what could have been done differently. Everyone plays a part, and it’s all a big dance. I believe that the American troops did what they had to do. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand why the hospital did what they did. I do understand. There’s going to be a shitstorm raging on this no matter what happens.<\/p>\n

It seems sometimes that the only thing worse than being a combatant in Afghanistan is being a non-combatant. The reality is that US troops can’t protect the hospital. Wardak is the size of Rhode Island, and they have like a battalion of US troops there. If we protect it, it becomes a target. If we don’t, then I can’t see what they can do other than claim that the US did horrific stuff, and keep their street cred as a non-partial place.<\/p>\n

Love for someone to tell me how this could be handled differently, but it just seems lose-lose to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In talking to Jonn and others in the secret cabal last week, there was a ton … A Rock and a Hard Place<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}