Two predictions:
1. This is going to be the explanation for decades among the pro-military types for why civilians prevented us from winning Afghanistan.
2. You’re going hear it first from the Republicans, explaining how the Democrats lost the war.
History of Afghanistan: need not apply to this argument.
I think you’re right. Here’s the quote that will be repeated every time a soldier is killed:
“We have not found a single situation where a soldier has lost his life because he was not allowed to protect himself,” one of the officials said.
My question is this: if this is our strategy, why release it to the media? Haven’t we now basically instructed the insurgents to setup camp in obviously civilian locations in order to protect themselves from retaliation? And if that’s true, isn’t our policy putting more civilians at risk rather than less?
You’re dealing with a population that is deeply separated from the information appearing in the US media. I’m sure that Taliban leaders can get this information, the average insurgent in Kandahar doesn’t have Google. I’m also assuming that this information traveled along the Afghani grapevine far sooner than it appeared to us.
Besides, the point of this policy is to avoid killing civilians, which in turn has a military objective if it encourages the civilians to stop supporting the insurgency. Hearts & Minds 2010. So you do want this to be publicly known as our intention, but the actual impact will be from the change in civilian death rates, if any.