A rchive Date
[ 26-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/worthington.html
A sorry history of 'friendly fire'
Too often, Americans shoot first ... and sort out the bodies afterward
By PETER WORTHINGTON - Toronto Sun
Testimony at the military hearings of the two U.S. pilots charged in the accidental bombing deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan stresses that "friendly fire" casualties are a hazard of war.
While true of any military, it's more true of the U.S. military, which verges on being blase about friendly fire casualties.
Being hit by accident by your own side is every soldier's nightmare, and military training concentrates on reducing this risk. ("Supposedly," one is tempted to add.)
Canada has been on somewhat of an emotional jag over the incident during a nighttime, live-ammunition training exercise last April in which four soldiers were killed and eight others wounded - much more, I suspect, than if the four had been killed by enemy fire.
Passions released by this tragedy have a vaguely anti-American tone - not from soldiers or their kin, but from those I'd classify as CBC or "peace-at-any-price" types.
The charges against top-gun F-16 pilot Maj. Harry Schmidt and his nominal flight boss, Maj. Bill Umbach, are mostly to placate Canadian sensitivities. The hearing is unlikely to prevent similar "friendly fire" incidents in the future.
While American casualties have been light in Afghanistan, roughly 30% have been from friendly fire.
The U.S. "friendly fire" record is abysmal. And frightening - to our side. In the Gulf war, officially, there were 147 American battle deaths - 35 of them by friendly fire. That's close to 24%. Of 467 Americans wounded, 72 were by friendly fire. In one case, a U.S. A-10 Thunderbolt attacked a British armoured unit, killing nine, wounding 12. Sound familiar? There were 28 friendly fire incidents in the 100-hour Gulf war - 16 by ground forces (24 dead, 57 wounded), nine by aircraft (11 dead, 15 wounded) and one where a U.S. ship shot up another ship (no casualties). Not reassuring.
'Training accidents'
Of 320 American casualties in the 1989 invasion of Panama, many who were killed by friendly fire were listed as "training accidents." In the 1983 invasion of Grenada (no media in attendance), nearly 50% of 112 U.S. casualties were from their own fire.
The Friendly Fire Research Forum, part of the American War Library, figures 21% of American casualties in World War II were from friendly fire; in the Korean war, 18%; in Vietnam, 39%. Those are staggering statistics.
Arguably, the most appalling friendly fire incident in WW II was in 1943 over Sicily, when 23 planes loaded with the U.S. 82nd Airborne were mistaken for German bombers. All were shot down, killing 410 paratroopers.
The American military tends to view friendly fire casualties rather as smokers regard their addiction - they know they risk death, but are willing to take the chance.
Rarely is there punishment in friendly fire cases, and rarely are the circumstances that create them corrected. That's likely to be the result with Schmidt and Umbach, whose military careers are kaput; scapegoats to diplomatic expediency. Had their victims been fellow Americans or Afghans, they'd likely still be flying.
Perhaps the first famous victim of American friendly fire was the Confederate general "Stonewall" Jackson, killed at Chancellorsville in the U.S. Civil War when accidentally shot by his own men.
The Canadian military attitude toward friendly fire is vastly different from the Americans. We have had incidents, too, but our troops are not nearly as trigger-happy. Is it Canadian caution, or are our troops better trained and more safety conscious? Take your choice.
An excellent documentary called Waging Peace, recently shown on the History Channel (undoubtedly to be repeated), graphically illustrates the difference in attitude in the two militaries.
Filmed by Garth Pritchard (who's produced three documentaries on Canadians in Afghanistan), Waging Peace covers an incident shortly after the American bombing that killed and wounded Canadian soldiers.
A long segment shows Canadians looking through night vision glasses at an area where three Americans had been killed by a mine shortly before. In grayish overtones, the camera shows murky people putting things in the ground.
It looks like mines are being laid. One person carries an object to another man, who bends over and buries it while the guy goes off to fetch another object.
Details are relayed to headquarters. Authority comes back to shoot them. Pritchard recalls: "I was convinced they were planting mines. As one who's seen what mines do, I'd have said 'kill the bastards.'" Maj. Tom Bradley of the Strathconas wasn't so sure.
Didn't feel right
Nor was Capt. Trevor Cadieux. They mused that it just didn't feel right. So they ordered their troops to pin the suspects down with tracer fire until daylight.
By firing on either side and above and below the Afghans, they forced them to the ground. Afghans have been shot at plenty, and understood their situation. They didn't move. Come daylight, Pritchard and the Canadian troops moved in and found Afghan farmers, highly incensed over being shot at, who had been planting grape vines. The "objects" being carried were small cans of water, because vines have to be planted in the cool of night and not the heat of midday.
All this is detailed in Waging Peace, and superbly defines Canadian peacekeeping professionalism, military alertness and judicious restraint. The care and caution exercised by Maj. Bradley and Capt. Cadieux are something Maj. Schmidt could have done with a couple of nights earlier.
The incident demonstrates the value of years of peacekeeping for our soldiers who aren't prone to panic, don't go off half-cocked, and rarely shoot their allies by mistake. American soldiers are trained to shoot reflexively; Canadian soldiers to shoot reflectively.
That's not meant as criticism, but as an observation.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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