Welcome aboard! Put on yer helmet. Let's go!

Since my foriegn policy is pretty sucinctly summed up in previous posts...I'll let you have a look at that stuff on your own time.  But this armchair quarterback (or armchair rear admiral as the case may be) would suggest the following in this on the ground firefight scenario:

 Reports noted that they took fire from an individual and then that indivudual took shelter in a Mosque.  My reaction, pull back and draw them out. Create a perimeter around the area...no one in, no one out.  In the meantime, secure houses farther away from the epicenter, creating an ever widening border that the bad guys would have to cross.  Then, if possible, negotiate the civies out of the mosque.  If not, wait for them to venture out. (if you can't subdue them non lethally, bring in the snipers.)

Y'see...we're there at this point and no one can do anything about that now.  But any military genius...or someone with at least one cereberal lobe will tell you that in a "reconstruction" situation, you do whatever you can NOT to incurr civilian casualties because when you do, especially in this region, each one just makes three more angry militants. And in a situation where the world already thinks it's a WAR ON ISLAM, one would do best not to shoot at a MOSQUE. That's the point.

I can hear the rebuttal already.  What if they didn't have safe ground to fall back to?  If they didn't have safe ground to fall back to, what the hell were they doing there. RECON or not, a recon does not generally get to call in a full on air strike unless there are no other options. And based on everything I've read...there were no options. 

So, Luke.  You have been charged with a mission of securing a hot zone while keeping civilian casualties low, developing a peaceful relationship with the locals and keeping the bad press of JIHAD out of it...what would you do?

a) use extreme firepower to blow up a place of public worship?

b) use more advanced and patient tactics and sugically zap the bad guys one by one.

The precident this sets is simple.  In the eyes of our military, we're protecting ourselves.  And I hope it works out...there's nothing we can do about it now but damage control.

In the eyes of the locals who saw it, we just shot a missile at GOD. 

You have to understand the cultural and religious differences, Lucas.  But the next time an Iraqi militant blows himself up taking out a Mission Tent filled with worshipers, I guess it's just collateral damage, huh?

PRH