The shelling or bombing of the Doctors without Borders
hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, reminds me of my time in an artillery battery
in Vietnam. In general we only fired at
targets that had been precleared by someone in our chain of command, or we
fired for forward observers who were engaged with the enemy. In a few cases, working with our quad-50
machine gun crew, we would have to seek clearance to fire at someone who we
thought was sneaking around our perimeter, just in case it was a South
Vietnamese unit wandering around.
We had a number of no-fire areas marked on our maps and
charts, indicating the locations of towns and bases. I don’t think we ever fired into one of these
no-fire zones. It would have required
all kinds of special clearances.
From the discussion it sounds as if the question in Kunduz
is whether the Afghan or US forces were taking fire from the hospital. Even if they were taking fire from the
hospital, would that warrant calling in an air strike on it? In Vietnam there was supposedly a pretty
rigorous process for clearing a fire mission on a target that was not engaged
in actual combat. American liaison
officers checked with Vietnamese contacts about whether there were any
civilians or friendly troops in the area.
The situation would have been complicated in Kunduz because
the city had been friendly until the Taliban takeover. The entire city would have been a no-fire
area, and there would have been to reason to fire into it. With the Taliban attack, the whole city would
still be considered a no-fire area because there would be civilians
everywhere. However, if friendly troops
were taking heavy fire, there would have been a debate about whether it was
necessary to accept “collateral damage” in order to neutralize the enemy. It would seem that a decision of that nature
should have been made pretty high up.
Doctors without Borders claims that no one was firing from
the hospital. In that case, there seems
no justification for attacking it.
However, if they are wrong and there was firing, then maybe there was
justification, but Doctors without Borders legitimately would want to know who
decided that they were expendable. I
guess that is what the military review will try to determine. I am inclined to give our troops the benefit
of the doubt in the fog of war, but screw-up do happen.
In Vietnam one night someone came up on our radio channel
asking if we were firing at certain coordinates. We were not, but we could hear him asking
other batteries if they were firing there.
Finally one battery answered and said that they had just finished a “battery
three-by-three” on that target. The
stranger on the net said that it was a small town, which was now
destroyed. A “battery three-by-three”
means that an entire artillery battery, probably four large or six small guns,
fired nine volleys in the shape of a box around the target. Obviously something went wrong in the
clearance process for that fire mission.
