[aa-jv]

>>McCrystal was in fact all about actually reducing civilian deaths.

Unfortunately, manifest whitepapers about 'honor' notwithstanding, McCrystal did absolutely nothing to effectively reduce civilian casualties - beyond whitewashing the scene, that is.

This is demonstrated in the actual statistics of civilian murder that have occurred since his command. It has not reduced tempo, one bit:

http://airwars.org/

[danielvf]

As I said, McCrystal intentions were to reduce civilian casualties; he took drastic actions to reduce civilian casualties; and yet the overall number of civilian deaths from all causes went up.

You can see that he was taking actions by just looking at things like the number of close air support weapon releases per month during his one year stint as commander. After taking command, the number of weapon releases went to one half that of the previous year. And once he was relived of command, they went back up again. The number of weapons releases per close air support sortie went from around 33% to less than 15%.

McCrystal made major changes to operational procedures - as an example the following rule:

"Prior to the use of fires, the commander approving the strike must determine that no civilians are present. If unable to assess the risk of civilian presence, fires are prohibited...".

That's far beyond a rule of "if you don't see any civilians", instead going to the level of forbidding strikes when unable to verify that there are no civilians around.

And that's not to mention the creation of whole bureaucracies poking into every corner of operations and focused on this.

Regardless of the actual outcome, McCrystal took many major, concrete, costly, and unpopular actions to attempt to reduce civilian casualties.

That some or many of those changes didn't stick afterwards, doesn't mean that his primary objective was whitewashing, rather than actual change.

[aa-jv]

Did civilians casualties go down?

No. They went up.

It therefore doesn't matter one iota what the war criminals responsible for that murder, have to say about it. No amount of flowery 'brave' language is going to bring those kids back from out under the rubble.

Stop defending known war criminals. McCrystal belongs in chains in The Hague, as does Obama. They both worked too damned hard to justify their murder of civilians to the rest of the civilized world.

[danielvf]

While McCrystal was in command, US caused Afghani civilian casualties went quickly down from what they were and stayed down while he was in command.

However the Taliban had been killing around 400% of the number of civilians that the ISAF was. Reduced ISAF force projection and increased Taliban activity resulted in the number of civilians killed by the Taliban going up. Thus the overall number of civilians killed during those 11 months went up. But it went up because the Taliban were killing more, not because the US was.

Another way of looking at it, if airstrikes and artillery fire were the primary drivers of US caused civilian deaths, then reducing the number of times those were used by 50% would obviously cause a noticeable reduction in US caused civilian deaths.

Anyway, it appears that we are at an impasse, and both believe that the other cannot see the obvious facts about McCrystal either doing nothing, or doing a lot to reduce civilian casualties.

Have a good day, and may there be joy in it.

[aa-jv]

The difference is that I consider McCrystal a vile war criminal and have no desire whatsoever to see his fake 'honor' defended by anyone. He belongs in chains, rotting in the Hague, as do most of his seniors.