1,000 More Volunteers for the Taliban

Or at least that many Afghans who might have been disposed to help the government and the NATO soldiers, but will now look the other way when the Taliban is about.

Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents, according to a statement on Wednesday by NATO, which apologized for the mistake.

The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war’s worst cases of mistaken killings by foreign-led forces. The victims included two sets of brothers. A 10th boy survived.

The NATO statement, which included an unusual personal apology by the commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said the boys had been misidentified as the attackers of a NATO base earlier in the day.

No matter how many clinics NATO sets up or how many schools are opened, the relatives of the dead children aren't going to be in a forgiving mood.

There is a rule in the military about screwing up: "A thousand `attaboys' are wiped out by a single `you dumb shit'." This is a serious dumbshit. We do not have the troops in-country that it would take to pacify it if the locals don't want us there. The Soviets, who were just next door and who had 115,000 soldiers there and who had far, far looser rules of engagement (including dropping hundreds of thousands of butterfly mines) and the Afghans ground them down.

This war is in its tenth year. If anyone can rationally project a ending that does not result in Harmid Karzai either fleeing the country (with several billions squirreled away) or dangling from a lamp post in downtown Kabul, I'd be interested in reading about it.