General apologizes

Earlier this month a NATO airstrike killed a number of civilians in Afghanistan; that was very unfortunate, but certainly not what was intended. So General McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces, took his apology for a weekend airstrike directly to the Afghan people Tuesday, with a video in which he pledged to work to regain their trust as NATO continues a mass offensive against the Taliban in the south.br /br /This is a tight line our troops must walk; we must be seen as very different from the terrorist Taliban who regularly and willingly target civilians and who will use civilians as shields as they conduct their terrorist acts. At the same time we must regularly and soundly beat, defeat, and kill the terrorists. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Don’t believe everything you read inbr /the newspapers. Our troops do care about the local people–and they know it.