Exactly. Which is I think why I and Eric raised issues with the assumptions you placed on this interaction. You can’t simultaneously assume good and bad faith to someone when discussing their motives. (Well, maybe you COULD, but that isn’t very good faith either.)

The air actions get ordered in ‘because’ (in some some strictly limited, technical-military sense) there are not nearly enough (sensitive, courageous, etc) ground forces boots on the ground. So Washington proposes sending in 30,000 more (pairs of) boots. Will this be enough, at this stage, to stem the rising tide of anti-westernism in Afghanistan? I doubt it.

Also, though I do think V06 betrays some keen tactical awareness and realism, I don’t see him, from reading through his posts since he’s been in theater, as having very much cultural self-awareness and sensitivity. I don’t doubt his courage for a moment.

Finally, I don’t think that busting into a doctor’s clinic fully armed and asking questions could be described as wholly non-coercive.

On the precise question re standard doc-patient confidentiality issues that you raise, you might be right. However, we do not know what questions V06 asked the doc.

And does anyone who has spent time with the COIN manual know how it would define “hearts and minds” (although I suspect it doesn’t use that term)?

Slightly related, I think an ANA or any NATO unit could do quite well with a consistent policy of respectful, non-coercive, not-making-people-say-so-much-they-lose-their-heads interrogation. That could actually be a basis for developing some trust in police structures if it provided security.

Lastly, and least related, were you suggesting that asking the doctor if there had been insurgents at the hospital violated medical confidentiality or entering with guns? I don’t believe US police asking a US doctor whether they had seen a patient would present any sort of confidentiality dilemma unless they also wanted to know the patients blood type…

This was not hot pursuit. He and his team launched the whole mission with the aim of looking for one or more wounded fighters in the medical facility where he guessed they might have gone– and with doing what if he’d found them there?

I repeat, though, that that blog post illustrated very vividly the impossibility of the western military project in Afghanistan– as V06 had some awareness of, himself.

Can anyone think he won “hearts and minds” through that little outing?If he won anything, it may have been a small measure of respect from the doc and his friends for the (relative) restraint he showed in not hauling doc in for even more interrogation (or worse.) It was a standoff marked by some possible mutual respect between the two of them. Sort of live and let live.

Which is good as far as it goes. But not good for anyone who still has the illusion, seven years in, that there’s any purely western-determined, purely “military” solution to the question of Afghanistan.

The Geneva Conventions do not “protect” medical clinics from a visit by a patrolling soldier. Especially since they were responding to reports of insurgent activity — if appearances were correct and insurgents were hiding within the clinic (as implied by the many large-caliber bullet holes in the gate), then the clinic does not enjoy protection as a neutral structure.

I’m sorry your sensibilities were not soothed by an embedded soldier making small mentions of the Geneva Conventions or a western idea of medical privacy. But the real world — especially in Afghanistan — simply does not work that way.

On colonial or not colonial, this judgment is one to be made overwhelmingly by the Afghans themselves. It’s a version of the question “liberator or occupier?” that the Iraqis have been dealing with amongst themselves for 5.5 years now. Opinions shift. Afghan opinion seems to have been shifting significantly against the US presence over the past 18 months.

I would also like to disagree with Helena.
In reading Afghanistan Shrugged, as well as Excellent Afghan Adventure, I am relieved by the nuanced cultural understanding and open mindedness the authors display while risking their lives. It is important that our perception of the US military, too often framed exclusively by civilian air strike casualties and stories of abuse, expand to encompass the experiences of Vampire06 as well.

I for one did not detect the racism that Helena seems to have felt so acutely. Nor did I notice anything that implicated the Geneva convention in any way.
While I do not doubt that there is no lack of racism or IHL violations in Afghanistan, Vampier06′s hike to the clinic is evidence of neither.

I appreciate what you’re saying, but what he described was quite literally a sewer. He said they have to spend long periods of time subsumed in trash, digging through effluvia and hoping they don’t get sick from it. The man is a soldier, not a professional social scientist or journalist; expecting elevated and perfectly neutral language from him might be misplaced.

As for the “saying,” that has its origins at least in the 19th century — from Afghans. Josiah Harlan, for example, recounted hearing that from “Pathans” he had met in Peshawar, and that view informed his strong opposition to the first Anglo-Afghan War (along with his own frustrating at being stripped of his crown of Ghor).

It might be offensive, but it isn’t “colonial” in the sense that it was invented to demean Afghans. Neither can the U.S. occupation really be called colonial.

Also, idealism about what is permissable or not is great, but… that doctor is in constant danger — not from this soldier, but from the Taliban. He was at risk before the soldier came, and he will be at risk after he leaves. Blaming the soldier for violating the Geneva Conventions misses the point.