The Story of Blow Back

The story of ‘Blow-Back’

 “Completely inhumane and condemnable in the strongest possible terms.” Karzai declared in recent news broadcast in response to a video that displayed three Afghan corpses being urinated on my American Marines.

This event in which the president of Afghanistan is referring to is hitting the news in such as way that is now causing wide-spread outrage that is even reaching the Pentagon when top officials such as Mr. Panetta stated that the acts were “utterly deplorable”. After hitting the White House, it hit the cords of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she showed complete “ total dismay” and went on to say, “vast majority of American military personnel would not engage in such actions”

            The sad thing is that, as much as our government or another says that this is not common it was caught on a video that is now being displayed around the world. Whether it is on televisions, phones, or computers, millions upon millions are reacting to this. Most of the people are going to react with letters of complaints or speak out, however, some will act in direct response as we categorize as ‘terrorism’

            It is important to note that those who act in such a response that is being categorized as terrorism, is an illegal act and the affected nation(s) will have every right to respond. But what is really going on here? It is ‘Blow-Back’. One may be asking, what is ‘Blow-Back’? The straight definition is:

“The espionage term for unintended consequences of a operation those are suffered by the civil population of the aggressor government. To the civilians suffering the blowback of covert operations, the effect typically manifests itself as “random” acts of political violence without a discernible, direct cause; because the public—in whose name the intelligence agency acted—are ignorant of the effected secret attacks that provoked revenge (counter-attack) against them”

In this case, the possible ‘blow-back’ will be a long stream of violence and retaliations until one side acts more responsibility in the future.

            Everyone of us can sit here and type away on what causes ‘Blow-Back’ and who may be doing the attacking in the future, yet no one gives ideas on how to avoid such events as witnessed in the past couple of days. Personally, I hold not military experience or have spend time in a military academy, so I may not go in point to point detail of military solutions, however, I can give a broad solution to the issue at hand. Lets propose an exit strategy for Afghanistan and for other nations that hold major American troops in minimize the danger of ‘blow-back’. Think of it this way; imagine a loaded gun on a table everyday. Would be a good idea to put the gun on safety or to put in a gun-safe to avoid accidently shooting and hurting/killing someone? And when time is needed to use it for self-defense purposes, then one may use it properly to defend oneself. This thought may be a stretch to some, but I believe it is important to take a hard look on our military presence around the world and analysis whether it is worth the blood American soldiers and American civilian lives to continue such a campaign.