I considered not typing a response to this one due to the raw emotions that all that frequent this site must be experiencing when viewing the results of yesterday's barbarism. I, too, experienced these feelings but I know my reaction cannot compare to some of you based on your backgrounds, personal relationships, and personal history with those directly involved in this mission and ones like it in the past.
IMO, The response should be focused only on the people that were responsible. Let me clarify quickly who I think that is before I upset to many of you. Anyone “at the scene” has contributed to this atrocity. Not just the actual participants in the ambush and subsequent attack, but also the relatively small % of the total population of the city that came out of their houses and celebrated the brutality. The punishment and retribution should be extreme, brutal, and definite.
That being said, I do not agree with the ideas that the entire town should be sanctioned/lay siege to it. That is exactly what the terrorists, extremists, etc want the US military to do in the wake of this tragedy. That is exactly why they tried to influence our foreign policy by their barbaric attempt to replicate the outcome in Somalia.
I think our military and the contractors still in the area responded very professionally by not simply rushing into the area with guns blazing
once it was determined that the initial attack/disgusting follow-on brutality had already taken place and had dispersed before the adequate troops could arrive on scene to prevent or disrupt its occurrence. The time to do something was either rapidly(like TR's suggestion) while it was occurring (probably not logistically possible at the time for the current forces in the AO) or by waiting and performing subsequent surgical attacks and intelligence collection by "whatever means necessary" from the people in the video tape in the near future.
If our troops and/or contractors would have rushed into "the city" after the event was completely over, the scumbags would have already blended into the general population again and been using human shields/regular civilians.
It is much more effective to ensure their destruction by allowing our
professionals to enter the AO and conduct operations against these swine on our operator’s terms and using the advantages our operators choose to utilize. The contract personnel in the area can perform this alone or with SF personnel and/or a joint effort.
I do not fault anyone for feeling more radical or extreme than my ideas on the topic. I just thought this viewpoint should be expressed into the thread.
RIP
Sympathy to the families and friends of those already lost while performing their duty in this honorable task
... and hopeful for absolute and swift justice/retribution for those that caused this atrocity.