One would think that the repeated "friendly fire" incidents in Afghanistan would lead to a real effort to minimize the conditions which lead to such tragedies. Instead, there apparently hasn't been any substantial improvement in communications between soldiers - which would seem rather fundamental to maintaining sufficiently coordination to avoid inflicting harm on one's friendly troops.
But while there's no apparent will to deal with the actual causes of friendly fire, the U.S. hasn't left the most recent incident completely unaddressed. Instead, it's decided to switch the airplanes it'll be providing at a Canadian air show so that a Warthog similar to the ones used in last weekend's incident won't be shown.
Which should help in putting last weekend's carnage out of mind for the moment - and may well be worthwhile to avoid further suffering for the families of the wounded soldiers. But it won't help in the least at what should be the more important goal of preventing similar harms in the future. And the all-too-consistent focus on appearances rather than substance only seems likely to result in yet more real tragedies.
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