If you ever wanted to tell someone you were going to lose the war because of ROE's without actually telling them that you were going to lose the war because of ROE's, you would show them this video.

I would just like to say, right out of the gate, that I apologize to all of our viewers for how this video ends. I know it's not what you wanted to see. In fact, I know exactly what you wanted to see, because I sat about two inches away from my phone for the duration of this video waiting to see exactly what you were all expecting to see, and it just never happened. Instead, what we got was a perfect example of how the rules of engagement literally handcuffed our greatest assets, and prevented us from having a decisive victory against the Taliban.

You see, in war, things are decided in inches and fractions of a second. In this video, there was about an 8 second window where the Apache pilot could have loosed one missile from the rails, and eliminated eight enemy combatants from the battlefield. A successful hit here could have decimated Taliban forces in this area of operations. Instead, the Apache pilot was required to put a delay on his better judgement, and call his TOC in order to get permission to let missiles fly. In the delay, while they were waiting to get permission, that window of opportunity closed, and the Taliban fighters were able to get into a position that was no longer tenable for the Apache pilot to open fire.

This isn't something that only happened to pilots unfortunately. I can't count the number of similar experiences that I personally had in Afghanistan that were like this, because it was a near daily occurrence. You would be out on patrol, and see a dude that you absolutely knew was Taliban, but there wasn't a damn thing you could do about it because the rules of engagement prevented you from doing anything at all. This political style of warfighting, in my opinion, ultimately cost us the war as senior commanders forgot one of the primary principles of American warfighting. The senior man on the ground needs the ability to make decisions independent of senior leaders who are not present.

Had the ground combat leaders on the ground been able to make decision, or even better yet, entrust their subordinates to make decisions on the fly independent of their own oversight, the entire situation in Afghanistan may have ended differently. Instead, senior commanders were so afraid of political backlash caused by troops making the wrong decision, that they locked-up and inhibited their troops both in the air and on the ground from making sound calls that could have ultimately defeated the Taliban.

That's why this footage exists, and why the Taliban are in control of Afghanistan as I type.