David Petraeus’ favorite tool for cowing populations into quiescence, the night raid, has led yet again to deaths NATO characterizes as insurgents but Afghans say are civilians. In this case, four were killed in an overnight raid Tuesday night, two men and two women. A crowd of two to three thousand took to the streets in Taloqan and there were multiple deaths when police opened fire on the crowd.

At the same time that the US and NATO are explicitly setting the end date in Afghanistan later and later into the decade, a new poll from Quinnipiac shows that public support for the war has completely collapsed. A majority of Americans now opposed continued involvement in Afghanistan. The ideological lines on this issue are interesting. . . .

Earlier this year, while Stanley McChrystal still headed US forces in Afghanistan, McChrystal lost control of messaging and stories began to come out revealing the extent to which Special Operations Forces night raids were alienating Afghan civilians. One of the more telling reports was by Anand Gopal, where he described in detail the anguish of families who lose members to these intrusions into family compounds, with loved ones disappearing into a secret prison system. Shortly after that report, we had the disgusting revelation of Special Operations Forces carving their bullets out of the dead bodies of women they killed in a botched raid on a family compound. Somehow, even though the number of these night raids has increased dramatically since David Petraeus has taken over after McChrystal was fired, stories detailing the horrors of night raids and the deaths and destruction caused to families who are incorrectly targeted have not appeared as frequently as they did in the spring. This weekend, the silence on night raids was broken by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and that action sent David Petraeus into a toddler-level pout.

What better example is needed to highlight the folly of how misguided the US effort in Afghanistan has become than to realize that troops from the same Special Operations Command which is responsible for the night raids that provoke civilian outrage are also attempting to provide primary medical care to the population?

The problem in Afghanistan is not picking the right or wrong counterinsurgency strategy, but picking any military strategy at all.

Protests in the Surkhrod district of Nangarhar province of Afghanistan over a night raid Thursday night have left at least one protester dead at the hands of Afghan police. There is a very significant change in the primary press coverage of this event. In a reversal of the initial reporting after the Gardez raid which killed two pregnant women, reports from the New York Times, Reuters and BBC all lead with witness claims of civilian deaths and then move to NATO claims that only insurgents were killed in the raid.

Counterinsurgency that relies on night raids is a recipe for more outrage and violence in Afghanistan. This pattern of brutality, denial, outrage and revenge has to stop.

The command structure for US prisons and special operations in Afghanistan appears to be another shell game being played to hide responsibility for secret prisons and night raids there.