The new United Nations report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan shows that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is failing, even according to the military’s own doctrine. According to COIN theory, if you can’t prevent your own side from killing civilians, and you can’t offer credible assurances of security to the population, you lose. And, guess what? Judged by its own standards, the U.S. military is losing. It’s time to end this mission.

Exclusive, on-the-ground interviews obtained by Brave New Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistan project confirm what NATO forces repeatedly denied: U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan killed dozens of people in the Sangin District of Helmand Province on July 23.

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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.

As I noted earlier in the week, there is a growing realization that the previously heralded counterinsurgency (COIN) plan developed by General Stanley McChrystal for US efforts in Afghanistan is failing, both in our ability to clear areas of insurgents and in the ability of the Afghans to govern cleared areas. The huge budgetary impact of the COIN strategy is finally beginning to be discussed by the Pentagon, and as a result, plans are now being floated for “counterinsurgency light“. Sadly, it appears to me that these “improvements” are just as flawed as the underlying plan. In contrast, Osama bin Laden’s plan to bankrupt the US through drawing us into expensive and unwinnable wars is working just as he described it in 2004.

President Obama’s ineffective strategy is costing us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Call Congress and tell them to support the McGovern bill to require an exit strategy.

For some time, I’ve been documenting the effort to present General Stanley McChrystal’s COIN strategy as a warm, fuzzy program of which we should be proud, instead of the reality of night raids that kill and imprison innocent civilians, fueling the anger of insurgents. My most recent find in that propaganda campaign is truly a sight to behold.

The video above shows a survivor of a brutal, botched special forces raid on February 12, 2010, in which U.S. and allied forces killed 5 civilians, including local Afghan officials and pregnant women. If that were the extent of the bad conduct in this incident, it would be devastating enough. Unfortunately, personnel under McChrystal’s command compounded the outrage by tampering with evidence at the scene and then attempted a propaganda job and cover-up of the massacre, which has now blown up in their faces.

Despite a steady stream of warm, fuzzy stories about General Stanley McChrystal insisting that his COIN strategy is all about protecting civilians and that he spends a good portion of his time imparting this wisdom on the topic to troops, pointless killings of civilians continue.

Continued civilian deaths resulting from night raids by Special Forces in Afghanistan have prompted more spin on the reasoning behind placing these forces under McChrystal’s command.