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?

Fred Hiatt has a sad this morning. In his editorial in the Washington Post, he provides his prescription for what ails the US effort in Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, he wants a more violent, less lawful approach modeled after Stanley McChrystal’s efforts in Iraq.

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.

The most recent report on Afghanistan from the Defense Department has very gloomy news.

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.

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.

Cross-posted from Rethink Afghanistan. U.S. and allied forces storm an Afghan family’s home. They kill civilians. They lie about it. The public affairs officer denies it. Outraged community members are outraged. Violence spikes. More people die. This is an all-too-familiar pattern in Afghanistan, and it’s got 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.

Stanley McChrystal has been given even more power in Afghanistan at the same time that he is taking token action to soften the effect of his worst practice.