"It's %$#@ like this that's going to bring this situation to a head, man."

This is the kind of stuff that is going to lose us the war in Afghanistan in the next year:

Western forces in Afghanistan acknowledged on Thursday they had killed six civilians in an air strike, just days after apologising for a similar incident that killed five.

18,000 new troops in Afghanistan matter less than the way you use them. And if you listen to the commanders on the ground -- "We're going to secure the Kabul-Kandahar highway! We're going to go after the Taliban rat lines leading in from Pakistan!" -- all the goals expressed are enemy-centric and terrain-centric. We simply have to figure out a way to stop killing Afghan civilians, though, and if that means killing fewer Taliban, fine.