Shoot / No Shoot

Big brouhaha about snipers because of that Chris Kyle movie in theaters, with usual America haters beclowning themselves and insulting professional soldiers. But the dust up does indeed get everyone thinking and writing about sniping.  Even metrocons.

Hanson's gist:  "Oh we don't snipe like in Enemy At The Gates with that old trope of offing a bigwig enemy General in the bath, snipers nowadays are trying to see which civilian is getting ready to turn into a deadly attacker..."

Well yeah. Sorta. A bad thing to do in an area of sniper operations is to pick up a weapon lying on the ground. The rules of engagement probably means you are gonna get shot at right now. And there are no line, really these days, where OVER THERE are a buncha guys and no civvies, and the guys are all wearing uniforms that are different that yours.

But don't act like those days are gone. I guess Victor David Hanson understands this concept, but ti didn't seem to come off so well in this post to me.  Maybe I'm the slowhead.  (Probabyl)  THIS war doesn't have the unarmed uniformed man walking around. But that doesn't mean we are never to see a war like that again or that it wouldn't be perfectly reasonable to snipe private Snuffy of the motorpool or General Hapablap of the Quartermast corp, or Captain Jorgensen, Lutheran reverand of the chaplain corps. At 800 yards it's hard to read the collar insignia. A medic with a white armband might have a better chance with some ROEs.

And you know if civilian-clothes wearing Osama Bin Laden type was positively IDed 800 yards away and wasn't carrying a rifle, he just might get engaged by a Sniper.  Heck, that kind gets a drone now.