Rules of engagement

“There are four men on the roof,” a soldier said. “You can’t see them anymore. They just ducked away as we got here.”

"They have a little bunker up there," he continued. "You can't see it from here, but it has sand bags and sniper nettings around it."

"What are you going to do?" I said.

"Nothing," he said. "It's a mosque."

"They're violiting curfew," I said, "and stalking us in the dark from a militarized mosque. And you aren't going to do anything?"

"Our rules of engagement say we can't interfere in any way with a mosque unless they are shooting at us, " he said.

Michael J. Totten reports from Iraq

Rules of engagement- No mandate to use deadly force until deadly force has been acted against you!

In times of conflict, being second on the trigger usually gets you killed.

It's really scary that police forces in USA, Sweden and other western countrys has the ability and mandate to use deadly force when nessescary- and our troops in foreign hostile environments has not. Just you try to go around with a AK-47 on a street in Stockholm or New York, and see how long it would take before some law officer would cap your ass. You just try to build a snipers nest on a "holy site" in the west.

But our troops has to wait for taking fire, or somebody getting shot before acting on threats...