‘Hvilken Stilling Skyder Du På’?

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That’s Danish for, “What position are you shooting at?”

That question appears as a subtitle caption in video footage from Syria, so we can assume that it was a Danish video crew covering this scene with rebel gunmen in a firefight against Assad forces. In reply to the question, one of the gunmen answers, “We got one of them. So there is only one left.” (“Vi fik en af dem. Så er der kun en tilbage.”) But then the gunman decides to stand up to get a better look . . .

 

That didn’t work out so good, eh? (Hat-tip: Blazing Cat Fur.)

Deadly blunders are to be expected when you send a bunch of untrained amateurs up against a professional army.

By the way, the subtitle “Gud er det største!” (at the 51-second mark) is a Danish translation of “Allahu akbar!”

UPDATE: Bob Belvedere points out that the same shot killed two rebels.

 

45 comments

  10. Uh, because of the Moral Imperative. Or something. I think.

    Anyway, Samantha Power says it’s the right thing to do, and that’s good enough for me!

  12. Anyone else see a problem with Assad’s army being blooded against people that are being armed by America?

    Also, the audio has to be off, or, this is film of a gun fight being carried out at knife fight ranges.

    I could hear the sound of the shot pretty much at the same time the bullet hit the guy in the head.

  13. Geez, a few well-placed mortar rounds may well have ended the rebel resistance. That was one target-rich environment.

    One big rule is that automatic weapons draw fire. If you live past your first engagement, you keep your distance from the automatic weapons.

  14. Yeah, you got to wonder about their tactics. Guerrillas shouldn’t be getting into extended gun battles with regulars, because the regulars can call in artillery on the guerrilla position. Hit-and-run tactics — a quick ambush and then skedaddle — is more typical of insurgent combat.

  18. Insurgencies can evolve into conventional warfare. Or there could be a mixture of guerrilla and conventional warfare, depending on how the situation is developing.

    n any event, a well trained guerrilla force can fight conventional forces in a pitched battle with sufficient preparation and planning. Check out the Battle of Dien Bien Phu for a classic example.

    In any case, I’d speculate that this crew are newbie guerrillas trying to fight as regulars, but with zero training. Which means they are learning by doing and dying, a very expensive way to fight a war.

    But, then, life is cheap in the Middle East. They have all those angry young men to throw into the fire, no?

  22. For a moment there, I thought this was in Dearborn.

    Sadly, we’re not all that far away from this being Life in These United States.

    Thanks, barack!

  25. Well, of course, insurgents can fight conventional battles, provided they have the weaponry to do so. But assuming that the regime forces possess artillery and the insurgents don’t, insurgents fighting a sustained battle with the regime forces risk getting pancaked by weaponry they can’t match.

    If I recall correctly, the Communist insurgents at Dien Bien Phu had artillery, or at least lots of mortars. When the Communists tried to repeat their feat in the siege of Khe Sanh, however, they discovered that B-52s trumped everything they had.

  28. The Commies had pretty much regularized by the time of Dien Bien Phu. We saw the result ourselves in later pitched battles in the A Shau and Khe Sanh.

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