Friendly Fire: The Untold Story of the US Bombing That Killed Four Canadian Soldiers in Afghanistan

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. His latest works are Who Killed Canadian History?, Who Killed
the Canadian Military, and Hell’s Cor

Accidents happen in war. They always have and they always will, and very
often our side’s shells or bombs fall short and cause casualties among
our own troops.

There were thousands of friendly fire casualties from artillery and
machine guns in the Great War and likely as many from bombing errors and
artillery shortfalls in the Second World War. But the memories of
Canada’s wars are long gone now, and when four Canadian soldiers died
in a bombing by United States Air Force aircraft in Afghanistan in April
2002, their deaths became the occasion for an extraordinary public
reaction in Canada and a long-running military investigation in the
United States and Canada. Michael Friscolanti’s book is certainly the
fullest account of this event we will ever have.

In its carefully researched and popularly written pages, Friscolanti
traces the events of that Afghan evening and explains what happened and
why. The bulk of his book, however, looks at the way “justice” began
to unfold for the pilots involved and how they became demonized because
the U.S. military legal system virtually forced them to say as little as
possible by way of an apology that could be construed as an admission of
guilt. He looks at the families of the Canadian dead and their near
hatred for the pilots, a terrible, if understandable, response that must
have been whipped up by Canadian media coverage. Friscolanti also looks
at the way senior officers hurried to cover their butts and ensure that
blame was fixed elsewhere.

Friendly Fire is not a pretty story, but that almost 600 pages can be
written on one small incident in a minor war does suggest that there is
a different sensibility at work in today’s Canada.