Getting right to the point....

....Cori Dauber makes the complex simple.

Here's the bottom line: there are calls for making checkpoints safer on the margins (larger signs, bigger, brighter lights) and those all sound like good ideas. But the real heart of the matter is that the troops have clearly been told to act as if any vehicle that fails to slow down after a certain number of warnings is hostile. That's where they place presumption: the risk of letting through a suicide bomber is greater than the risk of fatally shooting civilians.

And that's what's really upsetting the critics. They want presumption placed the other way. They want the troops to act as if the risk of shooting civilians, fatally or not, is a greater risk than letting through a suicide bomber or a drive-by shooter.

The dispute is absolutely that simple.

(Emphasis in the original.) The Europeans have never been loathe to sacrifice American lives on the altar of political correctness.