I spent the last part of 2006 in Afghanistan, a total of 4 months working for an NGO in the southern part of the country. 
One thing I learned was this: never trust the media for accurate reporting about a war zone. As I'm sure most of you know, many things happen in war zones that do not make it to the Western media- particularly things that happen in inaccessible areas or things that reflect poorly on the United States. In my opinion, one of those things is the fact that we are indiscriminately killing civilians in Afghanistan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7504574.stm

I believe that the UN's recent number of 577 Afghan civilians killed by coalition forces so far in 2008 is low. Here's why: US military frequently counts all males killed in raids as "suspected militants," thereby stripping them of their civilian status. Many of these men are village farmers who lives and families are threatened unless they harbor Taliban militants. The second problem is the same as that of body-counting in Iraq: many Muslims bury dead persons within hours, and almost always the same day, and these deaths go unreported. I think the real number of civilians we've killed this year almost certainly equals or outnumbers those killed by the Taliban.
Sarah Palin has never been Afghanistan. (Sarah Palin can barely claim she's even been to Kuwait, since visiting an American base is not a valid experience of another country.) And yet, Sarah Palin is claiming that our military is acting justly in Afghanistan. Claiming that she knows more about this issue than the Human Rights Watch "Troops in Contact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan" report, which points out that "few civilian deaths resulted from planned airstrikes, while almost all death occurred in unplanned airstrikes." If our military strategy on the ground were working well, we wouldn't need to air raid villages and wedding parties. In my mind, Obama's statement was right on; we can't continue trying to win this war by air-raiding civilians. 
I don't want any more innocent Afghans to die because we are saving face and refusing to admit that we don't know how else to kill militants in Helmand. Apparently Sarah Palin prefers the face-saving strategy.