Only in Germany You Say?

Via Matt Yglesias, news that two German cabinet ministers and a senior military officer have resigned over a recent airstrike in which a number of civilians were killed

Franz Josef Jung, Defense Minister of Germany at the time of the Kunduz airstrikes gone bad, got demoted to the Labor Ministry in the post-election cabinet reshuffle and will now be resigning from the cabinet altogether. General Wolfgang Schneiderhan and State Secretary Peter Wichert have already resigned over this matter.

In light of the fact that all this is happening in part because of an increased American emphasis on the need to reduce civilian casualties, it does strike me as worth wondering whether you can imagine anything comparable happening in the United States? In any bureaucratic organization, it’s one think to adopt rules or policies saying that such-and-such is a priority. It’s another thing entirely to demonstrate that doing such-and-such is, in fact, crucial to one’s career.

Or in Canada.

Minister McKay's 'the dog ate my homework' excuses are an embarrassment. He was Foreign Affairs Minister then and Defence Minister now. It is time for him to go.