What on earth makes you think that aircraft only have an excuse to engage ground targets if they are in danger of being hit by fire from those ground targets? Are you saying that when attack aircraft spot enemy troops on the ground, they have a moral obligation to move within range of enemy counter-fire before engaging those targets, even if they could engage them from a safe distance? What, just to make it sporting? What if the enemy lacks effective anti-aircraft weapons of any kind; would you then say that enemy ground targets are totally off-limit to attack by aircraft, since it just wouldn't be fair otherwise?
"Hey Bob, I see some enemy troops up ahead at 2000 meters, we could fire on them from here but then they wouldn't be able to shoot back... what do you say we close up to 500 meters before engaging, just to make it a fair fight for 'em?"
Fucking ridiculous. The fact that the Apaches weren't in danger from the guys they fired upon is totally irrelevant to the question of whether the guys were a valid target. You are clearly totally unqualified to pass meaningful judgment on whether these guys are good or bad soldiers. Your suggestion that it's only okay to fire on enemy troops when they have a chance of hitting you back is childish, absurd, naive, and frankly flat-out stupid.
EDIT: None of the SA posts you quote provides an intelligent argument against the initial engagement. In response to the guy who talks about what ratio of armed to unarmed people in a group makes it acceptable to fire on them: Obviously one armed man with fifty unarmed man wouldn't be a valid target, but that hypothetical situation has nothing to do with the incident in question. The group that was engaged in the video was about a dozen men with "five or six" AKs and at least one RPG. It's not absurd to identity a group thus armed as a group of combatants, especially since irregular combatant units often include several unarmed men with jobs such as carrying extra ammo and so forth. So let's stay focused on what actually happened instead of flying off with silly questions like "well would it have been okay to fire if there were 50 guys and only one had a weapon?!"
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