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Bigduke6

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Everything posted by Bigduke6

  1. John, Cool Breeze and Mr. Emrys: It's pleasant to be remembered, unless it's by the tax people. Thanks guys. I can say this: I'm in Donbass. I've been there since early last year. Nothing secret, nothing clandestine, but my employers want me to to avoid making anything like a public comment on the conflict. Hence the lurking. You've been having some really great arguments in here and it's been all I could do to keep from jumping in. So far my self discipline is holding. But JK is different - the man is an institution.
  2. I haven't posted in this forum for years as an employment change a while back forced me to into lurking. This forum is, as it ever was, a place where strong opinions are traded regularly, and weak arguments are slammed down mercilessly. May it stay that way forever. My opinion, this forum is much the richer for John Kettler's participation. He is an asset, he is imaginative and he is loyal. I don't tolerate his posts, I look forwards to the next one.
  3. We weren't arguing, we we exchanging points of view. *sniff*
  4. Yep, that is enough evidence to exclude option three. Even if you assume the military had an interest in feeding the story to the WP, and that what he did was heroicized at least somewhat, it seems pretty impossible that he was on the Taliban target list. Seems like a brave guy, RIP.
  5. Yeah, I doubt we're going to come to a common opinion on this one. As for me, collapse of the Karzai regime and Afghanistan's return to a hothouse for violence and extremist groups, would be a failure of US policy. Although, come to think of it, the both of us seem to think the Taliban are going to improve their position in the coming chaos, but neither of us see the Taliban as a dominant force capaple of ruling the country effectively. In other news, did any one see the report on who the raiders killed? One of them was the squadron commander, a major. He's identified as Lt. Col. Christopher 'Otis' Raible So ya gotta wonder: - Was Raible just in the wrong place at the wrong time? - Is it possible Raible got killed because he decided he needed to lead the QRF? - Or did the Taliban target him? We can't rule out any option, but at least you have to consider the possibility the Taliban targeted him. They appear to be pretty good at identifying local government officials they want murdered, and then assassinating them. You have to believe the would have had the idea to target the guy when they were planning this thing. A cynical extra piece of iffy evidence is, as nearly as I can tell the circumstances of his death have not been publicized. Those of us suspicious of official sources of information might take this as support to the argument the way he died is not something the Marines want publicized. But that's really cynical and I don't want to argue that it's proof. But if the raiders actually went onto a US base and killed the squadron commander intentionally...man, that's scary.
  6. If those few thousand can keep the Karzai regime in place. Otherwise the whole thing comes down like a house of cards. Considering the work it takes to keep that government propped up with more than a 100 grand NATO types in country, and the less-than-sterling performance of the ANA so far, I'd call that a pretty big "if".
  7. http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/03/cnn-poll-u-s-opposition-to-afghanistan-war-remains-high/ It is data like that that makes me suspect that, once the US troops substantially leave, they will not return. Two out of three Americans is pretty difficult to overcome. But if there's any evidence out there that the US population and politicians would support a re-commitment of force to Afghanistan, symbolically or materially, I'd be interested to see it.
  8. Vanir, Of course the Taliban will be welcomed by many as liberators. As your link makes clear, Dick Cheney was talking about invading another country. The Taliban, among others, are defending their country from foreign invaders. They are fighting a jihad. Karzai's death or flight abroad will not solve the basic problem that the regime we have installed in Afghanistan is corrupt and is so unpopular, that compared to that regime, for many people living in the country, the Taliban seem like a better alternative. Getting rid of the foreign invaders and tossing out the Karzai regime is appealing to many non-Pathans, it's not like the Taliban have a monopoly on wanting to run their country themselves. Why should the Hazara/Uzbeks/Tajiks etc. etc. support the Karzai regime? It's not as if Hazara/Uzbeks/Tajiks etc. etc. have never made deals with Pathans before, or that all those ethnicities wouldn't be united by a desire to grab a bigger share of the pie and kick out the foreigners. As I see it, the ANA is incapable of securing the regime or the country, and post-2014 the will on the part of the US population to secure the regime will be even less. Would Obama if re-elected re-commit troops to prop up the regime? If Romney is elected,would he? Would any forseeable Congress agree to it? Could such a recommitment, once most US troops are out of the country, be accepted by the US populace? Absent another bloody terrorist attack originating in Afghanistan on US citizens and territory, I don't see it. The end game I see is, the infidels leave and Afghanistan reverts to its normal state of equally-shared chaos, followed by lots of hands-wringing in some western military circles along the lines of "We coulda won if the politicians had let us". Which brings me back to my original point. This is what defeat looks like.
  9. Vanir, Anders Fogh Rasmussen is the Secretary General of NATO. He has held the job since 2009. Before that he was Denmark's Prime Minister, and a key player in pushing NATO participation in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Here is the key phrase from his comments, which are in the link you provided: "The goal is unchanged, the strategy remains the same, and, eh, the timeline remains the same." This begs two questions. 1. If the Secretary General of NATO is not some one to whom you look for the "blue" position on Afghanistan war strategy, then who is? 2. Why do you think the handover timeline is still on track? If the ANA is not trustworthy, and Rasmussen is saying the full handover will be complete by the end of 2014, how do you see that happening? I argued in a previous post that that leaves something like 24 months to convert the ANA from what it is to a force capable of providing security in the country on its own. Given that it is clear NATO and the US are, right now, not even sure which ANA soldiers can be trusted not to attack NATO and US soldiers, how do you see the ANA becoming a reliable and independent force over that time frame? P.S. If I've given the impression I think NATO and NATO service members are slovenly, I apologize. I think the service members are fairly dedicated but that like any rich military they are overly dependent on a high-tech approach and that many sevice members have an unsafely high opinion of themselves and their mission. I consider them tactically competent although, given the amount of resources they spend to do simple things like conduct a patrol or clear a village, I would say they damn well better be. I think the special forces, by which I mean the green berets and units like them, have failed miserably in Afghanistan, in that these special forces' primary mission is training foreign forces to support US military objectives. I'm sure the US special forces are competent enough at raiding compounds and calling down air strikes and rousting Afghans out of their beds, but the ANA sucks and the US trainers are the ones that took on the job of making the ANA a reliable force. As for the hope "Well, once the combat forces leave we'll guarantee Afghan security with air support and special forces", I think there are more than a few of us old enough to remember that was precisely what the US promised the South Vietnamese regime. Air support and special forces, even competent ones, are insufficient to support a discredited regime lacking support from the poplulace. The Karzai regime is corrupt and strictly speaking its sway right now extends not much further than Kabul's city limits. How many ANA soldiers do you think are ready to lay down their lives for that regime? And if they are not, how can we hope to keep that regime in place? If, when the US/NATO main force leaves, the Taliban and warlords are united, along with the population, with a collective hatred of the Karzai regime, the Taliban and the warlords - be they Uzbek or Tajik or Hazara or whatever you want - will not need conventional forces. They simply will waltz into provinces and the local leadership and population will receive them with open arms. And some super-duper NATO special forces trooper on the ground with a radio and a laser-designator is going to stop that? If he is stupid enough to follow orders and try, in nine cases out of time, I would predict his local "friends" will rat him out to the Taliban or their allies. If they can't trick him into calling in strikes on the ANA first.
  10. If I am obtuse, it is an unintentional accident. You and I agree a critical approach to information coming out of Afghanistan is important. Further, you and I agree NATO is one of the sources of that information. So I'll repeat the question: Do you believe Rasmussen when he says the security handover plan is still on track? If you do believe him, even in general terms, why? As you have probably gathered, I have concluded (not assumed from the get go, concluded, as in "after weighing the evidence available and making a considered judgement)" that NATO has little idea of the situation in the country, or that they are willfully handing the people that pay their salaries a load of bull hockey.
  11. I would say: NATO probably does not fudge numbers that can be checked relatively easily by an independent agency. This would normally be the media but it could be the political opposition or citizens' groups or the lower levels of the military itself. The obvious example would be soldiers killed; it is a very sensitive issue and even though it certainly would be in NATO strategic interest to put out lower casualty figures, than actual, it would be almost impossible to do without getting caught, and getting caught would be a huge PR disaster. So those numbers I believe. Numbers like "ANA personnel trained to combat effectiveness" or "Estimated Taliban killed" or "Provinces under Karzai government control" are not so easily checked independently, and I would not trust NATO declarations on these data as far as I could throw it. NATO has every incentive to put out the most positive number possible, that cannot be easily contradicted. In some cases their definitions are highly suspect, for instance, they for years now have told us a specific number ANA forces are online and can reliably be trusted to provide security, but now we have a NATO hold on joint operations with any ANA. (Again, unless a BG or higher signs off on the op.) So what are we to make of past NATO statements about the ANA? Were they lying intentionally, or just incapable of telling reliable ANA from unreliable ANA? To what extent has the rot set it? How many of these past joint operations, where they call in the media to watch the ANA clear a village or patrol in the mountains or operate checkpoints or whatever it is, were in fact dog and pony shows having nothing to do with actual ANA capacity? We obviously don't know. So I would say the NATO number on mission-capable ANA is highly suspect. Even if, and this is a if not just big but of Biblical proportion, NATO were to be an incredibly honorable and professional bureacracy practically free of traditional military careerism and CYA, NATO has a very big incentive not just to put out rose-colored numbers, but to make rose-colored judgements that create the assumptions build those numbers. Further, what about the things NATO simply doesn't know? If they say, well, Wardak province is now more or less peaceful and under reliable Karzai government control, and shut down NATO outposts there, then how are we - the people who are paying for this brilliant military operation - to know whether (a) the Taliban aren't waltzing in there the moment night falls and the Karzai people lock their doors or ( the Taliban haven't already cut a deal/intimidate the local Karzai people so the Karzai local officials just lie about their control of the region to Kabul and NATO or my personal favorite © the Taliban have come in, killed all the local Karzai people or put them to flight, and the Karzai government knows it but it just lies about the province's reliability to NATO? Yet our civilian policy-makers, and the general public, who pay them, are supposed to make informed decisions on how well the hearts-and-minds campaign is going, based on our military's estimate of how peaceful or violent it is in the Afghan sticks? It gets to the point where any NATO assertion about any security status, where NATO troops are not physically located, becomes inherently absurd. They don't know, they have no reliable way of finding out because their sources of information are limited and those that do exist often lie. So what are we to make of Rasmussen declarations like "we're on track with the security handover". How could that possibly be based on anything but wishful thinking? Are we to take his statements at face value, just because he's in charge of NATO? Does he think we're stupid? Gunnergoz, thanks for the note on the sandstorm. If I had to guess I would agree with you, it seems to me like the Taliban is intelligent and patient enough to wait for the right weather to pull off a raid like this. I also think it's possible that, if the British reaction forces are less efficient than the Marines' at this base - which I would say is possible but far from a given - then that may well have been something the Taliban factored in when planning the raid as well. It seems like they had enough information to know where to breach the perimeter and where to send the assault teams. The might have also had enough information to figure out, that hitting the British side of the base for whatever reason would give the assault teams more time. But of course we can't say that for sure. But knowledge of the British QRF capacity or no, that's more evidence the assault teams were in US uniforms not by accident, but as part of a well-thought-out plan. It is just a smart move, if you are going to raid a NATO base, to do it at night, and to send dudes dressed in the uniform of one of the coalition members, and then have hit an area where troops where another coalition member is predominant. NATO fear of blue-on-blue incidents is no secret and that's an easy way to take advantage of it. I mentioned it before, but again, one has to give the Marines and indeed the command at the base at least some credit; no blue-on-blue casualties were reported. In the chaos that's a sign of good discipline and control, although of course we can't say how much extra damage the raiders did, because the base command was taking its time and being careful to keep from killing its own people.
  12. Well I must have misunderstood you, because I thought you accepted the NATO assertion that 1 out of 4 green-on-blue incidents was Taliban-related, and the others not.
  13. No, you misunderstand me. I say we should not take NATO statements at face value and accept them uncritically. I can't tell you what the "true ratio" is, but again, green-on-blue incidents have tripled and NATO has stopped most joint operations with the ANA because of that. We can take as a fact that, on an individual basis, relative cultural sensitivity on the part of ANA and NATO personnel has not changed overnight. But the amount of green-on-blue incidents has, in a big way. The Taliban have said they have been infiltrating the ANA for some time and that instigating green-on-blue incidents is part of their campaign strategy. I think this is compelling enough to call the NATO assertion that one in four incidents is Taliban-linked into question. But I also think we won't agree on this. But that's not the only issue to be discussed, of course. Rasmussen said shortly after the announcement of the halt of joint ops with the ANA, that the security handover plan was still on track and that the country would be secure in 2014 once NATO forces (for the most part) leave. That's a pretty clear statement. To my mind, it is another NATO statement flatly contradicted by the evidence, and common sense. In my personal considered opinion, it is ludicrous to assert that, after something like 5-6 years of really trying to make the ANA a viable force, and now that it is not trustworthy enough to operate jointly with NATO, that in 18 -24 months the ANA will be made reliable. The force is too large, the country is too big, and it is reasonable to assume that as the NATO exit deadline approaches, Taliban penetration of the ANA will increase. Already we can state as a fact: "NATO has a poor grasp of the real degree of Taliban penetration of the ANA, for it seems that the only way NATO seems to find out about Taliban operatives, is when ANA soldiers open fire on their NATO colleagues." Eighteen months is not nearly enough time to purge the ANA of Taliban operatives, recruit and vet replacements, and create a viable force. Further, I would in the strongest terms question NATO's ability even to purge the ANA, as it would be the corrupt Karzai regime that would be doing the prosecution. At the same time NATO forces already are drawing down; that is reduced force capacity and pretty much for all of recorded history the moment the occupying force in Afghanistan reduces force imprint, the insurgents reassert control over the wavering provinces, starting with the most remote and heading towards Kabul. But Rasmussen says the handover plan is on track. He is the boss of NATO. Do you believe him? That's nice. If the campaign to do that created millions more irate Muslims and so also created an international fringe of several thousand young men willing to carry out terror attacks against citizens of Western nations, providing some one tells them how to do it, then I do not call that a reasonable return. In exchange for "eliminating" Al Quaeda (well, reducing substantially) we have made our country the legitimate object of a world-wide jihad for any nut job who wants to fight in Islam's name. Would you call that a positive? I'm not sure of the end state. I think once the West leaves the Karzai regime will crumble and there will be some form of civil war. The Taliban may win but they may splinter and they may be badly damaged in the conflict. But in any case, Afghanistan will become an even more lawless place with plenty of valleys run by bandits and drug lords or religious nuts, or any combination of the above, that an Islamic extremist group might well find protection from. What I am sure of is that the West is on a fool's errand, they cannot secure the country given resources available, and they are perforce wasting lives and treasure. You say time will tell. The West has been at this for a decade and they're bailing. The last "surge" troops left Afghanistan yesterday, it was in the news wires. I say time has told.
  14. And I shall go point by point, as sequential progression appeals to me. (a/k/a it's easy to move on to point "2" if you remember point "1" comes right before it) Well, how about the fact that green-on-blue incidents this year are, more or less, about triple what they were last year? Have Afghan men suddenly become three times more sensitive? Or NATO trainers three times more insensitive? If I get you right, you believe the combat organization involved in the conflict, in this case NATO, in its statements is a more reliable means of learning about the actual progress of a conflict, than just looking at the evidence available and using one's brain to judge the information on its own merits. Without getting into whether that amuses me or no, because I am not sure I understand your point precisely, wouldn't it then logically follow that the Taliban are an equally reliable source? And indeed, if the question is about the progress and effectiveness of Taliban operations, a better one than NATO? The Taliban have said that infiltrating the ANA and using turncoats to attack NATO is one of their strategies, and further that the strategy is successful. The Taliban is just as much at war as NATO, heck, probably more so. It's their country and their operation. Why should we not believe them? Me, I take neither NATO nor Taliban at face value. I assume both will lie to achieve their war aims. I think that's where your argument fails. The mission was to punish attackers. It was not, people carrying Al-Quaeda membership cards and only those with membership paid in full. We went in targeting the terrorists, their friends, their trainers, their neighbors, the people that sheltered them, and even in some case people who just didn't jump fast enough to help us attack the people we wanted to attack. The stated goal was to create a situation where such an attack could never happen again, and more specifically, to make it so that Afghanistan would no longer be a terrorist haven. A stated midway task in that strategy, was the removal of the Taliban from power. To do that, the Taliban would have to be not just ousted, but eliminated as an effective organization. Further, that whatever replaced them could keep the lid on Afghanistan enough so that Other Bad Guys would not set up their in a land of chaos and laws sold to the highest bidder, at some point down the road. It is precisely in these subsequent tasks that the mission became impossible. We had the capacity to start the war, but we lacked the capacity to finish it. Our stated goals cannot be achieved, in Afghanistan, unless an effective and legitimate state apparatus, be it dictatorship, democracy, or just a happy confederation of tribal clans receiving regular protection payments, is imposed on the country. Without nation-building the place reverts to chaos the moment the blue troops leave. (As, I suspect, we will see in about two years.) Have we? One of the prerequisites for terror attacks in the West is anger and militancy in the non-west. I think we can agree that the suicide attacks hitting NATO troops right now, are driven substantially by those motivations. In a way deploying troops to Afghanistan long-term was one of the best things the jihad could have happen to it. It gave the faithful a clear and present infidel danger, and placed infidel troops in reach of almost a bottomless number of angry young men. I do not call that a smart strategic move, and I think it is even stupider when the stated goal is creating a secure Afghanistan, a fool's task if there ever was one. I do not believe NATO can succeed where the Soviet and British empires failed. To my knowledge, the last outside force to impose peace on Afghanistan was the Mongols; they suppressed resistance by murdering entire cities. That's not a strategy NATO can follow, and I see no other strategies that can work. Voltaire's line on history applies here, I think. I focus on nation-building, because without that, Afghanistan remains a place where Islamic extremist groups may find a home, and a place where the Taliban remains a powerful political player. I see no reason to believe that will not become the case in the near future. But then, I don't accept a NATO statement "we're still on track" without evidence to back it up. If that is the outcome then I would argue that is a clear failure to achieve the stated goals. A corrupt Uzbek/Tajik/Hazara federation in the north, and more honest but fundamentalist Pathan/Taliban entity in the south is a recipe for civil war, chaos, warlords, and organized crime; at that's before Beijing, Dehli, Islamabad, and Tehran - just to name the local neighbors - start trying to skew things to their advantage. What near-by bases are you talking about? We're getting kicked out of Kyrgyzstan in 2014, and I don't think the Iranians or the Pakistanis would be very enthusiastic about opening their air space to US aircraft operating out of Iraq. To me it's all starting to look all Saigon 1975; we say to the regime we've installed "Don't worry, if the bad guys attack after we leave we'll send you air, and then we don't."
  15. Vanir, I see your point, my apologies, I wasn't being clear. The 9/11 terror attacks are certainly an emotionally fufilling justification. But what I'm asking is, what in the world posessed the people in charge to conclude that since those attacks took place, Afghanistan had suddenly become ripe grounds for the installation of a (relatively) modern state, with infidels (in the minds of most of the Afghans) doing the installing? To me that is a losing proposition from the get-go. To me, 9/11 is not a good reason to invade Afghanistan unless you plan to leave again in a couple of weeks. The place can't be made stable unless a major nation or coalition decides to fight a long-term war there and, necessarily, kill a lot of people on both sides. By a lot I mean, probably 1,000s. Maybe tens of thousands. Far more than any major nation can handle, without mobilization. Certainly more than the US population was willing to accept in 2002, and far, far more than they will tolerate today. So you may have gathered, in my personal opinion I disagree with you about 9/11 being a valid casus belli for a long-term invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. But there are other opinions out there. Well, maybe they do know better. But I have no vested interest in making NATO look good, nor do I have a vested interest in painting the ANA, and NATO's training of it, in the very best light. Any one speaking officially for NATO either does, or is taking orders from some one who does. I would submit that makes NATO more inherently inclined towards a narrative on the ANA than I am. I'm just a guy writing on wargaming forum, expecting most of whomever reads what I write will be other wargamers. There a real insurgency in progress, not a game, and for us wargamers it's a compelling question - how effective are the insurgents and how effective are the, er, non-insurgents? Honestly, I'm just trying to figure out who's winning, or more recently, when is the game clock running out. But I would also wonder, when does a "narrative" become "getting it right?" Surely it must happen sometimes. Certainly, there are more than few members of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, who are far more critical of the ANA, than the NATO spokesmen. Does that mean that all that noise from the troops we keep hearing about the ANA being somewhere between Keystone cops and useless, is also a "narrative"? I guess that's possible. But I think it's also possible, NATO is facing the reality that it is unable to provide security itself and it is unable to field enough loyal Afghan forces to provide security itself, and that is defeat staring NATO in its face. Organized militaries are usually very bad at realizing when they're beaten, and worse at admitting it. Certainly, I'm not saying I think the Taliban is in the end zone, but yes I am impressed that the insurgents have managed to break into a pretty well-fortified base and do the homework (collect intelligence, figure out a raid plan, pay off the right guards, whatever it was) so that they could pull off this airfield attack. Their leaders are hunted by UAVs, they have to smuggle just about every bit of cash and weaponry they use, pretty much every electronic communication they transmit gets sucked in and read by the opposition, and still they pull it off. I'm not saying they're great guys I want to marry to my daughters, but give credit where credit is due. Despise your enemy at your own risk, etc. etc. Add to that this week's NATO decision not, unless I think a Brigadier general signs off on it, to allow NATO troops to operate jointly with the ANA. Some one correct me if I've got the precise policy wrong but that's the general idea, don't allow joint operations unless some one with some serious ability to ruin field grade NATO officer careers, signs off on the op. So if you ask why I think failure is taking place, impossible task or NATO incompetency, I would say my answer is "yes". It is inconceivable to me that among all those professional officers in the NATO forces, none of them have heard the "graveyard of empires" song and dance. But if they have, even just a minority of them, why do they soldier on? Why not stand up, risk the career, and say "This is stupid, it can't work, we're wasting taxpayer money and what's more the lives of the soldiers whose lives we swore not to waste." Is it really possible that, these days, military professionalism = shut up and don't rock the boat? Sure, I know, maybe they really believe they're winning. But how can they do that, when the Taliban controls entire regions, can break into airbases and blow things up, and the force NATO has trained to secure the country, the ANA, can't be trusted with weapons? Yet they say the security turnover program is going well and the troops will leave in 2014 and basically things will be hunky dory. Based on what I'm seeing, that's either ignorance or deceit, and either way making such utterences, in my book, is not a sign of military competence.
  16. Heh. Who says I am a man? As to this - I would say first and foremost, Afghanistan's endemic corruption, lack of education, and minimal government records on citizens were not, and indeed have never been secrets. Why, then, invade the place? Why has the US and NATO pretended for something like a decade or a half decade or whatever it is, that in the absence of these things, a viable local security force can be created? Or that, in the absence of the creation of that force, security can be maintained by NATO forces, given the rules of engagement and boots-on-ground limits those NATO forces have? The ANA isn't Tinkerbell, its effectiveness does not depend on how much we believe in it. I would also point out that, in Vietnam, we heard much of the same song-and-dance: gotta be patient, it takes time to build civil society, they've been so corrupt for so long we can't expect to turn these people into law-abiding Scandinavians overnight. Meanwhile the Communist Vietnamese put together a nice ruthless organization with selflessness and sacrifice and honesty and even self-criticism base values at every level of the structure, and corruption if present was so minor that compared to the Dieu regime, the Communists seemed serious about law and order like, I dunno, like Republican suburban residents with a barrio next door. Is it really credible that the Taliban are a bunch of disorganized, unprofessional, unmotivated and uneducated bums, just like the Afghans willing to work for NATO seem to be? Is creation of a movement where law and order and discipline are valued, really beyond Afghan tribesmen and city-dwelling who believe they are fighting a jihad? Is it credible that only very few of those Afghans working for NATO are doing so out of purely personal motivation, i.e., the infidels have lots of money and might as well collect some of it from them while they're here? It would be good to be sure there are only a very few of them, because if, in contrast, there are a lot of them, then the moment NATO stops paying - and this can happen not just if the money stops, but if it gets routed through the corrupt Karzai regime - then a whole bunch of NATO-trained Afghans are going to switch sides, and reasonably so, they're not getting paid any more. I'm not going to make any predictions, but I will say this: Military people coming from countries where rule of law prevails, and who do not as a rule speak Dari or Pathan, will not be the best judges of the personal inclinations of an Afghan citizen recruited to serve in the ANA. Which brings me to green on blue. It's all very well and good to say, well, actually it was local grievances rather than a Taliban operation when some ANA service member turns his weapon on his former NATO buddies. But I have to ask myself, what does that say about the relationship between the NATO trainers and the ANA trainees? Are we to believe the NATO trainers just accidentally made some mortal insult out of the blue and set the guy off? Or are we to believe there was tension and antagonism between trainers and and trainees simmering for some time, and somehow the trainers and their superiors didn't notice? And even if that tension was there, and for some reason there were good reasons the NATO people didn't notice it, are we to believe the Taliban really lacks people intelligent enough to identify and exploit rifts between NATO and ANA soldiers? And therefore, that we should accept the NATO version of events, you know, what the NATO investigators tell us, which is that these green-on-blue incidents are just sort of local misunderstandings which have little to do with the insurgency and the Taliban? I am far from assigning everything that goes wrong in Afghanistan to a nefarious Taliban central council sitting on rugs and sipping tea and pulling strings from a secret hide out in the Tribal Territories. But still, more and more, I am having even more trouble believing the US/NATO service members or their commanders have any idea at all of what they are doing. They can say whatever they want, but if they reduce joint operations with the ANA because they're afraid the Afghans NATO trained might just attack their teachers, then the word for that is failure.
  17. I disagree. 15 young men motivated by jihad, and mentally and physically capable of doing the training to perform a one-way raid against people thought by them to be infidel invaders, are not a rare commodity in Afghanistan. It is a simple matter of reconnaissance, identification of ways to make the raid given the limited resources at hand, and training. I'm certainly not going to argue that 6-8 destroyed aircraft and 3 trashed fuel dumps, and whatever else that got done that is not being made public or has not yet been made public, will halt the NATO war effort. However, anyway you cut it, 180 million dollars in a single night is a painful dent. But I would call the raid much more significant because as far as I know this is the first time the Taliban managed actually go get onto an airfield and conduct a successful raid against an air base. Sure they'd mortared before but get on base and kill people and blow planes up? They'd already managed ambushes of platoon-size elements and inflicting casualties against company-sized elements. Whether NATO likes it or not, that's a step up the insurgency capacity ladder for the Taliban. I certainly call it a Taliban success because, again, whether NATO likes it or not, Taliban fighters are expendable and as nearly as I can tell they are fine with that. The NATO position that the Taliban is wasteful of human life and so incapable of prosecuting a war is stupid. As Gunnergoz points out, the war is over which side can demonstrate it is more resilient, and more capable of enforcing its will over large portions of Afghanistan. If the Taliban is up against a force capable of deploying laser-guided munitions and just about everything else in the NATO inventory up to nuclear devices, and the Taliban has its act together enough to pull off a raid like this, then like it or not, that is a powerful demonstration of organization and will. Deep breath and [rant] NATO led by the US is not even in the same ball park, heck, not in the same league when it comes to will. As old Vanir points out, the Americans and their friends won't kill people on general grounds they might be insurgents, they won't go after safe havens in a meaningful way, they won't mobilize their economies, they won't draft young men, and the only way they are capable of maintaining forces in field, and preventing the NATO nation civilizations from pulling the cash plug, is by making the top military priority prevention of blue casualties. NATO people don't like to look at things this way, but then, their opinion doesn't matter so much. What does matter is which side is going to outlast the other. NATO has said it is, for the most part, pulling the troops out in 2014. I think it was yesterday they announced, they were reducing joint patrols with the ANA, because of what NATO calls "green on blue incidents". That euphemism means, of course, the insurgency has figured out how to infiltrate its own people into the ANA or convert ANA members to the insurgency, which in and of itself is a logical and somewhat impressive achievement, but they have managed to increase the threat perceived by NATO from the ANA to such an exent, that NATO must consciously step back from its long-term goal of handing over the country's security to the Afghans. That is a patent NATO failure. It is a sign the Taliban is winning, and even if NATO spokespeople deny it there is no way to change what the Afghans see in their country. For those like Vanir who perhaps yearn for going in and "crushing the enemy with overwhelming military force", I would point out that's been tried, the US overran Afghanistan in what was it, a several months during 2001-2. All the way to the Pakistan border, lightning campaign, rah rah special forces, Rumsfeld is a genius. Remember? Professional militaries are very hierarchical organizations and there is a real danger in them for large groups of the members to decide that Our Assumptions = Correct Assumptions. One of the most dangerous and incorrect assumptions, that has been driving US policy for years, is that correct application of military force will necessarily, and always, enforce the political result desired by US policy. A parallel and similarly insidious assmumption is, possession of overwhelming military force equals the real capacity to deploy useful military force. In Afghanistan, indeed just as in Vietnam, US forces are shackled because they are fighting a war not supported by the population. By this I mean the US population. It is possible to point fingers and blame politicians and whine about, couldn't we just make an incursion into Pakistan's Tribal Areas just once, but the bottom line is the US population lacks the desire and will to green light the use of much military force in Afghanistan. This has been abundantly clear to the Taliban from Day 1, and that has made their top strategic goal to be simply existing as a viable organization until such time as the war becomes so intolerable to the US population, that they force the military to quit. Demonstrations of viability, therefore, are like gold to the Taliban. It is another question of course, whether it was a smart idea to get involved in a war where to win all the other guy has to do is not go away, when from the get-go most of the tools of war are not available options to your side. And another thing. We complain about safe havens, but sometimes I really lose patience. The Taliban are largely Pathans, so are Pakistan's tribal areas, it is one of the great smuggling regions of history, the great part of the Pathans are Muslims and rural, and Pakistan is nuclear capable. What genius in the Pentagon or the White House decided: Hey, let's invade, if an insurgency crops up we can deal with it! There probably won't be any safe havens! And if there are safe havens, no worries, we're the only superpower! We'll just wipe those safe havens out! How many more professional soldiers and lower-level policy makers saw this debacle coming, or taking place, and just kept their mouths shut? It's got to be a lot, twelve years is a lot of TDY and field assignments. [/rant] There, I feel better.
  18. It's been reported, but it's not really been brought out how successful the attack was. I suspect the Pentagon plan is to spin this hoping that the general public doesn't really know what a base, Harriers, and fuel dumps are. Kind of ignore it and hope it will drop off the news radar. Also since Prince Harry is there they can depict the incident as a victory, i.e., the Prince wasn't hurt. If the Taliban are getting better at their base assault tactics, the NATO people get points for using Royals in a new way: as a foil, by the Royal's mere Not Dying, to spin what by most any standard is a military embaressment into a qualified success. I read somewhere an estimate that those 15 Taliban guys caused about 180 million dollars of damage. Seems to me like what they did was cut a hole in the perimeter fence, bypassing the ID checks, and then, wearing US uniforms, attacked aircraft and installations. Inside a base, at a moderate distance, at night. It must have been nuts in there before the Marines tracked them all down. Although I hate to say it, you have to give the jarheads credit, the Taliban must have been hoping to get some NATO types killed by friendly fire. Although the damage is bad enough, the Marines inside the base managed to deal with these guys without killing either Brits or each other. (Probably.) Still, this is not looking good. Last month the Taliban rocketed the US joint chief of staff's personal C-17. (He wasn't in it.) Somebody correct me but isn't the worst Viet Cong raid on a US air base the November 1 assault sapper/mortar attack of Camp Holloway where they destroyed 10 - 17 aircraft and killed 10 or so US personnel?
  19. Another moment in that film was, when the boot is getting hammered by depth charges and starting to come apart at the seams, and just about every one in the crew is either freaking out or just about to, Prochnow's character yells "Reports! I want reports!" - and that stops the panic. That's not just accurate for men under pressure in wars, that's like an order of magnitude accurate for Germans when the situation is going south. They're just obsessed with imposing order on chaos. Another moment that I really like is the one in Battleground where the Germans are just about to win the Battle of the Bulge, and Van Johnson is just about at the end of his rope, and the sun comes out. His look to the heavens is classic dogface infantry, the guy who has no influence on anything, his best outcome is having the die rolls come out so he survives, and all of sudden he realizes There Will Be Air.
  20. Those stats linked by Tero for some reason separate indirect and artillery (I don't get it either), if you factor them together they caused more death than small arms. Also, those stats are deaths, i.e., wounds that were survived weren't counted. I think it's reasonable to assume that small arms injuries all and all were more fatal than indirect/artillery injuries, and therefore that indirect/artillery caused more casualties, percentage-wise, than deaths. I think the really unnerving part of those stats, though, is the amount of technically preventable death. Factor together sickness, friendly fire, accidents, and aircraft and vehicle crashes, and you come up with something like 25 - 30 per cent, depending on how you want to view things like burns and suicides. And of course many of the aircraft crashes weren't accidents but due to enemy action. But in any case it's not an insignificant number. All goes to show you, the military is just not good for your health.
  21. Thanks guys. I think one of the lessons I draw from this is that a tank is a tank, but these shells have considerable mass and penetration or no penetration, bursting charge detonation or no, at the end of the day all these shells have considerable mass and velocity, and so energy. In digging around on this subject I find that the Soviets chose the 122mm for IS-2 specificially because of all the guns in the Soviet inventory it was the one that turned out to be most effective at Kursk. I.e., more than the 85mm AAA cannon and more than the 152mm in the tank destroyers. (They also stuck with 122mm when the even more effective 100mm became available on grounds of mass production, but that's another thread) Anyway, now when BFI gets around to doing an update on CMBB (well they should) I will be more confident when arguing a mucking big explosion on the outside of a tank, without penetration, should have a chance of causing substantial damage. It makes sense to me the 76mm would penetrate the side of a Tiger better than an 85mm: smaller cross-section, higher velocity. I've read the Kubinka report on shooting up that captured Tiger II; one of the things the Soviets found out was that a good (proportion) of the test shots by 76mm and even more by German 88mm went in one side and out the other. I'll leave it to other to discuss whether that means Soviet 85mm and 122mm could be more effective than those higher-velocity rounds, as they did not produce through-and-through performance and so necessarily would burst inside the crew compartment. On the relatively poor mobility of the Sherman there is a good Soviet story about that. When the Soviets decided to attack Japan Manchuria was named the target, and the formation that got the mission to break into the Japanese rear and drive several hundred km and make the main thrust of the offensive, was 6th Guards Tank Army. 6th Guards Tank Army was a somewhat interesting formation from the equipment POV as its main armored components, 5th Guards Tank Corps and 9th Guards Mech Corps, apparently were equipped respectively with T-34/85 and Sherman M4. The route of 6GTA's advance took them through the passes of the Greater Hsingan Mountains, which, unsurprisingly, had steep and undeveloped roads. The story is that 9GMC initially led the advance, found its Shermans unable to climb the mountain tracks, and so 5GTC had to take over. The best way to get a Sherman over the Greater Hsingan, the accounts went, was to use a T-34 to tow it. For those interested in Soviet tanks 6th Guards also is interesting in that there have been rumors/unsubstantiated references bouncing around for years that the Soviets may have fielded and actually sent into combat IS-3 during the Manchuria campaign. If this took place then the logical unit to have done that would have been 49th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment, which was organic to 6GTA.
  22. Wait a minute, isn't Olivier is playing an American? He sure speaks speaks letter-perfect Yankee in the scene where James Caan pulls a .45 on him? Since Olivier's character in the movie is US colonel I assume they took the Dutch character in the book and made him an American in the movie. Great scene.
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