Tuesday Open Thread: Afghan Edition

I second the comments of BMartin1776 above. When I first joined the Agency I was amazed to read the cables about how the Mujahideen fought. Their favorite weapon was a .303 Enfield rifle. They had found out that the armor on a Russian BMP (an amored personnel carrier) was very thin in the left front tire well. A .303 armor piercing round would go right through and into the head of the driver. The rest of the crew could not get to the driver from inside and the vehicle would either simply stop or crash and the Mujahideen would take there time killing the rest of the crew.

I read about how the Mujahideen were given SA-7's (Soviet shoulder launched anti-aircraft missiles) to combat Russian aircraft. The missiles were heat seekers and you needed to aim slightly behind the aircraft to get a hit. The Mujahideen were great rifle shots and they had been taught as small boys to lead a target…old habits died hard and they never used the SA-7's to their optimum potential. A few years later my youngest daughter's godfather (a large Class 3 dealer) showed me a half dozen Lahti model 39 20 MM's that were being readied for shipment…via cut outs of course…to the Mujahideen. These weapons had been designed before WW II to take out lightly armored tanks. In Afghanistan the Mujahideen's handlers had figured out how to use there skills at long range shooting to take out Soviet Hind 25 helicopters (the Hind's were like flying tanks). A team of two or three Mujahideen would sit up high in the mountains and wait for helos to fly close…after being attracted to the area by a decoy camp site. The helos climbed slowly in the thin air and the Mujahideen would place one well aimed shot in the rotor transmission and scratch one Soviet helicopter and crew. I laughed at the idea that the illiterate peasants were from the middle ages and could not fire a missile accurately but they could use a 40 year old obsolete anti-tank weapon to take out a multi-million dollar helicopter. Illiterate peasants yes…but determined illiterate peasants.

I also laughed at the cables that said the Mujahideen called the Soviets the Great Satan and the US was the Lesser Satan. I did not realize that the followers of the pedophile prophet would come after us as soon as they chased out the Soviets.

We can not win that war playing patty cake and applying an enhanced version of the Geneva Convention and massive doses of political correctness. Either the military should be unleased to do whatever is necessary to crush the sob's into oblivion or we should bring our troops home. We are playing games now and all that will accomplish are more dead Americans and US allies. My heart goes out to the Brits. They have lost a lot of good soldiers…and had many more return home terribly injured. This is not just an American war. The Brits, Aussies, New Zealanders, Canadians, French and many more friends have been fighting and dying along with our troops.

As for Petraeus becoming the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), I have my doubts. The Agency is riddled with liberals. it is almost as bad as the State Department. I think he will find leading the Agency about as difficult as herding cats….they just won't do what you want them to do.

"The Agency is riddled with liberals." David Horowitz warned of this in a book I do not remember the title of, by him and Peter Collier.

The whole system is like Moscow west.

Be well Ex.

The US went to Afghanistan. US Generals kissed the Koran and burned some Bibles and Afghani women were denied the miscegenation that would have improved their in-bred bloodlines, all out of respect one supposes, out of stupidity in truth. Afghanistan remains the same third world dung heap that it was before the war. America's mission was reminiscient of the "prime directive" from the old 'Star Trek' TV show, which forbade the 'earthlings' from influencing the other world's 'culture'.
The whole affair was absurd. American Christian civilization is the far superior to Afghanistan and Islam. America should be leaving Afghanistan an improved nation, but that's not the case. Iranian and Pakistani anti-American, Islamic, radical influences will move in after the US is gone.

Not only are we still in Iraq, but we are in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and possibly shortly in Somalia. There is something terribly wrong with this picture. It is time to get out and leave the locals to themselves. We don't need their oil. We have plenty if the narcissistic toddler would get off his posterior and let the US develop its reserves of gas, oil, shale oil, and methane ice.

Food for thought. If I had the opportunity to select a country to protect other than Israel, I would help the folks in South Sudan.

Continue the war on terror here in the U.S. by setting up active surveillance and investigations of the 2,000 Mosque training camps all across America. Start active deportations of Illegal Islamists that were smuggled in thru Mexico.
Clean out their presence in our Government too. We are completely infiltrated with them.

Use our Military all along the Southern Border in armoured-up hummers.

Also to replace the, almost unionized Govt TSA at all of our Airports. It will decrease the size Govt that Obama's created and there will be efficiency in using the El Al document screening procedures. Plus we trust our Military.

Even Generals use Fatigues in battle, does your mechanic change your oil in a Tux?

Amen! 100% agreement!

This war was won. Our objective should have been to remove the Taliban from power, to destabilize Al-Qaeda, and to wipe out enemy training camps destroying as many enemy combatants in the process as possible. Through political correctness we have allowed winning to be redefined and feminized.

This war was won when we removed the Taliban from power. Bush had wisely scaled back operations to hunt and destroy. Obama began his Afghan war redefinition as"a take it to the Taliban in Pakistan war" during the election. That threat destabilizing Pakistan and forced a mostly controllable Musharraf from office. Enemy body counts (Taliban friends and neighbors) have revitalized the Taliban. We ended up on a fracture battle field much like in Vietnam. You can not run COIN while running aggressive air combat.

I am not convinced it is a war of Ideology as a war of home turf. The Taliban took control through violence and oppression. We have succeeded in justifying their violence against their own people once more by staying on as the foreign invader. The french left the Us after the Revolutionary war If they had stayed to nation-build at the point of a gun would we have welcomed it?

The truth is successful nation building Germany ,Japan the Confederacy as examples require total societal breakdown and a total dependency on the aggressor for the stuff of life food, water, shelter. Half measure prolong the resistance

…and then send the troops to our southern border.

"Get there firstest with the mostest"

Did the Geneva Convention outlaw this form of warfare,…..?????

My mentor was one of the people removed as a result of the Church purge…

He saw this coming…

Actually . . .

The first part would be illegal because it could fall under the principle of waging aggressive war, or waging war without proper notification.

The second part would be illegal because of the asserted principle of "proportional" response.

So I would have to say that yes, by the standard interpretations of the Geneva Convention asserted by people who refuse to read the simple text, it does outlaw that form of warfare.

Sad but true.

Conversely:
"Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."
- William T. Sherman

For good or ill, the West has no will to do what needs to be done to remove the threat of radical Islam. Bring ours in and let theirs duke it out as they have for centuries.

COL,

Thanks for your service (I was an E5 in the USN and Army Guard).

2nd, Good point.

Be well.

I was surprised to find out that Patraeus never saw combat as a junior officer. His first rel combat was as the commanding general of the 101st Air Assualt Division (the Screaming Eagles). The 101 did a great job in Iraq. Patreaus later was a successful header of our anti-terrorism efforts in Iraq. What he lacks in on the ground combat experience the guys seems to make up for with leadership.

He is tough. He was wounded in the chest with an M-16 round during training and was released from the hospital after a very short stay and proving he could still do 50 push ups. He also had a major accident while involved with civilian skydiving.

However, Dear Leader has nominated him top be the DCI. That nomination from Dear Leader is enough to make me think he is a closet lefty. Dear Leader would NEVER put a hard core conservative in charge of anything larger than a latrine.