Afghanistan
 

What has 20 years of deployment if allied troops in Afghanistan been all about just to hand it back to the Taliban?
Why did we ever bother!
454 British families have lost a loved one…. For what? How many injured ex service personnel out there? How can politicians claim their loss was not in vain? How can they face the families of the dead and injured?

Speak to any ex military who served there and they will tell you that the Afghan army could never ever hold that country regardless of how much training they had. The tribal and cultural mix was all wrong - troops did not respect or trust their officers……. Politics!

If the Russians could not fix the place 20 odd years ago what hope did the West have?

I was talking with my daughter several days ago, before the Taliban made so much headway. She is studying Psychology and she was reading about PTSD. I used Afghanistan as an example, hundreds of years of invaders and NONE have evr triumphed. It is a feudal, barren and very divided place, tribes, different cults, religions and laws. What hope has the average Tommy, GI Joe, etc. in such a place. It should just be left alone to find it's own equilibrium. I told my daughter that it was a "basket case", maybe prophetic.

Rgds.
Dave

Your daughter will be shrinking you next Dave .................:jester:

No one has ever managed to bring any kind of normality to that place throughout history- way before even the Russians

Totally agree! Worst 7 months of my life was when my son was there in 2012 with R Marines….

And your son's principal problem was,"Who [the FLOCK!] is the enemy?". No black or white, just different shades of gray - How, as a combatant, do you take a decision to squeeze the trigger or not? IED's, the chance of litigation afterwards for split second decisions taken in "the heat of the moment" [You are a murderer!], a total nightmare for the soldiers/marines dirtying their boots in the dust.

Saludos and a hug to your son. There ARE people who hear, understand and DO NOT judge. We sympathize with, what in the end, was a lost and useless cause.

Best Regards,
Dave

Do what is required or do nothing.

If we keep pushing our young people into ventures without allowing them rein to do the job there will become a time when we cannot recruit enough of them to defend us when we really need them.

Politicians and diplomats have invented 'rules of engagement' an absurd concept in war. In order that as few of one's own young people are harmed (and, I suggest the same for the losing side when the bottom line is reached) no holds should be barred unless they are ones likely to demoralise ones own troops. Assuming a 'win' is to be had at all then it will not be had quickly if the troops are insufficient in number or supply or if they are held back by bleeding hearts. The shorter the conflict the less harm for both sides. Harm to our young people people at the expense of inadequacies of supply and artificial limitations I find unacceptable. Harm to their young people or, possibly, people in general is regrettable but less important.

For civilised management use police, handcuffs and expect to deploy beat bobbies for ever - policing in other words. For war use soldiers and heaviest metals. Overkill may be the nasty word when applied to real killing but war is nasty and unless it is treated as such it will go on for ever. Why do our leaders so often confuse the two? Perhaps they don't. Perhaps they commit only what the opposition will tolerate instead of what is required.

The defeat will mean that these primitives will go back to chopping the hands of thieves (not the worst prescription), throwing queers from high rooves, public hangings and universal incarceration of women. Perhaps there will be a small delay while they extract their revenge on those who have helped the allies. I suppose I could finish with 'god help them' but I think their god is part of the problem.

How very true that young men die for old men's wars. To quote George S Patton, in war there are no winners or losers only survivors. Our, for want of a better word, leaders should never have gotten us involved in the first place. This was a war militarily we could easily win except we were never allowed to. Soldiers are NOT policemen, educators, diplomats or humanitarian facilitators, their job, which they are trained to do is kill the enemy, period.

Russia with all its might lost badly in Afghanistan, the US failed to learn the lessons of Korea and Vietnam and is now paying the same terrible price for failure.

It is much the same here in Northern Ireland, the crown forces were shoehorned into a policing role against ruthless terrorists and murderers on both sides. Hands tied behind their back they were in essence canon fodder with the result that after over 30 years of bloodshed and strife we now have the same murderous scum peddling their poison from the seat of government. Families of those who lost their lives here can rightly ask "what the hell was it all for?"

One day perhaps in our case we will realise we have enough troubles at home without becoming involved in other peoples conflicts especially ones our armed forces are NOT allowed to win.

The Russians lost badly - But it was a proxy war in the cold war with UK and US providing support to the Mujahideen, who, with a little help from Pakistan, spawned the Taliban.
Brezhnev overplayed his hand, yes, and other foreign interference kept the pot boiling.

The 'new' Taliban say that they are different and have changed in 20 years - For an organisation that lives in the 7th century (albeit with 20th century kit) what difference is the odd 20 years likely to make?

I cannot help coining of our gallant colonial cousins.

Too late in two world wars, too early in the next.

Right on Tmac.

I think that the author Rudyard Kipling had something to say about this country and its difficulty in uniting it .

This is an extremely delicate and emotive subject and the understanding of it deserves deeper reading than, perhaps, the popular press. St Thomas Aquinas started the ball rolling about a thousand years ago with his thoughts on the Just War and todays Geneva Conventions on wounded soldiers, POW's and civilians are regarded as the latest chapter.
Most countries in the world have armed forces raised by the legitimate government with an officer corps commissioned by the head of state, in the UK it is The Queen. The Other Ranks are trained to obey the lawful orders of their superior officers. They are not a rabble or a bunch of mercenaries.
Recently how proud were we when we listened to Lt Col Tim Collins's speech before Iraq and read Doug Beatty's book; both Officers were Royal Irish.
Those who hanker for Armies to be less restrained and always have "one up the spout" could perhaps comment on Lt William Calley and his behaviour at My Lai and Joachim Peiper and the Waffen SS with their 84 US Army POW's.

Is God on our side?

I agree restraint is required. But even that restraint will end in more of one's own young dead, whether de-humanised by their calling or not. The need for restraint is to avoid the disquiet (or indeed lust) amongst the rank and file. Collateral damage in inevitable and regrettable but must not be a reason to fail to prosecute such adventures to end them as soon as possible. 'Such' - better nonsuch, jaw-jaw etc. although how one jaws jaw with primitives is another matter. Softly carrying a big stick seems to be ineffective but, then, sticks are not for carrying but for using.

Was not Calley 'shopped' by his men? - in other circumstances that might have been cause to doubt as it would in any situation where subordinate challenges his superior. Murdering bastardy aside it seems he was not a fully competent officer, another cause for his men to take against him.

The Irish involved again? It was a noble one of those that refused to sign Byng's death warrant and another won us Waterloo - how obstinately decent the humble potato must makes one (especially when distilled).

Having lived in the Middle East as a marine pilot I do not understand what we were trying to do in Afghanistan as their way of living is different to ours. Their calendar is several hundred years behind ours and different countries have different rules.

Jean Claude Van Damme -Dead ringer for Peiper. A very interesting, and horrific, read.
Rgds.
Dave

Plenty of mercs in Afghan.
Deniability is (was) the watchword.

More to the point. IS there a "god"? If there is, that's one seriously disturbed unit.

History tells us that nobody has succesfully invaded Afganistan. Never. The only uniting force there is the Lex Talionis. American hubris does it again... shades of the evacuation of Hanoi 1975. Insanity is doing the same thing the same way, over and over, expecting different results.


Google "The War Prayer", Mark Twain.



I'm currently ashamed to be an american.

You are so right.
He speaks little about ‘Afghan’ as he calls it but once told of his frustration after a ‘skirmish’ where the local fighters sought refuge in a mosque and exited minus AK45’s and had to be allowed to leave on their motorbikes unchallenged.
The military taught him and nine others to speak Pashtun at the Royal Military language college, Beaconsfield so that they may better communicate and understand the local elders and population. What it did was give him an incite into a society that was locked in the past and totally disjointed and corrupt. There was an Afghan army where the officer corps were distrusted by the soldiers primarily based on tribal politics and a police force not to be trusted by anyone!

Why must we try to impose our ‘western standards’ on others? Let them develop in their own right. Look at the effect of our interference in Libya, Iraq and Syria. To what end?

Hear, Hear! It is something that I was discussing with my daughter just the other week.........."King" oil for USA. In Afghanistan, it was valuable minerals and rare metals. Then, as always, the USA decided (losing 20-0) that they didn't want toplay football anymore and took their ball home.

Cheers and best regards to your son.

Dave