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US Marine and Afghan forces lose many due to lack of support...

Four Marines are dead because they couldn't get affective arty fire. Where is that in the CI manual? Please, show me.
If you will take a moment you might realize that I was dressing the general issues raised not the specific incident.
 
Before we jump to too many conclusions, there are some things to note.



This is the key section of the report. If the enemy knows what you are going to do, you are screwed.

Secondly, there is no evidence that the commanders chose civilian lives over the lives of troops. All we are told in the article is that helicopters and HE and smoke artillery where unavailable, but that WP was available, and used. We do not know why and there are a number of reasons possible, with logistic troubles probably topping the list.

This is a tragic story, and to twist it to serve a political purpose is vile.

Also, please read the BN news rules, your thread title is supposed to match the article headline.
I'll bet those sympathizers work for ACORN.
 
Strategy is precedence. A key tenet of NATO strategy is to win the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan and convince them that the Afghan government and foreign forces are not the antagonists. Now, if calling in any type of indirect fire is going to serve as a tactical victory in exchange for a strategic blunder, the answer should be simple: Tactical actions should never be inconsistent with strategic objectives.

The only thing wrong with that, is that, "winning hearts and minds", isn't a military strategy. Nothing should ever take priority over mission accomplishment and economy of force, in that order. The hearts and minds of your soldiers are more important than any other thing.

The problem I had with the entire thing is that the coordinates they called in were out of the 500 meter safety zone. It wasn't near a village and they supposively made that clear, so what the **** was at stake?

We aren't informed enough of the situation on the ground to know if the ground unit intentionally called indirect fire danger close. When you get out of school and join the service, then you can make those judgements.
 
The hearts and minds of your soldiers are more important than any other thing.

People are people. They're all of equal value.
Nobody's hearts and minds are "more important".
It kills me to say that, given the circumstances.
But it's what I believe.
And it's the way I raised my soldier.
 
People are people. They're all of equal value.
Nobody's hearts and minds are "more important".
It kills me to say that, given the circumstances.
But it's what I believe.
And it's the way I raised my soldier.

You're wrong. The lives of the men in a military unit are far more valuable to each other and to their leaders than anyone else's. Anyone that believes otherwise either has never served in the military, or was a piss poor soldier. Any leader that would allow his men to die, either to protect his career, to uphold some political agenda, or protect anyone outside his service is a piece of **** and doesn't deserve the wear the uniform.
 
You're wrong. The lives of the men in a military unit are far more valuable to each other and to their leaders than anyone else's. Anyone that believes otherwise either has never served in the military, or was a piss poor soldier. Any leader that would allow his men to die, either to protect his career, to uphold some political agenda, or protect anyone outside his service is a piece of **** and doesn't deserve the wear the uniform.

As has been stated, if the lives of Iraqis are worth nothing compared to ours, we wouldn't have troops on the ground in the first place; we'd just drop a nuke on them, or fly over and bomb the whole damned country into a smoking hole in the earth.
We're actually attempting to accomplish something over there besides killing them all because they're worthless.
Our troops are voluntarily risking their lives to protect civilians.
Killing them kind of defeats the purpose of being there at all.
 
As has been stated, if the lives of Iraqis are worth nothing compared to ours, we wouldn't have troops on the ground in the first place; we'd just drop a nuke on them, or fly over and bomb the whole damned country into a smoking hole in the earth.
We're actually attempting to accomplish something over there besides killing them all because they're worthless.
Our troops are voluntarily risking their lives to protect civilians.
Killing them kind of defeats the purpose of being there at all.

Sure, we're trying to accomplish something, however, if I were still in the service and leading soldiers in Iraq, my number one mission in life would be to bring as many of those men home alive as possible, regardless of anything else. I would insure that no more of my soldiers would die protecting those civilians than was absolutely neccessary. If I have to call in air, or arty to protect my men and a few civilians get wasted in the process, then the bad guys shouldn't have started a fire fight so close to a civilian area. That's who's at fault; the bad guys. If they don't start a fight amongst civilians, then civilians won't die in the battle. The whole, "hearts and minds", BS isn't going to do anything other than encourage the enemy to use civilians as cover, which will result in only two things: more dead civilians and more dead American soldiers.

No one has ever said that the lives of those people are worthless. All anyone has ever stated, is that the lives of American soldiers take priority over anything else. When I was a fire team leader, squad leader, track commander, platoon sergeant, or 1st sergeant, there was no limit to what I would do to keep my men alive. If I had to bend a few rules to accomplish that mission, then so be it. Fortunately, I was never in that position. Make no mistake, though, had I been, then there would have been only one clear decision and I would have made it. If I was prosecuted for a crime and sent to prison, then I would do my time with a clear concience, because I made that decision in the utmost interest of the welfare of my men.

Anyone that's never been there can never understand.
 
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No one has ever said that the lives of those people are worthless. All anyone has ever stated, is that the lives of American soldiers take priority over anything else.

That's nice, and as a military mom, I selfishly appreciate it.
Objectively, however, some Afghan woman's son is as important and valuable to her as mine is to me, and she's as valuable and important, in the grand scheme of things, as I am.
And admittedly, we are kind of on her turf.
An American soldier could get out, get home, and get safe, if he really, really wanted to.
He could shoot himself in the foot, if he had to, in order to get out.
Ultimately, he's there by choice.

An Afghan civilian, on the other hand, can't get out.
He can shoot himself in the foot, and he'll still be wandering around in a warzone with no foot.
He's not there by choice. He's there because there isn't any way for him to leave.
 
That's nice, and as a military mom, I selfishly appreciate it.
Objectively, however, some Afghan woman's son is as important and valuable to her as mine is to me, and she's as valuable and important, in the grand scheme of things, as I am.
And admittedly, we are kind of on her turf.
An American soldier could get out, get home, and get safe, if he really, really wanted to.
He could shoot himself in the foot, if he had to, in order to get out.
Ultimately, he's there by choice.

An Afghan civilian, on the other hand, can't get out.
He can shoot himself in the foot, and he'll still be wandering around in a warzone with no foot.
He's not there by choice. He's there because there isn't any way for him to leave.


That Afghan mom needs to get out there and kick some ass, when the bad guys position themselves too close to her home and her family. If she doesn't then either her family isn't worth that much to her, or she's in collusion with the enemy. The latter makes her the enemy as well and therefore a legit target.

I think the biggest misconception here, is that US troops aren't actively targetting civilians. The subject is collateral damage, which is the nature of warfare. If US troops are intentionally targetting civilians, for no other reason than to kill them, then obviously, that should be dealt with swiftly and harshly. I propose the death penalty in those cases. But, that's not the case.

"Winning hearts and minds", is crucial, but not at the cost of more American lives. It's not worth one single American soldier's life to insure that the locals don't hate us. If they're too stupid to realize who is really causing their misery, then tough **** for them.

As far as the Afghans not having a choice, that's not true. They most certainly do have a choice. They can choose to work towards the annihilation of the Taliban. No more Taliban means no more US troops, which means that no more civilians get killed in fire missions. I think alotta folks are unable to see the big picture.
 
I agree, for the most part.

It greatly bothers me when people talk about "winning the hearts and minds" of this region or that no insurgency has ever been defeated. How can anybody feel comfortable with their opinions if they don't know this region or the issues at hand?
 
How can anybody feel comfortable with their opinions if they don't know this region or the issues at hand?


I've often asked that question, but then remind myself that ignorance has no concience.
 
What most people don't understand is that the winning of hearts and minds in Iraq and Afghanistan mostly consists of being the biggest, baddest mother on the block; killing the enemy in every engagement; demonstrating our ability to close with and destroy anyone who opposes us. It's kind of hard to do this when you have little armchair generals telling us how to conduct tactical operations because of some imagined strategy.

Collateral damage doesn’t do as much to undercut the “winning of hearts and minds” as most people would like to think; especially when the collateral damage is the result of a legitimate engagement. Iraq is a perfect example of this, as they (the Iraqis) have suffered innumerable casualties as the result of collateral damage, yet we were still able to win them over. Why is that? Because they are smart enough to realize two things:

1. The Americans are bad mothers. We do not want to fight them.

2. Most of the collateral damage was the result of legitimate engagements. If it’s anyone’s fault, it was the morons who chose to engage the Americans in close proximity to civilians.

That's not to say we should try to MINIMIZE collateral damage, or make efforts to engage in humanitarian missions, but endangering our troops because some noob in America likes to think they know how to win counter-insurgency operations is positively criminal.

If you've never served, just keep your tactical and strategic advice to yourself.
 
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If you will take a moment you might realize that I was dressing the general issues raised not the specific incident.

I apologize if I misunderstood. I thought you were addressing the OP. Can you clarify what you mean?
 
What's the truth? That if we accept high levels of collateral damage and kill a lot of innocent civilians, our troops will be safer?
Nobody's "blind" to that fact. We know it's true.
We just aren't going to do it anymore.

Welcome to Viet Nam, 2009.
 
What most people don't understand is that the winning of hearts and minds in Iraq and Afghanistan mostly consists of being the biggest, baddest mother on the block; killing the enemy in every engagement; demonstrating our ability to close with and destroy anyone who opposes us. It's kind of hard to do this when you have little armchair generals telling us how to conduct tactical operations because of some imagined strategy.

Except that isn't what happened in Iraq. Furthermore, if that was actually good, effective COIN, then the French would still be in control of Indochina and the British would have never lost Afghanistan.

Your two statements are highly questionable.

Many of the awakening councils came to believe that the terrorists were worse then the US, not that the US was unable to be beaten. And second, that agreeing to be part of the government would be good for their wallets and their status. Remember that the US promised jobs and pay checks to awakening council members. It's primarily a reason they are pissed off at us we (or the Iraqi government more accurately) hasn't entirely come through.

If you've never served, just keep your tactical and strategic advice to yourself.

Never mind when what you state is what actually occurred....
 
It's not. It's the same year in and year out. But our military has to be able to wage war the way it knows how to do. When our military excursions become politicized, the result is always far more death than need be. We have a history of this. Fallujah II was a result of the media's exaggerations over Fallujah I. To place perspective on this....

- Vietnam saw the media dictate the outcome of a war.

- Iraq saw the media dictate the outcome of a battle (Fallujah I).

Today the media's dictating military decisions and encouraging restrictions to our politicians more than ever. This trend is a guarantee to our military that failure is the only product.

I can think of another... it's called the draft. That's when the stupid rules guarantee that the smart people won't volunteer anymore, and the stupid people that made the rules have to force people to join the service.
 
Because, the media has learned that it can only get away with so much defeatism. The days of the loser piece-a-crap Walter Cronkite saying, "the war can't be won", are over.

No, the mantel has been passed the the Democrats.
 
Apsdt doesn't seem to think so.



This depends. For instance, if we always choose to go how you want, but result in killing civilians, doesn't that prolong the war which exposes even more soldiers to risk of death? So all we really end up doing is trading the lives of soldiers in the future for the lives of soldiers now. How does one measure this? In lives?

What you don't seem to understand is that if you allow the enemy to hide behind civilians while they shoot at our troops, they will continue to hide behind civilians while they shoot at our troops...

Is that beyond your understanding?

Now, if you go ahead and kill them while they are hiding behind civilians, not only will they move for better cover, but the civilians will quit letting them hide behind them.
 
Um...no this is not true at all. We have a very long history of insurgencies being defeated and broken throughout the world. The Romans have a history. The Japanese have a history. The British have a history. The Americans have a history - Morro...Boxer Rebellion...Cuba... Hell, all the European colonial powers had success against local insurgencies. There are entire books written on this topic.

The only difference now is that every time a media camera captures imperfection or when a soldier dies the masses paint it with "failure." And they do so because they don't know any better and simply form opinions that are based off of some idiot commentator who also doesn't understand what he looking at.

Hey... knock it off... my thanks button is getting worn out.
 
Except that isn't what happened in Iraq. Furthermore, if that was actually good, effective COIN, then the French would still be in control of Indochina and the British would have never lost Afghanistan.

Your two statements are highly questionable.

Many of the awakening councils came to believe that the terrorists were worse then the US, not that the US was unable to be beaten. And second, that agreeing to be part of the government would be good for their wallets and their status. Remember that the US promised jobs and pay checks to awakening council members. It's primarily a reason they are pissed off at us we (or the Iraqi government more accurately) hasn't entirely come through.

I know all this. I was there when all this was happening.

Essentially, the insurgents would rather get paid than be killed. Such an incentive would not exist in the absence of our aptly demonstrated military superiority. The insurgents capitulated because they were smart enough to realize that money is better than bullets.

Moreover, this misses another point I was trying to make e.g., collateral damage is not as detrimental to our strategic objectives as everyone would like to think. If it was those insurgents wouldn't have bargained with us, period.

And since we know collateral damage does not preclude the completion of strategic objectives, considerations of such should not jeopardize the safety of our troops.

Never mind when what you state is what actually occurred....

Yea, what would I know about it…:roll:
 
Except that isn't what happened in Iraq. Furthermore, if that was actually good, effective COIN, then the French would still be in control of Indochina and the British would have never lost Afghanistan.

The French and British armies in Asia can't be equally compared to the American military in a modern day war. Too many dynamics versus then and now. Besides that, losing wars is a centuries old tradition for the French.
 
I can think of another... it's called the draft. That's when the stupid rules guarantee that the smart people won't volunteer anymore, and the stupid people that made the rules have to force people to join the service.

I disagree that a draft would dumb down our military. Not only will the smart people keep volunteering--3 in 5 Vietnam vets volunteered to serve. Plus, Americans are superior to any other nationality in both aggressiveness and intelligence, so you're average draftee will be smarter than our enemy.
 
What you don't seem to understand is that if you allow the enemy to hide behind civilians while they shoot at our troops, they will continue to hide behind civilians while they shoot at our troops.

Is that beyond your understanding?

Interesting you think that after I explicitly stated the problem of water and fish to apsdt. I take it you did not understand the analogy?
 
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