False picture of Afghan war
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http://readability.iavian.net/?hop=http%3A%2F%2Farmedforcesjournal.com%2F2012%2F02%2F8904030
Having been there I can say this guy nailed it on the head. Hats off to an officer who has put something else before his own career. Something I rarely get to witness. -
Hate to tell you this, but links don't work in the forums. I tried clicking it 😜 😢
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I wanted to actually see a picture
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Zedman5000 wrote:
Copy and paste it into safari..Hate to tell you this, but links don't work in the forums. I tried clicking it 😜 😢
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The short of it is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army wrote an editorial stating the pentagon is hiding the fact we are not doing a damn bit of good in Afghanistan.
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Having been there myself as well, I am incredibly disappointed with article. I served on a training team and had a positive experience. U will always have the exceptions, but for the most part, the afghans I trained with everyday loved their country and wanted to make a difference just like we do with ours. I guess the afghan army just likes to put out more for US Marines...Semper Fi!
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Lol my hats off to the Marines, no doubt. I loved the ETT's.
I speak the language over there (Dari and a little Pashto). I know Afghans very well and dont dispute that they love their country more than most in this world. That's not the issue. The problem is we don't control ANYTHING beyond line of sight. If we spent half as much effort educating and rebuilding the country as we do fighting we would be much better off. The government over there is corrupt to the core yet we support it. The local Afghan knows all this.
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It's hard to educate and rebuild if coming under constant attack. You can't perform reconstruction under rocket,mortar, and small arms fire. The infrastructure in A-Stan is nearly non existent in most of the country, they have been trying to build roads but can't because of the Taliban. I just don't understand how you think we can accomplish any of this without fighting. All combat troops are to be pulled next year, my deployment was recently cancelled due to this(INF BN).
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The mission in Afghanistan is ideal for speical ops. Big Army took over eventually and screwed it up. The infantry are not meant to do anything but kill and destroy, not train and rebuild in an insurgency. We can't fight with conventional forces and stay on the locals good side due to unavoidable collateral damage. If we were building as much as we could and the Taliban (we are NOT really fighting the Taliban, that's a whole other conversation) attack those projects it would turn the local population against them. So much of our reconstruction money has been lost to corruption that it's a joke.
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When we do fight and then leave an area it doesn't instill much confidence in the local Afghan. Just in Kunar where I was we closed dozens of bases because our casualty rate was too high. Just one for example was in Wanat (13 July 2008) Afghanistan when we lost 9 soldiers and I was there when they decided to close that base 4 days later. Now we have totally abanded the Waygul valley, the Korengal valley, and the Pech River valley.
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So basically you expect are relatively small SpecOps forces to not only protect the thousands of reconstruction teams but also seek out and destroy the enemy and train the ANA in a country the size of Texas? The Army doesn't even have enough manpower to provide security but SpecOps is supposed to do this how? Kunar province is a whole story on its own. That's one place where we failed massively. Luckily most of the country isn't like that, if i remember correctly over 60% of all insurgent activity was in kunar. Much respect to anyone that went to that shithole. I'm curious to know who you think we're fighting, they sure go by the Taliban where I was at. I know in Kunar you had a lot more insurgent groups, but as far as I know the Taliban is also highly active there.
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We are fighting Pakistan. The term Taliban is used so generically to refer to anyone fighting coalition troops. Just a few of the groups are the HIG, Salafists, the LET, and all around thugs not associated with anyone but their own pocketbook. I know we don't have near the specops we need but they should be leading the mission at least instate of Big Army like the 101st. Don't get me wrong The big army and the infantry are great at fighting wars but we're not fighting a war there. We're rebuilding in an insurgency.
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In October 09 a US base was over run and set on fire. Six US soldiers were killed. The insurgent leader of that attack was a natural enemy of the Taliban and had asked the US for support to take in the Taliban. In response he was told to F off and put on the sh*t list. So instead of having a friend on our side we made another enemy and six brave men paid the price for it.
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I thought that was the new strategy anyways? SpecOps takes out HVTs while Army rebuilds and provides security, but security still blows and it simply comes down to not enough boots on the ground. I personally can't wait to GTFO of there. I just hate to see wasted American, Coalition and Afghan lives for nothing. It already pisses me off to think of the lives wasted in places like Korengal valley. I'm still pissed they abandoned it.
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PattySmack wrote:
That's because we have idiot officers that spend 2 years in ROTC( OOO QUALIFIED)and then suck 8===D all the way to the top. Im curious, did you have any northern alliance in kunar when you were there?In October 09 a US base was over run and set on fire. Six US soldiers were killed. The insurgent leader of that attack was a natural enemy of the Taliban and had asked the US for support to take in the Taliban. In response he was told to F off and put on the sh*t list. So instead of having a friend on our side we made another enemy and six brave men paid the price for it.
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You have it spot on with the officers. The 173rd there had the beat soldiers I've ever seen hands down but horrible officers who were career driven and mucked things up. IE Wanat. There wasn't and northern alliance there but there were not too far from us. The scariest groups we ever encountered were the Chechens.
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BEEN THERE DONE THAT,HAVE THE MEDALS.
Honestly we are doing no good over there.
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