posted
Is anyone else getting very uncomfortable with the strange situation in Afghanistan? It was always different from Iraq in that a) it actually was a stronghold for organised terrorists and b) several different nations have sent troops in, not just Britain and America. But, the news reports about the British seem to depict this weird army which seems to be made up exclusively of special forces (marines, paras and myriad units which seem to base their whole image on the Long Range Desert Group out of WWII).
Then we had that bizarre footage of commandoes strapping themselves to the outside of helicopters to rescue a fallen colleague. WTF is going on?
We get pretty much daily reports of British soldiers getting killed, in ones and twos here and there, but how many Afghans are being offed in return? It's like we've got a professional, highly trained gang of football hooligans, based on honour and revenge, and we're paying for them to go out there and kick some ass in this gung-ho fashion which is unlikely to actually reach any resolution.
The original mobile units these people seem to base themselves on were a small part of a conventional war. The LRDG would watch supply routes and report back the intelligence they picked up. Later on they would transport or guide SAS patrols who would make one-off attacks on airfields, both of which I'm sure were extremely useful in wearing down the opposition - but proper battles still had to be fought by proper armies.
Now it just seems that the whole strategy is based on these hit-and-run raids and nothing else. At best it may be containing the Taliban, but there is no way they're going to be defeated. What next? Concentration camps? (In the original Boer War sense.) That was considered the solution to a situation where roving Boer gangs (the original commandoes) where being fed by the local population. So we rounded the population up and invented concentration camps. Don't suppose anyone would stop us if we did that again, but it wouldn't be popular.
In the next 5 or 10 years this country is going to be flooded with ex-army guys that are all experienced specialist killers. In a normal war you get a load of conscripts that don't want to be there and a few people that do special missions here and there and carry on doing that when the war's finished. I'm pretty sure that applies in Iraq too, but Afghanistan seems to be different. There isn't going to be room anywhere for all this lot.
Is our presence in Afghanistan a positive thing then?
What do you think about this new type of army where everyone is part of a special unit, with beards and well 'ard vehicles and guns and that?
Posts: 8467
| IP: Logged
posted
I do think we need to be in Afganistan, but the redeployment of troops there to combat the resurgent Taliban has been woefully underfunded and under manned.
Some might argue that fighting experienced guerilla forces with small units of highly trained well equiped (if indeed they are) Special forces units is a better way to target and combat them than more conventional large scale military action.
Until something is done to address the opium trade - buy poppies from farmers, pay/support farmers to grow alternative crops, protect them from Taliban control - in Afganistan it's going to be very difficult for any outside force to have much effect.
[ 23.01.2007, 06:20: Message edited by: Boy Racer ]
-------------------- Some people stand in the darkness, afraid to step into the light... Posts: 3770
| IP: Logged
posted
I think our presence is a very positive thing, I think that if France could get off their cowardly high horses and get involved with the rest of the UN, then it would make the European presence a lot stronger, and help to move America out of the area, which would help in a hearts and minds and also military intellegence over big guns etc way. With battles tending to bleed over to the boarders, little skirmishes coming across boarder, hitting and fleeing, it's making the establishment of infa-structures harder.
The west needs to step in and turn the opium trade into a medicinal trade, cut out the black market money flowing through the middle east and turkey and so on.
-------------------- If Chuck Norris is late, time better slow the fuck down Posts: 2741
| IP: Logged
posted
I did a picture of you last night ralph. You were wearing nothing but a yankee hat and a beard, and Black Mask (depicted as a vectorized Zorro) was arse-raping you with a 'gas' pump, as you stood on the stump of a recently felled tree.
posted
Well we don't have a drummer, so I'll have to assume that's NWoD wrestling a couple of large, black, disembobbited cocks in the middle. Perhaps that might somehow explain the flying hat?
quote:Originally posted by dang65: In the next 5 or 10 years this country is going to be flooded with ex-army guys that are all experienced specialist killers.
quote:The MoD's own figures reveal that more than 2,100 troops - about 2% - returning from Iraq between 2003 and September 2006 have suffered psychiatric problems.
posted
I think that there are far too few troops in Afghanistan to stablise the country. That country could have been stabilised and real progress made years ago if a sufficient number of troops had been stationed there. The country probably needs around 100,000 foreign troops to ensure lasting security and put down the insurgency. It is a major war out there.
Though I initially opposed the war in Afghanistan. I still think the allies should put the country right before they leave.
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic