Stock photo of SF in Kabul 2002
Posted on 06/29/2010 8:08:22 AM PDT by Tulsa Ramjet
As many as 150 insurgent fighters have been killed since Sunday in a major offensive involving about 700 U.S. and Afghan troops along eastern Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, a senior military official confirmed to Fox News early Tuesday.
The U.S.-led operation was one of the largest yet in the region, officials told The Washington Post, who described the assault as "one of the most intense battles of the past year."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Stock photo of SF in Kabul 2002
700 doesn't strike me as "major." How about 10,000?
Major Attack! Who is in command? Obama? The general he appointed is sitting in a Senate grilling room listening to idiots pontificate. Rudderless regime.
I’m sure this was planned well before McChrystal got the axe and the subordinate commanders are running the show. However, it’s what happens next that will tell how the rest of the war will be conducted. If history repeats itself with Demoncrats in charge (ie. Viet Nam), the US will take ground and then give it back.
Great photo from a time when the military didn’t have restricted rules of engagement and took care of business.
On the plus side, the change in command probably led the enemy into a false sense of security, believing the operatoin wouldn’t take place for some time. On the other hand, I concur with some comments here that the current administration doesn’t have the sense or will to do what really needs to be done.
“Enough of this defensive warfare, take the battle to the enemy, that is the way to get this job finished. Let NATO keep the peace after wards.”
Too little, too late. This is one area where I agree with Obama, we can’t win and it’s a waste of time, resources and lives to continue on with this. You can’t force a democracy on people that just don’t want it. We should have gone in and leveled the place and then just left after 9/11 but Bush and his neo-conservatives thought that they knew better. BullS%%t! you can’t nation build in a place like this and you can’t win if you can’t go after the enemy where ever he happens to be. This is Vietnam act II and will end the same way only worse.
Depends. The Russians went in hard and heavy with hundreds of thousands and you see what happened to them. Yet 700 of our Special Operations troops would be considered a HUGE force for that group. Afghanistan has to be considered a SOF war, rather than conventional. Iraq is OTOH, more "conventional" since it has the terrain that lends itself to tanks and mounted infantry forces. Apples and oranges.
This war can be WON but it has to be fought smart and not conventionally. So I guess that rules out the current administration. McChrystal was a special forces guy and Petraeus is a conventional guy, so there you go. We lose unless he admits to himself and the POTUS that we have to commit overwhelming special operators to go in and do the job right.
Until we recognize that the war extends into Pakistan, we have no chance of winning.
Of course the question for General Patreus at his confirmation should be: General, you are a student of war and tactics throughout the ages, can you tell me of an example where a strategy similar to this present strategy has prevailed?
As I posted in another thread:
What I believe we need to win are -fighters-.
Fighters who will infiltrate their hideouts and shoot them in the back of the head without warning.
Fighters who will burn the villages that support the Taliban to the ground.
Fighters who will cross the border into Pakistan, find the Al Qaeda hiding there, kill them, and bury them wrapped in pig skins.
America finds this too nasty? OK, fine. Just don’t complain when we’re still slowly bleeding our military in Afghanistan fifteen years from now.....
“...What I believe we need to win are -fighters-...”
We HAVE fighters.
We DON’T have a CinC. We DO have a pathetic, spoiled, self-centered, narcissistic, megalomaniac backed up a subversive political party intent on reducing the country.
There. Fixed it.
(( ping ))
AMEN, Brother!
Seven of the nine years of no-win war in Afghanistan came and went before Obama was sworn in.
As was stated this morning, if the economy of Afghanistan can be developed with minerals that are supposed to be there, then the country can move forward into the 21st century, if they want to. If they talked to the Amish, they might not want to, although the Amish are surrounded by police and protected by the US military. :)
There, fixed it.
I can’t disagree.
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