MrsSpringsteen
Blue Crack Addict
I have no idea what all of this is about
So here's a random picture
So here's a random picture
and after all that, we fail to get any sort of meaningful intellectual exchange of ideas.
droning on and on into a megaphone isn't making an argument.
The U.S. military command isn't the only thing in Afghanistan undergoing turmoil.
The war has taken an increasingly violent turn: 11 bodies, some headless, have been found littered in the southern part of the country.
Mohammed Khan, deputy police chief in the Uruzgan Province, said a villager found the bodies in a field and called police.
“They were killed because the Taliban said they were spying for the government, working for the government,” Khan said.
Khudia Rahim, the acting Uruzgan governor, said five or six of the 11 victims were beheaded.
The deadly findings come during a dramatic time for President Obama, who on Wednesday sacked his top war boss in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and replaced him with Gen. David Petraeus.
Meanwhile, NATO said a U.S. service member was killed in an insurgent attack on Friday and another American died in a roadside bomb attack.
June was the deadliest month for western troops in the nearly nine-year-old war. With the latest attacks, the death toll for international service members in June is 83, and at least 49 were Americans.
yeah. it's a lose-lose situation, i think. if we leave, people will be killed. if we stay, people (including our troops) will be killed.
oh ffs.
It's time to be mean, or get the fuck out.
It's war. You're either all in or nothing. There's no in betweens. The troops have to play by a clusterfuck of ROE that really hinder progress. War is not nice. You can't be humanitarian in it if you want to win. Remember, the last war America won? WWII. People don't want to talk about what Americans did to the military and the civilian populace. No, I'm not talking about dropping nukes on civilian cities in Japan. We did far worse in that war.
Take Dresden, Germany for example. We firebombed the city with incendiary bombs. Thousands of B-17's and B-24's (what we glorify today) dropped hundreds of thousands of bombs on this city. The whole city was ablaze. The fires created a hurricane force circulating winds, that sucked out the oxygen from women and children in bomb bunkers. The generals knew this. They wanted this to happen. It's war, and war is terrible. But once you're in it, you have to go all the way. There are more examples. Tokyo was firebombed by B-29s. Over 100,000 died, mainly women and children.
American Revolution. What do you think American troops were? An insurgency. The British thought they themselves were all powerful, so they didn't take Americans seriously and attempted to fight with rules and civility. American's fought dirty, by Brit standards at least. Well, we all know how that ended.
If you talk to troops who have come home, they know this war will not be won, and it will continue until we pull the troops out or go all out. They know the civilians know absolutely nothing on how to direct a war. The politicians run the show and the war is a whole PR campaign. Everything about the war will be criticized, but absolutely no one remembers that you can't be civil in a war. It's contradicting yourself. The generals know exactly what to do. They just don't have permission.
Now respect to the Brits. They are the craziest bastards out there in Afghanistan. They don't have nearly the same amount of ROE Americans do, and they absolutely kickass and get the job done. If a person looked suspicious, you wouldn't be surprised to see a British chopper rain 30mm rounds on the guy. Americans, you have to get permission, and go through a very large chain of command, just to start shooting. Hell, read Newsweek. They tell you the amount of evidence to collect and CSI: Middle East you have to play just to detain an enemy combatant. Because if you don't do this ridiculous amount of work, you might piss off a Senator, and actually get something done. There are some not so nice divisions of the military that do say fuck the rules, and play not so nice with the enemy, but I guarantee you that these divisions get the work done.
And for an afterthought: Somebody I know asked why we are even in Afghanistan. That strikes hard in the heart.
A) She is a dumbass.
B) It's also been nine years since America's civilian population was attacked by Al-Quaida that bred in Afghanistan. Nine fucking years. It's time to be mean, or get the fuck out.
I know, right? Trying to hold ourselves to a higher moral and ethical code than our enemies is so damned inconvenient!
One gross oversimplification deserves another...
What about Al-Quaeda? I think rather than fighting a conventional war, we're simply going to have work at staying one step ahead of the terrorists.