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Revised Afghan ROE...

picklesuit

picklesuit

Dirty Hinge
pilot
Contributor
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090622/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

While I am not one to normally disagree with my CoC...doesn't this send a bad message?

I read this as "You shoot at us, we shoot back...you run to Mr. and Mrs. Achmed's suburbia palace and continue to shoot back, we back slowly away..."

I am no expert on tactics...in fact I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to killing bad people on the ground. But this seems like the newspapers are driving military tactics...since when did the NYT dictate who we could and couldn't shoot at?!

Pickle

FWIW I think this would be a great trick to get a whole herd of Taliban baddies to hide in a split-level duplex on the outskirts of Achbadistan, only to have us knock the house in on their heads and go "Ha-Ha-Ha, we fooled you!"
 
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exhelodrvr

Well-Known Member
pilot
Claims of civilian casualties, whether or not they are the fault of the Taliban, make it harder for the local political leadership, which in turn makes it more difficult for us. Of course, so does not killing Taliban. This is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario; I don't think it is driven by the NYT coverage, though.
 
Jim123

Jim123

DD-214 in hand and I'm gonna party like it's 1998
pilot
You kinda hit the nail on the head with what you said about tactics- but widen it out a lot to the big picture. The bad guys there don't just think in terms of killing our guys while taking the least losses themselves. If they provoke us a hundred times and run for cover at the Achmeds' each time, let's say 99 of those engagements we mop the floor with them but the hundredth time we take out half the block... well then what does that achieve? On the other hand, if we back off each time what do the Achmeds think of that and do they even notice? Either way what do the Achmeds really think of the Taliban using their place and the neighbors' place for cover and what can they do about it? Most importantly what are the results when one scenario or the other happens over and over again across the entire country for a few years? Almost forgot- sometimes the answer might be a lot different depending where and when it happens.

Food for thought and there aren't always simple answers.

There is plenty of ongoing debate our COIN doctrine... and look on the bright side- by the time you finish your sea tour and roll to shore duty somewhere these questions will still be around if you're up for getting JPME started :D
 
Brett327

Brett327

Well-Known Member
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
I don't know how the fuck this kind of thing ends up in the public domain, but as a reminder to all, discussions regarding specific ROE on AW are a bad idea. Please keep it very general in nature.

Brett
 
mmx1

mmx1

Woof!
pilot
Contributor
Well, the press labels anyone they talk to as "military spokesman", but they're quoting RADM Greg Smith, Director of Communication for CENTCOM, so it's probably a deliberate IO move to release this and not some dumbass slip of the tongue.

Still, warning taken, specific ROE speculation secured.
 
N

nursesoon

Banned
Maybe it has something to do with the president of Afghanistan having to tell us repeatedly to stop killing his civilians and denouncing our attacks in the media.
 
mmx1

mmx1

Woof!
pilot
Contributor
I don't think Gen. McChrystal takes his marching orders from NYT or Karzai.......
 
picklesuit

picklesuit

Dirty Hinge
pilot
Contributor
nursesoon said:
Maybe it has something to do with the president of Afghanistan having to tell us repeatedly to stop killing his civilians and denouncing our attacks in the media.
Click to expand...

Maybe if the President of Afghanistan took care of "his" civilians and policed "his" border "we" wouldn't have to kill his "civilians" while stopping "The Taliban."

I think it has to do more with whiny-ass liberals thinking there is such a thing as a cleanly fought war. Guess what, civilians get killed. Shit happens.

Let me lay some numbers on you. In WW2 (you know, the "Great War" that all standards are held to; I think they may have covered it between slavery, President Lincoln, and Roe V. Wade in one of your history classes) approximately 73 million people were killed. Of that number, 42 million were civilians. 58%...Shit happens.

I think our brothers over there are doing a bang-up job of prosecuting this war. If they have to kill Suzy Fucking Homemaker in downtown Achmedistan because someone is standing in her kitchen shooting at them, so be it.

The only way we were able to prosecute a war in the fashion of WW2 is because we kept a tight leash on the media...hell they kept a tight leash on themselves. Now, in pursuit of the almighty scoop, these soulless bastards don't care by what means they get a story, even at the sacrifice of national security and the facts.

Killing civilians=bad...I get that. But handcuffing our troops in the means which they prosecute an amorphous war is what led to many of our troops coming back from Vietnam in body bags unnecessarily. The media, liberals, and politics get soldiers killed...if you don't believe it, talk to some of the veterans here, on this board, about having to pass up attacking known enemy targets because they weren't on the "approved list" and bullshit ROE that got THEIR brothers killed 40 years ago. Ask them about the media turning the Tet Offensive into a "loss" for our boys in '68, even though we kicked the shit out of the little commie fuckers. When Walter Cronkite said the war was a stalemate and unwinnable (even after we had killed 100 VC for every one of our troops killed), it became so. Not by any action on the field, but in the halls of congress and on TV.

We are fighting that same battle today. Armchair quarterbacks on MSNBcrap, ABC, CNN, FOX, and elsewhere are leading to YOU and many like you making idiotic comments like the one I have chosen. (There are many like it, but this one is yours) This little diatribe isn't directed at you, it is directed at the fools that spoon-fed you the misinformation to make you think like you do.

War isn't clean, it isn't pretty. The rules aren't like a baseball game. There are no time-outs, no referee. The other team cheats, every time, and we can't get an instant replay when a bad call is made. We get screwed, every single time, because we abide by a moral code that sets us above the next man. Further handcuffing us beyond that moral code is more of a crime than allowing for some acceptable collateral damage.
 
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nursesoon

Banned
Doesn't matter, I am a US citizen, this is a political situation, here unlike places such as Iran the people get opinions and the government responds to them.
 
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