prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
'The French did better' is not a positive, and when the casualties happen directly because of American incompetence, those who made the incompetent decision deserve condemnation.
The War in Afghanistan
- Thread starter Husky_Khan
- Start date
Mistakes happen in war.
We do not know what made us choose the wrong target, hell I don't know.
Someone fucked up, but nothing is going to come from it, or every time casualties, something that happens in war, of a civie causes people yo get fired, we would have no drone operators, or pilots, or artillery
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
That droning of an aid worker & his family is getting so much bad press because, I think, the circumstances & context set it apart from the usual droning which blows up a wedding or birthday party (or even that time Obama bombed an MSF hospital and killed dozens). It's the very last thing the US did in Afghanistan before bugging out completely - and it's not a heroic elimination of one last terrorist cell, not even the guys who actually masterminded the killing of 13 American service personnel, nor was it any act of humane charity and benevolence that benefited the Afghans one last time.
Nope, it was vaporizing an innocent worker for an American aid org and nine of his kin, including seven kids, and then lying about it for a week or two before finally admitting to the atrocity. I'm sure there have been misaimed dronings and bombings that killed way more people in the past, but THIS is the capstone of America's 20-year project in Afghanistan, the very last thing it did before wrapping up the evacuation. I cannot understate how bad it looks that on top of a chaotic, disastrously managed evac which I've heard got a lot of randoms and trafficked girls out rather than actual SIVs anyway, the War in Afghanistan was capped off by the imbecilic West Wing LARPers in the Biden admin and their wokified military planners blindly lashing out in spite & desperation after the inevitable terror attack targeted their guys on the ground and humiliated them, managing for all that only to murder one of the Afghans who'd been on their side and his family. What a legacy!
How's this for an iconic sentiment in future Russian and Chinese propaganda: 'you sell out to the liberal Western world order and not only will they fail to carry out any of their promises to you, kill thousands of your people and corrupt your youth with their degenerate ways while they're at it, but on their way out they'll pointlessly kill some more of yours in one last flailing attempt to feel big & strong'. I really hope this isn't the brain-trust that's expected to take on China in the Pacific because God damn, I cannot think of a bunch who will lose the conflict for the US and the West as a whole more quickly than Biden, Harris, the idiots working under them, and their probable successors.
('But everyone in the Pacific Rim hates China!' You may argue. Sure, it's true that basically everyone from Korea/Japan down to Indonesia and Vietnam have laundry lists of historical and present-day grievances against the Chicoms. It was also true that damn near everyone who wasn't a Pashtun and an extreme Deobandi hated the Taliban in 2002. The neoliberal/neocon establishment seems to have a special talent for driving away allies, giving free shit to enemies and mismanaging war efforts into the dirt, if they can lose to the Taliban I'm sure they can find new and exciting ways to gift the entirety of the Pacific to China once they finish their 'pivot' there)
Nope, it was vaporizing an innocent worker for an American aid org and nine of his kin, including seven kids, and then lying about it for a week or two before finally admitting to the atrocity. I'm sure there have been misaimed dronings and bombings that killed way more people in the past, but THIS is the capstone of America's 20-year project in Afghanistan, the very last thing it did before wrapping up the evacuation. I cannot understate how bad it looks that on top of a chaotic, disastrously managed evac which I've heard got a lot of randoms and trafficked girls out rather than actual SIVs anyway, the War in Afghanistan was capped off by the imbecilic West Wing LARPers in the Biden admin and their wokified military planners blindly lashing out in spite & desperation after the inevitable terror attack targeted their guys on the ground and humiliated them, managing for all that only to murder one of the Afghans who'd been on their side and his family. What a legacy!
How's this for an iconic sentiment in future Russian and Chinese propaganda: 'you sell out to the liberal Western world order and not only will they fail to carry out any of their promises to you, kill thousands of your people and corrupt your youth with their degenerate ways while they're at it, but on their way out they'll pointlessly kill some more of yours in one last flailing attempt to feel big & strong'. I really hope this isn't the brain-trust that's expected to take on China in the Pacific because God damn, I cannot think of a bunch who will lose the conflict for the US and the West as a whole more quickly than Biden, Harris, the idiots working under them, and their probable successors.
('But everyone in the Pacific Rim hates China!' You may argue. Sure, it's true that basically everyone from Korea/Japan down to Indonesia and Vietnam have laundry lists of historical and present-day grievances against the Chicoms. It was also true that damn near everyone who wasn't a Pashtun and an extreme Deobandi hated the Taliban in 2002. The neoliberal/neocon establishment seems to have a special talent for driving away allies, giving free shit to enemies and mismanaging war efforts into the dirt, if they can lose to the Taliban I'm sure they can find new and exciting ways to gift the entirety of the Pacific to China once they finish their 'pivot' there)
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Southeast (and East) Asians pay attention to the news, and are a lot less willing to eat up whatever bullshit spin the White House & State Department try to put on it than liberal NPCs in America itself. They see what's going on in A-stan, they see what the US has to show for 20 years, thousands of lives and $2 trillion in investment, and they see how Biden handled the pullout: they may very well come to the conclusion that the US not that reliable an ally, which makes capitulation to China seem considerably more attractive (because surviving as a Chinese lapdog beats going up against China, suddenly having America sell them out for whatever reason and then getting crushed by the Chicoms). The Philippines, for example, is doing just that under Duterte, who is considerably more pro-Chinese than his predecessors and whose likeliest successor (his daughter) doesn't seem like she's gonna reverse any of his foreign policy.
I'll put it another way: reputations take lifetimes to build up and yet can be destroyed in moments. Nobody except insane neocon/lib warhawks wanted the war in Afghanistan to continue, but just about everybody can agree that how the pullout was managed was criminally incompetent, and that's going to leave a nasty mark on America's credibility with its allies which will take a good while to heal. Far worse than Vietnam, frankly that was handled far more gracefully than this - besides the evac and drone strike, we've literally just seen the US establishment willing to completely capitulate to the 'Ban and give them $$$ for some hollow assurances about an 'equitable' government while they were openly stacking their gov't with people on America's terror list like the Haqqanis and remnants of the client government the US had backed were still fighting them in Panjshir, for Christ's sake.
Most South east Asian countries aent being held up purely by the US military. They also are a lot more willing to fight Cbina then the ANA were the Taliban.
Because they know full well that China will not play nice.
The US also isn't the alone in this
Because they know full well that China will not play nice.
The US also isn't the alone in this
Bassoe
Well-known member
They also know that China would crush them if it came to a fight where they lacked the protection of American cannon fodder and nuclear deterrent.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Taliban leader Mullah Baradar missing; Haibatullah Akhundzada may be dead, says report
Following a disagreement among Taliban leaders on Panjshir situation, Mullah Baradar has not been seen in public while groups's spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada is rumoured to be dead
www.nationalheraldindia.com
They're infighting?
They always haveTaliban leader Mullah Baradar missing; Haibatullah Akhundzada may be dead, says report
Following a disagreement among Taliban leaders on Panjshir situation, Mullah Baradar has not been seen in public while groups's spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada is rumoured to be dead
They're infighting?
I've been wondering if that might happen once the obvious enemy, US, went away.
The thing about mistakes, particularly ones involving the death of human beings, is that there really ought to be consequences for them. I do not foresee that happening in this case, because it has never happened. What basically happened here is that the US military murdered 10 people, 7 of whom were children. What's worse, is that people like you just keep making excuses for it. You complain about "bad guys" hiding out amongst innocents to justify it. Disgusting. Tell you what, before you even worry about that, how about first you make sure there are even bad guys there to shoot at. And then maybe you give more than a microsecond's thought to the lives of others who might be in the immediate vicinity. You are so casual about ending the lives of others who do not in any way represent a threat to anyone as far as you can tell. This is what really disgusts me with you attitude. And then to make it even worse, you bring in the absolutely intellectually dishonest and purely hyperbolic argument that if the military isn't allowed to just go around killing whoever the fuck it wants in the pursuit of hypothetical "bad guys," we might as well not even have a military. Do you and @Marduk actually believe this line of bullshit, or is it just a pathetic debate tactic?
It goes back to what i said the much earlier. The nature of warfare is such that collateral damage happens. If the other party is one that considers laws of war more of a set of convenient exploits than something to follow (where are the fucking Taliban's uniforms?), and the combat happens in an urban area, its pretty much guaranteed to happen, and a lot at that. Are you just going to punish some military members for something that is inevitable, even if they do their practical best?
Doctors can make mistakes and people die too then, yet only in most clear cases of incompetence or malice they get punished.
Stock brokers and bankers can lose ridiculous money and barely ever get fired.
And lets not even get into what politicians get away with.
The point is, if in each of these cases you would punish people for most common mistakes, it would be unavoidable that anyone with significant time in the career would be punished (and i guess you are implying firing at minimum), and in turn soon competent people would not even volunteer to do it, because they would know that this is not a viable career at all.
It is a way to point out that your expectation as to how the military should function is not in line with what is possible in real world, and the unrealistic expectation you have could be fully satisfied only by an equally ridiculous solution.
Do you have any realistic solutions, or just complaining about others not sharing your zeal in moralizing about a tragedy?
Your attitude in this is similar to the attitude of activists who want zero COVID deaths, zero gun homicides, zero car accidents, and would like to implement restrictions on related things which are so hard, unrealistic and impractical that their cost in other areas would practically destroy one or several other areas of economy, freedom or law.
Okay.
Let me put it in laymen terms.
Bad guys who don't follow rules of law (medics don't wear giant red crosses anymore for a reason) will do what ever it takes to make sure the guys who do follow the rules of law do not win.
Make innocents die in a strike or raid.
Make a media thing about it to pull in heartstrings of people back home, of a country with a very biased media against its people.
Kids are the big thing.
A lot if these terrorists will train thier own kids, and then also use them shields.
So no matter what, we cause more to be made.
How do you beat an enemy that doesn't care about laws if war?
Do you know why we won WW2? Total War.
Civilian casualties were expected
A-stan isn't WW2, or even close; stop acting like it is a worthwhile or meaningful comparison.
We were never going to go 'total war' in A-stan.
StormEagle
Well-known member
That line of reasoning would also hold more water if we had actually hit anything or anyone of value to the enemy.
Just saying “collateral damage” and waving your fingers in the air isn’t a very good excuse for ten dead civies and no terrorists corpses to show for it.
I could accept the collateral damage excuse if we had a few isis corpses mixed in. Instead, we just look like bumbling incompetents because we hit an aid worker and have no terrorist bodies to show to the world.
Just saying “collateral damage” and waving your fingers in the air isn’t a very good excuse for ten dead civies and no terrorists corpses to show for it.
I could accept the collateral damage excuse if we had a few isis corpses mixed in. Instead, we just look like bumbling incompetents because we hit an aid worker and have no terrorist bodies to show to the world.
We were never going to win then.
Because, when you face an enemy that doesn't play by the rules and you follow the rules.
You will lose
Bingo; A-stan was never about 'winning' militarily, it was about getting Osama, then 'nation building' and lining the pockets of defense contractors/companies.
Winning is killing Osama and getting rid of AQ. Getting rid of the Taliban would have helped.
Because if people like you and X, we have to hold back from doing an effective job because "Innocenr civilians could die!" And then the enemy manages to stay alive because we hold back.
Don't expect any other enemy of ours to be as kind as we are to countries. Because had we been as viscious as we could have been, we would have won, we would have destroyed the Taliban and AQ, and left.
But no, we have to hold back, and ir seems yall want us to hold back even more.
How about we only fire if they are alone. Would that work? And if they are never alone then what?
What do you all suppose we do instead?