Oh my gawd man you have actually come to a sane conclusion. Asking questions about specific reconstruction plans. As if tanks are bulldozers and can used for construction. No wait Israel used bulldozers like tanks. Uhhm well how about how many tanks does it take to feed starving people. Can they be used like tractors? Since the major crisis Afghanistan is facing this winter is a summer long drought in the north. And while the NATO countries count soldiers on the head of a pin no one is ante up for that.
Plawiuk, you aren't fooling anyone.
You don't want answers regarding reconstruction plans. If you had those answers, you'd simply rant that they were the lies of the military-industrial complex, and go back to demanding an immediate withdrawal.
Besides, the answer is yes. If I recall correctly there are more than a few C1's with the construction items added on.
Cheers,
lance
We said skippy. It shows an escalation and we need to answer the questions about the new plan to deal with the escalation, rather than go on TV and tell us the same old sad rhetoric.
And I'm trying to picture my 250lbs, 6" brother the 1st Hussars WO trying to fit into one of those (which he managed to do WAY back before they made the unit Recon and back before they made his unit drive cougars and bisons).
Guys like your brother don't climb into a tank, Mike, they strap it on.
Yep, and he has the scars to prove it!
Tanks, like strike fighters, attack helicopters and artillery can be very counterproductive in battling an insurgency. Look at the terrific job the Abrams tank has done in Iraq. Take a read of "The American Way of War, Cultural Barriers to Successful Counterinsurgecy" by Jeffrey Record of the American Air War College.
There are so many potentially fatal challenges we must confront in Afghanistan. Firepower isn't one of them. Of course, perhaps we could use those tanks to crush out the rampant corruption in Karzai's security and police forces. Then we'd be making some headway.
Roberto, I'd take you seriously if your comments weren't so clearly agenda-driven.
Everyone here recognizes that a tank is not an effective weapon in classic counterinsurgency. It is, however, an effective weapon when your insurgents choose to behave like conventional forces, as they did recently and may do again.
The consistent error ideologues such as you make is to confuse the weapon with the manner in which it is used. Tanks can be counterproductive; they may also be effective. Once we understand that, it's clear that your comment has nothing to do with the concrete reality of Afghanistan.
You need to ask why the Taliban chose to stand and fight this time? The answer to that will suggest how likely it is we will have this opportunity in the future. It's not a trick question. There is an answer.
Your posts seem to assume that the Panjwai fight marked a change in tactics that will be repeated. For an insurgency with so many tactical disadvatages, this would be stupidity bordering on suicidal, wouldn't it? Do you really believe they're that stupid? If so, our troops should be home by Christmas, eh?
Whatever Panjwai was, I haven't seen the stacks of bodies that the field commanders would have laid out for us if their victory was remotely as great as they claim. A few weapons are insignificant in assessing what happened.
As for the reconstruction problem, that's not going to happen until we can secure the countryside and we don't have remotely enough boots on the ground to accomplish that. We're a garrison force reduced to patrols and search-and-destroy tactics.
I think Gwynne Dyer is right. We'd need a time machine to roll back five years, five wasted and irreplacable years, to win this one. So much of what needs doing needed to be done in the years before the Taliban became resurgent.
There are four, essential goals to counter-insurgency and all of them must be achieved simultaneously. The insurgents have to be held at bay so that the population is secure and can develop real confidence in their government. Infrastructure must be restored. The government must be sustained and its hold on power consolidated. Indigenous security forces capable of defending the government and protecting the people must be established because it is only they who can ultimately defeat the insurgents.
How many of those goals can we hope to accomplish in a country of this size in the midst of a region such as this with the meagre number of forces we have available?
This isn't agenda-driven. It's all about realities we don't want to accept.
I don't claim, or suggest, that anything will be repeated. My posts assume no such thing; you assume they do, because you find it convenient to do so.
I am fully aware of how counterinsurgencies are conducted. In fact, I'd suggest I have a better knowledge of the subject than you do.
The fact you insist on ignoring, even as you cite it, is that "the insurgents must be held at bay." If you are to do this, you have to fight your battles of Panjwaii. This requires that you prepare to fight them again, even if they may never happen. From that standpoint, moving Leopards to Afghanistan is a sensible move.
Events will not necessarily repeat themselves. However, it would be foolish not to prepare for the possibility.
Also, don't make mistake claims of victory for honest assessments of what happened. There's a PR, or propaganda, campaign to be fought as well. It never ceases to amaze me how people can decide that one statement must be a lie, but the next is sincere, as long as it happens to support their world view. You pick and choose which statements are hyperbole, and which are supposed to be true; I assume all are hyperbole.
I dismiss claims of a great victory. But a tactical success? Clearly, yes. You concede that point when you say "the insurgents must be held at bay."
I'm smart enough not to assume that I know all the answers. I'm not pretending that Panjwaii shows we will win; you're pretending that I'm pretending that. I'm not projecting victory in Afghanistan. Nor am I projecting inevitable defeat.
I'm glad you have all the answers, though. Somebody has to.
"The evidence suggests the insurgents were soundly defeated and fled, leaving behind weapons and ammunition, and are now attempting to put their best spin on the defeat." Those are your words. "Come on people. Everyone has an agenda. Stop grasping at straws. Think." Your words again.
I'm sure you would like to resile these comments but that's of no matter.
As you're 'fully aware' of how counterinsurgencies are conducted, far more so than me, you'll undoubtedly be aware of how routinely the conventional force fails.
Pray tell, what successful counterinsurgency are we modeling this effort on? We're neophytes at this so surely we don't have the luxury of trying to re-invent the wheel. We lack resources, time and political will for experimentation.
Of course we have the benefit of American command and they have had a good deal of experience in counterinsurgency over the past century. Remind me, how many of those have they defeated?
With your knowledge of counterinsurgecy, the agenda of the Taliban in this clash should be obvious. I'd tell you except you would dismiss the answer. You need to ponder this a while and come to it yourself.
As for holding the insurgents at bay, we fought a battle in one little spot. When it's over we don't have any choice but to move on to where they draw us next. Holding them at bay, effectively, means occupying territory, denying them movement and initiative. Panjwai did not achieve any of that.
Oh well, winter approaches and the Taliban will move into their off-season redoubts. It's been a long summer.
"The evidence suggests the insurgents were soundly defeated and fled, leaving behind weapons and ammunition, and are now attempting to put their best spin on the defeat." Those are your words. "Come on people. Everyone has an agenda. Stop grasping at straws. Think." Your words again.
Roberto, do you think you have made some kind of intelligent point here?
The evidence does suggest that. And "the evidence suggests" is not a phrase one uses to assert that something is fact; it's a carefully qualified statement that should -- to a literate reader -- indicate that the conclusion is only as good as the available evidence. So what, Roberto, am I supposed to be reconciling here?
I'm not going to play your silly little games. You do not, in fact, know what the insurgents' aim was here. You are guessing. And your assumption that if I think long enough, I'll inevitably figure out what you've guessed is, frankly, the height of arrogance.
I am fully aware of how often the conventional force fails, thanks. And you will note that I have not said -- anywhere -- that we are going to win, or that we are likely to win. Never. Nowhere.
My position on this is cautious and carefully qualified. I not arrogant enough to claim to have the all the answers.
That's one of the things that separates us.
Sorry Pal, time to let you off the hook. I seem to have ruffled your feathers to the point you can't begin to answer the very simple and direct questions I pose. That's the thing that separates us, not your ad hominem attacks.
If someone calls you out on your assertions, you don't attempt to refute them but dismiss them as playing "silly little games."
There are easily a dozen questions in my last three posts that go to the core of your claims. Why don't you take them on, one by one, and try to answer them. Or, if you can't, don't.
I'm outta here.
Best wishes
Roberto
You haven't ruffled my feathers at all, Roberto, but it seems clear that somebody's feathers are in disarray.
You've challenged me to play a game in which you withold your argument, and force me to present mine. That rhetorical tactic is all too familiar, Roberto, and it's as dishonest as the several straw men you've erected here. By not putting forward an argument, you avoid having to defend it.
I am not going to play your silly little game. I am not going to speculate on the tactical aims of the insurgents. You do not have authoritative information on their aims, whatever you may assume.
What claims have I made? The questions you pose have nothing to do with any claims I have made here. I have not claimed that we will win, or that we are likely to win.
You imagine, apparently, that I have made several claims, but you have disputed only one claim that I actually made: that Op Medusa was, on the basis of the evidence, a tactical success. This, I base on independent reports (not NATO claims) that weapons and ammunition were abandoned in place. This puts the lie to the spin that the insurgents slipped out of the trap. On the contrary, they fled.
I have not claimed that Leopard tanks are going to make all the difference, or that we are going to win, or that the fact that the insurgents were defeated in Op Medusa indicates that we will defeat them elsewhere. You are not calling me out on my assertions. You're calling me out on your imaginings.
I have reached only qualified, limited conclusions. But as I said, I'm glad you have all the answers.
The Americans have finally figured it out. The new, U.S. Army and Marine Corps field manual is an abrupt change in their counterinsurgency tactics. They went back to the oldies like Col. T.E. Lawrence for their epihany. The manual embraces the "Nine Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency". The first of these is that you can't hunker down in garrisons (like we do). That leaves the locals to the control of the insurgents, makes the government forces look weak and cedes initiative to the guerrillas. Quelle surprise. That means you need a very large force that can actually occupy enough of its territory that it secures the population and denies mobility and initiative to the enemy. We have deployed but a tiny fraction ofthe force needed in Kandahar province.
Another 'paradox' is the use of minimal force. The combined weapons tactics we used at Panjwai were counterproductive. We caused collateral damage and dislocated civilian populations. That gives the insurgents a big propaganda victory and wins them support. The idea of wasting our limited resources to send Leopard tanks over there is ludicrous.
As I said, there are nine of these paradoxes in the new American thinking which just happens to be the old thinking of guerrilla warfare experts like T.E. Lawrence "of Arabia."
We didn't win at Panjwai. The other guys, outnumbered and way outgunned, stood and took everthing we could throw at them for days on end. To their fellow Pashtun villagers - the one judgment that matters - there was no doubt who won. The Taliban withdrew in good order and the villagers know they'll be back whenever they choose. The villagers saw that, even when these guys stood and fought, we couldn't defeat them.
We didn't win 'hearts and minds' at Panjwai. We merely demonstrated the very weakness of our massive firepower.
We're going to continue with the very tactics that the Americans have finally realized don't work. It's called 'hubris.'
Blah, blah, blah.
Simply repeating that the Taliban retreated in good order won't make it true, Roberto. That's not what happened; it's what they said after the fact.
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