Almost word for word what i said at work today. Hilliers coward comments are also part of the same tactic. Make the enemy mad enough at you to come on out and fight like a man....
You mean BGen Fraser's comments, I'm sure.
This is no doubt true enough as far as it goes, but it remains futile.
Afghans were basically incapable of holding and defending territory against the USSR right up to the day the Soviets pulled out. Their equipment and training clearly do not allow them to go toe to toe with first world forces.
It's equally clear that first world forces in the area don't have what it takes to root out a locally-supported guerilla force. So they'll occupy territory where we aren't, and when we come to take it back their appropriate basic tactic is to get out and come back later. We can't be everywhere at once, even very many places at once. Operation Medusa might be called a success if it gave them less time to run away than they would have liked, or if they foolishly decided to try fighting back. Fine. But that doesn't make operations such as Medusa a plausible way of winning in Afghanistan, just of maintaining a bloody stalemate. Better than "letting them hold territory" but not as good as "a strategy for improving the situation".
The difference? They live there. They have nowhere to go. We can bug out. Sooner or later, we will, just like everyone else in history. Sooner would be better.
You make several key assumptions there:
1 -- that operations like this are the only activity of the counterinsurgency campaign, that is, that we will behave like the Russians;
2 -- that the insurgency maintains its local support;
3 -- that there is no strategy for improving the situation;
4 -- that history repeats itself.
Op Medusa was a tactical success. Insurgent forces did not melt away, to return later; they abandoned their weapons and ammunition in place, and fled.
In counterinsurgency, you must have your Op Medusas, or you will lose. You will not win by fighting, but you will lose by not fighting when the insurgents make a stand. You can only declare fighting "futile" if it is the sum total of your strategy.
The most major other element of NATO strategy I've heard of is belated attempts at poppy eradication, unaccompanied by meaninful alternative livelihoods for farmers.
That kind of ensures the popularity of resistance groups, whether Taliban or otherwise, right there.
Oh, well, if that's what you've heard, it must be so.
It's only recently that Operation Medusa made any sense. Why would an insurgent force stand and fight a coventional western force with superior numbers, armour, artillery, strike fighters, attack helicopters, aerial drones and superior light arms and rockets? We scored a victory? How could we lose? But what was our victory? General Fraser boasted that we had these guys surrounded, no way out. That genius, General Jones, boasted we killed at least a thousand of them, maybe even several hundred more than that. Their bodies must have been stacked up like cordwood all over the place. Their weapons must have been everywhere to be collected at our leisure. So, where are all these bodies? Where are these hundreds upon hundreds of weapons? They're as elusive as Saddam's WMDs. These insurgents didn't drop their guns and flee. They just walked out, right through General Fraser's vaunted cordon, and we didn't even know it until we went into their abandoned positions. Victory my ass.
The insurgents did leave weapons and ammunition behind. This was reported by reporters at the scene, not by NATO.
You might want to consider that public statements re having them surrounded may have been intended for an audience other than the Canadian public.
In fact, they were not encircled; this was reported in Canadian newspapers early in the operation. So the fact that they were able to abandon their positions, leaving their weapons and ammunition in place, should not surprise us.
The aim of the operation was to drive them out, by which light it was a success.
Commenting by HaloScan
