Afghanistan and released American documents
Now it is a mad Max situation, thanks to the NATO intervention.
Etudiant
The GNP numbers were dodgier than hell, the infrastructure projects never happened (but the money did disappear)
I know people who were doing business there and it was dreadful - a tiny clique around Qaddafi stealing everything and the main man several cents short of the dollar
The GNP numbers were dodgier than hell, the infrastructure projects never happened (but the money did disappear)
I know people who were doing business there and it was dreadful - a tiny clique around Qaddafi stealing everything and the main man several cents short of the dollar
Salute!
Thank you both - SAS and Easy. I think my wife , who was with me for all my tours, and knew many of my friends that never came back will also thank you for your viewpoint.
The point about losing more friendlies by trying not to cause collateral damage is a good one. It allowed the enemy SAS and I faced at about the same time to rove freely and melt back into forbidden territory we could not strike. That stoopid war cost me and my family and friends 10 years of our lives, and it also cost us losing 40 or 50 that never returned.
During the 68 Tet I bombed some village that the local province chief claimed was housing bad guys. It later turned out it was a family feud thing and the goal was to hit his brother-in-law, or equivalent. The 72-73 return of airpower to the North was much less restrictive. We got outta there by the end of the year. Let's face it, all we wanted by then was to get the POW's out (I guarantee I know more then anyone here), and quit the whole damned fiasco.
Once you release the dogs of war, then you must weigh the losses of good folks that carry guns as well as those simply going about their business. There is no simple answer or magic formula. War is a terrible thing. But only the dead will know the end of war.
Gotta go before bringing too many bad vibes to this old brain.
Gums sends...
Thank you both - SAS and Easy. I think my wife , who was with me for all my tours, and knew many of my friends that never came back will also thank you for your viewpoint.
The point about losing more friendlies by trying not to cause collateral damage is a good one. It allowed the enemy SAS and I faced at about the same time to rove freely and melt back into forbidden territory we could not strike. That stoopid war cost me and my family and friends 10 years of our lives, and it also cost us losing 40 or 50 that never returned.
During the 68 Tet I bombed some village that the local province chief claimed was housing bad guys. It later turned out it was a family feud thing and the goal was to hit his brother-in-law, or equivalent. The 72-73 return of airpower to the North was much less restrictive. We got outta there by the end of the year. Let's face it, all we wanted by then was to get the POW's out (I guarantee I know more then anyone here), and quit the whole damned fiasco.
Once you release the dogs of war, then you must weigh the losses of good folks that carry guns as well as those simply going about their business. There is no simple answer or magic formula. War is a terrible thing. But only the dead will know the end of war.
Gotta go before bringing too many bad vibes to this old brain.
Gums sends...
I think you and SASless are talking past each other somewhat. You see Western intervention as imperialism. He sees it as difficult or impossible for the West to do any good within the operational, legal and ethical boundaries it imposes on itself. The logical end point of both of your arguments is that the West should stay out of foreign conflicts which pose no genuine, direct and immediate threat to national security. Am I right?
Well you not wrong
We have different viewpoints and disagree on lots but genuinely respect his opinion because he has always been honest.
Doesn't mean we won't argue from different points of view in another thread.
A great irony of the wider dilemma is that many of those who are most vociferous about the evil wrought by Western adventurism are just as keen to push Western ethical standards on foreigners and intervene when they refuse to accede. I don’t accuse you of that, but unfortunately it is a commonly-held stance in certain sections of the political establishment.
The days of building infrastructure in the country from the West are dead, it is kind of why China has success in may countries, it stays out of lecturing about what people should do and builds the infrastructure.
Etudiant
The GNP numbers were dodgier than hell, the infrastructure projects never happened (but the money did disappear)
I know people who were doing business there and it was dreadful - a tiny clique around Qaddafi stealing everything and the main man several cents short of the dollar
The GNP numbers were dodgier than hell, the infrastructure projects never happened (but the money did disappear)
I know people who were doing business there and it was dreadful - a tiny clique around Qaddafi stealing everything and the main man several cents short of the dollar
UK / France attacked Libya because Sarkozy wanted more cash for his election projects, Gadaffi wanted more cash from Oil companies with oil at £100 plu a barrel. Gadaffi told Sarkozy he would go public on his corruption.
Anyone who has studied Afghan history would have known that America was the absolute last nation that should have invaded Afghanistan because the people concerned are exact temperamental opposites. Kipling summed it up perfectly:
Arithmetic on the Frontier 
A GREAT and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe -
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."
Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villainous saltpetre".
And after?- Ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.
A scrimmage in a Border Station-
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
No proposition Euclid wrote
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow.
Strike hard who cares - shoot straight who can
The odds are on the cheaper man.
One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.
With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem.
The troopships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.
A GREAT and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so, The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe -The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."
Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeterFor all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villainous saltpetre". And after?- Ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.
A scrimmage in a Border Station-
A canter down some dark defileTwo thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail. The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
No proposition Euclid wrote
No formulae the text-books know, Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow. Strike hard who cares - shoot straight who can
The odds are on the cheaper man.
One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expensesOf any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses, But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.
With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem.
The troopships bring us one by one, At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run. The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.
We rarely learn from history. Winston had us figured out when he opined that we as a Nation would do the right thing after we tried every other way first. (Or words to that effect.)
A conversation I had late on Thursday night in a hotel when watching the UK election exit polls come in. 4 of us sitting around seeing it. Opinion shared by one guy and agreed by us all was that Majority of politicians UK go to same type of University (17% of MPs went to Oxford/Cambridge), others will be similar. Most senior ministers will fall into that. Many will have either worked as an assistant (intern) with MP / Union / Think tank / Local councillor and will not have had a proper job where real decisions and real life needs to be experienced.
The similar background means that they think like each other, act like each other and there is no real difference in mentality. US Congress is similar in certain ways.
The end result is you end up with politicians who are more similar than they are different and make the same decisions because they know no difference.
As they divorced from the people they don't understand what really impacts those who vote and think someone else can pay for it.
Most revolutions start because people get tired of paying too much for something, this is the trigger point, "No taxation witho representation", the more you get like that the more the end result ends up similar to the Boston Tea Party.
Salute!
Sometimes not sure where race is coming from , but every now and then a blind squirrel will find an acorn.
Race has cracked the code that resulted in the U.S. latest president. The votes came from those that contributed the most to the country and did not live in Silicon Valley, or south L.A. or New York City or attend Harvard. Further, they were the ones who went to war or their sons and daughters went to war. They worked and paid taxes and cared more about their families and friends than a utopian dream some politicians wish to impose upon us. Oh welll...
Gums sends...
Sometimes not sure where race is coming from , but every now and then a blind squirrel will find an acorn.
The end result is you end up with politicians who are more similar than they are different and make the same decisions because they know no difference.
As they divorced from the people they don't understand what really impacts those who vote and think someone else can pay for it.
As they divorced from the people they don't understand what really impacts those who vote and think someone else can pay for it.
Gums sends...
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I am a new guy here at PPRuNe, and the conversation here on this thread is high quality indeed!
I did my time in SEA 70 and 71, and Hugh Thompson CWO of My Lai fame was a personal hero, a brave and principled man.
As for these new Afghanistan Papers, they demonstrate at least 2 things--Americans learned precious little from the Pentagon Papers, and the government still lies as it pleases. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
I did my time in SEA 70 and 71, and Hugh Thompson CWO of My Lai fame was a personal hero, a brave and principled man.
As for these new Afghanistan Papers, they demonstrate at least 2 things--Americans learned precious little from the Pentagon Papers, and the government still lies as it pleases. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Administrator
Welcome, Eva.
Just out of curiosity, what did you fly in SEA?
Just out of curiosity, what did you fly in SEA?
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Having spent a distressing proportion of the years since 9/11 looking down from my aircraft onto western troops engaged in a variety of ‘nation building’ projects, and occasionally unleashing a bit of ‘deconstruction’ to try to get them out of trouble, I have come to the following views:
1) Military forces whose top two priorities are elimination of own losses and avoidance of civilian casualties are so compromised in their ability to achieve goals that their presence probably does more harm than good;
2) Troops with ‘skin in the game’ beyond getting home (usually locals) are orders of magnitude more effective than their equipment and training would suggest. They are fighting for their own futures and families, they have a time horizon beyond their six-month tour, and therefore they have a different basis on which to judge risk and ethics.
3) Providing just enough outside assistance to keep the ‘good guys’ in the battle, but not enough to help them win the war, starts out looking like a measured and ethical choice but eventually ends up with the outsider sharing moral responsibility with the ‘bad guys’ for all of the additional suffering inflicted on innocent civilians by perpetual conflict.
There is very often no ‘correct’ answer to an ethical problem, and the best (or least worst) answer is different for people of different cultural heritage. And I would observe that the law of armed conflict has an ethical foundation which is foreign to a large proportion of the world’s population. Anyone who sees these things in black and white needs to learn a bit of grey-shade perception.
1) Military forces whose top two priorities are elimination of own losses and avoidance of civilian casualties are so compromised in their ability to achieve goals that their presence probably does more harm than good;
2) Troops with ‘skin in the game’ beyond getting home (usually locals) are orders of magnitude more effective than their equipment and training would suggest. They are fighting for their own futures and families, they have a time horizon beyond their six-month tour, and therefore they have a different basis on which to judge risk and ethics.
3) Providing just enough outside assistance to keep the ‘good guys’ in the battle, but not enough to help them win the war, starts out looking like a measured and ethical choice but eventually ends up with the outsider sharing moral responsibility with the ‘bad guys’ for all of the additional suffering inflicted on innocent civilians by perpetual conflict.
There is very often no ‘correct’ answer to an ethical problem, and the best (or least worst) answer is different for people of different cultural heritage. And I would observe that the law of armed conflict has an ethical foundation which is foreign to a large proportion of the world’s population. Anyone who sees these things in black and white needs to learn a bit of grey-shade perception.
Perhaps I am just guilty of the superiority complex, playing the "must be better" card.
Honestly, I view organisations like Daesh (which have now established themselves in Afghanistan) to be of a lower status than vermin - because even vermin has a place within nature.
They're sub-human and deserve every kinetic action against them - I don't take kindly to armed thugs with primitive mindsets shooting up entire villages, raping women and children after murdering their husbands and fathers right before their eyes, beheading hostages in front of the camera or even burning downed pilots to death.
I justify each strike against them as one more step to saving the innocent, who are victims of their barbaric practises.
However, I don't want our country to go after them without doing everything it can to avoid civilian deaths - because then we are in danger of becoming them, and they will use that to radicalise more people. That just doesn't sit well with me.
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I never had the pleasure of meeting his father, CMH winner.
Perhaps I am just guilty of the superiority complex, playing the "must be better" card.
Honestly, I view organisations like Daesh (which have now established themselves in Afghanistan) to be of a lower status than vermin - because even vermin has a place within nature.
They're sub-human and deserve every kinetic action against them - I don't take kindly to armed thugs with primitive mindsets shooting up entire villages, raping women and children after murdering their husbands and fathers right before their eyes, beheading hostages in front of the camera or even burning downed pilots to death.
I justify each strike against them as one more step to saving the innocent, who are victims of their barbaric practises.
However, I don't want our country to go after them without doing everything it can to avoid civilian deaths - because then we are in danger of becoming them, and they will use that to radicalise more people. That just doesn't sit well with me.
Honestly, I view organisations like Daesh (which have now established themselves in Afghanistan) to be of a lower status than vermin - because even vermin has a place within nature.
They're sub-human and deserve every kinetic action against them - I don't take kindly to armed thugs with primitive mindsets shooting up entire villages, raping women and children after murdering their husbands and fathers right before their eyes, beheading hostages in front of the camera or even burning downed pilots to death.
I justify each strike against them as one more step to saving the innocent, who are victims of their barbaric practises.
However, I don't want our country to go after them without doing everything it can to avoid civilian deaths - because then we are in danger of becoming them, and they will use that to radicalise more people. That just doesn't sit well with me.
There is clearly lots of background support from various countries to them and has been for years.
Strange than with all the "intelligence" agencies working on it they just never seem to be able to track them down, unless of course they are doing the supporting.
I don't take kindly to armed thugs with primitive mindsets shooting up entire villages, raping women and children after murdering their husbands and fathers right before their eyes, beheading hostages in front of the camera or even burning downed pilots to death.
Explain it to the family members, friends and relatives of the people concerned that "Oops we made a mistake" but 30 of your relatives, friends, villagers are scattered over a huge area in pieces with many more injured. Something similar in a western country will get thousands of lines of newsprint and hours on TV, in Afghanistan / Iraq etc it gets 10 lines and minutes in the media and "we will do better next time".
Best way to prevent it happening is to stop interfering in other countries and stop the supply of money / weapons. But there is too much money to be made from it so 1000 bodies whether they be US/UK/Locals is deemed a price worth paying so someone can be a little bit richer.
racedo.
Easy.
INTENT.
Easy.
INTENT.
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Pr00ne got there before me.
It's reasonable to assume nobody with an ambition to fly fast jets, bases that on the desire to deliberately kill civilians if they made it. I certainly don't and I don't think the current men and women on the combat air frontline do, either.
Daesh intend to kill innocents - they believe to do so, forces their religious message. Fighter Pilots, Bomber Pilots and UAV Operators do not.
It's reasonable to assume nobody with an ambition to fly fast jets, bases that on the desire to deliberately kill civilians if they made it. I certainly don't and I don't think the current men and women on the combat air frontline do, either.
Daesh intend to kill innocents - they believe to do so, forces their religious message. Fighter Pilots, Bomber Pilots and UAV Operators do not.
Salute!
Thanks "Proone" and BVR
I never joined up to go to war, although I knew that it was a possibility sometime down the road. Things were very calm in the late 50's and early 60's. It was the golden age of fighters, with new ones coming along almost monthly. If you wanted to go into space in those days you had to be a fighter pilot/test pilot. So even if I never set foot on Mars, I could fly some neat jets and " done a hundred things You have not dreamed of ......where never lark, or even eagle, flew". So that lasted for me until late 1967, and duty called.
I know and flew with and instructed many Vee. They knew their country leadership had questionable political ethics and such, but they did not want the Northerners to run things. The folks in the 'stans and their fanatics and such are not like that. That damned religion overrides the politics, economics and basic human dignity. And I don't have the slightest thot about how to face that with military action.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For fear of fire, enemy fire that is, read the MoH citation for Mike Novosel. His son flew with Eva here, and that guy, Mike Sr, was a piece of work. As far as anyone can tell, the father and son were the only two combat pilots that ever flew together in a unit. In fact, one rescued the other one day and a few weeks later they reversed roles. Wow!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
@ Eva....
My son and I had the pleasure of talking with Mike Senior for about two hours on the afternoon that Junior opened his "Flightline Bar and Grill". My God, the guy flew B-29's. Various reasons he missed out on Korea, but wanted to do something helpful during the mid-sixties so volunteered to be a helo IP up at Ft Rucker ( close to here in the Panhandle). U.S. Army took him in, but then sent him to IV Corps, South VietNam as Dust Off.
Later that night we attended the grand opening of their dive and my son and his wife and I sat across the table from Mike Sr and Bud Day - two MoH winners! Lottsa history here in the Panhandle besides the training of the Doolittle Raiders and the Son Tay raid.
Gums sends...
Thanks "Proone" and BVR
I never joined up to go to war, although I knew that it was a possibility sometime down the road. Things were very calm in the late 50's and early 60's. It was the golden age of fighters, with new ones coming along almost monthly. If you wanted to go into space in those days you had to be a fighter pilot/test pilot. So even if I never set foot on Mars, I could fly some neat jets and " done a hundred things You have not dreamed of ......where never lark, or even eagle, flew". So that lasted for me until late 1967, and duty called.
I know and flew with and instructed many Vee. They knew their country leadership had questionable political ethics and such, but they did not want the Northerners to run things. The folks in the 'stans and their fanatics and such are not like that. That damned religion overrides the politics, economics and basic human dignity. And I don't have the slightest thot about how to face that with military action.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For fear of fire, enemy fire that is, read the MoH citation for Mike Novosel. His son flew with Eva here, and that guy, Mike Sr, was a piece of work. As far as anyone can tell, the father and son were the only two combat pilots that ever flew together in a unit. In fact, one rescued the other one day and a few weeks later they reversed roles. Wow!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
@ Eva....
My son and I had the pleasure of talking with Mike Senior for about two hours on the afternoon that Junior opened his "Flightline Bar and Grill". My God, the guy flew B-29's. Various reasons he missed out on Korea, but wanted to do something helpful during the mid-sixties so volunteered to be a helo IP up at Ft Rucker ( close to here in the Panhandle). U.S. Army took him in, but then sent him to IV Corps, South VietNam as Dust Off.
Later that night we attended the grand opening of their dive and my son and his wife and I sat across the table from Mike Sr and Bud Day - two MoH winners! Lottsa history here in the Panhandle besides the training of the Doolittle Raiders and the Son Tay raid.
Gums sends...
Last edited by gums; 20th Dec 2019 at 22:29. Reason: spell checker vs callsign
