SGT DAN HAMMER/MOD
Soldiers of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers patrol near Musa Qala last month. Although British squaddies are welcome in the town, patrols to the north are usually greeted with an ambush
The British base called Stalingrad
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Independent Minds« Back to The British base called Stalingrad
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Oh yes, "to stop terrorism aimed at Britain". But mysteriously this "terrorism" (the military buzz-word for "fighting back") is only directed at, errr... Britain? And not at, say, Norway, or Portugal, or Iceland? D'ya think it could be because Norway, Portugal and Iceland aren't.... attacking Afghanistan?? No, surely those bright chaps like Sir John Scarlett would have thought of it already, wouldn't ya think eh?
I mean, you think back to the bomb attacks on 7/7, and they were all masterminded by.. people born in Britain who'd lived here all their lives? So what's that about, then, eh? Despite Tony Blair deliberately wasting Police time by sending the UK police in the Indian sub-continent to find the alleged perpetrators there.
So we arrested some Brits who happened to be in Afghanistan, and then we took them to Cuba, where we attached their goolies to the mains electricity, to prevent London from being attacked by people from, errr, Birmingham and Bradford? That chap Scarlett must be jolly bright, because many people would think that the way this has been handled has been criminally incompetent? Unless, of course, you had John Scarlett's, ooops I mean SIR John Scarlett's brilliant "insight" into these matters.
And let's not forget 9/11. In which no Afghans were involved at all. No, not a single one of them. Buuut, well, Uncle Sam had to take it out on someone, and the Afghans and Iraqis - not actually having any WMD - were the ones least likely to retaliate. Next time we could try attacking Tibet. After all, we did so at the beginning of last century when the Younghusband Expedition stormed Lhasa. Another moment of our "glorious" military past, eh?? Another militaristic wanker in charge.
I once saw a fitness centre where they were running the "Battle of the Bulge", a business launching a new corporate wide IT system on "D-Day", how many times have you heard the phrase "Dunkirk Spirit" or a "Waterloo" or, a Pyrrhic victory ? Have you ever listened to the words of the song Waterloo by Abba ?
I suspect that some wag putting up a sign saying "Welcome to Stalingrad" was not comparing the scale but rather the hard facts in military terms of a slugging match or war of attrition.
Personally and as human history is written in battles, I would rather people remembered those battles because hopefully they might also remember the lessons that came from them.
I'd let em all into Afghanistan and keep an eye on them there and when they are all, so to say, in the pot, nuke em if it is absolutely necessary, but only if; but pissing about with the Taliban is clearly a waste of time
build the baddies a lovely warm place to stay and mine it and blow it up when they are all comfortably settled in
Public pressure to leave is growing on a daily basis, and politicians respond to voters concerns in the run up to a general election. The timetable in the UK is fixed, June 2010, and as hard questions are asked, politicians will realise that speaking out in favour of the war will not win them votes.
Poitical short-term gain or long-term strategic interests of the country, which way will the politician turn?
"People at home think we are taking a rogering. It is not true," says Captain Polyanna of the Black Watch.
Or would that be the Black Knight of the Month Python movie?
If this is NOT taking a rogering what would it be if you were?
www.millarcrime.com
specialist troops relying on secret intelligence and working discretely. But this has burgeoned into a big operation.
History would tell us that getting control of the country would not be easy. The mountainous terrain would require huge numbers
of troops and plenty of helicopters to maintain control. Perhaps the best we can for militarily is control of some areas and
containment everywhere else.
The Soviets saw, as NATO sees today, that no amount of troops could subdue the warrior tribes of Afghanistan, and conceded defeat, leaving behind a nominally socialist government allied with Uzbek and Tajik tribes, the same ones that the Yanks used to chase out the Taliban in 2001. After the Soviet retreat in 1989, the Yanks decided to pull the plug on the jihadis, both in Pakistan and among the Arabs in Afghanistan. They started by assassinating Pak dictator Zia and his head of the Inter-Services Intelligence, both of them jihadi fanatics. The new Yank-appointed ISI chief ordered the jihadis in Afghanistan to mount a frontal assault on heavily-defended Jalalabad, over a totally exposed plain. To maximise jihadi casualties, the CIA blew up their arms depot in Pakistan and sent them no new supplies through the winter of 1988-89.
Osama was wounded at Jalalabad and saw many of his friends die needlessly. He put two and two together and realized that his bosses had betrayed him. So he started using the CIA's rolodex of jihadi terrorists to get back at the US. The CIA name for that jihad database, used both in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya to achieve Yank strategic purposes, was "al Qaeda," which means "the database" or "the registry."
The Yanks never wanted to kill or capture Osama. They were in constant contact with what they apparently saw as a temporarily rogue agent who could once again become a valuable asset. Gaddafi put out an Interpol red bulletin for Osama's arrest, the Yanks quashed it. Sudan offered to hand him over, the Yanks refused. Osama sought refuge among the Taliban and the Yanks continued to invite the Talibs to the US and treat them like royalty. Two months before 9-11, the CIA station chief in Dubai visited Osama in a hospital.
Meanwhile, a guy called Mohammed Atta with links to Syrian intelligence was being wired $100,000 by the head of the Pakistani ISI. Soon after, a Mumbai-style commando with Syrian-style plane hijacking expertise pulled off a major terrorist operation against the Twin Towers and Pentagon with the full knowledge of Israeli intelligence, which had tracked the terrorists' every move, and that of the Yanks, who took great pains to quash FBI investigations against the terrorists-to-be, turned a blind eye to their outrageous visa violations, and stood down their air defenses, yet they hardened the section of the Pentagon - and only that one - that the terrorists would hit so as to minimize the damage.
When the terrorist attack was over, the Bush cabal started thinking about who to pin it on. Wolfowitz, Perle, and Rumsfeld adamantly wanted to blame it on Saddam so as to invade Iraq, something that they had been campaigning for over the past decade. Bush and his Texas oilie buddies had other ideas, however. They had been trying to close a pipeline deal with the Taliban for years and had just served the Talibs with an ultimatum: Sign up for the pipeline and receive a carpet of gold or refuse and receive a carpet of bombs. The Talibs told them to stuff it. The Pakistani foreign minister who atended the UN-sponsored Berlin meetings with the Taliban, told the press that the Yanks were going to war "before the first snows." In October 2001, they did just that.
Osama was again allowed to roam freely as Yank AWACS radars tracked his convoy in the heat of the invasion. At Tora Bora, the Yanks left the back door open so he could escape to Pakistan. And today, their killer drones blow away one Taliban leader after another but Osama remains untouched.
as an american who reads the comments in american newspapers and despairs, i am so happy to read so many informed well argued comments as appear to this article. i wish there were more intelligence like yours in the good old us of a. i would almost like to say: wouldn't you consider emigrating to the usa and raising the level of discussion. but actually, i don't think you would be understood and in some parts of the land of the free and the home of the brave you might have to go underground yourselves to avoid being lynched. but i will certainly return to reading the independent-- as much for the commentary as the articles.
colonel moredock (at home in melville's The Confidence Man)
is what will end it,if there are no willing fighters then we win.
We must play to our strengths in Tech and training,and particularly.
Surveillance Surveillance and Surveillance.
This "The final six kilometres are the most lethal." or 3 miles needs 24hr monitoring with drones and hidden cameras et al partnered with movement detection software
Suspects can then be electronically tagged so routes of travel identified and hubs
targeted.
While GPS/UAV targeted mortaring gets the Talibs running scared.
Also why do we seem to see so much random firing the only point of which is to keep Talibs heads down.
Major Coates talks of "It is known simply as Compound 17, a Taliban firing point".If this is known
why are we not setting our own radio IEDS to activate when its next used.Or if surrounded on three
sides again set IEDS at known firing points for appropriate detonation.
These two extra tactics confidently promoted would i think make a big difference.
During the WWII i could not understand why we sent hundreds of slow moving and inaccurate four engined bombers when the Mossie was vastly better.The released Armament capacity and focus could have built the Centurion three years earlier.
While in the Atlantic why did we let hundreds of ships be sunk by slow moving metal tubes,when 30 foot outriggers along port and starboard sides with just fishing nets hanging would have stopped the torpedoes dead.
Henri