BF2S Forums 10 years in Afghanistan

LOL that you think the NSA provides intel that is more usable than the CIA.

Anything the NSA has that's worth a shit, they keep to themselves. They're fucking worthless, from an execution perspective.

rdx-fx wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Anything the NSA has that's worth a shit, they keep to themselves. They're fucking worthless, from an execution perspective.

You're top shelf, or you're toilet water... 

They have their own agenda...and it's not tied to national intelligence priorities.

FEOS wrote:

They have their own agenda...and it's not tied to national intelligence priorities.

I'd have gone ISA in a heartbeat, if they'd asked.
Now that's a group that knows how to turn SIGINT into actionable intelligence.

-Sh1fty- wrote:

So at this point what should be done?

Politicians need to pull their heads out of their asses, and pick an objective.

Like they should've done before they decided to send in the conventional forces.

Does a great disservice to the military to just let them keep chasing in circles for 10 years, without providing them with a clear objective to work towards.

Give the US military a clear objective, and they will achieve it.
Stick them in a circle-jerk shithole with no clear objective to accomplish, and they'll keep killing and dying until the civilians get bored of seeing coffins come home on TV.

rdx-fx wrote:

Shocking,

I see your point.
I just don't have any give-a-shit left for the Middle East.

Whole fucking region could be under 100 feet of ocean water, and I wouldn't really care.

They like their pretend sky-daddy myth,
they like having someone to blame their problems on,
they like their psychotic despot rulers,
they absolutely love being pissed off at the jews.

Fuckit.
Leave 'em to it.
Bomb the shit out of them when they get Jihadi-explodey towards us.

Maybe try not supporting the jews ? - Another group of Armageddonist sky-daddy fruitloops.
Or supporting their psychotic despot rulers and selling them arms and chemical weapons factories?

Then maybe they won't hate you so much.

FEOS wrote:

Btw: don't consider field units of that sort "NSA".

Aware of the distinction.
Started off as a sigint linguist.

rdx-fx wrote:

-Sh1fty- wrote:

So at this point what should be done?

Politicians need to pull their heads out of their asses, and pick an objective.

Like they should've done before they decided to send in the conventional forces.

Does a great disservice to the military to just let them keep chasing in circles for 10 years, without providing them with a clear objective to work towards.

Give the US military a clear objective, and they will achieve it.
Stick them in a circle-jerk shithole with no clear objective to accomplish, and they'll keep killing and dying until the civilians get bored of seeing coffins come home on TV.

I'll have to disagree here, the objective was defined, although not so much by politicians, but I'm sure I read reports dating to about 2003 in which people defined the overall strategy & objective using what was said (in politics, speeches et al) post 9/11. While some of the blame lies with the politicians, the military itself has been way, way too slow in adapting to the situation. I remember being told by FEOS in another thread that there was a 'struggle' as it were going on within the armed forces between the SF department and others to treat the Afgh war as an insurgency rather than one massive counter terrorism ops.

If there's anything I've learned about military matters it's that time is precious to spend years on infighting and then years on re-formulating the overall strategy is a terrible waste of time. More importantly, you can't go back and undo or re-do what has been done during the years of infighting, the damage you do to your war strategy is pretty much permanent, especially if the local populace is important in the equation. Not to mention that public support at some point will wane so it's of vital importance to settle disputes quickly and be flexible if you want to get anything done at all.

Now beyond that, it shows that the military didn't do its homework properly prior to the invasion, which is, I think, the most serious problem. 'Getting it right' from the start is unbelievably important, in the case of the US military - not doing its homework properly on Afghanistan is, I'd say, even more of a failure because the intelligence service was already well acquainted with the area prior to the invasion, being their involvement in the soviet-Afghanistan war. To have treated the Taliban as a massive terrorism cell or extension thereof really shows either a lack in communication or sheer dumbfuckery in the upper echelons.. maybe both.

Last edited by Shocking (2011-09-20 11:15:42)

Call it an insurgency, call it anti-terrorism.

That may be what it is.
It does nothing to define a clear end state objective.
It doesn't define 'accomplish these specific goals, then everyone can go home'

It is the politicians job to define the political or strategic objective.
It is the military's job to inform the politicians what they need to accomplish those objectives, whether or not those objective can be accomplished, and then come up with a plan to accomplish the mission.

The politicians completely neglected their responsibilities there.
One, they never set a clear objective
Two, they never gave the military enough time or resources for proper recon before invasion
Three, they crippled the special operations teams by micromanaging them and overruling the field commander's decisions (Operation Anaconda for one)
Four, they sent the big green regular army in to do the job of the Army SF (interfacing with native personnel)

Short story,
Politicians were in such a big hurry to kick some ass, that they neglected everything they were supposed to do, and just sent in the whole military with no planning.  When they did bother to pay any attention, they micromanaged tactical units while still ignoring their strategic objectives.

Shocking wrote:

oh and about the graph in OP what I found interesting is that since the implementation of COIN lots more people are dying.

COIN takes a lot more casualties, because it requires you to get out of the firebase and go out into the communities.

Shocking wrote:

It's not like the defence staff doesn't get consulted prior to an invasion though, they too have a voice in the decision of how / when to go to war and pretty much the most important say on the strategic bit of it all.

There's a pdf by a lt col harring dating to 2003 which I found on google in which he states

Lt.Col Harring wrote:

Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration
established a national policy that would guide the United States’ response to the attacks. In
essence, the policy of the Bush Administration was to find those responsible for the terrorist
attacks and bring them to justice.3 In his first televised speech following the attacks, President
Bush expanded the policy to include not only the terrorist perpetrators, but also nations that
harbor them.4 In essence, the Bush Administration’s policy made elimination of terrorist
sanctuaries and support systems as important as elimination of the terrorists themselves. In
doing so, the United States would disable the terrorist organization in Afghanistan, eliminate the
sanctuary provided by the Taliban, and prevent the terrorists from mounting further attacks
against the United States.

(source: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Lo … =ADA420140 )

Hence, I would say, the goal was, in a sense, defined. Furthermore, the defence staff has the responsibility to communicate the objective to the rest of the armed forces or to ask those in the white house on what their desired objectives were, if an objective wasn't defined it's as much their fault as it is that of the politicians. I also distinctly remember Clinton stating that he wanted to invade Afghanistan in 2000 following the USS Cole incident, I'm 100% sure that given he stated that, the idea of invading Afghanistan should've been on the table back then which means there would have been people thinking about planning or preparing for such a war. They had time, they knew about Afghanistan and its terrorist havens - they probably knew about it even prior to Clinton stating he wanted to invade.

There's lots of blame to go around, in politics but sure as shit in the armed forces as well. To be honest there's so much blame to go around and so many mistakes which have been made it really makes me question the professionalism and ability of the people who were in charge during the beginning of the war. It's kind of sad really.

You're assuming those clarifying questions weren't asked...repeatedly.

Shocking wrote:

You mean to tell me that

A: the white house didn't listen to its defence staff prior to the invasion and told them "go there and get stuff done"?
B: the white house didn't give an objective even after being asked repeatedly?

oh boy

I thought that at the very least the CDS (or I believe you call it CJCS) had a major say in what was going to happen, how and when.

The civil-military relationship during that period was not very good. Rummy knew best.

Shocking wrote:

Starting a war without one is crazy, how are you even going to prepare properly if you don't know your objective?

Exactly.

Military chain of command.
Your boss gives an order, you can ask for clarification of that order.
If they decline to give you more specifics, you interpret and execute those orders to the best of your ability.
As long as it's a lawful order, you cannot tell them "no way, that's asinine, incomplete, and vague"

As far as I've ever seen, any officer with the balls to say "no" to poorly defined orders, never gets promoted past Colonel.

Last edited by rdx-fx (2011-09-20 13:24:39)