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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (21121)	3/11/2002 9:00:03 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Well, you know I agree with you that it's far easier to be an armchair general, rather than be the one making the calls on the ground. And certainly in this case I can be accused of that. But that being said, there is certainly room for calling a spade a spade, when it seems obvious that perhaps our commanders (or other supporting elements) failed to assemble all the necessary firepower and logistical support necessary to fix, hold, and eventually overwhelm the enemy. Why we went "hunting" for these Taliban/Al Quaida, without proper preparatory saturation, or at least having on station massive immediate air support until we had our boys on the ground and secured in a defensive perimeter is beyond me. We're out there with little artillery suppport, helicopters which have difficulty operating at those high altitudes anyway and which are vulnerable to AAA fire. And then our boys not having sleeping bags until they were flown in on the 3rd day (even 1/2 the number so they could hotrack while the others stand guard)?? Heck, I don't know Unclewest.. I'd like to give the benefit of a doubt to the commander in charge of the operation. But it seems that this was a "All Army" show during the initial stages, without proper coordination with Air Force resources until after they were already "catching it".. And the lives of our guys out there are far too valuable to be caught up in Pentagon politics or having to "prove" they Army doesn't need the other forces. But here is the link to the article and some the pertinent commentary: washingtontimes.com Seven U.S. combatants were killed in gunbattles Monday after their MH-47 Chinook helicopters were inserted into mountanous terrain fiercely defended by al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. The Air Force source said one chopper on a rescue mission lacked adequate fire support from the air. Military officers contended yesterday in interviews that there was no need to insert ground forces so early in Operation Anaconda, the first combined U.S. air and ground assault in the war in Afghanistan. Instead, they said, jet aircraft with precision-guided bombs and the howitzers on AC-130 gunships for weeks should have pummeled caves and compounds where the enemy is hiding. During that period, the critics say, special-operations troops should have been used to find targets for direct aerial bombardment but not to directly attack the well-armed enemy forces. Only after days or weeks of softening enemy positions and putting fighters on the run should significant numbers of U.S. ground troops have been inserted, they said. Gen. Tommy Franks, running the war as head of U.S. Central Command, changed tactics for the 5-day-old battle in a mountain region called Shah-e-Kot, southeast of Gardez. In the mid-December battle of Tora Bora, Gen. Franks employed days of air strikes to hit enemy troops while relying on local, untrained Afghans as ground forces. As a result, the enemy was routed from Tora Bora, north of Gardez. But hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters escaped because no sizable force was on the ground to stop them. In what analysts said was a correction of the Tora Bora tactics, Gen. Franks sent in relatively large numbers of American ground troops at the outset of Operation Anaconda and was using U.S.-trained Afghans to block escape routes and do the fighting. ************************* Don't know about you, but it makes sense to me... surround them, cut off their escape routes, and pound them into submission... And don't unecessarily risk the lives of our soldiers. After all, the goal is to make the "other dumb SOB die for his country(cause)"... Hawk