The Link Pray for our fallen men and women in Afghanistan. Difficult month. 101 brave souls. More casualties this month in Afghanistan than the last 12 months combined in Iraq.
George Stephanopoulos used to run a silent tribute to the fallen soldiers each week at the end of his show. Does he still do this?
Who was it on here that seemed to be gleeful in posting the deaths of our brave men and women during Bush's admin? It was heinous then but if it seemed important enough to the vile poster to do it then why not now? I am hopeful Petaeus will change the ROE and once again consider the safety of our own above all. McChrystal was wrong to think it was ok to put our own in danger and death to possibly score points with the locals. Yo, Those brave fallen are on McC. I only wish he wouldn't make one cent off any book and he spends the rest of his life in misery.
I think the answer on ROE is somewhere in the middle of what McChrystal was doing here lately versus the ridiculous "shoot first, ask questions later" regulations that were initially in place in Iraq. I trust General Petraeus to strike the right balance.
Punk I agree pertaeus will make the right decisons . He has already said things might not change fo awhile but like you I trust him to craft a sound set of ROE that will not hamstring our people out there. In the meantime I will do as Yo asked and pray for them all
I don't get what we are doing there. What is our mission? When will it be completed? What is the long term strategy?
ROE's that "hamstring" our forces are what happens when you let politicians run a war. Fight or leave. Nothing less.
Well I'm glad they didn't change the format when Obama got in office. I did not see any mention of this in their transcripts or on their web site. Afganistan has become extremely costly in American blood. I sure hope like hell we are not asking our men to fight with one arm tied behind their back.
My response was not a putdown but a view from a guy who sees no problem with "shoot first ask questions later." Letting the other guy shoot first is a great way to die. I had the nearly unique combatent experience to go from ROE that said "OK to shoot first" to ROE that said "They have to shoot first" to ROE that said "You can't shoot without calling higher HQ first, even if you are getting shot at." That happened all in one tour. In Vietnam, prior to Dec '68 we could shoot at whatever we thought needed to be shot at. We were the ones with the experience in a particular AO (Area of Operations). We could see things that changed day to day, things that were different, people where they shouldn't be. Now, before you call those ROE ridiculous keep in mind that if we shot something up that shouldn't have been shot at we still had to answer for our actions. It wasn't a free-fire zone mentality. And, believe it or not, we didn't want to kill civilians and tried our damndest not to, no matter what the revisionist history says about the crazed, hair-trigger VN vets. When the ROE changed to "you have to get shot at first" is actually wasn't that big a deal for helicopters. That's the we operated anyway. "Trolling for bad guys." The Sharks were know for flying everywhere at 50 ft. We wanted the bad guys to shoot at us. Hey, ya' can't kill 'em if you don't know where they are. The overwhelming majority of our engagements were initiated by the bad guys. All you had to do was be lucky enough to survive the first burst and usually we were. That first, free shot was the price of admission. Later, when the ROE changed to "call higher HQ before shooting" we developed our own methods. If we got shot at we returned fire, quickly and massively. When the shooting was over, we'd call HQ and ask for permission to shoot. If permission was denied, we just flew off and forgot about it. Never had a problem handling idiotic ROE that way. Today's forces, in today's battles don't have the "luxury" we did. We were usually so far out in Indian country that no one noticed the shooting. Today, the technology is probably watching you. Hell, for all I know they have to account for ordinance expended. We didn't have that problem. We were pretty much on our own. It was up to us to take care of us...and we did. I point all this out simply to explain why, to the guys on the pointy end of the spear, there is nothing "ridiculous" about shooting first. It's actually a life-saving technique at times.
We need to declare victory and get the f**k out of those two shitholes. We have sons and daughters dying over there for no good reason and that just has to stop.
What was McChrystal's ROE policy? I'm really surprised if it was much different from the positive ID policy that was under Petraeus in Iraq...
