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Post by Deleted on Aug 25, 2021 3:28:34 GMT
Yes.
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Post by quincannon on Aug 25, 2021 14:37:01 GMT
The problem with general and flag rank officers as I see it Mike are twofold.
1) What they learn as company grade officers, they try to apply when they reach positions of power. That is why we always are fighting the last war, instead of adapting to the conditions and parameters of the wars of the present.
2) They have had to compromise their values so much to reach those positions of power. Their backbone has turned to jelly, and they have compromised those values so much by going along to get along, the values they believe they have, are no longer there. To them, values are the signs you see promoting "Army Values" as you enter the gates of our various posts throughout the country. That seems to be enough to give lip service to the core beliefs we all must have if we are to serve our country in the manner the country expects us to serve her. Values are something that must be lived every moment of every day. There is never a permission slip, for any reason, to compromise those values. When someone does to get ahead or for any other reason, they are about as useless as a three peckered goat with amnesia.
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Post by yanmacca on Aug 25, 2021 15:41:12 GMT
Found out just yesterday from my eldest sister (who is 83), that our Grandad got wounded in the Khyber pass, some locals took him in and nursed him, he rejoined his regiment a few months later. He later went on to serve in the middle east during WW1. He died in 1922. My sister found all this from his obituary in the local rag.
All this come about when we went to see her yesterday, and Afghanistan was on the news. So my relatives where fighting in the area over 100 years ago. Apparently my grandad was a boy soldier, looks like my dad followed suit, he joined the territorial army in 1936, he was only a teenager.
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Post by quincannon on Aug 25, 2021 15:53:35 GMT
If you want to read a really good book about the British Army at the time (a little later than your granddad but much the same situation) I would recommend highly "Bugles and a Tiger" by John Masters. It is the first volume of his autobiographical Indian Army career, the second being an equally good "Road Past Mandalay". Masters was an officer in the 4th Prince of Wales Own Ghurka Rifles, part of the Chindit 44 Campaign, and went on after the war to write these two books about his life, but is best known for his novels such as "Bhowani Junction", "The Ravi Lancers", "Coromandel", and a particular favorite of mine "Nightrunners of the Bengal". Masters was both an accomplished soldier and a best selling author. Great writer.
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Post by yanmacca on Aug 25, 2021 18:49:56 GMT
You must have one heck of a library Chuck.
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Post by quincannon on Aug 25, 2021 22:08:39 GMT
Well, it's my library supplemented by the Pikes Peak Library District. I do own Bugles and Road though.
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Post by yanmacca on Aug 26, 2021 7:57:26 GMT
The latest now is that ISIS are planning a send off for us all in Kabul airport, apparently the Taliban and ISIS are both enemies, so this should be interesting, if ISIS starts a bombing campaign in Afghanistan like it has done elsewhere, the Taliban will have its hands full, then we will see how they like it when suicide bombers hit their buildings and IEDs start going off on their main roads.
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Post by quincannon on Aug 26, 2021 13:16:01 GMT
As you may know Ian, I have a very good source on all things dealing with Afghanistan, and in speaking with that source yesterday, he told me things that to me are encouraging. I cannot go into a lot of that right now, but there is some worth sharing.
The Taliban in the 1990's did not run a government in Afghanistan. They ran something akin to a huge country wide guerilla base camp. They have grown much more sophisticated over the last thirty years, and now they find themselves in a position of having to govern a country, a country that during that same time has itself become more sophisticated. That will pose a much larger and more complicated set of problems for them. Governing and running are two very different things. To that end they will not tolerate anything, including ISIS and AQ, that interferes with Taliban objectives. For one thing they know what ISIS and AQ brings with them, which is nothing but trouble, trouble for the Taliban. It is a fundamental mistake to believe that these people are allied with each other. All of them would just as soon cut each others throat, because each of their objectives are different. Once upon a time we thought all communism to be monolithic, a communist, was a communist, was a communist. What we found out was that every communist country was a country first, and a communist second, and they did not always like each other. In fact most times they didn't. So it is here.
The second thing is that no army in the end will fight for a government they believe to be corrupt to the core. The Afghan government was corrupt to the core, as was the government of Vietnam, and many, too many, other places in this world of ours. Corrupt governments elicit no loyalty.
So, wait until all this current situation dies down, and we probably have two more weeks of it ahead, then see where things land. I think what we will find is that the whole evacuation process will be deemed a success, and maybe a huge success. Things always look bad initially when these things start, but the measure of a man, and the measure of a country is not how well you begin, but how well you end, and should not be judged by how many times you are knocked down, but how many times you get up.
As a final thought. Anyone who did not see this coming, was not looking. We were looking, and knew what was coming. Where we failed is in not thinking that it would come so fast. That is a failure of intelligence, but then again intelligence is what you interpret it to mean. We got that wrong, shame on us. We recovered, and are getting the job done anyway. Hopefully next time, if there is one, we will understand that intelligence many times isn't so intelligent.
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Post by yanmacca on Aug 26, 2021 19:06:57 GMT
Did your source predict the ISIS bombers? Intelligence reports have been coming in thick and fast over this and they were right on the money.
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Post by quincannon on Aug 26, 2021 19:22:20 GMT
Absolutely did. We have known about them being in country for several years. Unfortunately we lost seven Marines in today's attack. I had hoped that could be avoided, but your enemy always has a vote.
Keep in mind Ian that this is what we have to live with for the foreseeable future. You try to stop it all before it occurs, which means you have to be right all the time, and they only have to get it right once to hurt you. Unconventional warfare is just as deadly as the Battle of The Bulge.
Part of this though is our fault. We expect perfection in everything we do, and perfection does not exist short of the Pearly Gates. We still expect it when we have no right to, and get our shorts in a twist when perfection does not manifest itself.
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Post by yanmacca on Aug 26, 2021 19:28:13 GMT
Its the Talibans worry now, ISIS will carry on after we have all gone. Sad about the Marines, this was not supposed to happen, even the Taliban kept its word.
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Post by deadwoodgultch on Aug 26, 2021 19:59:51 GMT
The latest now is that ISIS are planning a send off for us all in Kabul airport, apparently the Taliban and ISIS are both enemies, so this should be interesting, if ISIS starts a bombing campaign in Afghanistan like it has done elsewhere, the Taliban will have its hands full, then we will see how they like it when suicide bombers hit their buildings and IEDs start going off on their main roads. Ian,the beheadings had already started, before you wrote this. And as you now know of the suicide bombers have struck prior to me writing this. Many of the planes have been fired upon(mall arms), and the military planes have use flares and other such devices when climbing to altitude. I have concerns for some civilian aircraft. Regards, Tom
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Post by deadwoodgultch on Aug 26, 2021 20:02:41 GMT
Another blast as I wrote the above, that after the earlier two.
Regards, Tom
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Post by yanmacca on Aug 27, 2021 5:18:46 GMT
Tom, the Taliban are not a cohesive army, each group or band or whatever, have their own leadership, which means that some groups are more lenient then others. I agree with you that we will see reports of people getting killed or beaten and this will go on for the foreseeable, but at least we are not there.
These attacks by ISIS, are discriminate and I guess they killed people on all sides, even Taliban fighters, so they also have a dog in this fight.
As I said before, the Taliban are made up of regional bands each with its own tribal leaders, so it will be interesting to see if they can all work together under a single leadership, my guess is that they will eventually turn their AK47s on each other.
Another thing my sister said the other day was a tale our grandfather said before he died and probably passed down, he said that in the Khyber pass you would see one tribesmen on a hill behind a rock with a gun, on the other side you will see another tribesmen also behind a rock with bow, and both men are there because that was his rock.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2021 14:42:55 GMT
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