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I think you are the one having trouble reading. With all due respect, which part of "The need to detain a busload of people had no bearing on the success or failure of the mission" do you not understand? An intelligence failure is an intelligence failure. Or are you attempting to claim that intelligence getting something wrong means failure no matter the outcome? Intelligence failures occur even in many successful ops. As for bad planning, the original plan was to stage the op six months earlier when the conditions were favorable. That's on Jimmy Carter.Are you having trouble reading? Do you not understand that it's not a sign of good planning when there's a busload of people on a road intel said was supposed to be abandoned?
As for bad planning, the original plan was to stage the op six months earlier when the conditions were favorable.
Poes Law in action.Why? Nothing any vet has done in the last 30-40 years has made us any safer. Their actions in the ME actually put more American lives in danger.
You are completely failing to realize that the entirety of Operation Eagle Claw was based on terrible planning that the modern SOF community would never have accepted. You keep pretending that it was just the conditions that caused the failure; it was not.
Eagle Claw was a failure because it was a terrible plan. Even if the sand storm had not occurred, the entire plan was almost certainly doomed to failure. You don't know what you're talking about, which is why you keep insisting that it was only an issue of the sand storm.
To cap off a few of the problems with Eagle Claw:
1. There was a complete lack of human intelligence on the actual target area.
2. The operational plan basically admitted that the rescue team would have to wing it once they got to Tehran, because the intel was so incomplete. At the most important phase of the operation, they quite literally be making it up as they go.
3. The various different forces involved in actually carrying out the operation had never rehearsed together.
4. The actual members of the operation were not sure who was actually in charge of the operation owing to the lack of coordination. At the site Desert One this caused confusion because there wasn't anyone designated to take command of the site after landing.
5. Two the of helos had to turn back entirely based on the technical failures of their crews due to lack of training. Bluebeard 6 mistakenly assumed that a Blade Inspection Method warning light meant they were in imminent threat of crashing, because they had been trained in Marine H-53s, but the Navy's RH-53s had never had a blade failure after a BIM warning. In fact the RH-35's BIM indicator was just a caution, but Marine pilots were trained to believe it was a sign of immediate failure.
Bluebeard 5 also had to abandon the mission because the crew had accidentally blocked off a cooling unit when they were loading equipment, causing the aircraft to turn back. to make matters worse, Bluebeard 5 was carrying all the spare parts for the mission.
Honestly dude, what part of this gives you this idea that Eagle Claw was a good plan?
You are making all kind of assumptions.
What I have claimed is that if op had been carried out when it was ready to go, it would have had a decent chance at success.
And it was your boy Jimmy Carter that approved the mission.
None of what I stated are assumptions; those are all facts of the mission as they occurred.
Nonsense. When your plan for the most vital part of the operation is to "wing it", it's not a good plan.
You know what's really stupid? Even acknowledging the plan was terrible allows you to blame Carter, which is the main point you like to focus on.
It was Carter who ordered the armed forces to focus on conventional forces at the expense of special forces that led to the extremely poor planning and operational environment that resulted in Eagle Claw. Now, in fairness to Jimmy, many of the senior staff went along with it because they too didn't trust special forces; it was a common motif in the post-Vietnam era that you could later see in the Gulf War with Schwarzkopf and Powell.
You can banter about planning until you turn blue, however you are still failing to admit that the reason for aborting the mission was consequences of unfavorable weather that did not exist 6 months prior when it was deemed ready to go. And I do not take you as an authority on what qualifies as good or bad planning.
Obviously the rescue unit was not the Navy Seals or the Green Berets, however the abortion of the mission is solely a consequence of weather.
You hav ecompletely failed to explain how any of the very real and dangerous flaws in the plan (the complete lack of coordinated training, ridiculous opsec measures, lack of intel) were somehow not a problem within the original time frame.
The idea that without the weather the mission would have succeeded is ludicrous for all the reasons I've mentioned. Your complete inability to refute any of the issues I raised with the planning of Eagle Claw demonstrates that.
I have refuted everything that counts. Your are attempting to suggest that due to the fact that since the mission was not comprised of a unit the level of something along the lines of Seal Team Six, that it had no chance of success whatsoever.
Did you serve in the military? Like it or not, the mission failure was a consequence of unfavorable weather.
Afghanistan: 'We have won the war, America has lost', say Taliban
I tend to agree. The Taliban are still around, still controls parts of Afghanistan, and will probably be in charge of all of it within a few years. America is leaving and the people they went to unseat from power will be back in charge.
I tend to agree.
No, this is the result of what the United States has long become "Drive-by country"Kabul will soon be returned to the 15th century.
Sad!
But that's life!
We actually did win until Bush decided to allow the Taliban to flee into Pakistan while he attacked the wrong country.Almost impossible to defeat insurgent forces on their own turf. That lesson was taught the French in Algeria and Vietnam, the British almost everywhere, and the US a few times. The problem for democracies is they won't do what is necessary to conquer an indigenous people. It requires genocide and extreme brutality. American public opinion won't accept those tactics.
But I'll tell you who is very good at that; the Chinese. They are willing to take the necessary steps with no remorse and no apology. If you're willing to execute enough people, including women and children... if you're willing to starve people..... if you're willing to enslave a population.... yes, the Chinese could conquer Afghanistan.
No, we didn't. Only in your dreams. We haven't won in Pakistan nor Afghanistan nor Iraq nor Iran. We're batting zero in the Middle East.We actually did win until Bush decided to allow the Taliban to flee into Pakistan while he attacked the wrong country.
Macmillan was right; the British during the Raj and North West Frontier, the Soviets, the US and NATO; none seem to have learned from history that nobody, despite trillions-worth of sophisticated materiel, has managed to subdue the Afghans since the days of Alexander the Great. History is a great teacher; woe to those who choose to ignore those lessons.Shithole before we got there, shithole while we fought there, shithole after we leave, but, hey, what's a few trillion between friends.
So much for exercises in "nation building".
In 1963, the British prime minister Harold Macmillan declared: “Rule No. 1 in politics: Never invade Afghanistan.”
Yes, the USSR, Great Britain and many others tried that, and failed. History clearly didn't teach them much about Afghanistan's resistance to invaders-irrespective of how powerful their military toys are. The Afghans just melt away into the mountains at the first sign (or sound), of an invader, and await their chance...They harbored know terrorist that attacked us, we gave them a diplomatic chance to turn them over to us, they refused, as Bin Ladin and others were guests in the county and culture, it would have been taboo for them to do it.
That not withstanding, taboo is not a recognized thing under international law.
We had every right to declare war on them, and remove them from power, but we didn't, because Congress is a bunch of useless old farts, and Bush II let Chaney rule an illegal "authorization of the use of military force".
If we had declared war, we could have forced them into unconditional surrender, and the war would have been over.
If you think Iraq has anything resembling a functioning government you should be writing comedy scripts.I have been around since President Eisenhower. As for Iraq, we first went to war with them in 1991 over their annexation of Kuwait. The objective was simply to evict them from Kuwait and stop their production of weapons of mass destruction. They signed onto terms that allowed the regime to stay in power. Fast forward to 2003. They violated those terms, they continued to threaten Kuwait and refuse to verify destruction of wmds. The regime was given an ultimatum. Saddam and his bastard sons were to leave or there would be an invasion. After the regime was taken down, ofcourse we could not leave them with no functioning government. We did not do that in Germany either in the aftermath of WW2. However we did not remake Germany of Japan, nor did we remake Iraq.
That much we can agree on. It was pointless, enormously wasteful and achieved nothing.I don't know how Bush could even show his face in public after this Afghanistan/Iraq fiasco.
All that wasted youth and wealth for nothing.
If you think Iraq has anything resembling a functioning government you should be writing comedy scripts.
Iraq’s dysfunctional democracy needs to change
Iraq's current system of democracy is hardwired for sectarianism, but its discontents suffer without prejudice.www.trtworld.com
And by the way, did anyone ask the Iraqi people if they wanted democracy forced on them by an invader?
Afghanis have been hiding beside a road waiting for their enemy to come along since Alexander the Great. Arabs, Persians, Mongols, the list goes on and on. There's no winning in Afghanistan. You're right. That's life.Me, too.
The Brits could not tame that country in the 19th century.
The Russians failed to tame it in the 20th century.
And the Americans have run out of patience in the 21st century.
Hope that some key Afghan allies will be flown to safety in the States.
Kabul will soon be returned to the 15th century.
Sad!
But that's life!
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