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U.S. Threatens Afghans Over Kidnapped GI

Red_Dave said:
Most of them arent. Thats why the voting for the goverment that we,re their defending. Jesus:doh
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If we can narrow intelligence down to knowing with 99.99% certainty that a hostage is being held in a specific village then I believe we should go into that village to get our guy out. It's not like these villages are metropolitan cities...they're frickin dirt road villages.

It would only take making an example out of two or three before the rest started to see the folly in harboring the Taliban.
 
jallman said:
Well that's a very "let me roll over and take it" attitude that Americans just don't have, Laila.

I am all for surgical strikes within a civilian population if they are known to be harboring the captors of an American soldier. I am also ok with going house to house within a village until we find him. And if we find him dead, we leave nothing breathing on the way back out.
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Yeah cause that worked brilliantly in vietnam:doh. If bombing civillians was such an effective way to win counter-insurgencies then you would have thought that, after the U.S used more bombs on vietnam then on the entire second world war, the U.S would have been more successful. If you want to know which approach works best then compare Vietnam to the Malayan emergency.

It wasnt commonwealth forces that defeated the insurgents in Malaya, [my grandfarther for example spent much of the conflict failing to find them] it was the Malayans who eventually got fed up and turned on them. We could easyly do this in Afganistan as the Afgans have been fighting the Taliban since the mid 90s. Historically they have no love for the Taliban but we seam determined to turn them against us.
 
Red_Dave said:
Yeah cause that worked brilliantly in vietnam:doh. If bombing civillians was such an effective way to win counter-insurgencies then you would have thought that, after the U.S used more bombs on vietnam then on the entire second world war, the U.S would have been more successful. If you want to know which approach works best then compare Vietnam to the Malayan emergency.
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I'm sorry. I fail to recall ever having used the word "bomb" in relation to this incident. :confused:
 
jallman said:
If we can narrow intelligence down to knowing with 99.99% certainty that a hostage is being held in a specific village then I believe we should go into that village to get our guy out. It's not like these villages are metropolitan cities...they're frickin dirt road villages.

It would only take making an example out of two or three before the rest started to see the folly in harboring the Taliban.
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Well theres been many examples of this intelligence being wrong in the past and according to the article its not one village its two or three villages. Im sure we can assume that the captured GI is only in one of them.And even if the Taliban are there how are we to know its with the villages consent? Its fairly normal for insurgents to use peoples homes using force [we have family freinds who left northern ireland because the I.R.A had a habbit of doing exactly that]. If they have consented we have to ask why, could one of their young men have been abducted without trial? Could they already have been targeted in airstrikes?


And remember these villages are in a lose-lose situation here. If you watch footage of coalition forces searching villages the main thing their looking for is weapons. So if they arm themselves against the taliban they,re with the taliban, and if the taliban use their village, then the villages are with the taliban. They guilty untill proves innocent either way.
 
Red_Dave said:
Is that not what the article implies? how else could they be "targeted"?
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In some backwater village...probably with squads of foot soldiers and a couple of assault vehicles. Granted, air support if it turned out to be a major infestation of Taliban, but for search and rescue purposes, probably just the ground troops.
 
Red_Dave said:
Yeah cause that worked brilliantly in vietnam:doh. If bombing civillians was such an effective way to win counter-insurgencies then you would have thought that, after the U.S used more bombs on vietnam then on the entire second world war, the U.S would have been more successful. If you want to know which approach works best then compare Vietnam to the Malayan emergency.

It wasnt commonwealth forces that defeated the insurgents in Malaya, [my grandfarther for example spent much of the conflict failing to find them] it was the Malayans who eventually got fed up and turned on them. We could easyly do this in Afganistan as the Afgans have been fighting the Taliban since the mid 90s. Historically they have no love for the Taliban but we seam determined to turn them against us.
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Why would you want to randomly bomb villiages, while searching for one of our MIA's? Who even suggested that?
 
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Laila said:
No it does not.
We are the occupying forces, not them.
If anything, we should be thankful they did not kidnap or kill our soldiers some more.
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Have you forgotten that we removed the Taliban oppression from these people? Occupiers? The Taliban were beating women at the drop of a hat.
 
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