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Also, another report says that a drone had followed this SUV for hours. Since I don’t trust the media, I don’t know if this is actually true. But if it is true, they surely would’ve seen it was not a threat.
The drone did not--could not...because it doesn't hover--"follow" the SUV for hours. It would have to orbit or fly some other kind of route that brought it repeatedly back to the SUV. It would not have had constant view of the SUV that was surrounded by city buildings. So the surveillance team realized they were missing significant chunks of time while the SUV was being loaded.
They mistook the target. They did not deliberately destroy a vehicle they knew was inoffensive. It was a "possible," but not "confirmed." And I've see "possibles" get targeted before.
This type of approach is a decision not just that civilian death is acceptable, but that you'll happily kill 10 of their kids to save yourself from risking 1 of your volunteer soldiers' lives. At that point you're an assassination squad, not an army.
That only makes sense if you're in a total war vs an irreconcilable enemy. It doesn't make sense for a limited war with political goals where your main claim is that you wish to help locals. In other words, American foreign policy and American military doctrine are not compatible.
In war, assassination squads are acceptable. The idea is to kill people and break things. Don’t want that? Be more careful who you decide will lead you. Hiroshima was the correct way to wage war. Kill everything and make them stop resisting. They stopped. Now we’re friends. But they had to stop.
This type of approach is a decision not just that civilian death is acceptable, but that you'll happily kill 10 of their kids to save yourself from risking 1 of your volunteer soldiers' lives. At that point you're an assassination squad, not an army.
That's an inane response.
A national commitment to military action carries with it the understanding that civilians will be killed. That understanding does not mean "you'll happily kill 10 of their kids to save yourself from risking 1 of your volunteer soldiers' lives."
A national commitment to military action carries with it the understanding that civilians will be killed. That understanding does not mean "you'll happily kill 10 of their kids to save yourself from risking 1 of your volunteer soldiers' lives."
Sending a drone to kill people who have not been positively identified as hostiles simply on the basis of a suspicion is not something you do when your primary war goal is to convince the very people you might blow to smithereens that they should embrace a government and political system on your suggestion.
The United States have at no point been at war with the country of Afghanistan or its people. The national commitment was to destroy the Taliban as a viable force (a mission whose failure became obvious a long time ago of course) and to ensure the establishment of a pro-Western democratic, pluralistic political system in Afghanistan (also a failure of course).
But for that 2nd objective to have any chance whatsoever one would need to gain the consent and cooperation of key sectors of local societies, something that is certainly made more difficult if your approach is to simply fire missiles at any potential enemies without verification of their status.
Did the "free fire zones" of Vietnam help the war effort there? Unlikely to say the least. In reality, the technology-focused long distance approach to warfare so typical of modern U.S. military operation is not very conducive at all to convincing locals that you're not just an enemy out to kill them.
The whole point is that there are wars where that's all you are - an enemy out to kill them - but this one certainly wasn't that type of war at all. In fact, avoiding that perception was one of the primary political objectives of the whole war effort.
The drone did not--could not...because it doesn't hover--"follow" the SUV for hours. It would have to orbit or fly some other kind of route that brought it repeatedly back to the SUV. It would not have had constant view of the SUV that was surrounded by city buildings. So the surveillance team realized they were missing significant chunks of time while the SUV was being loaded.
They mistook the target. They did not deliberately destroy a vehicle they knew was inoffensive. It was a "possible," but not "confirmed." And I've see "possibles" get targeted before.
According to the article, it was a Reaper, not a Predator. I don’t know the exact capabilities of that airframe, just the general information released on fact sheets. But it does have the ability to loiter in the area, and it doesn’t seem to me to be that hard of an ask to flight follow a vehicle, even by continually circling around. You’d think the multiple camera and video systems could still paint the target in any direction? Again, I don’t really know, so I won’t really argue that point all that hard. I have seen drone footage before, but I wasn’t really noticing if they were following targets or not. Didn’t occur to me at the time to ask.
For all we know, there might’ve been another set of eyes on the vehicle, which helped place the Reaper back on the target after it made continual passes in the vicinity.
As far as the actual decision to hit the target, hitting a “possible”, then rushing out to insist it was “righteous” doesn’t sit well with me at all. You keep trying to lump this one in with all the other mistakes, but you really can’t see the difference here?
If you're talking about me, I'm not a moderator or admin, but I've been around here a good while and I've been walking around with a military ID card since middle school and collecting DoD paychecks for over fifty years since high school.
As far as the actual decision to hit the target, hitting a “possible”, then rushing out to insist it was “righteous” doesn’t sit well with me at all. You keep trying to lump this one in with all the other mistakes, but you really can’t see the difference here?
Apparently I've seen a lot more mistakes than you have.
I've seen us strike wedding parties, I've seen us strike Bedouin truck caravans. I've seen us strike things my people have reported...and we who reported them didn't even think ourselves they were valid targets...but someone in the chain above us did. I've had my own people ask me, "Why did we hit that? We didn't know for sure what it was."
Last edited by Ralph_Kirk; 09-21-2021 at 01:40 PM..
Sending a drone to kill people who have not been positively identified as hostiles simply on the basis of a suspicion is not something you do when your primary war goal is to convince the very people you might blow to smithereens that they should embrace a government and political system on your suggestion.
The United States have at no point been at war with the country of Afghanistan or its people. The national commitment was to destroy the Taliban as a viable force (a mission whose failure became obvious a long time ago of course) and to ensure the establishment of a pro-Western democratic, pluralistic political system in Afghanistan (also a failure of course).
But for that 2nd objective to have any chance whatsoever one would need to gain the consent and cooperation of key sectors of local societies, something that is certainly made more difficult if your approach is to simply fire missiles at any potential enemies without verification of their status.
Did the "free fire zones" of Vietnam help the war effort there? Unlikely to say the least. In reality, the technology-focused long distance approach to warfare so typical of modern U.S. military operation is not very conducive at all to convincing locals that you're not just an enemy out to kill them.
The whole point is that there are wars where that's all you are - an enemy out to kill them - but this one certainly wasn't that type of war at all. In fact, avoiding that perception was one of the primary political objectives of the whole war effort.
The US is rarely involved in the kind of combat you're idealizing. In fact, almost never.
That's just one more reason to understand how grave a matter it is to commit the military to combat. Everyone needs to understand that there is nothing clean or neat about combat. There is no kind of guarantee that innocents won't be killed.
Combat is always nasty and evil, and Americans are far, far too casual about committing America to it.
The US is rarely involved in the kind of combat you're idealizing. In fact, almost never.
That's just one more reason to understand how grave a matter it is to commit the military to combat. Everyone needs to understand that there is nothing clean or neat about combat. There is no kind of guarantee that innocents won't be killed.
Combat is always nasty and evil, and Americans are far, far too casual about committing America to it.
Well, we don't seem to be in disagreement on that. The only acceptable war in my mind is one of desperate self-defense in which case all means are legitimate.
For sure, it was political, just as it was political when General Glosson kept reporting to the media on the success of the Persian Gulf War SCUD hunt, even though we explicitly briefed him that the Air Force was bombing gasoline trucks, not SCUD TELs.
Since this situation is the same as a SCUD hunt, let’s try a different approach.
The Kunduz hospital was bombed and flattened. The U.S. knew the Taliban were using it for a C2 headquarters yet bombed it. Justified yet there were civilians in the hospital. Within a WEEK, Obama apologized and agreed to send condolence money to pay the families. https://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/22/...us-446017.html
Obama didn’t trounce out his chief of staff or some general to squir, with the press corps. He went out there. Quickly, didn’t blame intelligence. And then immediately apologized and began paying out to the victims. Apparently Biden was asleep at the wheel and didn’t notice how to respond to “war errors”. Come on, Biden is a lame duck on his first term.
Last edited by johnsonkk; 09-21-2021 at 08:22 PM..
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