Marines from 2/3 assaulted a Taliban stronghold in Southern Afghanistan over the morning, landing a force behind the enemy lines and meeting stiff resistance at dawn.
Associated Press journalists traveling with the first wave said militants fired small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades after helicopters dropped the troops over Taliban lines. Fighting lasted more than eight hours, as Harrier jets streaked overhead and dropped flares in a show of force.
The Taliban put up such fierce resistance that Marines said they suspected the militants knew the assault was coming.
Other Marines met heavy resistance as they fought to seize control of the mountains surrounding Dahaneh in the southern province of Helmand. Another convoy of Marines rolled into the town despite roadside bomb attacks and gunfire.
Under the new rules of engagement, the Marines promise a “proportional” response to fires from the town, which they say has been long abandoned by civilians.
Sounds as close as you’d ever want to get to a “fair fight.”
Sounds as close as you’d ever want to get to a “fair fight.”
My son say’s the ROE’s are so restrictive as to bringing in heat from the air that most air strikes are deliberately to nearby empty fields. This distracts the Taliban long enough to allow the Marines to advance and engage at closer range and substantiate that civilians are not in harm’s way, then they get down to the real fighting. Most of the times they use the Cobra’s and Apache’s overhead as just eyes in the sky to report on movement and placement only, rarely actually clearing them in hot on a target. Good men are going to die with one arm and a leg tied behind their backs. A crying shame.
BT: Jimmy T sends.
“Show of force.” Like I have said before, we need to kill everything and everyone that needs killing. ROE like this only makes it harder.
To me, a fair fight is one I win. Amen, Bullnav!
As I’ve opined before somewhere, were I the parent of a military member who was at-risk and who got hurt or worse, I would be one VERY angry parent if the cause of the injury were sissypants ROE’s. I mean, I understand success of the overall mission is important, but the lives of those in harm’s way have to be considered, too.
“Show of force” is sort of the equivalent of our politicians “sending a message”. Thought up by pinheads who don’t have a pair on the chopping block. I guess I vote with bullnav and Quartermaster on this one for sure.
SteveC,
Trust me as a Father of one in harm’s way, I surely believe in the scorched earth approach. We would only have to do it once all over that place, but it would be done. Making enemies is a dammed sorry excuse for not making WAR. Just like getting Europe to like us again, form over substance and I can’t stomach that anymore than more restrictive ROE’s.
BT: Jimmy T sends.
In my cro-magnon day it would be “snakes and nape” and have done with it. Of course, such antediluvian attitudes are the reason we lost in Vietnam, right? I mean it couldn’t have had anything to do with multi-divisional strength regular army NVA, tanks and shoulder-fired SAMS, could it have? Must have been all those broken hearts and minds……
VX:
Actually it was restrictive ROE’s which forbid using naval air to make a “highway of death” for the PLAVN armored columns during the last PLAVN offensive.
But you knew that.
I’m with bullnav on this one – glass it over and let’s start fresh.
Ah, yes; the ROE’s. Here is an excerpt from a letter to my Dad written in ’68 :
“He was angry because we had broken the ‘Rules of Engagement’ by attacking without visual contact. The Rules are worth a whole letter by themselves, but we won’t get into that except to say that they were supposed to be there to protect innocent civilians from getting hurt by stray fire. They were also an excellent way to get killed if you followed them to the letter. Everyone had their own rules about how far to go, and one of mine was : If you shoot at me, I‘m going to shoot back”.
Dad’s answer was clear and sucinct: “In my day I had one ROE. I’m going home and you’re not. You can borrow that one if you want to.”
When will we ever learn?
TwofiveZ
Concur. My Mother just put all of my Father’s letters to me from his battalion CO days in VN in a binder. And his letters to her. Mine – not so revealing. His to her? When they cut his battalion loose to cross into Cambodia and go after the known sanctuaries it was a different game. His one ROE to his troopers: “you go home, they do not. Whatever else does not matter as there are no friendlies or innocents in their base camps”.
Seems to me all of these tears shed for “innocent” victims in a house with a known terrorist getting leg massages on the roof, are nothing more than sanctimonious BS from a lib who has never set boot one on hostile ground. When Bonnie and Clyde and Machine Gun Kelly show up on your front door, it’s time to diddy mao’ing out the back.
My navy experience was similar. My first ship was always at Condition III underway because we were operating in a declared war zone. Our standing orders (ROE for all intents) included an absolute admonishment from the Admiral commanding that he did not want to suck up the first blow and that we were directed to open fire as soon as the bad guy demonstrated hostile intent. Hostile intent was determined by us warning them off and if they failed to heed that warning they’d done all that was required for us to declare them hostile and open fire. USS Stark screwed up by the numbers. I spent a thousand hours listening to IAD, MAD, TAC, and Navy Red all at the same time plus driving over a sound powered circuit. I used to hear various Gulf Air Defense Stations warning aircraft that they were standing into danger and would be blasted if they maintained current course. Pilots all over the Gulf would roger up that they were altering course dramatically since nobody was really sure which particular aircraft was the craft of concern at a station that referred to itself as UAE Air Defense Station 3. They used to broadcast the crafts course and speed and sometimes altitude but without a geo ref, none of the civil air types knew where the origin was.