When the United States announced its new Rules of
Engagement Policy regarding its Conflict in Afghanistan with the Taliban, we,
in effect, learned what the old Rules of Engagement were. It seem that the Obama Administration, in
order to persuade the Taliban to go lightly on the Americans, since the
Americans were planning on significantly ratcheting down their presence to a
skeleton of what it had been, committed to the policy of Fighting Only When
Attacked. Basically it was “If you don’t
screw with us, we won’t screw with you”; “live and let live”; “be smart enough
to let a sleeping dog lie”. Such a
policy would allow for as much ‘peace’ as could be expected in a Nation where ‘war’
has become perhaps their biggest money making ‘Industry’. You see, from the Taliban point of view, if
the Americans stopped being such a nuisance then they could certainly be tolerated
to stay, since they were no slackers in regards to paying their way. The Americans were spending tons of money in
the Country, much of it going to the Taliban as ‘protection money’ ( you see,
there were ‘Security Companies’ that were contracted by Afghanistan Businesses,
Municipalities and even by the American Armed Forces to ‘protect’ certain areas,
roads, buildings, etc. But these Security
Companies merely channeled the lion’s share of the money to the Taliban to persuade
them to keep their distance. ), and I would suppose even the Afghan Government,
the nominal sworn enemies of the Taliban would divert funds to the Taliban so
that they would come out and fight every once in a while, but nothing too
severe. You see, as soon as there is any
true and lasting Peace in Afghanistan, America would simply pack up its Billion
Dollar War Machine and go home. After
all, America is now sworn to never ever again to engage in ‘Nation Building’ but
would be perfectly willing to stay forever as long as there is a Fight. So if it is a Fight they want, then it is a
Fight they’ll get… even if it has to be Stage Played. Without War Afghanistan would only have the
opium and heroin Trade to pay all its bills, and prices there have dipped since
the American Pharmaceutical Companies have flooded the American Drug Markets
with cheap ‘black market’ opioid pills (if not the work of the Board of
Directors, we can well imagine that in any big Pill Factory that nobody can actually
counts every single pill that the machines spit out, thousands each second, and
if there ARE numbers, that such numbers can’t be played with. I suppose in each big Pill Factory there must
be at least 50 workers and Managers who have gone into business for themselves,
carrying home a lunch pail or briefcase full of pills every day. Oh, and then there could be the Conspiratorial
Partnerships, where some middle level Production Manager teams up with a
Shipping Clerk to ship complete crates of Pills to some ‘shell company’ address
somewhere, while erasing any Paperwork Trail of the bogus transaction. And then certain foreign Generic Factories
probably don’t even have to hide it, except to be careful how they ship the
pills in. You can only imagine how many
things that get shipped across the border which are basically hollow and can be
filled with pills, and the drug dogs at America’s International Airports aren’t
trained to go crazy about ‘prescription drugs’, and the Big Overnight Shipping
Companies don’t even wait for Customs Inspections anyway and packages go almost
directly from plane to delivery truck… yeah, I wonder how that works, but that’s
another story), so with the bottom knocked out of the Opium Trade Afghanistan
would go broke without the War. So I
suppose the tacit policy of both the Afghan Government and the Taliban was to
fight just enough to keep America interested, involved and reliably reaching to
pick up the check and pay the bill.
Now, certainly, there must be Career Government
People, Military Leaders and even some Politicians who see what’s going
on. And, yes, there are actually some
people who react in repulsion to such a suggestion that the War is largely
artificial. For instance, a few years
back when the Fight in Afghanistan was an International Affair, that is, when America
was diplomatically ‘twisting arms’ of other Nations to join the Fight, well,
there was a situation where the French sent in a few Battalions and they stayed
a year, and were to be replaced by a Detachment of Italians. Well, the Italians were pleased because
apparently they were going to be in a Really Quiet Zone. But the French, before leaving, told the
Italians that such Tranquility was no Accident, but that it was relatively
cheap to procure. They wrote out a Name
and a Phone Number and told the Italians what they could expect to pay for a
Year’s Vacation. Well, the Italians
bulked as such a dishonorable suggestion and swore they wouldn’t give a lead
lira for any favors. The French shrugged
their shoulders and left to go home to their Hero’s Parade. It seems the Taliban were miffed enough at
the Italians for their attitude, that they moved their forces around, and
though the Region was strategically a nowhere land, it was suddenly the focal
point of intense fighting. So a great
number of the Italians died for nothing else but Honor, and they didn’t even save
any money. To rebuild their shattered
garrison it cost ten times what the Payoff would have been. The Americans also reacted poorly in a
similar situation when they ‘discovered’ or the Press found out that a Security
Company was paying off the Taliban to allow the major supply route road to stay
open. You think the Press would know
when to shut up. So the American’s, knuckling
under to He-Man Macho Political Pressure, had to fire the ‘corrupt’ Security
Company and actually Fight to keep the Supply Road open. Well the Road was hundreds of miles long, and
suddenly the Taliban was contesting every inch of it. And the American’s had to do all this Fighting
while being strangled for Supplies (duh!).
I suppose hundreds of American’s died because back then the public was still
taking the Press seriously. Now, the
Military would just have to call it all of bunch of Fake News and keep with the
Program that’s working just fine. Or
maybe it was the case that the Military really was appalled and decided to Fight instead of
Pay. Yes, it boggles the mind, but there
are crazy people like that. Italians
aren’t the only people will to die for nothing better than Honor.
Oh, wait!
Remember General Petraeus and the Iraqi Surge. Basically, the Key to his Strategy was to pay
off the Sunni Tribes to stop fighting against the Americans. He even armed them so they could offset the
Shia Militias. Now that is a Guy who
would have had no qualms about paying the Taliban to keep the roads open. I wonder how much he would have paid them to ‘take’
certain Provincial Towns so that the American’s could pretend to Win Battles
taking them back again. If Petraeus was
no real hero, he certainly knew how to act like one. A real John Wayne. But was
Petraeus uniquely cynical or are they ALL like that? Interesting question. But it’s not simply a question of being either
Honorable or a Scoundrel, but also of either being either Smart or Stupid. This is not Morally or Intellectually just a
2-dimensional Picture.
Anyway, the New Engagement Policy will roll back the
Old Engagement Policy and go back to the ‘Fight to Win’ Policy that was
utilized back when Americans had upwards of 100,000 Troops in the Country, that
they would admit to, and who know how many Foreign. You have to wonder what the heck the American
Generals are now thinking. If America
with its International Allies could not suppress the Taliban with such a huge super
Army, how do they think they will do with just a tiny fraction of that number? There are only 13,000 Troops in Country right
now. The Trump Administration has
alienated any possible Allies. You know,
what Foreign Soldier from anywhere in the World would want to serve under the current
American President, and no Nation’s Public would sit quietly and allow its Sons
and Daughters to be taken up to fight under the command of the current American
President. Adolf Hitler during the mid-1930’s
was more Internationally Popular than Donald Trump is today.
Then we must consider that the Taliban has only
grown stronger. It’s been 7 years since
the last serious fighting, and that means that Taliban boys who were 9 years
old back then are now 16. In America
these kids would be playing High School Foot Ball, and it would be a pretty
good game. And these Kids would need
minimal Military Training to fight alongside their fathers. Just think about who they are and where they
come from. The Taliban have been at War almost
constantly since 1980. Every night when
they sit down to family dinner they hear stories about the glorious bravery of
those who died, and the cunning cleverness of those who lived. From mother’s milk on these kids have heard
every detail of every Battle ever won or lost.
From the time they were three years old, every stick on the ground was a
Toy and that Toy was some kind of Gun or Grenade Launcher. These Kids will go up against American who go
through an 8 Week Boot Camp, and then business as usual Field Training when
they go out to their units. That’s okay
as Modern Developed Nation Armies go, but the Taliban Kids were born and raised
to be Fighters. And they have learned all
the lessons of Modern American Warfare. Hmmmm
… unless the Americans have something new up their sleeves… well, Drones are
relatively new and can be mighty pesky.
But Drone Technology now is too limited and spotty to weigh in
significantly in any full scale battle campaign. A Concept that would Work would be Artificial
Intelligence Drones that would simply go out and identify and kill Taliban
Fighters and do it night and day, around the clock. They wouldn’t have to be very big
either. I don’t know why they make
Drones so large. They are virtually the
same size as the planes they are replacing.
Well, Planes were designed big so they could carry human pilots and big
heavy old ‘dumb’ bombs. But with
Artificial Intelligence Weapon’s Systems and Targeting, a killer drone wouldn’t
have to be much larger than a seagull or an eagle. You could even have one big Mother Drone
(half the size of small single engine Cessna, so the “Big Mother Drone” would
be kind of small too) circling high above which could refuel and rearm its Baby
Drones. The Baby Drones, with fixed
wing, and not those noisy slow helicopter things that the Taliban could swat
like flies, could identify a target from up high (or use Targeting Info from
the Mother), cut power and go into a silent dive where it would buzz close
enough to shoot one small caliber bullet into the head of its target (the
accuracy of its aim assured by using the same Image Stabilization circuitry that steadies the video
in almost every cheap camera sold today), then the Baby Drone would rev back up and climb
back up to ‘Mommy’ to dock and take on another load so it could make another
pass. You don’t need a 2500 lbs. drone
carrying 250 lbs. missiles that price tag out at two and a half million dollars
in order to kill somebody when a 20 cent 22 bullet from a $2000 Baby Drone
could do the same thing. It would kill
somebody just as dead. But so far I haven’t heard that the Americans
are fielding any such Weapon’s Systems. It seems that Generals
are generally slow and stupid when it comes to adopting Innovations. Only during Major Total Wars where Nations
are Fighting for their Survival do the Generals seem to allow themselves to be influenced
by Technologies and that is only because they see themselves running out of
bodies that they can through into the Battle (for instance, in World War I the
British had prototype Tanks almost from the very start of the War but resisted
the very idea of them, that is until they suffered so many losses that by 1917
they were entertaining the idea of bringing tanks onto the Battlefield to
replace the men they no longer had, but then America came into the War with the
promise that there would be thousands of new bodies to toss into the Mauls of
Death, so the Tank was again put on the strategic backburner.)
Anyway, I wonder whether the American Generals genuinely
realize what they are getting into.
Maybe they think that what fighting they have seen from the Taliban in these
last few Slow Years has been everything they got, and so they suppose that it
wouldn’t take much more to knock them over completely. Maybe they don’t realize that Obama’s
Engagement Rules actually served to encourage the Taliban to cut way back, and
to hold most of their material and personnel assets in reserve in order to
consolidate, rebuild and re-arm, probably for the eventuality that when America
does leave, the Taliban can quickly pounce on Kabul Puppet Regime and return
Afghanistan to the 2001 Status Quo.
America could be unloosing on itself an avalanche of
the best insurgent fighters in the World today (a mix of salty old ‘unkillable’
Vets and zealous young athletes) who have behind them warehouses (or ‘warecaves’)
full of new weapons, stockpiles of ammo, and enough high explosives to place an
Improvised Explosive Device on every other square inch that America wishes to
step on or near. And it wasn’t some
stupid Trump idea, either. These are
Career Generals we are talking about! But,
on the other hand, Trump did use his Presidential Powers to reshuffle the top
levels of the Chain of Command at the Pentagon.
I suppose the Moron might have put the Block Heads in charge. Maybe all the Big Thinking is being done by a
guy called Mad Dog.
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