Top general in Afghanistan expels Marines

This was handled badly by our PC leaders. The "facts" of this action are still very muddled. Figure it like this: 10-20 Afghans KIA, and dozens WIA. Conflicting stories: It was a VBIED complex ambush (meaning carbomb then small arms fire). That the Marines shot anything that did or didn't move for that 6 mile strech or road because either they lost it or they had continuing contact with ACM. Then a mass protest immediately after it happened. Soldiers deleting pics of the aftermath by journalists. All of this plus more and it only got press for 2 days? Yeah I think something fishy happened here. What really happened who really knows. It was probably a trainwreck of a gunfight that went alittle wild. But I do know that PC crap like this has gotten well out of control and then following rules affects us shooters. You wouldn't believe the "rules" that fall on us after any incident big or small over here.

Fishy, indeed. The Marines in MARSOC were taken from the absolute best of Recon, Force Recon, and Scout Sniper Marines, most of whom have already seen combat in prior deployments. These were not gun crazy newbies.

And as I mentioned before, they were specifically requested to come to the Afghanistan (after working up for Iraq for a year) because the Army needed a kinetic strike force as it had gotten too close to the tribal leaders to come down on them.

Looks to me from other articles like they did their job, and while following Marine SOP by attacking through the ambush, a time proven measure against insurgency, they killed some civilians (this happened evidently in a relatively urban area). They are now publicly booted out for their efforts. It is utterly disgraceful; evidently they are expected to lay down and die.

I wish our leaders had some coherent strategy. The best tactics are useless without a consistent mission.

I wish we didn't value foreign "civilians" more then our young fighting men and women. Does no one but the enemy understand what war is?

It is an obvious oversimplification, but I can't help comparing how we won the second World War to how we are failing in the middle east against a weaker and less organized enemy. Civilians died by our hands as we pressed on to victory in Germany and Japan. It is sad, but the time for weighing this fact in your decisions is prior to invasion. In northern Iraq, we have tried to snuggle up with warlords and protect civilians. We get Al Sadr's as our reward, civilians die anyway, by our hands and theirs, and they engage in a propaganda war with our soccer moms as their best allies, all because our leaders allow the concept of a sterile war to exist as a prioritiy.

I have lost all faith in our ability to lose this war with our current strategies.

I never swear in my posts, but I wish someone would grow some damned balls.

My son, who is a member of this unit, is an expert marksman. When MARSOC was founded, there appeared to be some rivalry between them and other military branches who had been part of the Special Operations Command for some time. I believe if Rumsfeld was still on board, they would not have been expelled. I have spoken to my son and he was unaware that this is making news back home. It is interesting to note that they were expelled by an Army General, who may or may not have been resentful of the Marines joining the Special Operations Command. Before anyone says that the Marines messed up and shouldn't be part of the SOC, they should note that Pat Tillman was killed by careless firing of ammunition by Army Rangers, not Marines. What we don't need is the different branches of the military turning on their own. This would be playing right into the hands of the enemy. We're all in this war together, and should be showing a united front.

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