Ganjgal should be levelled in an airstrike that surrounding inhabitants will recount to their grand children and great grandchildren for decades to come as the day a huge fire claimed the village.
The villagers and elders were complicit in this ambush.
That said, Afghanistan is a tribal hellhole, mired in 700 AD with IEDs and automatic weapons.
It is not worth the life of ONE American, let alone 4 Marines.
I am seeing Vietnam all over again, writ large.
“Pacifying” a village here, a village there, does not work.
Muslims and Afghans will only respond to overwhelming force and the impossibility of victory without the total annihaltion of their culture and families. That is the deciding point for them.
That is what worked with the Japanese. Only when they were faced with total annihilation and the knowledge that they had an enemy willing to incinerate their cities did they surrender, and even then they almost did not.
Day after day, our soldiers are being maimed by crude IEDs, killed in ambushes, suffering in extreme heat and cold, being put in impossible situations trying to find and kill an enemy that wears no uniforms and is willing to hide behind women and children, as well as willing to use them as human bombs.
After eight years, we have not ever found Bin Laden or Al Zawahiri, we haven’t won the country, and we have given our forces suicidal rules of engagement.
And we are worried what the Afghans might think of us?
F’em and the camel they rode in on. Our people are worth more than theirs, period.
Kill the enemy and get the hell out. We won a World War on two fronts in half the time we have been in Afghanistan.
Enough already.
“Ganjgal should be levelled in an airstrike that surrounding inhabitants will recount to their grand children and great grandchildren for decades to come as the day a huge fire claimed the village.
The villagers and elders were complicit in this ambush.”
Arc Light!