Posted on 11/27/2019 8:49:20 PM PST by RomanSoldier19
On Monday night, France’s counter-terror stalemate in the Sahel struck a new low. Manoeuvring to engage militants on the ground, an attack helicopter collided mid-air with a troop transport chopper. Thirteen French personnel perished – the heaviest toll of a single incident in a generation. The tragedy is, for many, emblematic of France’s faltering West African mission, which, six years in, looks no closer to success.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Pikes & salted earth.
Works every time it is tried...
41 soldiers killed since 2013 is a quagmire? There’s something very wrong with today’s journos.
The US is busy with impeachment...
You have to remember, this is the French. They’ve been extraordinarily sensitive to casualties since WW1.
Then again, with the losses they took in WW1, they do have a point...
“Negative ghost writer. The transcript is bull”
West Africa is their bailiwick. It was part of their Empire.
We have our hands full with our backyard.
Manoeuvring to engage militants on the ground, an attack helicopter collided mid-air with a troop transport chopper. Thirteen French personnel perished – the heaviest toll of a single incident in a generation.
Certainly not like Waterloo where 25,000 Frenchmen were killed in one battle.
“41 soldiers killed since 2013 is a quagmire? There’s something very wrong with today’s journos.”
Not by our standards, but I think it’s more the thought that they are in a totally backwards country and still can’t keep their people safe.
What they’re learning the hard way is what we learned in Somalia - which is that Muslims are serious fighters when it comes to defending their territory, and taking them lightly is not very smart.
Here’s the answer. Remove your troops. Don’t let another African into your country. Terror problem solved.
Well, France You’ve got that European Union thing.
That is where you might get help, if it exists for you.
That’s why France is reluctant, the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars were Darwinian catastrophes for France, and World War I culled the survivors. France was demographically stagnant in the 19th Century when every other European country was exploding in growth, if France had comparable population booms to the UK or Germany then they would have a population from 110 to 150 million people. If their population was uninterrupted from the time of Louis XIV then they would nearly equal the United States in population!
France has nukes.
I met a guy on a plane today who said is son is “special ops”. He is in Niger, and his team is helping the French. There was apparently an attack or something a few days ago, in which 25 were killed (not sure about my memory here) and US guys are there helping the French respond.
At least some Frenchmen are fighting terrorism.
The quagmire consists of France and her local allies gradually losing the war, with no clear alternative except to persist and look to EU partners to bolster her effort. The expense of the war is also a burden and detracts from France’s conventional military capabilities.
Africa is fed up with French.
Even the French are routinely fed up with the French. Yet, given the chance, probably ten percent of Africa would move to France, while the jihadist one percent want to kill Frenchmen and Africa’s Christians. Given France’s economic, political, and familial connections to Africa, the French cannot disengage and abandon their military effort there.
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