Aye.
Only other retarded thing I heard was some midwit fucktard reporter breathlessly talking about the weapons we left behind…So fucking what I sez Aye? Small arms. Big deal. MRAPs? So what? Like they’re going to form up a caravan of the fucking things and head to Europe overland? And do exactly what? 10 to 1 those over-sized over-armored RVs, once they fucking break down, (and believe me they -will- break down…ask me of how I know this) they’ll be stripped of any useful resalable metal, and turned into either small shelters, or just left to rot in place like they did to all the former Soviet Armor that got left behind.
Big. Fucking. Deal.
Mind you -I- personally was responsible in 2013 for signing off on the demo of a metric shit-ton of MRAPs. I also, no Bullshit, witnessed the reason for the “No Ship Home/Demo Excess” orders. Quite literally, there I was, in 2013, on Bagram. I waiting for a minibus to get me to work when:
Follows, a gin-yoo-wine Ho Lee SHIT!!! video of the actual 747 crash BCE goes on to discuss next, a horrifying thing to watch. Onwards.
Now, didn’t see the plane.
HEARD the impact.
Shit, felt that motherfucker.
Saw the fireball/impact like in the immediate aftermath. At first I was worried it was a C-17. When I got to work, word had gotten thru the contractor grapevine that it was a 747 Air Cargo that’d augured in. Ye Olde Contractor Grapevine used to work quicker n’ the pony express I swear. That particular shitshow came aboot because the DotMil -tried- to ship some MRAPs out of theater via air. The heavy motherfuckers broke loose during takeoff (instead of chains, they’d used cargo straps or some such retarded shit like that,) and you can see the moment when the whole cargo ‘shifted’ right before the plane completely smokes in in the vidya. End result of it was we got orders a few weeks later.
Scrap ’em.
Can’t take ’em out the way they came in via Air, and overland to ‘friendly lines’?
Whelp, ain’t no such t’ing mon.
So, Demo Time7 billion in MRAPs.
65 Million of that -I- personally signed off on. No shit… I did the 1348A-1, to include the DEMIL annexes on the excess-to-needs first go around MRAPs in Kandahar. Almost exactly 100 of the fuckers. $600K and change per fucking truck. And without any sort of bullshit, some of them? Like the lowest mileage ever on a DotMil Truck. We’re not talking about beat-to-fuckall trucks. Nope. Brand. Fucking. New. Bit weather-worn, as these were replacements, some of them being the ‘on deck’ replacements. Try 6.7 MILES on one of them. Reason for this was that the trucks that units had on hand already? Already on hand, already on their property books. ALL the parent-child serial numbers too. To break out a new truck from deep storage, paperwork and time wise is a stone bitch. Most units didn’t want/need the fucking hassle. Hell, as the property book manager for 60 units, I needed the extra paperwork like another hole in the fucking grape.So, via con Dios new trucks. Paperwork done, they went to a scrap yard, where quite literally, they were stripped of any and all useful shit that was quick and easy to remove, and then they were pushed into they BIGGEST metal eating grinding machine I’ve ever seen. MRAP in one side, large chunks of metal out the other side. I couldn’t take pics tho, as the DotMil was all ‘leery’ of ‘bad optics’ of brand new MRAPs going into the chipper.
A complete and utter waste Aye?
‘Fraid so, bro, ‘fraid so. I try, but can’t find any way around it. It’s sick-making, that’s what. Your tax dollars at work.
Of people lives, killed or wounded
Nevermind permanently damaged and psychologically shattered.
Of resources
Squandered money that would have been better spent elsewhere.
Of National Honor, if there ever was such a thing
And yet we’re saber rattling at Russia…again for the ten millionth time.
“”Maybe you aren’t up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!” Hudson, ‘Aliens’
AFTER the Russians got theirs kicked by the same exact farmers, goatfuckers, and wild-eyed Islamic Mountain men. I honestly said in 2001 that if we -did- invade Affy, we’d lose. Afghanistan is the “Graveyard of Empires”…The Brits tried it not once, but twice, thrice if you include them on this particular jaunt. The USSR at the height of it’s “We’re Badass Ivan!” times and they got their asses handed to them as well.
By doodz with Henry Martini rifles, AKs, supplied Stingers and a patchwork pastiche of small arms for the most part. As pure a guerilla war as could be. Tenacious badass hardcore Islamic fuckers who died in droves but never, ever gave up.Talk about not learning from history.
Reminds me of the socialists/communists these days…”But that wasn’t real -insert ideology- This time it’ll work!” Also like them fucking idiots saying “Voat harder” after all the current shenanigans and bullshit.
Leave me the fuck out of it Aye.
Let me have my patch, my guns, my buzz, my woman and my family.
The rest? I’m content to watch it burn.
Likewise, plus. Glad you made it back, BC. All too many didn’t.
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I am 100% certain that lots of politically connected someones made big, big money selling those rolling-scrap-piles-to-be to Uncle Sucker. And then made ever more money selling replacements for them, too.
I’m pretty sure I could defeat Afghanistan without a single modern human going into the nation. It would require five years or so and lots of drones. Burn all crops. Shoot at all heat sources and anything moving. Inform the Pakis and everyone else that if they interfere or provide assistance to the Afghans, they’ll be nuked.
I’m not saying that it should be done, simply that it could be done.
I agree it could be done, if it was necessary and the US was willing to actually do what was required. Which of course our leaders are not.
But the real question is why bother? It might (maybe) have been needful to conduct a punitive expedition, crushing the ones responsible for whatever they may or may not have actually done and to serve as an object lesson for others thinking of similar acts. But that would requite some strategy, which our leaders lack, and similar firmness of will as SteveF’s approach, which as already noted our leaders lack.
So instead we get a decades-long quagmire of “nation building” among tribal people who desire no such thing, with many thousands of dead and wounded, trillions spent, no visible impact on the Afghan rabble, and yet another US defeat that will be publicly celebrated for years to come by our enemies foreign and domestic. It is almost like the people running the US are malevolent globalists who want to see the nation drained of blood and treasure, one step closer to destruction. Or feckless, incompetent fools. Or some of both, even.
Bill Quick supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, close to twenty years ago, because he thought they were going to be jumping-off points for (finally) conquering Iran and the terrorists running it. Well, you see how that worked out, whether or not that was Bush43 and the generals’ original plan.
I supported the invasions close to twenty years ago for similar reasons, plus the fact that I was delusional enough to believe that we might have had something similar to the Marshall Plan for the ME for rebuilding it afterwards. Boy, was I foolish and wrong!
But – Mike also supported it for similar reasons. I was a CF reader and occasional commenter around 2003.
So did damned near everyone else in the Right-wing blogoshpere. “War Bloggers” became a name for a reason.
Unless you were reading them at the time and know they’re being truthful for a fact, don’t let anyone in the Right blogosphere get away with saying they didn’t – 99% on they’ll be lying to you.
I also supported the invasions*. I didn’t support “democracy” in the ME even though I did believe that people once freed would want to stay that way. That was just one of many canards.
I think it’s clear Bush had no idea what he was doing. I don’t think he gave a damn about a single American life lost in those shitholes. He pretended to though.
*my mistake. I had friends that predicted we would be there for decades and for no reason. They were right.
I did the same, for the same reason. More than a few OG warbloggers got suckered on that deal.
Update! And right away I see that Ironbear beat me to the punch with similar sentiments, just above.
Understood, and I wasn’t trying to point to Bill as the original neocon warmonger literallyhitler who pushed the US into an unending war. I should have been more clear in stating that I hadn’t given the matter much thought but saw Bill’s arguments in favor of the dual invasions and thought they made sense. (Made sense assuming national willpower and leaders with balls, a pair of assumptions falsified in an annoyingly short time.)
You and me both, brother. I should have known better than to assume willpower and balls on the part of national leadership, but there ya go.
I will point out in at least mitigation, if not defense, of all of us: at least a good part of that was due to the Left going balls out Bushitler! on Shrub and everyone on the Right at the time. Supporting the invasions was a handy way to wind them up and poke ’em in the eye with a dull stick.
I know I got years of amusement out of doing that, regardless of the actual merits of invading the Graveyard of Empires and Hussein’s Paradise.
Heh, looks like Ironbear, Mike, and I all made the same essential comment at the same time. Perhaps I had the page open for a while but the other 2 were not there when I commented.
Great minds and all…
(ducks)
Shit, just nuke the Afghans.
Problem solved.
Not really. Even a small country is pretty big in human terms and even a big nuke is pretty small in landmass terms. If Afghans were utterly dependent on the electrical grid, as we are, then destruction and contamination of the generating sites would be worth doing. That’s not the case there.
There are some key points in Ashcanistan that could be targets. But of course that would take even stronger will than actually fighting to win, so….
Nukes are most effective against nations like the US: lots of developed infrastructure and large concentrations of people and industry. And given the ramblings of Dementia Joe and the hatred of America by Democrats, I expect the only place we will ever see US nukes used is in America against Americans.
While I agree they are more effective against the modern nation, I’m not the least bit opposed to testing that theory in Afghanistan, among other places.
We could win in Afghanistan if we wanted to and had the national will.
All that it would take would be for us to go Ghengis Khan x Attila x Vlad Tepes on them, kill every single male there from the adults down to the teens and boys and infants, kill every woman over child bearing age and every female too ugly to enslave, enslave all the nubile females, leave no structures un-rubbled, and salt the fields.
But why the hell would we want to?
And after all that, we’d have gone downright medieval in a manner that would have Geronimo and Cochise looking askance at us and going, “Dude… ” and for what?
We’d be the proud owners of a sandy rock pile.
And we already have a New Mexico. Why would we want two of them?
Fuck it. Nuke Mecca and Medina, and leave them to wallow in the 6th Century if they want to.
“Fuck it. Nuke Mecca and Medina, and leave them to wallow in the 6th Century if they want to.”
Suits me 100%.
Nah, just drop nukes on the leaders huts and caves. Keep dropping them until they, their 2nds, 3rds, and on down the line are dead.
When they pop up again, nuke them again.
It’s pretty cheap in the long run, no American need die in that shithole, there’s nothing left for the chinaman to steal, and it will put an end to all anti-American activity in that part of the world.
There’s no downside unless the left peeing theirselves is considered a downside. I don’t so there’s not.
Given how much money we have spent on operations and ‘aid’ to Afghanistan, it would have been much, much cheaper. And that is just money, add the savings in lives and wounded/maimed American soldiers.
Of course the left would have gone even more berserk (difficult as that may be to imagine at times) if Uniquely Evil America had used the Horror of all Horrors and opened the seventh seal (not that they believe in that religion stuff, nope, nope, not at all).
Well, hell, if you’re looking for the best bang for the buck and minimal risk of worthwhile (ie, American) lives, I solved that twenty years ago: Even assuming the Taliban were a problem that Americans needed to fix, we didn’t need boots on the ground. We needed to drop care packages all over Afghanistan. Include a Liberator pistol and ammo, some food, and some medical gear. Maybe a radio locked to the Voice of America channel in every tenth package. Some consumer goods like a pair of blue jeans or few square yards of cloth or a doll.
In bulk and including delivery, that should come to well under $100 per package. Ten million of them, one for every three Afghans, comes to a billion dollars, and the only American lives at risk would be the air crews, and only from the kind of mishaps that occur every time you fly. Compare to the actual cost in blood and treasure and the care packages idea looks mighty fine.
I pushed this idea, way back when, but it never got anywhere. I don’t think I even got a response from my congressional representation. (But my senators were Schumer and Clinton and my representative was some Dem chair-warmer, so that’s hardly a surprise.) And anyway, the low-cost route didn’t provide enough payoff for the defense contractors, so it was doomed from the start.
Hey, I have always said much the same thing. I have stated my only policy in the foreign arena and my only foreign aid would be to drop guns and ammo all over the world. Lots of guns and ammo.
I think we’ve gone from generals that think the solution is always boots and tanks to generals that think the solution is more transgender troop training and celebration.
We have generals who think “white rage” and climate change are the biggest threats to the nation. What more needs to be said?
Interesting bit of trivia: the Soviet Union collapsed and broke apart just over a year after the Russians pulled out of the Graveyard of Empires. Interesting, wot?
2023 and 2024 should be really interesting years, for certain values of interesting. 🙂