Home
Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
Latest activity
Members
Current visitors
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Home
Forums
Brown Cafe Community Center
Current Events
Afghanistan war
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Babagounj" data-source="post: 648871" data-attributes="member: 12952"><p>A pair of friend-15 jets circle overhead. Cameras on the bellies of the aircraft capture the standoff: the opposing compounds, the tree line to one side, the fields between. The images are relayed to Echo’s headquarters, a burned-out schoolhouse just over half a mile away surrounded by sandbags and mortar tubes. Inside the school, <span style="color: black"><strong>Eric Meador</strong></span>, the company commander, leans over a small table and looks at the footage on a laptop. Meador is on the small side — 5′9″, 140 pounds — and is a bit quirky for a Marine officer. A former Mississippi cop from a family of musicians, he has a weakness for chewing tobacco and reality TV — he keeps a picture of Kate Gosselin on one wall of the schoolhouse. But he radiates authority, and in the command post everyone focuses on him. Meador asks air controller Josh Faucett to review the standoff. “This is where the friendlies are,” Faucett says, pointing to the screen. “This is where we think the sniper is.” It’s a building in the northern compound, next to the main east-west road.</p><p>The next step seems obvious: Call those friend-15s and have them reduce the Taliban’s positions to rubble. That’s how the Marines took out insurgents in Fallujah in 2004. Hell, it’s how they went after the Taliban in August 2008. But it’s August 2009, and today Meador is not sure.</p><p>A month earlier, just as Meador, Paz, and 4,000 other Marines were getting ready to move into Helmand province, the US military modified its counterinsurgency strategy. Incoming top general Stanley McChrystal issued <span style="color: black"><strong>strict guidelines forbidding air strikes</strong></span> except in the most dire circumstances. The number one priority in Afghanistan, he declared, was to secure the population so normal life could resume. The US needed to rob the militants of popular support, he argued. Dropping bombs only disrupted lives and drove people into the arms of the Taliban. So civilian casualties from air strikes had to stop — immediately.</p><p><strong>How the Afghanistan Air War Got Stuck in the Sky</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>By Noah Shachtman</strong></p><p><strong>..........................................................</strong></p><p><strong>And I always thought the number one priority</strong></p><p><strong>was to protect your own troops.</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Babagounj, post: 648871, member: 12952"] A pair of friend-15 jets circle overhead. Cameras on the bellies of the aircraft capture the standoff: the opposing compounds, the tree line to one side, the fields between. The images are relayed to Echo’s headquarters, a burned-out schoolhouse just over half a mile away surrounded by sandbags and mortar tubes. Inside the school, [COLOR=black][B]Eric Meador[/B][/COLOR], the company commander, leans over a small table and looks at the footage on a laptop. Meador is on the small side — 5′9″, 140 pounds — and is a bit quirky for a Marine officer. A former Mississippi cop from a family of musicians, he has a weakness for chewing tobacco and reality TV — he keeps a picture of Kate Gosselin on one wall of the schoolhouse. But he radiates authority, and in the command post everyone focuses on him. Meador asks air controller Josh Faucett to review the standoff. “This is where the friendlies are,” Faucett says, pointing to the screen. “This is where we think the sniper is.” It’s a building in the northern compound, next to the main east-west road. The next step seems obvious: Call those friend-15s and have them reduce the Taliban’s positions to rubble. That’s how the Marines took out insurgents in Fallujah in 2004. Hell, it’s how they went after the Taliban in August 2008. But it’s August 2009, and today Meador is not sure. A month earlier, just as Meador, Paz, and 4,000 other Marines were getting ready to move into Helmand province, the US military modified its counterinsurgency strategy. Incoming top general Stanley McChrystal issued [COLOR=black][B]strict guidelines forbidding air strikes[/B][/COLOR] except in the most dire circumstances. The number one priority in Afghanistan, he declared, was to secure the population so normal life could resume. The US needed to rob the militants of popular support, he argued. Dropping bombs only disrupted lives and drove people into the arms of the Taliban. So civilian casualties from air strikes had to stop — immediately. [B]How the Afghanistan Air War Got Stuck in the Sky By Noah Shachtman .......................................................... And I always thought the number one priority was to protect your own troops. [/B] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Home
Forums
Brown Cafe Community Center
Current Events
Afghanistan war
Top