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I heard an army rep on the radio say this last week. I was truly amazed.
Good Taliban or Bad Taliban? Or both? Or are they all "bad"
This thread is nothing without pics (dead Talibs, that is)
Well there's the solution then.
All we need to do is send enough young men to die in Afghanistan, and we can't help but win.
Sorted ........ why didn't anyone think of that before ?
That's a pretty big range. Does that include civilians?
Does that include civilians?
LOL !
They're all the same ............................. aren't they ? 😕
Did you see it on the night vision film on the news last night? 6 blokes digging beside the road at night & they launched a missile at them from a helicopter - 3 died instantly & they chased the other 3 & shot them.
[i]Good Taliban or Bad Taliban? Or both? [/i]
that's AIDS, not Taliban.
They're all the same ............................. aren't they ?
We (well, you lot) didn't get an empire by splitting hairs, you know.
I don't want to sound too sceptical, as the idea is essentially plausible. But they do not actually find anywhere near enough bodies to back up those numbers, so they are pretty much conjecture I think.
Was it Operation Anaconda where US commanders believed they had killed 1,000 people but only recovered a dozen bodies?
Who decides if they are Taliban or civilians?
One persons terrorist is anothers freedom fighter. Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams
You could well be right BD, as the rep himself said it's very difficult to get a reliable numbers.
But it could be quite feasible. It struck me that it's more of a massacre than a war.
they are pretty much conjecture I think.
Never seen a James Bond/Rambo film ? ...........1 to 100 is easily achievable.
....... and the other thing you'll learn from James Bond/Rambo films, is that foreigners (specially the ones with darker skin and/or moustaches) make a lot of noise when they die.
foreigners (specially the ones with darker skin and/or moustaches) make a lot of noise when they die.
It's those American "freedom bullets". They hurt more if you're a bad person.
One persons terrorist is anothers freedom fighter. Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams is/was a terrorist, its just he was deemed *useful*
Why does this remind me of the US obsession with 'body counts' during the Vietnam conflict?
I did read a report (BBC online) from an embedded reporter that the Talib are very good at spiriting away their dead and wounded, also at resupply by motorbike etc but under the rules of engagement the Army are not allowed to engage them?
What sort of cretin bars soldiers from shooting at those who are carrying ammo up to the lines?
Why bother when you can just call in repeated airstrikes?
I also wonder whether it is sensible to compare numbers of people [u]killed[/u], and whether the figures look radically different if you count people who are too badly hurt to fight anymore.
Comparing actual deaths when one side has body armour, helicopter evacuations, decent field hospitals and the ablity to evacuate casualties to specialist hospitals within 24 hours is meaningless. Plenty of British troops are getting very badly hurt without getting killed. Presumably a lot more afghans who get hurt die.
BD - Thye don't often find the bodies to back those numbers up because many of the weapons used don't leave many bodies.
The numbers are usually based of pre-strike and post-strike intel, or 'now you see them, now you don't' as I believe some caring folk call it.
Of course what they don't say in the figures is that many of the casualities on the Taliban side are 'tier 3' personnel. The poorly trained 'dickers' who man the OPs keeping an eye out for allied forces, 'mules' who bring up equip from ****stan and lightly armed locally recruited irregulars who provide support to the better trained tier 1 and 2 personnel who actually carry out the attacks or lay the IEDs.
Good point BD, but that still wouldn't even out a ratio of 1:100
To the republicans he was a freedom fighter - same as mandela was a terrorist to the SA government of the time.
Moshe Dayan?
It all depends on your viewpoint
the Talib are very good at spiriting away their dead and wounded
I think the term is "the Taliban are very good at burying their dead and at not abandoning their wounded".
What I struggle with is the value of western lives vs afhgan/iraqi lives.
We had the disgusting events of 7/7, and that helped justify being in Iraq.
But at one point the Iraqis were getting suicide bombers doing a 7/7 EVERY DAY. Just crazy.
Some anti-personnel weapons are specifically designed to injure/maim rather than kill.
AP mines for example are designed to blow a foot/leg off and leave you screaming as your mates look on. It is meant to be demoralising, it endangers your rescuers who have to brave more mines to get you out (often under fire) and uses up more resources than a dead soldier does.
The Talib are using these tactics, knowing that a combat loss is a combat loss whether dead or maimed.
Either get the troops out or give them the freedom to take on the opposition without hindrance.
Kill everything! Taliban, civilians, dogs, everything.
For every British soldier killed, 50-100 Taliban have been killed
I hope that's true. It's certainly cheered me up, just a shame we have to lose any.
Bling Bling - Ah, the 'brass-up everything' approach. Not always the best plan.
One persons terrorist is anothers freedom fighter. Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams
Unlike Mandela I don't think Adams has ever been implicated in taking part in any actual terrorist attacks
There has been intell reporting a number of Talib mass graves, this intel also seems to indicate that the Talib like to keep them secert. Both from NATO and from the Afgan's.
sootyandjim, what I meant was if unsure and you may be in dager shoot first check the body for ID later 😆
I could never be in the forces I'd be shooting eeverything in sight just in case.
BlingBling - Luckily rules of engagement exist so 'shooting first and asking questions later' (which would and has resulted in criminal charges for service personnel) is a very rare thing.
The rules of engagement are fairly restrictive, considering what is going on in Afhganistan is actually a war in all but name, which although may have accounted for a number of service personnel losing their lives has meant that the godwill with is gained from not brassing-up innocent civilians often results in less support for the Taliban, who have no quarms in killing Afgans for minor 'offences'.
Too much CoD4 for me mate, best left to the professionals I think.
i think if they are dead they get classified as taliban, that way it was a good honest kill
on the flip side does that not mean for every grieving family in the uk there are 50-100 grieving afgahn families and plenty more martyrs in the making?
The one good thing about martyrs is they never try again 🙂
Why does this remind me of the US obsession with 'body counts' during the Vietnam conflict?
Indeed, in the same vein the Vietcong suffered similar massive casulties compared to the US forces, and they lost that war resoundingly didn't they ... oh hang on ...
Yeah it must do kimbers.
Maybe that is why we are close to 'losing the war'?
ooooooo was that sarcasm or not interweb is hard to tell
Pure confusion mate!
I agree with Muddydwarf, we are repeating many of the mistakes of the Vietnam war and also of the first Afghan War when the Soviets were beaten by a rag-tag army (or hang on, wasn't the first Afghan War the one in 1879 or whatever when we got kicked out the first time?).
War cannot simply be reduced to a matter of mathematics and body-counts is an insidious way to measure success. It encourages attitudes such as the 'if it's dead and Afghan then it's a Taleban'.
Sooty, I agree re modern weapons but in cases like that don't they just take the number of arms and legs lying around and divide by four?
See, it's not a pleasant business.
(The two quotes above are paraphrased from the excellent book '[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rumor_of_War ]A Rumor (sic) of War[/url]' by PJ Caputo based on his Vietnam experiences)
One persons terrorist is anothers freedom fighter. Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams
Nope, sorry, both terrorist scum! 😀
on the flip side does that not mean for every grieving family in the uk there are 50-100 grieving families and plenty more martyrs in the making?
Indeed there are probably 50-100 grieving families on the other side, though as with the allies, I reckon a suprisingly large amount of those familes are outside of Afghanistan too.
As it was in Afghanistan during the 80's Soviets vs West by proxy it is now West vs Middle East by proxy, though for some mis-guided fools you can subsitute 'West' for 'Christianity' and 'Middle East' for 'Islam'.
Damn religion again.
[i]You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.
Ho Chi Minh [/i]
Kill everything! Taliban, civilians, dogs, everything.
I saw some footage from an A10 head-up-display a while back: half a dozen guys walking along a road at night with (probably) guns over their shoulders and a dog tagging along. The footage then shows some vibration and simultaneously you can see the magazine load figures from the 30mm cannon tumbling rapidly!!!
This is all from a range of a couple of miles, so there's a brief pause, then the dog makes a sharp exit miliseconds before the rounds arrive !!!
The impact is pretty graphic in infra red (or whatever) as you get to see the warm bits spread around.
Impersonal business it's become, killing people that is (but looked clinically effective).
The problem isn't that there are more matryrs in the making, it is that thousands upon thousands of ordinary people have lost loved ones and have their lives scarred forever as a consequence. Their love, pain, grief, pride and so on are identical to ours.on the flip side does that not mean for every grieving family in the uk there are 50-100 grieving afgahn families and plenty more martyrs in the making?
Our propaganda machine, and our natural tendencies, seeks to make us think that the other side are somehow different to us - obvious nonsense when you think about it.
Interesting.
We are pretty lucky over here really.
TandemJeremy
To the republicans he was a freedom fighter - same as mandela was a terrorist to the SA government of the time.
Moshe Dayan?
It all depends on your viewpoint
BS ... Well known, widespread and often repeated BS (particularly by supporters of terrorist groups to justify the actions of those they support.) But BS all the same.
If you deliberately set out (as your primary aim) to kill and maim civilians and non combatants as part of a military operation, you are a terrorist.
Eniskillen bombing - terrorism
My Lai massacre - terrorism
9/11 - terrorism
Intention is everything, and you shouldnt use cheap phrases to bung genocidal mass murdering nullwits in the same category as people trying to use military means to achieve a political end without deliberately causing civilian suffering (whether you agree with their aims or not).
(I'm not saying that you (TJ) would actually do this personally ... I just don't like the phrase. Its too easy and seems more like a way to avoid thinking about the subject than an actual answer).
Intention is everything
Why?
A sweeping generalisation that means absolutely nothing...
Is that for every British person killed, the British Forces have killed 50-100 people (also there is a large difference between 50 dead and 100 dead - so which is it?)? Does that make it worthwhile? As we are already thinking we shouldn't be there due to our losses, are the native people thinking the same due to their losses?
That just makes the person on the radio sound like a right eejit...move along as you have nothing to contribute...
Well there's a pretty fine line, if any at all, between being pretty damned careless and taking civilians by mistake and actually setting out with that intention. When you send a remote weapon on thin evidence to a location with hundreds of civilians (including children) purely because there might be a "terrorist" there also you are pretty much intentionally wiping out innocent people. And the justification is that the "terrorist" intends killing innocent people! So what it comes back to is the idea that it is more acceptable for innocent Afghans to be killed than it is for innocent Brits - it's ok, there not the same value as the humans we have here.
......are the native people thinking the same due to their losses?
I've mentioned it before but its probably worth mentioning it again. Many of the Taliban killed (whatever the total figures) aren't 'native' to Afghanistan.
Afghanis, it seems, are finally getting tired of years of fighting and are more interested in peace. Many of the people who make up the numbers of the Taliban are religious extremists from other parts of the world who are in Afghanistan purely to 'fight the West'.
Most of the Afghanis who do assist the Taliban (tier 3 personnel mainly) only do so for financial gain. They have an AK, they have a family, they need money. Very few want a return to the bad days of Taliban rule by fear, but a small number will do anything to put bread on the table.
mmmm thanks Dick, not sure what your post contributes either TBH
[b]For every British soldier killed, 50-100 Taliban have been killed[/b]
aye, and for every british soldier killed 20-40 (?dunno cos they won't say)british soldiers have arms/legs [i]insert body part[/i] blown off.
was there a comment recently that injury rate(not absolute figures) was approaching that of ww1...
grumm
I mean that there is an enormous difference between
a) launching a missile or firing a weapon with the intention of killing an enemy combatant, (and perhaps killing an innocent bystander by accident).
and
b) Doing the same thing with every actual intention of killing as many innocent bystanders as possible.
Like the germans (?) bombing that tanker in Afganistan last week. They thought it was surrounded by enemy combatants and they were wrong.
But morally they are on a different planet from someone who would plant a bomb on the same tanker and detonate it in a market square.
Intention is not "everything" in all circumstances, but it matters when you're trying to spot the difference between acts of war and acts of terrorism (which was my point).
Wow Polaris.
Do you think it's a similar ratio for taliban?
eat_the_pudding - I really don't agree.
It's all using violence to achieve political ends. Whether you aim to kill people deliberately or you are just allowing it to happen is irrelevant - the end result is the same.
And the fact is, that while the Americans commemorate 9/11 - in their response they/we have killed many orders of magnitude more than the terrorists ever would or could.
Morally different yes ETP, but I imagine anyone on the reciving end of an attack cares more about the end result.
Modern technology seems to breed different assumptions. I found this quote interesting
The disparities between combatant deaths and civilian deaths merely represent a long-term trend in modern armed conflicts. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross and various U.N. reports, the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties was between 5% and 10% in the First World War and then dramatically leapt to 50% during the Second World War.11 By the 1990s, 75% of all casualties resulting from armed conflicts were civilian, and in some cases the rate has allegedly reached as high as 90%.
My point was that I didn't understand the need to do the comparison - it sounds aslmost as though it justifies the deaths...although we lost one of our men, we managed to bag 50-100 of theirs at the same time) - I don't see the need for the comment as it just comes across as senseless and nonsence.
This particular 'conflict' seems to be getting to people but not for the reasons of wanting to win, so telling us that sort of information isn't going to win any support (in general)...it's simply highlighting the fact of how pointless this 'war' is.
Well I have to take issue - the difference is pretty bloody minimal really. And, as I said before, the irony of killing innocent people in order to stop a terrorist killing innocent people is just too much.
We call some groups extremists - but it is difficult to imagine a stance more extreme than spending billions upon billions on the mass killing of people on the scant premise of protecting our (greedy) way of life.
glenp - But would we need to spend billions defending 'our (greedy) way of life' if it weren't for the fact some people believe that their particular understanding of a book or their misguided belief in some leader gives them a right to want to attack it?
The scale of destruction groups such as the Taliban are capable of inflicting isn't restricted by ambition, just ability.
Putting it simply, we have bigger clubs.
grumm, glenp
I'm not saying I agree with everything that the UK and the US have done in Afghanistan & Iraq, and they _should_ do more and more to minimise the chance of killing civilians.
I'm just saying .... what I've said clearly already.
But try this,
a) Driver runs over child in the street, and then reverses back to "make sure"
b) Driver reverses over child in driveway who was tragically playing in an unexpected place.
Same culpability?
I'm not saying that either is a guiltless scenario or that accidents automatically make everyone blameless, just that the two situations are morally different and that the difference matters.
If you can't see that then ...
Should've gone to spec savers
Dont know why we just dont pull the boys out and then Nuke em ?
eat_the_pudding
The analogy might be more accurate if b) was
'the driver is going way too fast along a road, sees a whole group of children in the way, thinks 'ah **** it I'm not stopping, then ploughs into them and kills them.'
Which is worse, killing one child deliberately, or killing many children through recklessness?
ooOOoo
Absolutely.
I wasn't suggesting that two things being "morally different", means that one is "horrible" and the other is "a wonderful way to spend the afternoon".
Just different, not recommended.
Pity you can't ask the children at that stage....their opinion would count the most.
ADT - you mean like this? 😕
[img] 
[/img]
Saw this a lot after 9/11...
grumm - Or perhaps more a more realistic analogy to current operations on the ground,
b) The Taliban herd children against their will onto the track at a blind corner of the Nuremberg Ring, to provide a degree of protection from high speed vehicles that are known to be operating in the area.
The Taliban are well-known for using locals as 'human shields' and whilst this isn't an out and out excuse for accidental deaths the allied forces may cause among the civilian population they have as much if not more blood on their hands for using such tactics.
Do you see British troops on TV dragging groups of locals along when they are on patrol or trying to keep them away?
grumm "
"ah **** it I'm not stopping
Yes, yes, you've got it!
That is precisely the dictionary style definition of "unintentional" and "accidental" I was trying to put across.
My _whole_ point was obviously about how nasty johnny taliban is an evil monster, only outweighed by nastier tommy tommy, with his necklace of childrens teeth and a reckless attitude.
Gold star for comprehension and goodafternoon.
The Taliban are well-known for using locals as 'human shields' and whilst this isn't an out and out excuse for accidental deaths the allied forces may cause among the civilian population they have as much if not more blood on their hands for using such tactics.
It's certainly a handy excuse - when you drop a 2000lb cluster bomb how far away do the civilians have to get to not be a human shield?
tommy tommy, with his necklace of childrens teeth and a reckless attitude.
Er... I was using your own somewhat silly analogy, not talking literally. 🙄
It was a somewhat silly analogy to try and demonstrate my point that:
"2 actions (one deliberate and one accidental) are morally different, even if the result is the same."
I think you read it as:
"2 actions (one deliberate and one really *in' deliberate) are morally different even if the result is the same, or *'in worse."
To clarify, reckless disregard =/= accidental, and not what I was getting at.
I'm off before I get SOIWOTI disease, or have to defend lots of other things I haven't said 🙂
In all seriousness, I have recommended it before in these discussions,but Martin Shaw's book, The Modern Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and Its Crisis in Iraq (Polity, 2005) is extremely interesting on this.
War is dumb.
The reason I have read for the high number of deaths on the Afgan side is that the traditional method of Afgans having a war was to meet up after lunch in the middle of nowhere, wave their AK47s in the air and fire at passing clouds then go home feeling better for having a war.
This has been proved to not work against squaddies as they do sneaky things like "take cover" and "aim" which spoils the out come.
I guess this is why they are resorting to "road side bombs"
SSP
oOOo, no i don't think it's a similar level for the Taliban, do you?
The terrorist vs freedom fighter- let's call it the Mandela Maneouvre- isn't very effective... The comparison you're looking for here is "French resistance"
Why is Nelson Mandela always trotted out as an example of a former terrorist who is now considered
respectable ?
As far as I am aware, Mandela was never convicted of killing anyone. At his trial Mandela was accused of sabotage - something which he freely admitted. Surely however, this is not the best example of a 'terrorist' ? Specially as the target of his sabotage actions was a regime which under international norms, would have been considered illegal.
Its a shame that someone who is supposedly a spokesperson for the armed forces has come out with such a bollocks statement. I'd be surprised if they were actually a soldier, rather than a political lickspittle! Clearly they have little knowledge of military history.
The use of body count as a worthwhile measure of the success of a military mission went out with the Vietnam war, not only is it meaningless, it is positively destructive to the goals of a hearts and minds operation - those killed are someones family and neighbours , and its those villagers that we need to win the approval and trust of.
The fight against the Taliban specifically, and the islamic fundamentalist movement in general, is a worthwhile and valuable one - it is absolutely one element of the continuing fight against facism and intolerance in all its forms - however the foundation of a true COIN operation has been lost and the lessons of past campaigns are repeatedly being ignored, with certain on our allies trapped in kinetic warfare mindset and seeing every gathering of people as a target, rather than a patient surgical cat and mouse COIN operation with the priorities placed on providing security and support for local villagers.
Until we as a nation, and a coalition in general are willing to begin making sacrifices on a home front, pushing the budget and support needed into providing massive reconstruction, improvement and security effort, from hospitals for people with quite literally nothing, to helicopters for the troops that are there to protect them, then we will never see a peaceful resolution to the problems in a part of the world that deserves so much more.
In the longer term, we need to look at what we can do for the locals, at the moment we buy drugs from them via the taliban, funding the enemy, whilst at the same time promoting a wave of crime and violence on our domestic front - lets mature our drug policies and stop fighting the inevitable, we learnt years ago that the greatest way to prevent war was trade, lets legalise the drugs and take away the enemy funding in one fell swoop.
I urge you to sit down and read a few of Michael Yon's dispatches from the front line
[url] http://www.michaelyon-online.com/an-artery-of-opium-a-vein-of-taliban.htm [/url]
[url] http://www.michaelyon-online.com/do-americans-care-about-british-soldiers.htm [/url]
that ratio is gonna drop...
they have just aquired aircraft[img] 
[/img]
hope this doesnt offend any1...if it does im sorry and mean no offence to anyone
so the definition of terrorism is killing civilians? Dresden, Hiroshima anyone?
or shall we try a different definition? unlawful attacks, bay of pigs, Nicaragua, Iraq?
maybe Korea, Vietnam, Laos,
How about propping up governments, or sponsoring coups, like the Shah in Iran. Who is right the revolutionary or the person supporting the government?
Or is a terrorist act where only a few people are killed rather than a lot? Partisans in WW2?
War is always about interests, Civilians will die, one side will always denigrate the other in whatever way seems appropriate.
The loser will always have committed war crimes whilst the winner, well that will be forgotten.
defenition of terrorism is terrorising people...scaring them...i think you find trying to scare your opponent into defeat is a tactic used in every war...
I agree with Zulu-Eleven,
on the subject of casualty numbers and lack of bodies. Yes, surprisingly the Taleban take care removing their dead.
Another interesting report from Sean Smith
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/17/black-watch-afghanistan-british-soldiers
[i]The Taliban don't leave their bodies. Occasionally there will be a news report that 30 insurgents were killed in this place, 20 Taliban defeated in that place, but this is a surreal conflict, a narrative without clear beginnings and endings, without substantiation. High explosive is zooming back and forwards, so the enemy is certainly there, but go to the position from where they have been firing and there is usually nothing to be seen. Once, we arrived at a compound from where there had been firing and found four glasses and a teapot set out on a tray; the tea in the pot was still hot enough to drink. But you don't see anything, not a thing. I never even saw a blood trail. It's like a ghost war.
..all the civilians had fled this part of Helmand; the walled compounds were silent and locked, the lush irrigated fields, now largely empty since the opium crop had finished, seemingly abandoned. There was no question that the people who were in the building were fighters. A missile was launched, either with programmed co-ordinates, from nearby Camp Bastion, or dropped from an aerial assault; I didn't see. But a few days later as we came back from a patrol I noticed a head in one of the fields. As soon as we got close to it we could see it had a pigtail.
It was a girl, a young girl of perhaps 14 whose body had been flung out of the building by the force of the bombing. But why was she there? Had the fighters kept her there to do their cooking? Why had no one come looking for her? I don't suppose anyone will ever know
'I took some flesh home and called it my son.'
Anyone who thinks any of this war and weaponry stuff is cool or justified should [url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/11/afghanistan-airstrike-victims-stories ]read this[/url].......
Is western democracy really that great that we have to force it on the rest if the world?
