[General Battuta]

loooool

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_373

debates about the utility or efficacy of stuff like this aside, this is such a quintessential, precise, poetic encapsulation of the atmosphere of our time.

if Vietnam was napalm and jungle and Arc Light and the draft and good music, Afghanistan and Iraq and the 'GWOT' are this:

-these amazing, golden euphemisms: 'deactivate', 'joint prioritized effects list'

-the comedy of disproportionate response; as if multimillion dollar cruise missiles taking out huts and families weren't enough, we have Task Force 373 calling in AC-130 support because someone shone a flashlight at them, only to find hours later that they'd successfully 'deactivated' a bunch of Afghan police

-the staggering civilian body count racked up in the name of taking out targets who are presumably sanctioned because they are a danger to civilians and Coalition authority; in one damage assessment after 500-lb bombs were called in we have

12 US wounded, two teenage girls and a 10-year-old boy wounded, one girl killed, one woman killed, four civilian men killed, one donkey killed, one dog killed, several chickens killed, no enemy killed, no enemy wounded, no enemy detained

they even killed the goddamn dog. (but bear in mind the 'bad guys' have doubtless authored similar atrocities, rape and murder and coercion and all that - everyone's down in the mud)

now here's the kicker: it may well be that taking out these targets is worth the costs listed here. it might well be that task force 373 is doing the best it can given uncertain information. the compensation money given to the families of civilian dead (the dead civilians are sometimes taken as human shields by the taliban) may be enough to stem resentment. i'm not sold, but it's not a possibility i'm willing to dismiss; in the cold calculus of it all it's possible, though perhaps not probable, that this is a necessary business.

the question of whether task force 373 - and everything it represents - is doing more harm or good (i suspect harm; good COIN involves seducing and protecting the locals, not spending their trust to kill bad guys) is not the point here.

the point is the gestalt, the atmosphere, the grim reaper slapstick of it all, the

The target was a notorious Libyan fighter, Abu Laith al-Libi. The unit was armed with a new weapon, known as Himars – High Mobility Artillery Rocket System – a pod of six missiles on the back of a small truck

TF 373...fired five rockets, destroying the madrasa and other buildings and killing seven children, before anybody had fired on them

The knowledge that TF 373 conducted a HIMARS strike must be protected.

william gibson would be proud. he probably is. what a fascinating, depressing, strangely hilarious war - robots blowing up family farms because 'nefarious individuals' might be there, private military corporations running child prostitution rings, gangs of drugged-up Afghan cops in makeup cuddling together in the cold (because Afghanistan is a nation where having a boy lover is a mark of manhood and strength), well-trained American regulars painstakingly building relations with the village elders along their patrol routes while black ops cowboys fire rockets from the back of pickup trucks.

you can't make this **** up.

[redsniper]

So... if the soundtrack of Vietnam was stuff like Fortunate Son, the soundtrack of today's wars would be..... Benni Hill music?

[General Battuta]

apparently the troops are pretty into the heavy stuff, Godsmack and what not, get you pumped up for srs fight in srs war

edit: and nobody get partisan, remember, the bush administration started this but the obama administration has only expanded it, they looooove drones and cowboys

[IronBeer]

Disproportionate response. Gets me every time, because apparently, there is no kill like overkill.

[NGTM-1R]

Disproportionate response. Gets me every time, because apparently, there is no kill like overkill.

You have the wrong paradigm, sir. There is no overkill; there is only under-dead.

[Mongoose]

Hilarious, depressing, hilariously depressing...take your pick.

[IceFire]

It sounds like something out of Call of Duty... I know art is trying to imitate reality but sometimes reality seems to be imitating art just a little too much. In all of the wrong ways.

Task Force 373 in my head is sounding a little bit like Task Force 131.

[Dilmah G]

I think I lack context here, I don't want to make judgments about a situation or a particular contact I don't know the details about. Although I've read the AC-130 one before; it was used for a break contact, and under the circumstances, I doubt anyone else would've done something different. I mean, this is effectively a unit that can't be seen, so A) if they get into a contact, something's wrong, and B) they need to break contact as fast as possible.

-the comedy of disproportionate response; as if multimillion dollar cruise missiles taking out huts and families weren't enough, we have Task Force 373 calling in AC-130 support because someone shone a flashlight at them, only to find hours later that they'd successfully 'deactivated' a bunch of Afghan police

Terms that don't personalize the death are pretty common if you're into reading this kind of stuff, and I doubt many of us wouldn't do it. Also, referring back to my earlier point, these boys need to break contact ASAP, and the use of whatever support is available (AC-130s only operate at night these days, from memory, so it was probably a case of it being on station and available rather than anything else). The use of its cannon was probably in replacement of some kind of squad heavy weapon or unit MMG. They didn't go all out 'callodooty' style heavy weapons on the guys, that is disproportional response.

I can appreciate this was made in jest, but the fact that there are still people over there, some people whom I know, makes this a little hard for me to laugh at, even considering the tone and 'atmosphere', if you will, of it all.

the point is the gestalt, the atmosphere, the grim reaper slapstick of it all

Sure, but I guess I'm the only one who isn't finding it funny. It seems just a little distasteful to me to take the piss out of a conflict that's still going on.

[General Battuta]

dilmah, get some sleep

I can appreciate this was made in jest, but the fact that there are still people over there, some people whom I know, makes this a little hard for me to laugh at, even considering the tone and 'atmosphere', if you will, of it all.

i've lost friends to enemy fire and suicide in this conflict. close friends. you do not own it. you do not get to try to own it. stop.

Sure, but I guess I'm the only one who isn't finding it funny. It seems just a little distasteful to me to take the piss out of a conflict that's still going on.

you spent your whole post arguing that some of these actions were justified when there is explicit acknowledgment RIGHT IN THE POST that all these actions may be necessary!

these actions are distasteful. ignoring them is distasteful. WAR IS DISTASTEFUL. pretending it's not there is not going to turn it off. it doesn't matter if every single death here - if those children killed in that madrassa, those cops who were killed because they dared turn on a flashlight to look at strange people in the dark - died for a good reason, they still died. and that is worth considering.

possible rage induction in spoilers, for courtesy

Spoiler:

although seriously, explain this to me

it was used for a break contact, and under the circumstances, I doubt anyone else would've done something different

Spoiler:

how does having a flashlight shone at you qualify as contact

are those our ROEs now

the flashlights are ied triggers, signals to snipers, they're ****ing laser beams

you turn on a flashlight in afghanistan and you are dead ****ing meat?

what if it had been a regular army unit? how do you possibly justify calling in gunship fire on a flashlight? especially knowing it ended up killing a bunch of cops that some poor regular army sods probably spent months training to be good cops?

you think I don't get it but I do. the soldiers on this raid were twitchy as hell, they were going in on shaky intel, they'd seen bad things. they figured they'd been made and they called in the gunship. whoever made that call felt it was the right call. but the question here is what kind of context could produce that situation and that call in the first place? would you honestly believe that invading force X was trying to save your country if their gunships were killing your own cops at night because their secret death squads couldn't find their own asses without approach radar? what would you, Momma Afghan, say when you learned your son had died in his starched uniform, out on proud patrol to keep his people safe, because Black Ops Tom was scared of a flashlight?

the military is a vast organization full of good policies, bad policies, good apples and bad apples, good missions and bad ones. inevitably some policies, missions and people are going to go bad. mistakes will be made. i don't see the point to arguing that this isn't one of them. something clearly went very wrong here.

[Dilmah G]

Well first off, the intention in a break contact isn't to kill them, but to suppress them long enough to break contact. I imagine that the cannon on the AC-130 was used in substitution of a section heavy suppression weapon. I daresay the AC-130's was probably a bit more accurate. And I don't know if it's really as simple as 'Flash light, twelve o'clock! CONTACT CONTACT CONTACT", I'd trust the operators to have taken a little more than that into account.

i'm not sure you caught how they killed SEVEN AFGHAN POLICE who some poor regular army unit probably spent a year training up to be good cops, because those cops turned a flashlight on unknown people in the night

I'm not saying what they did was okay, but I recall from what I read that the article wasn't really very specific as to what happened between the torch being shone and contact being declared. I don't think enough information's given to make a proper judgment on it.

i've lost friends directly over there and friends to suicide when their friends over their dead. please don't do that.

That's fair enough, and I'd rather this didn't turn into dickmeasuring, but just because you may be ready to say these things with the intention of taking the piss, doesn't mean that I am, and I believe I'm entitled to hold that view. 'please don't do that' seems to me as if I'm saying it with the intention of guiltripping or something.

i think it's perfectly respectful. war is a cluster****. that's where the term comes from.

Now you're just taking the piss. For the sake of the thread, I'll agree to disagree with you.

[Dilmah G]

And now you've rewritten your post and I have to post all over again, thanks.

[General Battuta]

That's fair enough, and I'd rather this didn't turn into dickmeasuring, but just because you may be ready to say these things with the intention of taking the piss, doesn't mean that I am, and I believe I'm entitled to hold that view. 'please don't do that' seems to me as if I'm saying it with the intention of guiltripping or something.

if you can find nothing blackly hilarious about this i suspect you are not reading it. they killed the damn dog with a 500lb bomb. they shot up ANP with gunship fire and kids with experimental pickup-truck-mounted rockets. they operate under the gaze of robots who blow up goatherds with hellfire missiles. they are the elite of the elite.

read any account of combat - maybe in this war more than any other - and you're going to find this kind of stuff. i suggest michael yon, he's good.

that's the war we're in.

[Dilmah G]

dilmah, get some sleep

Funny you say that, I didn't get any last night! 

i've lost friends to enemy fire and suicide in this conflict. close friends. you do not own it. you do not get to try to own it. stop.

What on Earth? Where's this coming from? Just because I find it hard to laugh at something because of some kind of connection to it, doesn't mean I'm 'trying to own it'. I do feel uncomfortable about humour around this subject, and I can appreciate that some people are cool with it, I was just giving my view on the matter, rather than trying to force it down your throat. Sorry if it came off that way, but that's not the way I intended it.

you spent your whole post arguing that some of these actions were justified when there is explicit acknowledgment RIGHT IN THE POST that all these actions may be necessary!

these actions are distasteful. ignoring them is distasteful. WAR IS DISTASTEFUL. pretending it's not there is not going to turn it off. it doesn't matter if every single death here - if those children killed in that madrassa, those cops who were killed because they dared turn on a flashlight to look at strange people in the dark - died for a good reason, they still died. and that is worth considering.

Okay, that's fair enough.

As for whether it was necessary to call a gunship in on a flashlight, I addressed that earlier.

if you can find nothing blackly hilarious about this i suspect you are not reading it. they killed the damn dog with a 500lb bomb. they shot up ANP with gunship fire and kids with experimental pickup-truck-mounted rockets. they operate under the gaze of robots who blow up goatherds with hellfire missiles. they are the elite of the elite.

read any account of combat - maybe in this war more than any other - and you're going to find this kind of stuff. i suggest michael yon, he's good.

that's the war we're in.

Well I don't find it blackly hilarious, so there you go. I have no sense of humour. I've read this kind of stuff so many times, a Spit dropping a 250lb bomb on a cow in southern France, a Mosquito V crew shooting a guy off a ladder, Vietnam in general, I've acquired the ability to read this stuff fairly straight faced.

Also, I've read 'War' by Sebastian Junger, this whole thing is useless.

[General Battuta]

look, if you want a serious take at it, go this way:

you know, from earlier threads I've opened if nothing else, that the US has been trying to curtail the use of heavy air and artillery power because it did more harm than good. they're going for boots on the ground, trust and love and all the stuff that almost worked in vietnam before they started carpet bombing.

how is this possibly a sane element of that policy?

[Dilmah G]

Well, you could probably argue that just using the cannon probably isn't *too* overkill in the context of it being used in replacement of a heavy suppression weapon for a section to break contact, although the section should probably have ascertained who the other guys were.

Either way, I can't be arsed, I'm too tired.

[General Battuta]

you're actually right about that

On the night of Monday 11 June 2007, the leaked logs reveal, the taskforce set out with Afghan special forces to capture or kill a Taliban commander named Qarl Ur-Rahman in a valley near Jalalabad. As they approached the target in the darkness, somebody shone a torch on them. A firefight developed, and the taskforce called in an AC-130 gunship, which strafed the area with cannon fire: "The original mission was aborted and TF 373 broke contact and returned to base. Follow-up Report: 7 x ANP KIA, 4 x WIA." In plain language: they discovered that the people they had been shooting in the dark were Afghan police officers, seven of whom were now dead and four wounded.

which moves the hilarity more to this fog of war stuff than any real incompetence, though the question of how the hell a firefight developed could still put blame on either side

in summation, i think you're looking at this as 'the green berets', and the rest of us as 'apocalypse now'. bear in mind that in the US, attitudes towards the military are very much shaped by Vietnam, and we've come to be a little weary of 'we had to destroy the village in order to save it'

and when it comes to war humor, too, remember 'charlie don't surf' - the great nam films were made while nam was still ongoing, and those were black humor through and through.

[Dilmah G]

in summation, i think you're looking at this as 'the green berets', and the rest of us as 'apocalypse now'. bear in mind that in the US, attitudes towards the military are very much shaped by Vietnam, and we've come to be a little weary of 'we had to destroy the village in order to save it'

That's actually quite a good way of putting it.

[NGTM-1R]

how is this possibly a sane element of that policy?

Fire with fire. On one hand, you have the regulars. On the other hand, you have these guys, who are here to convince you are dealing with the Israelis and you're well and truly ****ed now.

It's a classic carrot-and-stick approach. If they were operating in areas already pacified for the most part, yes, that'd be a problem, but they do not seem to.