Helecopter gunships operating in high mountains are vulnerable to sneak attack.
Black Hawk Special Delivery by Stuart Brown. Direct Art.
Like the gunships in Mogadishu... just swap the biuldings for mountain peaks.
Even Hollywood producers and directors know that... they make films about it... so why doesn't the Pentagon get it !
Afghans will draw the Americans into close quarter fighting in mountain passes and urban areas where their sophisticated weaponry becomes less effective and more vulnerable to hit and run ambush sneak attacks
Maybe "research" is not Bush's strong point...
Meanwhile this is a photograph of a killer... Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels who was leader of the Nazi's propaganda machine, later the minister incharge of all Nazi Propaganda and Hitler's successor as the Chancellor of Germany.
An early and avid supporter of war, Goebbels did everything in his power to prepare the German people for a large scale military conflict. During the Second World War, he increased his power and influence through shifting alliances with other Nazi leaders. By late 1943, the war had turned into a disaster for the Axis powers, but this only spurred Goebbels to intensify the propaganda by urging the Germans to accept the idea of total war and mobilization. 'I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?' Joseph Goebbels. P.R.O. Hitlers Third Riech. Sportpalast speech. 18 feb 1943. wikipedia.
Soviet soldiers fighting in the ruins of Stalingrad, 1942. wikipedia.
The defence of Stalingrad, the counter-offensive that trapped the German forces in and around the city.
The German surrender on 2 February 1943 marked the turning-point of the entire Second World War. The intensity and sheer scale of the battle of Stalingrad illustrates the ferocity of the war. Heavy German bombardment, killing thousands of civilians, had turned the city into a landscape of ruins. Workers of the city's weapons factories started personally handing over arms and ammunition to the defending soldiers as the Germans closed in, and eventually continued the fight themselves. Ever more Soviet troops were shipped into the city across the Volga River under enemy fire. German superiority in tanks became useless in the rubble of urban warfare. Fierce man-to-man fighting in streets, buildings and staircases continued for months.
Baghdad could easily turn into a tactical replay… fighting in the rubble of blasted city streets fucked the Germans who were far more fiercely aggressive extremist fighters than the Yanks are. And for what? The corporate P.R. war has already been lost.
‘United States guilty of selective morality.’
1. To overthrow the Ba’ath Party in Iraq and install a pliable regime.
2. To control Iraqis oil wells.
3. To Balkanize Iraq.
4. To attack Iran after overthrowing the Ba’th Party and:
5. To set up Israel as the only power in the region.
The U.S. has installed a pliable regime in Iraq and the bailiffs in government make it possible for the U.S. to control Iraqui oil and lucrative contracts to do clean up operations after the messy war… (Make a mess and get paid to clean it up!) The jury is still out on the Balkanisation of Iraq, but with the divisions between Sunni and Shi’ite Moslems , such a prospect is not far fetched. The U.S. threatened several times to attack Iran under the pretext that the latter was developing nuclear weapons. However Isreal is a nuclear power and is not a signatory of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. If the U.S. wants to attack a country , there will always be a pretext. The last pretext was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which we all now know was false.
The U.S wants to set up Isreal as the only power in that region to look after it’s interests but Iran is a stumbling block.
That’s why the U.S. wants to attack Iran and reduce it to ruins so that Isreal should be the only power in the region.
The U.S. is guilty of selective morality and double standards.
Sam Ditshengo. Kagiso. Mogale City.'
This was a letter written to the South African Star newspaper July 2007, and is a clear example of the views held by assessment of where America is leading us. America is now hated in many places because it attacks other countries and kills people… For what they might do!
One of the world's greatest and most successful experiment in democracy is being shredded
One of the greatest constitutions in the world is being destroyed from within.
Meanwhile… People threatened with being ‘bombed back into the stone age’ will fight back.
They have no option…
Wake up America!… and who said if you don’t support the war you don’t support the soldiers?
They need to be brought home to their families… rather than dying for weapons of mass destruction that never existed anyway.
Eventually America will be tied down and beaten like Gulliver was by the little people… many little strings holding him down… not one enemy… but more than can be counted.
Small groups… everywhere… using the net…
The American people should be afraid… for not stopping Bush.
Things are not looking good…and violence breeds violence…
'If the recent bombs in Britain had gone off it would have unleashed another wave of hatred and Xenophobia directed against innocent Arabs…and if this hatred is driven by religious differences, then religion has betrayed human kind’ Dr. Lucas Ntyintyane.
Amnesty International recently blasted Bushes war on terrorism.
Saying America is treating the globe like one giant battlefield in it’s war on terrorism… Eroding human rights globally .
Secretary – General Irene Khan described the United States behavior as setting a destructive example for all nations, and that other countries were using the war on terror as an excuse to violate human rights and stifle dissent.
"One of the biggest blows to human rights has been the attempt of Western democratic states to roll back some fundamental principles of human rights — like the prohibition of torture," Khan told The Associated Press, speaking before the launch of her organization's annual report on the global state of human rights.
The 337 page report condemned the United States' response to international terrorism, saying it had done little to reduce the threat, while deepening mistrust between Muslims and non-Muslims and undermining the rule of law. The Bush administration's policy of extraordinary rendition — the alleged practice of secretly flying terror suspects to countries where they could be tortured — came in for particularly scathing condemnation.
"The U.S. administration's double speak has been breathtakingly shameless," the report said. "It is unrepentant about the global web of abuse it has spun in the name of counterterrorism."
In Washington, Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the report reads more like a political document than an honest review of human rights around the world.
"It's pretty clear that Amnesty International thought that we'd make a convenient ideological punching bag," he said.
Khan said America's unique position on the world stage justified the criticism.
"If we focus on the U.S. it's because we believe that the U.S. is a country whose enormous influence and power has to be used constructively," she said. "When countries like the U.S. are seen to undermine or ignore human rights, it sends a very powerful message to others."
European countries were attacked for failing to challenge the U.S. rendition scheme, while U.S. allies Britain, Australia, and Japan were singled out for passing harsh new anti-terror or anti-immigration laws.
Khan compared Amnesty's struggle to the fight against climate change.
"Just as global warming requires global action based on international cooperation, the human rights meltdown can only be tackled through global solidarity and respect for international law," she said."
For Napoleon and Hitler to loose wars against the Russians was as ‘unthinkable’ at the time as it was ‘unthinkable’ for the Russians to loose against the Afghans in the 80’s.
Like the Americans loosing in Vietnam was ‘unthinkable’…but it happened.
When Saigon fell we watched ‘the unthinkable’ on news bulletins.
A bunch of ‘gooks’ in black pajamas with a bag of rice, an AK 47 and a bicycle had defeated one of the two biggest and most sophisticated military nations on earth.
All the tanks, stealth bombers, agent orange, carpet bombings, special forces, green berets and all the rest of the American militaries brouhaha
proved to be just an empty vessel making too much noise in the jungle. Ending in images of frightened American sailors hurriedly pushing millions of dollars worth of helicopter gun ships off their aircraft carriers in their haste to escape… they ran.
Latterly the Americans rewrote the history book using Hollywood.
‘Rambo’ …the best trained… ‘invincible’ soldier… didn’t really loose… he had been let down… betrayed by politically motivated commanders and weak civilian government… coining the line ‘ we could have won if they had let us’
The Truth is the Americans would have given their eye teeth to have won in ‘Nam’ but they got well and truly beaten, tactically, strategically and physically.
They lost because they lost.
They lost because they could not win…they where not good enough… militarily… and it looks like it’s happening again.
Only this time the cost will probably be much greater. This war is not isolated in one country… it is spreading… developing into a world war… a bigger conflict with the inevitability of bigger casualty rates… and more complex political dilemmas.
There are staggering similarities with Vietnam… the last act really could be the Americans withdrawing defeated and humiliated just like the Russians before them.
And Russians are tough. American commanders have never fought the Russians… if they had they might pay more attention to the history of the Russian debacle in Afghanistan.
Effects of military withdrawl.
Before the Americans withdrew from Vietnam they began a campaign of arming and training the South Vietnamese to fight for themselves.
Helping build a new ‘mentored’ military infrastructure thus releasing American soldiers to go home… because like now the war had become unpopular at home… Sound familiar!
The Americans kitted out and trained thousands of Vietnamese… so they could sneak out the back door while the ‘slope heads ’ took the heat… just like they are doing now in Afghanistan and Iraq… And when they leave? …they will leave these badly ‘mentored’ amateurs facing a vengeful and ruthlessly fierce opposition that loves using 12 year old children to behead it’s enemies slowly with carving knives and videoing it for the internet.
A painful, archaic and disgusting way to die... if you're lucky they might just shoot you in the street.
So let's look back to the last ‘serious’ American war and how it ended.
As the North Vietnamese entered Saigon, South Vietnamese soldiers leapt out of their uniforms in a mass striptease.
Their combat gear and boots left strewn across the streets. Three divisions of the South Vietnamese Army around Saigon melted away.
A back story not often discussed… apocryphal for the new forces of American trained Afghan and Iraqi armies and para military special police that the Americans boast about having trained.
30,000 men they claim… that means 30,000 men with families vulnerable to reprisals after the Americans leave them behind. These men and there families will become targets just as the Vietnamese who worked for the Americans before them.
But the Americans will be long gone by then… leaving others to bear the brunt of their folly and weakness.
Lets look back a moment… ‘Action replay!’
Vietnam civilians try to board an Air America helicopter on an apartment rooftop in Saigon, April 29, 1975. This is perhaps one of the most famous images from the Fall of Saigon taken by Hubert van Es, a Dutch photographer working for United Press International. wikipedia.
"Major James Kean was the last man evacuated off the U.S. Embassy roof.
He remembers crying...
Thousands of Vietnamese had worked loyally and faithfully for years for the Americans and completely trusted the promises the Americans had made to them.
Thousands had been promised they would be evacuated...
Kim Vin Luong was an interpreter for American Intelligence and her husband was an air force pilot. Both of them knew they would be targeted for possible liquidation, torture and execution by communist cadres who would naturally be looking to make examples of those who had collaboratorated with the Americans.
"I was told an American bus would stop at our house to pick us up for the airport.
Nothing happened, and I spent 18 years with the communists because of the mispromise of the American embassy..."
A former CIA officer, says he was terrified for his Vietnamese friends who pleaded to be rescued.
The desperate cries for help which came over the radio circuits, he calls "sound mares" - nightmares in sound.
"They'd say, I'm Mr Han the translator, please ... come pick me up. And we got on the radio and said sure, we'll be right there - and, of course, it was never going to happen. "
Fifteen hours before Saigon surrendered hundreds of Vietnamese besieged the embassy. A large number had been promised a seat out. Many were left behind.
The last US military in Vietnam escaped to the embassy roof chased by a crowd of desperate southerners...
Vietnamese refugees arriving on a U.S. Navy vessel.
There was further humiliation out at sea. Scores of South Vietnamese military officers escaped on their own helicopters to the American evacuation fleet.
The crush became so great their machines had to be dropped overboard. There were no worries about the cost - after all the US had spent 12 years and $150bn on this lost crusade.
America's involvement in Vietnam ended in a nightmare of guilt and recrimination, and the scars remaining unhealed to this day. President Ford accepted the failure to evacuate everyone they had promised to get out could be called a betrayal. ' Associated Press The Fall of Saigon."
History repeats itself and Americas Geo political strategy could easily lead to an action replay . Bushes army can control cities and towns by day. But at night towns are infiltrated and the army cannot prevent fanatical resistance fighters using the cover of darkness to set up ambushes and lay anti personnel mines and bombs in and around all the centers of population. Just like in Vietnam. The enemy is difficult to pin down in harsh and inhospitable terrain.
Just like in Vietnam.
Identifying the real enemy is always difficult and the collateral damage caused by the killing of innocent civilians does not help ‘the hearts and minds’ war effort.
Colonel Hackworth USMC remembers the Vietcong were the most highly motivated soldiers he had ever seen."They had lots of fire in their belly. They were well led. They were totally dedicated.They were fighting for independence… much like the Americans in 1776 were fighting against the British. They wanted their country free of foreign oppression."
If this motivation worked for the Americans in 1776…and the Vietnamese in 1996… Why not for the Taliban in 2007?
