Jocko's take on how to deal with our problems in Afghanistan
- Thread starter Willence
- Start date
Finally saw this. Nice Bravado but totally devoid of reality. If he doesn't think the Taliban have the tactical advantage in this situation, he's are fooling himself. Say that to the Taliban and I'll tell them what they will do. They will set up a mortar site near the airport and start shelling the field and aircraft. It won't take long to shut it down. They will then surround the mortar site with lots and lots of Afghan civilians and dare us to take it out. Their cameras will be rolling the entire time.
Strike'm and their narrative will be that America killed innocent Muslims and never cared for the Afghans. That'll strengthen Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and Salafist anti-American argument throughout the world. The crazies will come out of the woodwork to hit us again.
From my own experience, I think he likely does know that but he also understands that we will have to do it anyway as this problem isn't fixing itself by end of month and it likely gets worse with the inflow of other terrorist groups which will push the boundaries of the Taliban rule past aggressive and inhumane to murderous.
Mortars would be a big issue from a perimeter control perspective as the Taliban will have tons of spotters that can't be identified from civilian populous, making the dialing in of targets much more effective and deadly. They also now have shoulder to air advanced capabilities courtesy of the botched pull-out so slow mover aircraft (black hawks, chinooks, AC-130's, etc) are out of the question as far as air support and people movers.
Ground and pound would have to advance their way out of the Airport perimeter and fight a fortified Taliban with a few weeks head start of finding defensible and strategic positions (L shaped ambush, etc). That's a tough ask when we will find it challenging to get more troops in country and the poorly chosen location of Kabul as the "Alamo" means that air support is off the table. It's literally a ground war at that point.
The reality of our options are really to either fight or to fund the exfil of Americans and allies. Fighting means loss of life, funding means paying terrorists to attack us for the next decade at least.
This admin is really in an impossible situation.
That they created for themselves and have continued to make worse. Now the choices are horrible and even worse. That being said, Jocko's record speaks for itself. I'm sure he's perfectly aware of what he's talking about here. That doesn't make it the right answer but as we've seen stated here, there aren't any real exciting solutions here.
I'd take Jocko planning next steps over the current diversity and inclusion muppets we have running the show, that is for sure.
Saw Jocko's record. Great American in many ways. However he was a non-select for O-5 so he wasn't moving up in the Navy based on his military resume.
Shoulder Surface to Air? Pretty sure we didn't supply the ANDSF with that. There was no threat. Also MANPADS require a level of training to operate successfully.
My opinion: no one is advancing outside of HKIA. There's no need to fight the Taliban at this point.
There'll be plenty of air if needed.
The log of weapons indicates we likely did but there is always the off chance that the military records aren't accurate and by off chance, I mean highly probable
I don't think we will go in on the ground either, again......America doesn't have the stomach for it but I don't see how you bring in air given the heavy amounts of civilians in Kabul. Too risky
More likely that we consider a ransom
Also, we (the US) had manpads in country as they are helpful for fortified positions, trucks with mounted tactical weapons, etc. It may be that we didn't leave any behind though, which I hope is accurate.
Again, we haven't had guys outside the wire for years (other than a few snake eaters). No reason to have weapons like that in Afghanistan.
Stingers are a highly controlled asset for a number of reasons.
I haven't seen any inventory of weapons except what reported on the news. What's being reported isn't necessarily 100% accurate....or 80%....or ...... :^)
We wouldn’t have needed to, since al-qaeda and the taliban have had sa-7s and sa-14s funneled from Russia through turkey and Iraq for a decade+.
