Poodles and Choppers
There were a couple of interesting items in the news over the last few days. The first one is that the poodle has decided to start withdrawing British troops from Iraq. It’s hardly surprising considering that even though he managed to win an unprecedented third term as Prime Minister his margin was the slimmest so far. Can the Tories win the next election? I don’t know. It seems that if the discontent of the British population with Iraq was such they would have voted conservatives in greater numbers in the last election cycle. I also think that however discontent the public might be with Blair the population isn’t ready yet for another Tory government. Could it happen? Sure. I think that the liberal democrats might be the greatest beneficiaries of the current situation. We will see in a few months. The bottom line is that no matter how cheery Tony Snow is; this is a hard one to spin for the government.
The second item is the increased number of aircrafts shot down. I don’t have clear-cut reasons on that one. I would rate the probability of shoulder fired missile trickling down from Afghanistan as pretty high. I am sure the Iranians would look the other way if not outright help the transfer. Why from Afghanistan, you may ask? Well, I am a frugal kind of guy. If you give me something and I don’t need it I will store it. We gave the mujahideens thousands of Stinger missiles in the 80s so that they could rid themselves of the Russians. I would be very surprised indeed if a) they used all of them and b) returned them for a refund after the Russians left. I don’t know the reason for every chopper to go down but I wouldn’t be surprised if those Stingers played a part in it. The next thing is that bringing a chopper down is possible with small arms fire. Missiles or not, enough people taking pot shots, or expanding a burst of automatic fire, at helicopters some of those shots are bound to hit their targets. At this point a reading of Dune might be required to understand the gravity of the situation: the Harkonnens are beaten by the Freemen once they loose the ability to move at will… Are we in dire straits? Probably. Will more troops help? Possibly. I am simply afraid that it might be too little too late.
The second item is the increased number of aircrafts shot down. I don’t have clear-cut reasons on that one. I would rate the probability of shoulder fired missile trickling down from Afghanistan as pretty high. I am sure the Iranians would look the other way if not outright help the transfer. Why from Afghanistan, you may ask? Well, I am a frugal kind of guy. If you give me something and I don’t need it I will store it. We gave the mujahideens thousands of Stinger missiles in the 80s so that they could rid themselves of the Russians. I would be very surprised indeed if a) they used all of them and b) returned them for a refund after the Russians left. I don’t know the reason for every chopper to go down but I wouldn’t be surprised if those Stingers played a part in it. The next thing is that bringing a chopper down is possible with small arms fire. Missiles or not, enough people taking pot shots, or expanding a burst of automatic fire, at helicopters some of those shots are bound to hit their targets. At this point a reading of Dune might be required to understand the gravity of the situation: the Harkonnens are beaten by the Freemen once they loose the ability to move at will… Are we in dire straits? Probably. Will more troops help? Possibly. I am simply afraid that it might be too little too late.
Labels: Afghanistan, Blair, British, Irak, Military, Pull Out, Surge
posted by Sgt. B. at 2:44 PM
3 Comments:
On that list of Things We Probably Shouldn't Have Done In the 80s, funding the mujahedeen in Afghanistan is starting to look like it's right up near the top, neh?
In addition to Stingers, it's not like there aren't boatloads of old Soviet missiles floating around, too.
I find it interesting that while the UK is talking about pulling troops out of Iraq, they're talking about sending more to Afghanistan, and blasting other NATO members for not doing more.
Link
We'll see how this all works out, I suppose.
I highly doubt, however, that ability to move is being taken away in any serious fashion. There are how many assorted divisions and ships and whatnot over there, with how many helicopters? They'll hit a few. But we're not exactly losing stuff on a Vietnam-esque scale, here. Even counting IEDs vs ground vehicles.
But are we in dire straits in general? Maybe. It's my sense that military generally understands how to run the Iraq fight. If we give them the troops they need. If we back them up. If we and the Iraqis can work out some kind of political structure that works. We'll see. These things take a lot of time.
Yeah, I heard about that. Spring is the beginning of war season in Afghanistan. We should introduce them to baseball. That might help things out a little bit. I agree that soviet material is probably readily available as well.
I don't think our ability to move is hindered completely but the army has been using helos as a way to avoid loosing people to IEDs. Downing enough helos would negate the benefit of the tactic. Plus helos tend to be a lot more expensive than 7 tons.
We should introduce everyone to baseball. Baseball is cool. Even if I suck at it.
Part of me wonders what the cost analysis is between having Humvees get hit all the time by IEDs, and odd Blackhawk getting hit by an RPG. Bigger loss of men and material at once versus lesser ones spread out. But not entirely a fair comparison, since the two methods are more complementary than opposing.
I'm not sure if that made any sense.
I'm finding myself curious about the individual circumstances. I'm pondering comparisons between this and, say, Vietnam and the Soviet Afghanistan, both of which were decidedly unfriendly for helicopters in that way that environments with abundances of shoulder-fired SAMs and heavy machine guns tend to be, and a way that we fortunately aren't really faced with in either our Afghanistan or Iraq.
Post a Comment
<< Home