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Thread: More roadside bomb deaths in Afghanistan.

  1. #1
    aka ivan the not-quite-as-terrible ivan astikov's avatar
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    Default More roadside bomb deaths in Afghanistan.

    Wtf is going on over there? How long have enemies been planting bombs now, and they are still falling into these effectively simple traps? It's not like the roads the army patrols are traversing would be hard to monitor by satellite, so how are these insurgents managing to plant them with such ease? Why aren't the army putting out false reports of important patrols to lull these opponents out into the open more often? Surely the money the US and British military have had to spend over the last 10 years has been enough to provide a solution to this problem, and if not, why not?
    To sleep, perchance to experience amygdalocortical activation and prefrontal deactivation.

  2. #2
    Mi parolas esperanton malbone Trojan Man's avatar
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    Well, maybe FOX News (The Lupus of News) isn't beating the Afghanistan drum so much any more, settling for other targets. But I keep hearing conflicting and confusing things about this country. Does anyone honestly have any fucking clue what is happening there, or is it just guesswork chaos theory?

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    An IED is just a fancy, cobbled together mine with a trigger device. The trigger devices range from cellphones to non-electrical wires. They've gotten around cellphone triggers by using signal jammers, but how do you prevent a tripwire? These things take under a minute to emplace, and sat tracking doesn't work like it does on the movies. Same thing with UAVs.

    Anyways, the fact that they're moving towards IEDs and away from full on attacks means that we've been pretty successful in defeating the Taliban via conventional means. Without as many major support bases, they're forced to move to less resource intensive attacks like IEDs and using kids as suicide bombers. Asymmetrical Warfare. Look it up.

    The reason there's more news coming out about Afghanistan now is due to the change of command. Petraeus is a great guy and smart as hell. He may not be as physically tough as McChrystal, but he's able to use political, military, and media means to achieve results. It's working, too.

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    FYI:

    http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/as...rgeted/?hpt=T2

    Just in case you forgot why we're in Afghanistan, these guys make any of the groups in Iraq look like fine, upstanding citizens, instead of the Arab IRA they really are.

  5. #5
    Mi parolas esperanton malbone Trojan Man's avatar
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    Thanks hobbler. I get easily confused and frustrated with things like this. You explained it very clearly.

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    No problem. There's a lot of mis-information and lack of information floating around. Afghanistan is a nasty place, but there are gains being made.

    Here's one of the systems they use to defeat IEDs.

    http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...d/an-vlq-9.htm

  7. #7
    Mi parolas esperanton malbone Trojan Man's avatar
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    The Aghanis I met at the centre painted a pretty bleak picture of their country, which I certainly don't fault them for. They seem to've given up on the country altogether. They were also very cynical about outside involvement. These guys were the most peaceful, meek souls you'd hope to meet, and I wish them well.

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    All most people want is to be left alone to live their lives. It's the lack of national identity that causes so many problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, because it allows the hill tribes to run rampant. There's no single local group powerful enough to stop them.

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  10. #10
    Mi parolas esperanton malbone Trojan Man's avatar
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    I've been cynical about outsiders in Afghanistan, largely because of Iraq, maybe. But the Afghani situation does seem to be improving. Obviously it will take several years to see real results, it all seems to be moving in the right direction.

  11. #11
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    The place has massive problems similar to the Balkans in the 90's, but it's impractical to chunk the area up into regions due to the threat from Iran.

    "Me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother, and my cousin against the other." No Iraqis really like the Iranians, but they're considered close enough cousins by some to side against the Americans with.

    Take a lot of the media driven stuff about Iraq with a grain of salt. Things have been and continue to improve. Unfortunately there's no real way to tell how it'll end up in 10-15 years. I'm just hoping it doesn't turn into another Lebanon.

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