Category Archives: Afghanistan

Operation Redwing

Posted on October 29, 2007 | Comments Off on Operation Redwing

Military heroics are seldom reported in the media these days, MSM or otherwise. So it’s rare to find a story of battle heroism. Mainly because of people like this woman, a professional journalist who has to struggle to find excuses for her appalled friends when her son joins the Army to serve in Iraq. But here’s a heroic story, and a book, that deserve knowing, told by an East Texan who fought behind the lines in Afghanistan. The book is selling, and so a movie may be made, which worries him. He knows Hollywood knows (and cares) nothing about this war.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Library, The War, Troops

Military lessons of Iraq

Posted on September 28, 2007 | Comments Off on Military lessons of Iraq

Why we couldn’t simply replicate the Afghanistan/Taliban approach in democratizing Iraq:

"It is not enough to persuade a Muslim population to reject al Qaeda’s ideology and practice. Someone must also be willing and able to protect that population against the terrorists they had been harboring, something that special forces and long-range missiles alone can’t do."

Read it all. 

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, The War, Troops

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Where’s the terrorism?

Posted on September 27, 2007 | Comments Off on Where’s the terrorism?

Six years after 9/11, the Dictator’s Club (also called the UN) still doesn’t even know how to define it.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, The War

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Ladies Night Over Afghanistan

Posted on September 20, 2007 | 2 comments

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This is an old favorite of mine. It’s a four-plus years old photo, from the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom, and these gals may no longer be flying KC-135 Stratotankers for refueling fighter-bombers over there. But you can bet that they’re flying aerial gas stations somewhere. It’s a nice illustration of both the all-volunteer military and the 9/11 generation. They are not what you think.

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Posted in Afghanistan, The War, Troops

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Grunt work

Posted on September 3, 2007 | Comments Off on Grunt work

In the Marines, it’s Military Occupational Speciality 0311. In the Army, it’s MOS 11 Bravo. Doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s still the infantry. And, though the ancient Greeks used men of all ages in the phalanx, theirs was a different kind of war. Nowadays, it is, as W. Thomas Smith Jr. says, young man’s work.

Via OpFor. 

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, The War, Troops

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The kingdom of the blind

Posted on August 27, 2007 | Comments Off on The kingdom of the blind

I was ambivalent about President Bush’s recent invocation of the Vietnam post-war catastrophe (re-education camps, thousands escaping in rickety boats, piles of corpses in next-door Cambodia) as the definitive example of what could happen if we similarly slam the door on Iraq as the Dems want to do. But the Seablogger, linking to a recalcitrant Christopher Hitchens and a matter-of-fact Mark Steyn, reminds me that the Dems feel free to flee because they have never admitted to any connection between their anti-Vietnam war effort and the horrors that followed. They would just turn their other blind eye to Iraq.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, The War, Viet Nam

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One hundred will do

Posted on August 26, 2007 | Comments Off on One hundred will do

How many people do you need to come to your demo to get international publicity? One hundred will do if you’re an angry Muslim and the BBC is handy. Though you have to read eight paragraphs down to find the figure in this story of outrage at American delivery of some free soccer balls. Outrage!

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Posted in Afghanistan, The War

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