I wish we would push for less troops, but better ones, like these guys. I wish most of our military was special forces-types. Seems like it would be more beneficial in conflicts like this.
Agreed. Seems like an effective way to eliminate the actual targets, and not risk the collateral damage of larger bombings, or civilians getting in the way of larger scale attacks. Or, even, civilians siding with the enemy during a fight, and picking up a gun to help. Move in, eliminate, move out. I know it's not that simple, but still.
Most of the people who go SF are a cut above the rest of the military. I've worked with regular ground pounders, Rangers, and guys who have been there done that. Regular infantry is necessary. Can't have an entire army of SF guys. There simply isn't enough talent available to fill that many teams.
SF guys are generally the cream of the infantry crop. The crazy thing about infantry is that it generally takes about a 10-to-1 support system (docs, cooks, motor transport, aviation, etc.) for each member of the infantry to do his job. I don't know as much about how spec ops work, but it seems just from the few articles I've read that they farm out to private contractors a lot of their infrastructure. I don't know yet whether that's good or bad.
my favorite part of the link... even better then special forces killing terrorist leaders is remote controlled drones scouting and killing terrorist leaders. This has got to be disheartening for their moral. I'm pretty sure that those drones are controlled by operators somewhere in the SW like New Mexico this article makes it seem that the heat that Obama took over the underwear bomber and not wanting to be involved with national security issues over the Christmas holidays was political nonsense... with some perspective it seems that he was very involved with national security issues at that time. STOMP
Looks like we did none of the killing, but supplied intelligence and resources. Better tactic than unmanned bomb drones, I reckon.
That the Yemin soldiers own the killings doesn't let the Taliban blame us nearly as directly for their recruiting... and as an added side benefit, it spares American soldiers from dying. I'm big on that STOMP
we shall see... al-Qaeda isn't exactly the popular kids in Yemin from what I gather and now a portion of their local leadership is dead. Continued support like we're providing would seem to give the Yemin gov't the upper hand in future conflicts. STOMP
