First off, if you haven't read it yet, go read The Bear trap here http://www.afghanbooks.com/beartrap/
The Soviets went in with very poorly trained conscript soldiers. These soldiers only served in the military for 2 years, they hardly got any training, and moral was at an all-time low. They also tried to go in and completely dominate the country.
As is stated in the book, a small force of highly trained highly mobile soldiers could do much more damage than all the soviets ever hoped to accomplish. We would station some commandos in camps just inside uzbekistan and azerbajian. Augmented by naval based air units these forces would perform quick in and out operations against key military positions, particulary terrorist training camps.
Here's an example of what a common mission in afghanistan would be like:
Afghanistan has many moutains and valleys. Most of the camps are located in these very tight valleys in the mountains. The valley would be fuel-air bombed(fuel-air bombs are equivalant to a tactical nuke, but without the nasty radiation) first. Shortly after that, an hour at the most, a unit of ground personal would land at one end of the valley and work their way out to the other side. This whole time helicopter gunships would be standing gaurd at the other end cutting off the escape. The russians main strategy when they did go on the offensive(which was rare), was to carpet bomb, then send a ground force to recon, but being conscripts they were afraid to leave their vehicles and wouldn't engage the enemy. They also failed to cut off the line of escape. The afghanis would sit in deep underground caves a la iwo jima and as soon as the bombing stopped they would head for the mountains and move to a new camp.
The afghanis that fought the soviets also had up to the minute cia intelligence as to the current positions of all soviet forces. They new exactly when a convey was heading down the road, they new when would be the best time to attack it, and they new how to inflict maximum damage with minimum force. In vietnam the vietnamese had comprable inteligence coming in from soviet sources. Without this inteligence they will lose a lot of their power.
Also, one of the key points to winning a guerrila war is to have a place to regroup and recouperate. In Vietnam is was laos, cambodia, or north vietnam. In afghanistan in the 80's it was pakistan. As much as people would like to believe, it just isn't possible to fight a lengthy war against a much stronger opponent unless you have a place to run to when you are beat. Remember when you played tag as a kid? When you got winded the nearest metal pole was always "base" where you could rest as long as you wanted. Same idea applies here, only in this was Bush has made it very clear that there are no "bases", all your base are belong to bush...sorry, this is long and I couldn't resist.
To all the people who claim this is the next vietnam and is going to destroy america, study history. Its not going to be as bad as some people are saying.
I'm a junior in college, and have been working for the feds since I got out of high school and here's my take on the whole issue:
I started out working at a youth center running a computer lab for the kids. I was a sub-contracter back then. They decided $10 an hour I was making plus what my contracter made above that was too much, so they slashed that, and tried to get me to come back to work for them as an official federal employee making $7 an hour. To add insult to injury, the way the application proccess is setup they "trick" you into thinking you'll get paid more for the federal job. IE: you apply for a tech position running a computer lab, but to "maximize your chances of getting a job" they also apply you for the lesser paying job of "day-care assistant". Guess which job I was offered when they called me back? Needless to say I stopped working there after they fired my contracter.
Ok, now on to goverenment job take 2! The navy runs a large supercomputing facility near me that proccess payroll for the entire navy, and some other fed departments. So I get a nice job working over there. It only pays $8 an hour, but since I worked the night shift I made more like $10 an hour. They had a bunch of tape machines, and every once in a while it would ask for a tape and I would have to run and fetch it. Night shift was quiet, and I knocked out about 2 books a week...Most everyone working day shift was over 40, and a lot were over 50. I don't think ANYONE, repeat, ANYONE was between 25-40. Night shift we had a lot of college students came in and ran the place.
The problems I've seen:
#1 I was making $10 an hour at most, just 2 hours away from me in DC I had friends making $15 an hour, and they didn't even have techie jobs.
#2 There were a lot of older people nearing retirement, and nobody to take there places.
#3 I look at the older folks there, how cynical they've become after working for the feds for so long, how they don't make all that much more than me, and the idea of working there for the rest of my life is not apealing.
#4 Raising pay helps, but raising moral would go a lot further!!! I can't stress that enough, I would gladly work for the feds for less than the industry knowing that I had a secure position and good benefits, but working with a bunch of 55 year old senile women turns me off, yugh!
Slashdot Mirror
First off, if you haven't read it yet, go read The Bear trap here http://www.afghanbooks.com/beartrap/
The Soviets went in with very poorly trained conscript soldiers. These soldiers only served in the military for 2 years, they hardly got any training, and moral was at an all-time low. They also tried to go in and completely dominate the country.
As is stated in the book, a small force of highly trained highly mobile soldiers could do much more damage than all the soviets ever hoped to accomplish. We would station some commandos in camps just inside uzbekistan and azerbajian. Augmented by naval based air units these forces would perform quick in and out operations against key military positions, particulary terrorist training camps.
Here's an example of what a common mission in afghanistan would be like:
Afghanistan has many moutains and valleys. Most of the camps are located in these very tight valleys in the mountains. The valley would be fuel-air bombed(fuel-air bombs are equivalant to a tactical nuke, but without the nasty radiation) first. Shortly after that, an hour at the most, a unit of ground personal would land at one end of the valley and work their way out to the other side. This whole time helicopter gunships would be standing gaurd at the other end cutting off the escape. The russians main strategy when they did go on the offensive(which was rare), was to carpet bomb, then send a ground force to recon, but being conscripts they were afraid to leave their vehicles and wouldn't engage the enemy. They also failed to cut off the line of escape. The afghanis would sit in deep underground caves a la iwo jima and as soon as the bombing stopped they would head for the mountains and move to a new camp.
The afghanis that fought the soviets also had up to the minute cia intelligence as to the current positions of all soviet forces. They new exactly when a convey was heading down the road, they new when would be the best time to attack it, and they new how to inflict maximum damage with minimum force. In vietnam the vietnamese had comprable inteligence coming in from soviet sources. Without this inteligence they will lose a lot of their power.
Also, one of the key points to winning a guerrila war is to have a place to regroup and recouperate. In Vietnam is was laos, cambodia, or north vietnam. In afghanistan in the 80's it was pakistan. As much as people would like to believe, it just isn't possible to fight a lengthy war against a much stronger opponent unless you have a place to run to when you are beat. Remember when you played tag as a kid? When you got winded the nearest metal pole was always "base" where you could rest as long as you wanted. Same idea applies here, only in this was Bush has made it very clear that there are no "bases", all your base are belong to bush...sorry, this is long and I couldn't resist.
To all the people who claim this is the next vietnam and is going to destroy america, study history. Its not going to be as bad as some people are saying.
I'm a junior in college, and have been working for the feds since I got out of high school and here's my take on the whole issue:
I started out working at a youth center running a computer lab for the kids. I was a sub-contracter back then. They decided $10 an hour I was making plus what my contracter made above that was too much, so they slashed that, and tried to get me to come back to work for them as an official federal employee making $7 an hour. To add insult to injury, the way the application proccess is setup they "trick" you into thinking you'll get paid more for the federal job. IE: you apply for a tech position running a computer lab, but to "maximize your chances of getting a job" they also apply you for the lesser paying job of "day-care assistant". Guess which job I was offered when they called me back? Needless to say I stopped working there after they fired my contracter.
Ok, now on to goverenment job take 2! The navy runs a large supercomputing facility near me that proccess payroll for the entire navy, and some other fed departments. So I get a nice job working over there. It only pays $8 an hour, but since I worked the night shift I made more like $10 an hour. They had a bunch of tape machines, and every once in a while it would ask for a tape and I would have to run and fetch it. Night shift was quiet, and I knocked out about 2 books a week...Most everyone working day shift was over 40, and a lot were over 50. I don't think ANYONE, repeat, ANYONE was between 25-40. Night shift we had a lot of college students came in and ran the place.
The problems I've seen: #1 I was making $10 an hour at most, just 2 hours away from me in DC I had friends making $15 an hour, and they didn't even have techie jobs. #2 There were a lot of older people nearing retirement, and nobody to take there places. #3 I look at the older folks there, how cynical they've become after working for the feds for so long, how they don't make all that much more than me, and the idea of working there for the rest of my life is not apealing. #4 Raising pay helps, but raising moral would go a lot further!!! I can't stress that enough, I would gladly work for the feds for less than the industry knowing that I had a secure position and good benefits, but working with a bunch of 55 year old senile women turns me off, yugh!