New U.S. Plan in Afghanistan: ‘Awe and Shock’

[n2doc]

By Spencer Ackerman November 19, 2010 | 10:21 am | Categories: Af/Pak




Behold the U.S.’s new counterinsurgency tool in Afghanistan: the M1 Abrams tank, your ultimate in 30-year old precision firepower.

Increasingly distant are the days when Defense Secretary Robert Gates worried aloud about replicating the Soviet Union’s failed heavy footprint in Afghanistan. Under the command of General David Petraeus, the military’s leading advocate of counterinsurgency, an unconventional war is looking surprisingly conventional.

NATO planes are dropping more bombs than at any time since the 2001 invasion. Special Forces have been operating on a tear since the summer, to the point where Afghanistan’s president is saying enough is enough. The coalition is using massive surface-to-surface missiles to clear the Taliban out of Kandahar. And now the tanks are rolling in.

In an excellent piece from the Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran, U.S. military officials brag that they’ve “taken the gloves off” in Afghanistan, just as they’re sending 16 lumbering Abrams tanks into Helmand Province. That’s pretty much the opposite of Petraeus’ famous “Get Out and Walk” guidance for troops in Iraq.

What do the tanks add to the fight? There’s some attempt at spinning their 120-millimeter guns as precision weapons, but one military official bluntly tells Chandrasekaran, “the tanks bring awe, shock and firepower.” Because “shock and awe” always works.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/new-u-s-plan-in-afghanistan-awe-and-shock/

Good article. WTF are they thinking?

[democrank]

1. Four more wars! USA! Four more wars!

[unhappycamper]

2. With all the talk on military budget cuts, I suspect the Pentagon

shipped those tanks from Iraq to Afghanistan. (Lower shipping costs.)

[Uben]

3. But the real plan is....

....to expend as much of the munitions and equipment as they can in two years so the military complex here in America can reap billions replacing them. Why do you think we have extended wars? Generals have no glory if there is no war. Suppliers can't reap billions if there is no war. The pentagon cannot waste billions if there is no war.

War is a business. A very lucrative and expensive one. And the people who are complicit in wars are making ungodly profits off of it.

[billlll]

4. Q. which nations have nationalized arms factories for that reason?

Think Eng did it about '47.