Waar gaan 'onze jongeren' naar toe?

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

De Volkskrant heeft vandaag een artikel over het Amerikaanse leger dat een
onthutsend beeld geeft van wat het 'machtigste leger' van de wereld tekort komt om
'werkelijk effectief' te zijn.

Omdat DV geen URL heeft voor het (vertaalde) artikel, hier die van het oorspronkelijke:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,862499,00.html

En enige saillante passages:
These failures have led the US to keep its forces mostly inside their bases: at Khost
and Kandahar they are under attack almost daily from missiles and machine guns.

Locally recruited Afghans were trained to act as "beaters", driving al-Qaida from its high
mountain caves on to the guns of US soldiers lying in ambush. The reality was that it
was the US army that was ambushed.

At a dozen mountain passes, al-Qaida attacked US and allied forces as they jumped
from their helicopters to take up what they thought would be their own ambush
positions. So intense was the enemy fire that for two days the US could not fly in
helicopters to support its own troops, who remained pinned down in vicious fighting.
The US had eight men killed and 100 wounded before al-Qaida pulled back.
After proclaiming the operation a complete success, the US announced that no more
operations of this kind would be undertaken.

During the summer, the units involved - the 101st air assault and 10th mountain - were
replaced by the 82nd airborne. This is the most highly trained infantry unit in the US
army, and one Pentagon planners would prefer to have available for Iraq.

Newsweek described as "a disaster" its first high-profile mission, quoting other US
troops and civilian witnesses. They said that 600 soldiers had gone on the rampage in
Operation Mountain Sweep, undoing in minutes six months of community building.
They went through villages "as if Bin Laden was in every house", said one of the US
army's own special forces soldiers. So serious were the complaints from other units
about the conduct of the 82nd airborne that the army took sworn statements from all the
officers and senior NCOs involved. The civilian casualties have not been accounted for.
The 82nd is continuing to conduct cordon and search operations and has reduced
media access.

He said the only comparison in US military history was with a punitive expedition into
Mexico conducted by General Pershing in 1915.

De 'ouderen' onder ons kunnen teruggaan in hun herinneringen aan de berichtgeving
over Vietnam om dit in context te zien.

De 'jongeren' onder ons zijn nu onderweg ...

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