Taliban shoots down Chinook and kills bin Laden hunters in biggest Nato loss of life in Afghanistan
6th August 2011
Most of the 30 US troops and crew on board were from Seal Team Six, equivalent to Britain’s SAS. Some 23 members of the same 120-strong fighting unit raided the compound where the al-Qaeda leader was hiding in Pakistan earlier this year.
This is a disaster of unparalleled gravity. SEALs are the best of the best; this is like having two dozen Rolls Royces destroyed.
August 7th, 2011 at 09:34
And so we re-learn the lesson of Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, Mogadishu: A poorly-armed but numerous enemy can defeat a powerful, high-tech, but much smaller force.
We are sometimes lulled into complacency because one US soldier is worth 50 of the enemy. But all it takes is one lucky shot, and as the number of rounds incoming increases, the odds of that one shot happening get closer and closer to 100%.
It is, indeed, a tragedy. And it should serve to remind us that, though we are awesomely fell, we are not in the end invulnerable.
August 8th, 2011 at 12:22
Hmmm, you must be using a different history book. Last I checked, we beat back the Commies in Korea and I don’t think that anyone considered the MIG-15 to be inferior. American troops devastated well-armed Vietnamese troops at every engagement; the war was lost on the political front. Great Britain took back control of the Falklands. As for Mogadishu, American troops were more than willing to erase the town from existence, but were held back for political reasons.
Yes, a dedicated force with their backs to the wall can inflict tremendous damage on a superior force. (Google “American Civil War” for a great example.) But you really, really don’t want to be fighting on the “poorly-armed” side.
As for “one lucky shot”, I am continually amazed how easily people forget that war is all about killing. People get killed. Every war. It’s very tragic. In this particular case, some of our very best men were killed and our hearts go out to them. They understood more than anyone else alive that this is the terrible cost of war. (“It is good that war is so horrible, or we might grow to like it.” – R. E. Lee)