Bomb first, talk later
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But in the end he was killed by other warlords what.....
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The mission on 3rd October itself was technically considered a success. The mission goals were accomplished albeit sustaining heavy casualties. That was what I meant...Originally posted by observe:No, the mission was a total failure. Task Force Ranger was setup to apprehend Aideed. In this they failed. The incident at Mog finally lead to the withdrawal of the US forces from Somalia.
http://www.totse.com/en/politics/us_military/165502.html
So, final victory went to Aideed.
Incidently, after the withdrawal of the US forces, the task of providing Quick Reaction Force went to the Malaysian Battalion eventhough the Italian and Pakistani had better armour.
http://maf.mod.gov.my/english/atm/pbbdarat/unisom.html
Aidid succeeded in ejecting the Americans and other UN elements, and that may be a victory, but he couldn't claim total victory. So he died in 1996 in the midst of an on-going civil war. Aidid's victory is kinda hollow to me.
The overall mission of TFR itself, which was to apprehend Aidid, failed. I would agree with you on that point. It must also be noted that TFR could have succeeded if there was political will to carry on the fight. The link you provided was rather interesting though. Like I mentioned before, lack of contingency-planning and other pertinent issues such as political will, made mission execution difficult. -
So it's a scaled down Vietnam War?
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Democrats like Clinton dun have the guts to carry it through. In the end 18 americans died for nothing and so will many more somalians...
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Eh, 18 DEAD americans plus more HANDICAPPED ones leh, somehow peope always forget the injured but not dead. . .]
The point brought out so many times was the reluctance to use armour to go in and get the warlords out. They went FIBUA in HUMVEES. . .asking for trouble even if u dun expect all hell to break lose
The show itself features too much on american heroics, but then hey, the show is made for profits and the american audience will be its largest source of ticket sales. . .though it would have been nice if they bothered to show abit of the ACTUAL rescue, instead of half-baked american rescue. . .
And yeah, Aideed lost in the end. How do we tell? simple. . .he ain't ruling that place anymore. . .
from the point of view BEFORE the ops, it would not be practical to bombard the whole city first, too much 'collateral damage', too many 'civilian deaths', bad for publicity, the whole idea is, they expected the ops to be a simple one of police work: drop a few skinnies, and grab both of the head skinnies. . . does not justify u blasting a crater in the place. . .
another thing, if Singapore has to do any of the now hyped up type of preemptive strikes, the army will have to do alot of fighting also, the air force only has that many bombs and that amount of choppers. . .apcs and ifvs will probably fire off the most rounds, not tanks or planes or choppers
and in fibua, u can't blast a whole place to hell anyway