more thoughts.....

Well I wish I had found this article first but credit must be given to Stephalapogus over at My Opinions. The Marines are going with low tech unarmored transport in Afghanistan. Actually not uncommon except on the scale they are doing it right now. I had a friend that used to go on patrols with the New Zealand SAS. They rode horses. four or five days out at a time. The transport is a great idea and eveyone will be pleased unless the ACM (Anti Coalition Militia) decides to ambush a supply train. Then the anti war groups will start howling about pointless risks and such. Troops are kept from doing a lot of usefull things because those things might be "dangerous". You know what? We are a war, it is an inherently dangerous business. Often we (speaking as a troop) are willing to do the dangerous thing because it would get the mission done faster. For example: There was a time earlier in the war in Afghanistan when the interrogators could take a detainee, jump in a truck with him and take the detainee to a location they are wondering about and question him about it on the spot. "Which house is the one the Taliban man lives in? The one with the green door right there? Ok, thank you." bingo, take a GPS reading and a photo and drive away and let the infantry take him down the next day or so. Now you have to get him to describe the house and try to get an exact location, question the guy for hours about the house so the infantry can identify it. And still we often end up with the wrong house. Why you ask? Because to our non Afghan eyes, all the bloody houses look pretty much alike. And there aren't addresses out there, no house numbers. Directions in Afghanistan: "You go down the road till it crosses the dry stream bed. Turn left and travel for 3 or 4 hours until you go around the big bend where the rocks are. Go up the hill past Asadullah's house and Rahmantullah's will be the one on the left." Needless to say figuring these directions out takes more than a little bit of time. Showing the average Afghan a map doesn't help much. They just don't see the correlation between what is on the paper and what is out in the world. (Most of them, there are of course exceptions.)
Oh well, the hard part of the war for the leaders isn't the fighting over there, it is the war of PR here.
People like Mrs. Cindy Sheehan camping out on the road to see the President. Frankly I think he should see her (again, yes, he met her once, of course now she says he was cold and impersonal which is not what she said at the time but hey, politics can change our memories). Of course it would be pointless because she doesn't want to talk to him or hear anything from him. She wants to make a good tirade and get press. So he should meet her privately, no press, no aides, no recorders, tell her he's sorry her son was killed. Let her vent and then get on with it.
It is sad when I read the blogs of people I respect and they get so worked up about hating the President that they seem like they are frothing at the mouth. It frankly reminds me (and I apologize for this potential insult) of how former congress man Bob Barr from Georgia, or radio talk show hosts like Michael Savage talked (and still talk) about the Clintons. They get so caught up in hate that they couldn't bring themselves to admit the person was capable of doing good things. Understand, I am not terribly fond of many of the things our current President does. I am somewhat less pleased with many of the things the former President did. But both of them have done good things too. And as much as I may dislike many of the things Pres. Bush is doing, I still think he is so much better than either of the options the Democrats offered that it is sad. (These people are the Best and the Brightest???? God help us all.)