Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
JMA; three failures on your part:

1) How could it have been a bluff? We deployed more additional troops since 2005 than the Hydra strategy would have required (assuming the same KIA/WIA as without the strategy).

2) jmm99 did not claim a 100:1 kill ratio. Read again.

3) Your last post is unrelated and entirely unable to argue against the Hydra strategy.

@jmm99: It's more like 60:1 actually, and that ignores the WIA.
Fuchs I like your "hydra" idea but I'm afraid it would not be possible as the West does not have the stomach for such a prolonged game of brinkmanship.

Also there is no point in putting more troops into a conflict where even though you have air and artillery support available the restrictions on it use render it ineffective in the broadest sense. And that the ROE demand that ISAF forces have to deal with the enemy as if they were arrested in New York City for a traffic violation. You find a guy with GSR on his hands an hour after a contact and you have to process him through the system where by paying a bribe he can be out by morning. Can't understand this obsession with taking prisoners.

Then what of the Keystone Cops outfit called the Afghan National Army? All 134,000 of them. What exactly have they guys achieved?

I'm not talking about the soldiers here when I say the politicians and the generals do not have the stomach for a war. Nothing will be achieved in the end and the Afghans will claim to have seen off another invasion of their homeland.

A variation on your "hydra" concept would be the use of "surges" in areas where ISAF (and ANA) KIA have occurred.