Scores of children killed, crippled by explosives left by US, NATO in Afghanistan
58 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Robman8908;44524875]Really? North/South Vietnamese, French, and U.S. forces all laid tons of explosive traps. One side isn't innocent in any way. Since '89, the U.S. has poured $46 million into helping clear the mines leftover from the Vietnam War.[/QUOTE]
There were French in Vietnam?
[QUOTE=maxumym;44525844]There were French in Vietnam?[/QUOTE]
Well yeah, especially considering the whole country was a French colony for awhile.
We tried to keep the french, and later on the local dictatorship, in power because of better-dead-than-red.
This is why I don't understand my dad when he says "our soldiers are over there to protect us"
I don't like the Taliban but invading an entire country to remove them seemed a little ambitious, especially now that were trying to pull our army out as soon as possible when I actually think the army should remain there until the situation is stable enough.
[QUOTE=maxumym;44525844]There were French in Vietnam?[/QUOTE]
ya, first indochina war in the late 1940s-1950s
[QUOTE=godfatherk;44525757]what did Afghanistan do to deserve constant war since the 80's?
If I were born there, I'd start voting with my feet(if they weren't blown off by mines by the time I became an adult)
oh but wait; as someone born there, you need a visa practically everywhere else you went...damn
[img_thumb]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Visa_requirements_for_Afghan_citizens.png[/img_thumb][/QUOTE]
as I pointed out in another thread, they've had warlords and colonial governments and dictators running the country since the 1700s
[QUOTE=maxumym;44523328]Jee I wonder what country could've put them there.[/QUOTE]
Obviously sweden dufus gosh
its never been a peaceful place, because nobody has ever let its citizens run it, its always been some form or dictatorship which leads to another dictatorship
To be fair, This was bound to happen. We can try our best but we can't get every single little shell or Claymore.
We had the same issue with Vietnam with both sides leaving mines and shit undetonated.
EOD Tech here, Army bomb squad for those who don't dig acronyms. Just to give some insight, this is not the first time anything like this has happened. There are still people in Vietnam, Laos, Africa and places all over the world that actively seek out UXO and clear it to make the world a little safer. I do absolutely agree with the idea of holding the occupying accountable for cleaning up after themselves, but unfortunately it's not a purely black and white situation. It still is an active war-zone, and that makes it increasingly hard to do humanitarian missions, however most of the job at this point is to train Afghan forces and yes, there are now Afghan EOD techs but they still live in an area dominated by IED's. This will likely go the way Vietnam and Laos went, and overtime small legacy units will return during a much more stable time and do recovery and disposal of the ordnance left behind. I can have the pipedream of saving the world everyday and wear my heart on my sleeve like anyone else who reads an article and says they care, but the reality of the world is a slow and bureaucratic process. As much as I hate to say it, that's just the way it is, doesn't mean the effort won't be there to change it when it can.
Whoa! Lemme get off this soap box now. :words:
[QUOTE=Psychokitten;44525918]Well yeah, especially considering the whole country was a French colony for awhile.
We tried to keep the french, and later on the local dictatorship, in power because of better-dead-than-red.[/QUOTE]
Whoops, you live and learn huh?
I'm sorry, but literally all the things I know about Vietnam come from Forrest Gump and Full Metal Jacket.
[QUOTE=maxumym;44527171]Whoops, you live and learn huh?
I'm sorry, but literally all the things I know about Vietnam come from Forrest Gump and Full Metal Jacket.[/QUOTE]
Watch [I]We Were Soldiers[/I].
[QUOTE=Sableye;44526039]as I pointed out in another thread, they've had warlords and colonial governments and dictators running the country since the 1700s[/QUOTE]
That's been true for N koreea too(ex japaneese colony, one of the worst dictatorships ever) and yet they haven't fought a war since the 50's if I recall correctly.Your argument is falsifiable.
Romania had been under one of the worst dictatorships(Ceausescu regime) and in the 90s guess what: poof! the regime was gone along with all other east European dictatorial regimes, including former URSS now that's a feat!
Banning people from traveling just because they were born as afghans is a cruel undertaking, from the leading civilizations on earth. With power should come responsibility.
[QUOTE=maxumym;44525844]There were French in Vietnam?[/QUOTE]
Just download and play Hearts Of Iron 2. Or Darkest Hour.
[QUOTE]This is why I don't understand my dad when he says "our soldiers are over there to protect us"
[/QUOTE]
Well, your father is 50% right and 50% wrong.
He's right when he says "to protect us". In fact, there's a difference between a terrorist-government and a government who has terrorism problems. A huge difference.
Now, he's wrong when he says "are". The US mission has been accomplished. The talibans are fucked up, and some infraestructure has been set up to avoid further interference from them in the country.
As I see it, the taliban won't be having a chance at retaking power. It's either they are fucked up by EEUU or by Pakistan. Even though Pakistan has been playing the dumb guy all the time, they only care about US not being in Afghanistan.
[QUOTE=godfatherk;44527531]That's been true for N koreea too(ex japaneese colony, one of the worst dictatorships ever) and yet they haven't fought a war since the 50's[/QUOTE]
right because north korea is peacefully run by the north koreans, no wait just one and he's incinerating his people now, threatening the world with nuclear war, and lobbing rockets at japan...
the point i was making was that the country of afghanistan was finally in the hands of the actual afghans. its not like visas aren't impossible to get either, its just afghanistan has been unstable for the most of modern history
[QUOTE=GunFox;44523347]Uhh, not only is the US not entirely to blame, but it is trying to clean up after the Soviets.[/QUOTE]
Don't forget the insurgents and Taliban, not to mention the fact that they're still killing innocent Muslim men, women and children on a daily basis, engaging in extortion, beating, torture, kidnappings, killings and everyone's "favorite", throwing acid in the faces of little girls and women whose only crime is daring to go to school and learning to read.
Guess who kills more innocent Muslims more than anyone else in the entire world? Muslims. But yeah...those uh...evil infidels or something. Yeah.
[url]http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/International/ap_nick_ut_pulitzer_prize_image_1972_vietnam_thg_120606_wblog.jpg[/url]
Not for the faint of heart ^
You would think we'd have learned.
[QUOTE=I'm invisible;44529778][url]http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/International/ap_nick_ut_pulitzer_prize_image_1972_vietnam_thg_120606_wblog.jpg[/url]
Not for the faint of heart ^
You would think we'd have learned.[/QUOTE]
well to be fair the US aren't going around napalming everything
Buy more armored Tractors, like France!
To be quiet honest with you from an outside viewpoint I wouldn't be trying to find a comparison to the Taliban and your military, and you shouldn't be in the first place saying nonsense like this bollocks:
[QUOTE]Don't forget the insurgents and Taliban, not to mention the fact that they're still killing innocent Muslim men, women and children on a daily basis, engaging in extortion, beating, torture, kidnappings, killings and everyone's "favorite", throwing acid in the faces of little girls and women whose only crime is daring to go to school and learning to read.
Guess who kills more innocent Muslims more than anyone else in the entire world? Muslims. But yeah...those uh...evil infidels or something. Yeah.
[/QUOTE]
Their crimes are not to be put even remotely in comparison to those of what ye folks did, ye could have easily cleaned those ordnance ranges and don't throw shit at me saying that your military couldn't because I've seen it done with my own and we have only a fraction of the funds you have. While the Taliban want to cause harm and grief as an objective your military causes it threw incompetence and supposed "lack of funds" Which I wouldn't blame on the men on the ground but the men in the board rooms.
Also as well as Hollywood tries to portray conflicts don't rely on them to shape your view of a war, read a book for fucks sake, it's not fucking hard.
[QUOTE=Mabus;44530979]Also as well as Hollywood tries to portray conflicts don't rely on them to shape your view of a war, read a book for fucks sake, it's not fucking hard.[/QUOTE]
For someone who supposedly read so much you seem to know blissfully little about the situation.
[QUOTE=Mabus;44530979]To be quiet honest with you from an outside viewpoint I wouldn't be trying to find a comparison to the Taliban and your military, and you shouldn't be in the first place saying nonsense like this bollocks:
Their crimes are not to be put even remotely in comparison to those of what ye folks did, ye could have easily cleaned those ordnance ranges [/QUOTE]
you realise that we're talking about hundreds of acres of land that hasn't been used at all, and the country has been one big war zone for the last 40 years, with multiple sides occupying the various bases. also you are understating the effort it takes to clean up unexploded ordinance safely, its not like we're ignoring it but most of our efforts are directed towards clearing mines and ordinance from actual used lands, and its difficult to plan out ordinance clean up which takes years when politicans dictate that your base will be shut down then they change their mind. mind you we might not even be allowed into afghanistan in 6 months, karzi's replacement may decide (or be bribed) to side with the russians and then those bases we currently use will be ramped down and removed
Mines and unexploded ordnance is hard to find over thousands and thousands of acres of land. People need to realize Afghanistan has been a war zone since April 1978. There is a ton of explosives everywhere. Removing it all will take a lot of time.
It easier now for people to blame the US for the unexploded ordnance rather than the fact the country has been a constant war zone since 1978.
Even now people get killed all over the globe from unexploded ordnance. There is regular discovery of unexploded ordnance in Europe, in Africa ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_gardens]Devil's gardens[/url]), and generally [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexploded_ordnance]all over the world[/url]. Its not going to be an easy process to remove it since most of it is unmarked and unknown until someone stumbles upon it.
The best thing is to educate the Afghan people to recognize explosives so that they can avoid them and let local authorities know.
^Exactly. You people ever hear of Princess Diana? She did a lot to try to bring awareness to unexploded ordinance in former warzones around the globe. Well before the US went into Afghanistan.
By the way everbody, especially those of you who are saying "minefield," there's a massive difference between UXO (unexploded ordinance) and purpose-built mines. ISAF has not placed any active minefields in Afghanistan, mostly because it's a bitch to clean up and mines are kinda more of a hazard than they're an asset now. Back in the day, WWII days, landmines needed to be deployed by hand, and later aircraft-dropped landmines became the best way to distribute them.
This is where the problem comes in, a great deal of the actual landmines in Afghanistan are Soviet PFM-1 anti-personnel mines. These are oddly shaped little mines, they kinda look like the paddle on a lawn sprinkler, and the Soviets seeded fucking millions of them to keep the Mujaheddin from moving around off-road. Unfortunately, since they're so oddly shaped and look really cool, they're basically a magnet for children who mistake it for a toy. Considering that it looks like a physically handicapped Happy Meal toy, I don't blame the kids and these mines account for a [i]lot[/i] of injuries and deaths. Another problem with mines and fields of UXO is (as mentioned in the article) scrap hunters and probably nefarious types looking for IED materials. Hell, scrap hunters trespass onto firing ranges in the [i]United States[/i] and every year a bunch of people get in a boatload of trouble for it. Anyway, by the nature of UXO it's really not supposed to even be there in one piece so some type of failure has allowed the various munitions to remain. This makes them highly dangerous to fuck around with, and a 500lb bomb that has all of it's explosive nougat center exposed is [i]unbelievably[/i] unstable after mere months of exposure to the elements. There's been cases where isolated bombs from WWII have inexplicably gone off without warning in Southeast Asia, particularly those of British design, due to the explosives used.
All in all, there's really no way to track these objects, they exist entirely by accident. While your average, reasonably intelligent person wouldn't even begin to consider messing with them, children aren't like that. Then there's those special types, the retards and fuckups, who are playing with fire (sorta literally) simply because they're either too stubborn to admit the danger or they're short on smarts. Clearing the terrain of this very special hazard is a difficult job, and the Afghani EOD personnel will be dealing with this for years and years to come.
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;44532661]Then there's those special types, the retards and fuckups, who are playing with fire (sorta literally) simply because they're either too stubborn to admit the danger or they're short on smarts.[/QUOTE]
We were in snowy, bum-freezing northern Japan for joint artillery (155mm, not those weak-ass 105s) training when one of the guys on our forward observer team, starts running up to me and our section sergeant with this huge shit eaten grin on his face and something that looked like a miniature missile with fins on it in his hand. A look of horror shot across my face and I mouthed a silent "NOOOOO!" but it was too late to save him from the oncoming wrath...our sergeant's eyes were already twitching and the sky was turning dark...
[QUOTE=IGotWorms;44532710]We were in snowy, bum-freezing northern Japan for joint artillery (155mm, not those weak-ass 105s) training when one of the guys on our forward observer team, starts running up to me and our section sergeant with this huge shit eaten grin on his face and something that looked like a miniature missile with fins on it in his hand. A look of horror shot across my face and I mouthed a silent "NOOOOO!" but it was too late to save him from the oncoming wrath...our sergeant's eyes were already twitching and the sky was turning dark...[/QUOTE]Oh no. Oh [i]no.[/i]
NJP or did he get something worse?
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;44532822]Oh no. Oh [i]no.[/i]
NJP or did he get something worse?[/QUOTE]
Just a major ass chewing.
[QUOTE=IGotWorms;44534609]Just a major ass chewing.[/QUOTE]
Reminds me of the story my dad told me about the guy who poked a coral snake with a stick while in full view of the PSG.
From what my dad said, you could see a bootprint on the guy's ass for a full week afterward.
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