That’s a fairly standard role for a soldier, really. But, I’ve been surprised at how little press this incident received.
In every sense it’s worse than Benghazi! – US soldiers told to “shelter in place” with a 5 hour warning of inbound ballistic missiles. Then, the government says “it’s OK nobody was hurt” for the television cameras and media.
A week later, it turns out 11 of the soldiers were sent to medical centers in Germany because they were exhibiting concussion-effects from the massive explosions they were ordered to sit and wait for. [bi] They could have loaded up and been 200 miles from the impact zone, with that much warning.
The American Way of War entails dropping massive amounts of high explosive on people who cower, unable to respond, hoping merely to survive. In this situation, perhaps, the government has decided to wave it off as “acceptable retaliation” from Iran, because they realize that if they pushed things further in that direction, it would be every US base in the Middle East, and every port, getting hit 10 times harder, with follow-up. I would like to imagine that the US leaders had a momentary flash of clarity in which they realized that this is what it feels like, and their humanity re-asserted itself. It’s that, or cowardice. And I think I know which it is.
The ‘conservative’ media, whose official stance is near-worship of the military, has been surprisingly quiet about the way this whole thing went down – which is interesting since it actually mirrors the Benghazi! hearings pretty closely: Americans killed or injured in a foreign land; why weren’t they protected better? I suppose if there is any good to be found in 2020, some of that is the absence of Trey Gowdy.
What do I think the US should have done? Well, obviously, ‘”not being in the Middle East” is too big a strategic move. Assuming that the situation is much as it is, I think they should apologize profusely for killing Solemani, say that there would be an investigation, and then (months later) say it was all a big mistake. You know, the old “we thought it was a medcins sans frontieres hospital” argument.
A possible halfway solution between the very strategic and the very tactical approach would be “not playing warrior stunts with hostile nations for domestic propaganda purposes”.
lumipuna@#1:
“not playing warrior stunts with hostile nations for domestic propaganda purposes”.
Well, yes, that’s the strategy of “don’t do something dumb.”
But once the dumb thing is in progress, how do we deal with it?
“Don’t elect Donald Trump” is also an obvious strategy.
“what should the US have done?”
I read somewhere that “They could have loaded up and been 200 miles from the impact zone”, so, y’know… that?
sonofrojblake@#3:
I read somewhere that “They could have loaded up and been 200 miles from the impact zone”, so, y’know… that?
Strategic genius!
Seriously, it would have made the war worse but imagine the fun if Iran blew the shit out of the base and the guys who were in it were tweeting pictures of them sitting around a swimming pool at the Hyatt Regency, 150 miles away. “Things to do while Iran revenge-strikes your base. #1: hot tub!”
Maybe the intel was just on the location of the strike, not the timing. So then obviously you wouldn’t want your troops to all be loading up the choppers while the missiles were coming down. Or else maybe there weren’t enough choppers to evacuate everybody?
I think if the same thing had happened with a Democrat as president, Fox News and others of that ilk would have been a lot more vocal.
I also wonder about US anti-missile systems. Did they not work or were they not used for some reason or is that information being kept tightly under wraps?
Humanity? I doubt that these people have any.
springa73, I doubt the bases in Iraq have any sort of missile defense systems, since ISIS and the rest don’t have ballistic missiles.
Anti-missile systems are hard from what I understand. The missile is coming in pretty fast and you have to detect it’s location very accurately in a very short amount of time. Then you have to worry about fallout. Where does the mess actually land and what happens to the payload after you hit it? Do you just knock it off course or is it disabled? How big of a boom do you need to blow it up? I’d imagine to some degree the size of your anti-missile kaboom can help with targeting inaccuracies. Would the Iraqi’s believe you when you claim the missile that landed in their backyard and blew up dozens of their people hit where Iran wanted it to and wasn’t steered off-course by your attempt to save a military base?
All in all I think we’re fortunate to have avoided that sort of conversation entirely.
I suspect it was an intentional move by our military/industrial leaders who see the trend toward withdrawal of our military forces. Just imagine the field day the war-mongers and press would have had if the missile had hit and killed the troops at our base. Scenes of destruction and broken bodies mixed with bold patriotic rhetoric on the nightly news, and back we go into another 5-10 years of senseless expensive war. The winners? The generals who get to make war-porn with the lives entrusted to them. Billionaires who own stock in Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, etc.. The losers? Our soldiers, their soldiers, the US public who will be paying the tab for decades, and mostly the innocent civilians who get in the way.
And the bloodthirsty Christians cheering them all the way, hoping that this time it will lead to Armageddon.
@ #8 and #9
I remember reading that some US bases in the Persian Gulf have anti-ballistic missile defenses because of bad relations with Iran. That’s what I was thinking of, but you’re right, I’m sure it’s different in Iraq itself. Until recently we were technically on the same side as Iran fighting ISIS, which as noted didn’t have any ballistic missiles to defend against. Plus, as noted they carry a big risk of causing civilian casualties in a densely populated area.
There’s a pretty interesting description [here] of the missiles Iran used.
Apparently the air base that was hit had a CIWS/Phalanx system – anti-artillery/anti-low-end-rocket, i.e.: it could knock down a katyusha rocket or a homemade mortar round. The CIWS was active on the night of the attack and apparently filled the air with 20mm rounds flying uselessly in all directions. Actual photo from Forbes:
There are patriot batteries in the area, apparently some of them were moved to defend the Saudi oil wells that were attacked. The US does not have a large number of patriot batteries, so it has (as per my earlier posting) a force protection problem: the more troops they have in the area, the more high-value targets they create. If we were dealing with vietcong, their next move would be to start attacking the extremely expensive and rare patriot batteries (which in turn would make the force protection problem even worse!)
One of the things that drives me nuts about this situation is that the US can get away with complaining that the Iranians have been arming the Houthis – like that’s a bad thing – but somehow the fact that we’re arming the fuck out of the Saudis doesn’t count. So, we put patriot batteries around Saudi oil wells, but they are currently spinning up into a tizzy over the Houthis apparently getting a significant hit on Yemeni government troops using a missile that apparently came from Iran somehow. It’s statecraft when we do it, foreign fighters when they do.
That’s the Benghazi! angle the press is not pushing: US troops got all blowed up because their defenses had been diverted to protect a bunch of Saudis! Red-blooded muurrican boys got concussions that the Saudis should have gotten.
PS – all those 20mm rounds that went up; they came down. Somewhere.
Per CNN [cnn] Trump was asked about the incident in a presser at Davos and replied:
Trump’s a shoo-in for the nobel peas prise.
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/24/us-soldiers-iran-traumatic-brain-injury-pentagon
““It’s [sic] physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral consequences affect every aspect of an individual’s life,” he [Michael Kaplen, the chair of the New York State Traumatic Brain Injury Services Coordinating Council and past president of the Brain Injury Association of New York State] said.”
John Morales@#14:
““It’s [sic] physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral consequences affect every aspect of an individual’s life,” he [Michael Kaplen, the chair of the New York State Traumatic Brain Injury Services Coordinating Council and past president of the Brain Injury Association of New York State] said.”
Yes; I think that when Trump is saying “it’s just a headache” he probably means “it’s just bone spurs.”