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Using neutron bombs on taliban safehavens

Tumbleweed

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T
Joined
Dec 22, 2006
Messages
555
OkayI'll dare to broach the subject
Let's look at the advantages:
No troops necessary.
It drives home the point that they are NOT inaccessible.
It can be done anonymously by drone. The perpetrator could be us, Israel, India, Europe, Russia, Pakistan
It's what the great generals of WW2 would have recommended.
History has shown that the way to defeat a ruthless enemy is to outdo them . For example: the Japanese were a thousand year old warrior culture that had plenty of suicide bomber volunteers. But the shock of Nice Guy Truman devastating their civilian population was so overwhelming they surrendered unconditionally and , dare I say it, they are a better country today for it. The very same principle should be used in Afghanistan. One or two neutron bombs in those so called inaccessible Taliban controlled valleys and they will cave just as certainly, surrendering ALL of their arms. Otherwise we are going to end up just like the Russians -cutting our losses and quitting.
And the beauty of neutron bombs is that their is no blast damage and very little residual radiation. The Taliban and Al Qaeda bullies basically receive a deadly x ray and nothing more. Surely someone in the military has considered it. After all they do possess the weapons
 
One good rule of thumb: The war is lost when people start talking about how miracle weapons will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Arguments were made in the same vein about using nuclear bombs in Vietnam.

Also, Hitler believing magical Nazi jet planes and rockets would stop the Allies from closing in.
 
Tumbleweed said:
And the beauty of neutron bombs is that their is no blast damage and very little residual radiation. The Taliban and Al Qaeda bullies basically receive a deadly x ray and nothing more.
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Um... no. Neutron bombs are nuclear bombs. There is considerable blast damage - much less than most standard nukes, but still in the kiloton range. And they're called neutron bombs (not x-ray bombs) for a reason.

Surely someone in the military has considered it. After all they do possess the weapons
Click to expand...

Not any more. All our neutron bombs have been decomissioned.
 
I recall Paul Harvey talking about the "life-saver bomb" in the early days of the Gulf War, when the opposition still expected tens of thousands of UN casualties during the ground phase. It was ridiculous then and it's even more ridiculous now.

There is a faction in the ultra-right that is seeking to rehabilitate the image of nuclear weapons, to make them more palatable for tactical use on the battlefield. This is gradualism at its worst. Either there is a class of weapons that is so horrible their use is unforgivable, or there isn't, and we should expect to have them used on us someday.

I wonder, would you advocate VX gas on the Taliban? Germ warfare? Why or why not?
 
lol @ OP

Looks like the fantasy of winning a counterinsurgency from 40 000 feet is gonna take a long while to gain its rightful place in the "discredited idea" pile.

You'd think Vietnam, and heck more recently - the air fuel bombs in Afghanistan, and the experience in Iraq would have taught more people this lesson.
 
Praktik said:
lol @ OP

Looks like the fantasy of winning a counterinsurgency from 40 000 feet is gonna take a long while to gain its rightful place in the "discredited idea" pile.

You'd think Vietnam, and heck more recently - the air fuel bombs in Afghanistan, and the experience in Iraq would have taught more people this lesson.
Click to expand...
Are you talking about Joe Biden?
 
R.Mackey said:
I wonder, would you advocate VX gas on the Taliban? Germ warfare? Why or why not?
Click to expand...

The primary reason not to use chemical or biological weapons against the Taliban is that they offer no tactical advantages in this fight, and have many tactical disadvantages. Similarly, Tumbleweed's main mistake is not in thinking the use of nuclear weapons can ever be justified (because they can be), but failing to understand the reality (especially the practical limits) of their use.
 
WildCat said:
Are you talking about Joe Biden?
Click to expand...

If he believes that he's just as much an idiot as the writer of the OP.

The idea is what's silly - no matter who thinks it. Now, maybe in a fantasy world where America's intelligence is about 1000 times better on the region in question, maybe then it would have a flying chance of working..;)
 
Praktik said:
If he believes that he's just as much an idiot as the writer of the OP.

The idea is what's silly - no matter who thinks it.
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Biden wants to reduce troop levels and fight the Taliban and al Qaeda almost exclusively with drones and air strikes.
 
What do you have against fuel air explosives? They are a fine weapon for some targets. Not a one size fits all, not a silver bullet, but a fine weapon nonetheless.

DR
 
Darth Rotor said:
What do you have against fuel air explosives? They are a fine weapon for some targets. Not a one size fits all, not a silver bullet, but a fine weapon nonetheless.

DR
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If I understand them correctly, they can kill everyone inside a cave/bunker (because the explosion uses up all the oxygen) but don't actually destroy it nor the materiel inside?
 
WildCat said:
Biden wants to reduce troop levels and fight the Taliban and al Qaeda almost exclusively with drones and air strikes.
Click to expand...

Ah well now you're talking about something entirely different.

Others talk about that too - including Bacevich, this Colonel dude I saw on O'Reilly who looks like he eats cigars for breakfast, and Rory Stewart.

What they're talking about is ending the "nation building" aspect because if we work real hard, maybe in a few decades we will have succeeded in making Afghanistan look a little like Pakistan does today (they are about 20-30 years ahead in development).

I happen to find these arguments somewhat persuasive, coming from a country that has committed itself to the Afghan mission (Canada). I dont think we can realize a western-style democracy there anytime soon.

Now - from what I've gathered from these types of arguments the idea of "winning" isn't actually going to happen. What you'd have is a smaller presence there, a much higher emphasis on intelligence, and the capacity of air strikes sure - but also special ops - to hit selected targets when actionable intelligence arrives. Given present realities, this kind of presence would be there for at least a decade or more. The whole metric of what constitutes "winning" would be changed. All you're looking to do is take out high-value targets and training camps.

And that is eminently do-able, even if it does rely on better intelligence than we're currently getting.

But democracy isn't going to flower from 40 000 feet when the population of Afghanistan is the way it is. And using neutron bombs or WMD of any kind won't "win" this war.

Stewart:

Consequently, in Stewart's opinion, the McChrystal report is the military's answer to the wrong question: what would it take to defeat the Taliban? He explains, "I think the President has defined a very, very narrow objective. He's said that we're there to do counter-terrorism. That's what he's been saying since January. But then he said in order to get there, we need this huge project, which amounts really to building a state. That's all dressed up in this language of counterinsurgency, fighting the Taliban."

According to Stewart, this is a dangerous conflation of goals, "So, the problem is that these are all quite different objectives. In and of themselves, they're fine, but they're not connected, necessarily, in the way the President thinks. There's a huge theory that everything that we want to do is somehow connected. The stability of Pakistan. The security of the United States. Beating the Taliban. Beating Al Qaeda. Bringing development to the Afghan people. But we end up in a bit of a muddle, because we tend to be pursuing five objectives at once, assuming that they all amount to the same thing."

The catch, Stewart goes on to say, is that "some of these things just may not be possible."​
 
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WildCat said:
If I understand them correctly, they can kill everyone inside a cave/bunker (because the explosion uses up all the oxygen) but don't actually destroy it nor the materiel inside?
Click to expand...
That second part I'll not agree with. There is a limit to how deep into the bunker that overpressure/underpressure will have the lethal effect. Attenuation of the effect is not strictly driven by spherical spreading, though its a good way to sketch out a rough model.

If the FAE goes off, near a bunker, there is plenty of stuff that will break, get torn apart, to include humans.

DR
 
Praktik said:
Now - from what I've gathered from these types of arguments the idea of "winning" isn't actually going to happen. What you'd have is a smaller presence there, a much higher emphasis on intelligence, and the capacity of air strikes sure - but also special ops - to hit selected targets when actionable intelligence arrives. Given present realities, this kind of presence would be there for at least a decade or more. The whole metric of what constitutes "winning" would be changed. All you're looking to do is take out high-value targets and training camps.
Click to expand...
You have described the kernel of Rumsfeld's vision of how Afghanistan was going to play out, way back when. Things have changed, and I think that is due in a large part the decision to go into Iraq.

DR
 
This thread reminds me that incitement to violence against an ethnic or religious group is a crime at least where I live, BUT I am sure that it doesn't refer to Muslims or Arabs.

:duck:
 
Tumbleweed said:
OkayI'll dare to broach the subject
Let's look at the advantages:
No troops necessary.
It drives home the point that they are NOT inaccessible.
It can be done anonymously by drone. The perpetrator could be us, Israel, India, Europe, Russia, Pakistan
It's what the great generals of WW2 would have recommended.
History has shown that the way to defeat a ruthless enemy is to outdo them . For example: the Japanese were a thousand year old warrior culture that had plenty of suicide bomber volunteers. But the shock of Nice Guy Truman devastating their civilian population was so overwhelming they surrendered unconditionally and , dare I say it, they are a better country today for it. The very same principle should be used in Afghanistan. One or two neutron bombs in those so called inaccessible Taliban controlled valleys and they will cave just as certainly, surrendering ALL of their arms. Otherwise we are going to end up just like the Russians -cutting our losses and quitting.
And the beauty of neutron bombs is that their is no blast damage and very little residual radiation. The Taliban and Al Qaeda bullies basically receive a deadly x ray and nothing more. Surely someone in the military has considered it. After all they do possess the weapons
Click to expand...

Besides your bad understanding of history, what evidence do you have that neutron bombs exist?
 
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