Obama should be trampled by virtual horses and held at pixelated bayonet point for debate flippancy

[Marcie]

Apparently Obama, with his flippant comment, doesn’t appreciate the valor and determination of our soldiers and our allies when it comes to horses and bayonets:

  

Operation Enduring Freedom

http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/Afghanistan/Operation%20Endur...

 

page 11:

From 19 to 24 October the Special Forces team operated in a split team manner. One element, Team Alpha, rode on horseback north into the mountains near Keshendeh Bala along with General Dostum to help him plan the attack on Mazar-e Sharif. The other half of the team, the Bravo element, moved south into the nearby Alma Tak Mountains to attack the Taliban in the southern Darya Suf Valley.

 

Page 11 – 13:

The massive close air support brought down by Special Forces had a huge and immediate psychological effect on the Taliban, causing panic and fear, and a correspondingly positive effect on General Dostum's men. Starting on 22 October, Team Alpha, traveling on horseback in support of Dostum's cavalry, decisively demonstrated to the Afghans the U.S. commitment to their cause. From an OP near the villages of Cobaki and Oimatan, team members began systematically calling in CAS missions. In one eighteen-hour period they destroyed over twenty armored and twenty support vehicles using close air support. At first the Taliban responded by reinforcing its troops, sending reserves into the area from Sholgara, Mazar-e Sharif, and Kholm. All that did was provide more targets for the CAS aircraft circling overhead and called into action by the SF team on the ground. Numerous key command posts, armored vehicles, troop concentrations, and antiaircraft artillery pieces were destroyed.

 

Meanwhile, the Bravo element of the team, also mounted on horseback, moved south into the Alma Tak Mountain range to link up with one of Dostum's subordinate commanders in the southern Darya Suf Valley and prevent the enemy from assisting its forces in the north. They would continue to interdict and destroy Taliban forces in these mountains until 7 November, destroying over sixty-five enemy vehicles, twelve command bunker positions, and a large enemy ammunition storage bunker.

 

The work of Teams Alpha and Bravo quickly eroded the initial Taliban defensive positions. Many Taliban vehicles were destroyed, and hundreds of troops were killed. The survivors fled for their lives north to Mazar-e Sharif. In pursuit, Dostum's forces began to conduct old-fashioned cavalry charges into the northern Darya Suf and Balkh Valleys. During these attacks SF team members were in the forefront of the action, often on horseback, even though only one member of the team had ever ridden extensively before.

 

Soon the Northern Alliance troops approached a critical pass just south of Mazar-e Sharif. It was a natural choke point, and the enemy was there in force. Dostum's force could not go farther without massive fire support. Moving over treacherous terrain by horse and foot, SF elements moved into a forward mountain OP, and on 9 November they engaged Taliban defenses on the north side of the pass with close air support. Their efforts resulted in the destruction of several vehicles, a number of antiaircraft guns, and numerous troop concentrations. Coming under direct effective enemy BM-2 1 multiple rocket launcher fire on two separate occasions, they continued to engage Taliban forces with B-52 strikes. It was the heavy bombers that finally broke the back of the Taliban defenders, who now began streaming in retreat to Mazar-e Sharif and beyond.

 

Page 18:

During the Mazar-e Sharif and Taloqan-Kondoz campaigns with the Northern Alliance forces, Army SF soldiers effectively liberated six provinces of Afghanistan, including the key cities of Mazar-e Sharif, Meymanah, Sar-e Pol, Sheberghan, Heyratan, Auybak, Kondoz, Khanabad, Taloqan, and over fifty other towns. To accomplish this feat, they had traveled by horse, all-terrain vehicle, pickup truck, and on foot along hazardous mountain trails, often at night and in all extremes of weather, through hundreds of miles of mountains, gorges, hills, and valleys. They did all of this in about a month with only a few U.S. casualties, while inflicting thousands of casualties on the enemy and completing the destruction of Taliban and al Qaeda defensive positions in the north, including the liberation of Kabul.

 

 

The Telegraph: Soldier who led Afghanistan bayonet charge into hail of bullets honoured

By Telegraph reporters. 6:30AM BST 28 Sep 2012

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/9571522/...