Afghan in Army Uniform Kills 2 NATO Troops

reply to post by betaiso

is the Afghan govt paying 50grand to the unfortunate christian soldier's family?

The afghan govt. was installed by the US.
So ask the US who installed the afghan government to cough up 50 grand to the " unfortunate christian soldier's family".

reply to post by paradox


I agree with you and even stated in my previous post that same sentiment. Whatever the subterfuge to get us over there in the first place is long played out and we need to bring all our soldiers home.

I do feel for people that are less fortunate than us but we have so many unfortunates right here at home that we don't need to spend billions of dollars trying to fix some third-world country that truly does not want our help. Can you imagine the help we could have given to the people that truly needed help at home with the cost of these asinine wars.

So many other countries owe us money that will never be collected and we continue throwing good money away everyday to the detriment of our own country.

There never were any WMD's but because the war machine needed to play with its new toys we invented them and invented terrorist cells to boot.

Oh well. Maybe I just need to go to the rant section and vent a little.

reply to post by mikelkhall


I did 2 tours over there.

It's a disgusting country, with disgusting people who # goats.
None of us wanted to be there.

All the money wasted there could be put to good use feeding our own poor at home.

Afghan forces. Green-on-blue attacks. The solution

The Afghan National Army, the "green" force is rotten, if not to its core then to much of the periphery. Some of the green is more like gangrene (gan-green, get it! )

The problem I see is in the disconnect between the political control (Karzai) and the funding (mostly from the USA but anyway internationally funded).

Wikipedia: Afghan National Army
The new Afghan National Army was founded with the issue of a decree by President Hamid Karzai on December 1, 2002

Karzai as the "duly" (ahem) elected president of Afghanistan is perfectly entitled to run an Afghan national army but Afghans should pay for that themselves.

Afghanistan is a poor nation and could not afford that much of an army but if they paid for it themselves, at least the Afghan national army would likely be honest, accountable to Afghans and take on limited tasks - secure the presidential palace, military headquarters and might be up to defending the capital Kabul and surrounding land, maybe.

Now the issue is this - to secure all of Afghanistan, even to secure our supply routes, we need lots of troops and it makes sense to have some kind of Afghan force to help us - but we need a bigger and better green force than the Afghans can afford to pay for. (Also why would a national Afghan force want to prioritise defending our supply routes? They wouldn't want to.)

So the West, NATO needs to pay for some green Afghan forces - that's a good idea, if, if, if, if and only if, those green forces we are paying for are auxiliary to NATO-ISAF - run by NATO-ISAF - under the control of a NATO general, maybe an American general if you could find a good one to do it.

That way we would only recruit capable Afghans into the green force we pay for and interact with daily. We'd be sure our green troops were loyal - wouldn't shoot our blue troops.

No way would we have any incentive to spend our own money on disloyal incapable Afghans in green uniform so we would not do it, if we had political and military control over our green forces, which we would have if they were called "The NATO-ISAF Afghan auxiliary force" - with no pretence of them being an Afghan national force under Karzai.

However, some idiot has come up with the idea of paying Afghans to have an army funded by us but controlled by Karzai so there is no accountability. The people in charge, deciding who to recruit, can recruit bad soldiers because they get paid more by the US for soldiers, whether they be bad soldiers or not.

Why wouldn't Karzai and this guy


Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammad Karim, Commander of the Afghan National Army

recruit junkies, thieves, murderers and agents for the Taliban into the Afghan National Army?

Why wouldn't they recruit anybody they can find into the Afghan national army if, for every soldier they can name, they get paid more US dollars?

Where's the incentive for Karzai and Karim to recruit only good soldiers? There isn't any incentive at all.

Again the US ends up funding corruption.

If a green soldier kills a blue then who gets held responsible in the chain of command?

Nobody gets held responsible.

Who should get held responsible? The US and NATO should. We should blame ourselves for paying anything for an army which we do not have any political control over.

What on earth does Panetta (and what did Gates before him) think he is (was) doing trusting this guy Karzai and his general Karim with billions of US tax-payer dollars to pay for a green army?

Why are NATO defence ministers happy with the poor leadership from NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis? Shouldn't the NATO leaders have spotted this fatal flaw in green troop organisation and tried to re-organise green forces as I suggest here, if they know what they are doing (which they don't)?

The competent answer to green on blue attacks is to split up the Afghan army into two distinct forces -

• a national Afghan army which Afghans pay for and is commanded by the Afghan president and whichever general he/she wants to appoint. ("dark green")
  
  
• a NATO-ISAF auxiliary force of Afghans, funded by the US and other NATO counties and international donors. This would be commanded by our generals. ("light green")

Just found this thread. I have spoke to people who were on the scene.

The two killed were Sgt Luke Taylor, 33 of the Royal Marines, and LCpl Michael Foley, 25 of the Adjutant Generals Corps. I personally knew Luke and can tell you that he was the epitomy of the professional commando and that the work he was doing in TFH was invaluable. "Axel" Foley by all accounts, was a great lad too. Axel was on stag on the gate during the shooting. Luke was at the gate waiting to escort another Afghan soldier who hadn't arrived at the camp yet. Both were taken completely by surprise by the Afghan officer, who was in uniform and armed with a light machine gun. I won't go into the details of the incident, suffice to say they didn't suffer.

Both lads are missed and that it is a great loss to the Forces.

Luke Taylor and Michael Foley


RIP lads