Someone has posted a recount of a firefight between US SEALS and the Taliban in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan, which had disasterous results for the US:

The headquarters could see that the TEAM was encircled by bad guys and that the enemy was too close to the SEALs to use Air force close air support. A weather front was rapidly coming into the area and the SEAL Commander a Lieutenant Commander ask permission to launch his quick reaction force to go rescue his men.

[…]

Leadership requires having the guts to make a decision, based on analysis and forethought. You must totally recognize the risk and be ready to accept the results. The general in charge made the right call, he had to try to rescue the operators, we as American soldiers can not leave our people on the battlefield, every Airman, Marine, Sailor, Coast Guardsmen and Soldier has to know that when you go down range and things go wrong keep fighting and help will come.

It’s a tough story to read, but it gives a glimpse into the dangerous missions being waged in Afghanistan. The Chinook Helicopter site also mentions this mission and provides a great deal of information on the US helicopters struggling to survive extremely bad weather and rough terrain, as well as an apparent increase in hostile fire and opposition to US forces:

…Afghanistan, June 26, 2005. From U.S. and U.N. officials down to Afghan villagers, there is growing fear that this country may be at a seminal moment with three years of state-building in danger of succumbing to the barrage of violence.

The Chinook site also gives chilling details about another rescue operation called the Battle of Roberts Ridge that happened in 2002.

As I read these stories I can not help but recall a Soviet helicopter called the “Hind” by NATO (Mi-24) that was used in Afghanistan twenty years ago:

The Mujaheddin soon nicknamed the Hind the “devil’s chariot” and realized that their small guns were practically useless against its heavily armored hull. Bigger guns could bring down the Hind, but the real threat was from shoulder-launched, surface-to-air missiles, particularly the American heat-seeking Stinger, which the CIA began shipping to the Mujaheddin in large numbers starting in 1983. The Stinger could easily home in on either of the side-facing hot engine exhausts, located at the top of the fuselage near the rotor hub and bring down the helicopter. In response, the Soviets began fitting special covers over the exhausts to mix cooler air with the hot engine gases. This dramatically reduced losses but did not stop them completely and came with a price—the blocky covers slowed the helicopters down in flight, turning a fast, unmaneuverable helicopter into a slower, unmaneuverable helicopter. During the war, 333 Hinds were lost in combat; the number lost to operational accidents is not known.

The Afghan fighters have clearly continued to develop and advance their counter-helicopter tactics. More data on the losses suffered by the USSR in the 1980s, including helicopter casualties by year, can be reviewed here.

And finally, I noticed that the study of combat tactics in Afghanistan led a Major in the US Marine Corps to suggest rather ironically in 1985 that ground forces would be ill-equipped if they were to fight helicopters with surface-to-air missles:

Ground-based defense against enemy helicopters in the Marine Corps consists of small arms and the Redeye/Stinger man portable missile systems. The appearance of decoy flares on Soviet helicopters make the lethality of the Redeye/Stinger questionable, however. In any case, with only one battery of missiles per Marine Aircraft Wing, one must question whether there are sufficient numbers to provide adequate protection even if lethality is high.

Note, this was the same year that Gorbachev assumed leadership of the USSR and pushed for withdrawl negotiations to recommence. They had been stalled since 1982 but it was only after the Soviets were able to prop up the semblance of a local government and make declarations of a new constitution that they formally announced their withdrawl in 1987. The stories are sad, the lessons lost upon some even sadder.

Keith Obermann referenced an interesting episode of the Twilight Zone, in his harsh critique of President Bush:

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An “alien” is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, “they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves.”

I thought this section was also worth noting:

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ‘something to do’ with 9/11 is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase is “impeachable offense.”

Someone asked me if I had seen the episode of Star Trek where Data (an android) says that terrorism can be successful. I had never heard of this, let alone seen the actual episode. A quick search only uncovered a basic reference to “The High Ground“:

The three different factions were clumsily but accurately shown: the misunderstood but bloodthirsty rebels, the well-intentioned but brutal government, the idealist but hypocritical Federation-slash-symbolic-America. However, it all fell apart in a worthless, soporific ending: the Starfleet officers scratched their heads, said “Gee, why don’t you just stop killing each other?” and flew off to the Never-Neverland System at Warp Nine.

I understand this episode was originally banned by the BBC since Data mentioned that terrorism did work sometimes, and listed the Irish Republican Army’s victory of 2012 among his examples.

Here are my questions, then: How does this old (1990) episode stand up to modern, post-September-Eleventh sensibilities?

Couldn’t the network just edit out the one line, or is the whole episode too controversial? Note the date. Any more data (pun not intended) out there?