Mate don't let your patriotism blind you. Learn to recognise mistakes where you see them.
Special Forces are special people who do special tasks. Tasks that require a high level of training etc. A well planned operation should utilise the strengths of such a force and certainly not exemplify its weaknesses.
Suicide missions certainly aren't the MO for any professional soldier. These guys are simply NOT meant to be filling the role of the regular infantry, i.e clearing and taking enemy positions.
Sometimes difficult and dangerous tasks need to be done and there are no other options, but in this case there WERE other options and they weren't utilised.
My patriotism isn't blinding me at all.
Yes, I know what special forces are. Read my posts again. SSG was needed here as the hilly/mountainous conditions are hard for regular infantry to break through - it is irregular fighting, militants have tunnels everywhere and as they have been using Tirah Valley as a last bastion, barring NW, some of their more experienced fighters would be there (not to say that regular forces can't take them out -- it's the fact that there's absolute complete slopes with IEDs all over, tunnels coming out of every nook and cranny, peaks on both sides, etc - it's not conditions which regular army, which has been training for conventional warfare, is used for).
So yes, the whole 'regular infantry' argument isn't working for me. You could argue that SSG are being used for that role if they were in the area long term, holding down territory. What they're doing is being injected right into the heartlands -- causing maximum damage, along with regular reinforcements.
As for this aireal bombardment argument - the Valley was bombed, but people think you can just see everything from the sky, or blanket bomb the whole area. Firstly, to blanket bomb a whole area would - if nothing else - would require a huge amount of resources, monetary or otherwise - and there would be no guarantee of eliminating the thread, the US bombed the crap out of Tora Bora but Bin Laden still escaped. You can't really see tunnels from high altitude, or even at normal ground positions unless you have an eye for it - they're hidden, they're
underground.
