Army Combat Fitness Test Fiasco! Slides Reveal 84% of Women Failing ACFT

Absolutely, and thinking about the long term outcome is something we did not do with this War on Terror which is why we have been in this mess for 2 decades. We figured Iraq would be just like Desert Storm with us walking in there and wrecking house and leaving in a few weeks. We never thought about an insurgency popping up in this power vacuum we created by taking out Saddam. Then we expected the US military to become nation builders. We are not nation builders. Then we expected the conventional US military to operate in a sort of "gain the trust and respect of the populace" style operation the way the US Army Special Forces are designed to operate.

Army Special Forces are designed for that role. Infiltrate and gain the trust and start counter insurgencies and train and lead local rebel forces. The conventional US Army is a hammer, it's not designed to do that. I've been saying it ever since the troop surge of 09, this war is unwinnable this way. The way to fight terrorism is small specialized forces such as SF coupled with manned and unmanned aircraft. Trying to have tens of thousands of conventional US troops occupy and rebuild nations whose cultures are pretty much incompatible with western civilization is ridiculous.

This new ACFT test is a prime example of what I'm talking about and we do this sort of thing all the time and never learn. Oh this sounds like a good idea, lets do it! While completely failing to take into consideration the long term effects of implementing a new test like this. And look at the result. Female Soldiers couldn't pass it and disabled Soldiers couldn't either. Then they were forced to actually look at reality and change this thing up and go back to the drawing board because they didn't think beyond tomorrow.

The difference is that in regards to something like a new PT test they can do what they did and just pull the plug and shelf it while the tweak it. In a mess like the War on Terror once you send us there then we are pretty much screwed because we are damned if we leave and damned if we stay. There is no "oops let's start over we didn't really think this through" regarding "occupy Iraq and Afghanistan".

Folks bash on Trump for butting heads with Mattis over wanting to pull out of Afghanistan and/or when Trump "negotiates with terrorists" by making peace deals with the Taliban. Well what the hell do they expect him to do? I operate the deadliest piece of hardware in the US military arsenal based on statistics over the past 20 years. I have no issue whatsoever with society telling me and my boys to take our gloves off and crack our knuckles and start sending haymakers without mercy in Afghanistan. But society WON'T LET ME. 2020 American society would call us monsters. My boys and I are the real world tip of the American spear in the Global War on Terror. But if you won't let us stab anybody because your conscience can't handle it then stop sending us over there! .

I don't deliver cargo folks...I don't deliver mail, I don't deliver troops, I don't take Soldiers to the airport for leave. I sit on top of 9 tons of armor, tank buster missiles, and beer bottle sized grenade bullets that we send towards human beings that have done something to piss off America. That is my job, that is what American taxpayers pay me to do. If you don't want me to do that then that's perfectly fine, but stop sending me away from my home then and stop asking why we haven't won this war yet. Let me stay home so I can go fishing.

 

That would never happen in 2020 and to be clear I don't necessarily want something like that implemented fully either. I'm perfectly fine with the SEALs whacking Bin Laden then tossing him in the sea or whatever they really did with him. Don't bring him back to "stand trail for his crimes" as if he is somebody who deserves a "fair trail in the US courts". Hell no, that was an enemy of the United States and a terror leader responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. Take him out and dump his ass in the ocean and go home.

However, here is the issue. When dealing with terrorism we sort of can't fight fire with fire and deny our enemies any sort of civility even though they themselves are not civil. If we do that then we'd have to start massacring people by the tens of thousands. If a Taliban takes shots at US forces and then takes off running into a crowded market full of civilians then we have two choices, let him "get away" or shoot back at him and hit him as well as a dozen innocent people in front of him. If the Taliban or ISIS shoots at me then runs into a crowded mosque I could level the building with the flick of a switch, I'd get him but then I'd get 100 other folks too who had nothing to do with any of this. I don't want that.

But that's the problem, terrorists KNOW we won't do that which is why they operate that way and there is literally nothing we can do about it. Thats why I said in places like Afghanistan we really only have two choices, extermination or withdrawal. We either say sorry folks there's a terrorist in your building all of you say goodnight or we let them shoot and kill us and hide behind the innocents like cowards and get away with it. We can't win a war like that as we've been shown over the past 2 decades, therefore we are out of options with regards to using the conventional US military.

We need small operational cells to hunt these people down and execute them the way we did Bin Laden, Baghdadi, Soleimani, etc if we want to keep any shred of civility as the US military. My hammer is too big for this type of conflict in it's current phase of using human shields. I'm not in the business of massacring a dozen innocent people with a chain gun in order to get one bad guy.

I'm not a monster, I'm a terrorist to terrorists. I sleep well at night knowing that according to captured terrorists themselves my boys and I are the most terrifying single entity that these people fear in the War on Terror. And as one captured guy put it "Those machines are the vengeful right hand of Allah". Damn right punks. I get a smile on my face when I watch these people through my gun sights and see them take off running in sheer horror when the spot us coming. But I'm not in the business of slaughtering innocent people to get these cowards because they saw full well what happened to the last idiots who decided to shoot at me so they decide to run and hide behind innocent children now.

Fight this like we did with Baghdadi and Soleimani. Raid them, drag them out of bed in the middle of the night with small specialized cells that can do this without having to slaughter the whole village. And do it like we did Soleimani, there is no "green zone" or "out of bounds", you are an enemy of the United States, if you so much as step outside of your front door and we see you then you are getting a special delivery tank buster missile sent to your face and we don't give a damn WHERE you are. Do it like we did during the Obama years with 24/7 terrorist hunter coverage with drones. 20 year old kids sitting in pods halfway across the globe sipping 7-11 big gulps and lobbing tank buster missiles at anybody on America's hit list who so much as walked outside to goto the bathroom.

And do all of this while simultaneously giving a very large and unapologetic middle finger to ANYBODY in the world who has a problem with that. And that includes both foreign nations and members of our own US government like Pelosi and company who think that we needed to "sit down and confide in her and her peers and talk about this first" before deciding to turn an enemy Iranian general into red mist with a tank buster missile. No we don't, it's war lady, get on board or sit down and shut up. We're playing whack-a-mole with terrorists, there is no discussion required.

 

Most Presidents' make sure that collateral damage is to the bare minimum. Obama was way more restrictive than Trump in some regards. You want to talk about taking the gloves off and disregarding collateral damage then look to GWB during the Fallujah campaign....That was brutal...

Plus Obama wasn't out there ordering the deliberate targeting of civilians with hellfires. He was basically saying we aren't playing this game with terrorists anymore and if you want to shoot and then go hide behind civilians then you may or may not still get a hellfire delivered to your doorstep from a Predator.

Problem is our weapons are terrifying and they make big booms. We can't exactly snipe individual people in the head with aircraft so when we drop JDAMs or Hellfires or something then they tend to take out more than just the person we were aiming at.

We try....it's not like either Obama or Trump was out there ordering us to carpet bomb people or anything. We could drop dozens of dumb bombs for the cost of a single laser guided bomb but we still choose the latter for collateral damage purposes.

 

Obama got a pass because during his tenure as President the War on Terror hadn't quite reached the "ok this is getting old now" phase. The troop surge of 09 was pretty much unanimously supported by both parties as well as most of society. It was supported largely because we thought it would be the final push to end the war.

Republicans only bashed Obama for the drone policy because of stupid partisan issues. The same Republicans that supported pretty much scorched earth policy during the early years of the Iraq war magically turned around and found a conscience once Obama became President and started picking bad guys off with drone strikes. It's all partisan garbage, it has nothing to do with the policy itself but rather whether or not it's "your" party who is doing then. If your party does it then it's fine, the second the other party does it then it magically becomes something worthy of criticism. Dems and Reps both act like that.

Same Dems who unanimously praised Obama as an excellent Commander in Chief after taking out Bin Laden magically had a huge issue when Trump was President and they dragged Baghdadi out of his cave in much the same fashion as Bin Laden got whacked. But since Trump did it then NOW it's wrong to do that. Just like how Dems praised Obama for pulling out of Iraq yet they criticize Trump as a weak Commander in Chief and a coward who "negotiates with terrorists" when he tries to pull out of Afghanistan.

Stupid partisan crap like this is why pretty much all of society hates Congress so much and why the military gets so absolutely frustrated with Congress. We as the military who have been fighting wars for the past 3 damn Presidencies don't have time to get caught up in political bullshit and continuously changing policies because both sides of the Congressional aisle act like toddlers all day long.

 

Wrong. Honorable Soldiers follow lawful orders. Nowhere in my oath is it stated that I am sworn to obey the orders of the President. It's the Enlisted folks who have to swear that. I take the same oath as Congress does which is to the US Constitution, not the President. It's written that way for a reason.