[size=4]Chinook Down[/size=4]
[b]What they died for.[/b]
By James S. Robbins, a national-security analyst & NRO contributor March 5, 2002 8:15 a.m.
I once gave a lecture on Clausewitz to a group of servicemen in which I referred to the famous Prussian's admonition not to have wars without bloodshed. An infantry officer in the audience shrugged and said, "Just so long as it's their blood." Until this weekend, it seemed as though the war on terror would see very few allied losses — but then came Operation Anaconda. Just when the public was beginning to focus on other matters, and when politicians sensed it was safe to begin to devise ways to criticize the commander-in-chief, the United States was faced with its first cluster of combat casualties — as of this writing, nine dead and 40 wounded.
The largest number of KIAs were seven soldiers in two MH-47s (the special-operations version of the CH-47 Chinook). Details of the engagement are conflicting. Anaconda is a long-planned, large-scale operation aimed at cleaning out a nest of Afghan, Arab, and Chechen al Qaeda fighters, possibly including leadership elements, who have established fortified positions in the mountains near Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The Chinooks were reportedly inserting special-forces teams and supplies in support of the operation when they were hit. The first chopper lost one soldier when a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) temporarily downed it. The second, coming to assist the first, was riddled with small-arms fire, and six more soldiers died on the snow-swept Afghan mountainside.
Inserting heliborne troops in the mountains during active operations is dangerous business. In the 1980s, the Soviets used to drop Spetsnaz units behind the mujahedeen during major offensives, to cut off escape routes and generally cause havoc. The Afghan guerrillas eventually learned the Soviet pattern and began to stake out probable landing zones with small teams armed with RPGs and, later, British blowpipes and American stingers. They would hit the choppers when they were preparing to land, when they were relatively stationary and most vulnerable. They also figured out the probable routes of ingress and would place men along high ridgelines to shoot down at low-flying targets, aiming for the fragile top and tail rotors. Today, fighting the same type of enemy in the same terrain, the tactics — both allied and al Qaeda — have a familiar ring.
These soldiers were not the first allied service deaths in the war (not including 9/11, that is). Air Force Master Sgt. Evander Earl Andrews lost his life in an accident October 10. The first combat death was Mike Spann, on November 25. The first soldier killed by the enemy was Army Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman, on January 4. Many others have died in the theater, by accident or from friendly fire. And ten days ago, an MH-47 carrying eight soldiers and two airmen went down in the waters of the southern Philippines during exercises in support of Philippine operations against the Abu Sayyaf terror group. No, this has not been a casualty-free war, far from it.
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