‘Why I Flattened Three Afghan Villages’

[unhappycamper]

‘Why I Flattened Three Afghan Villages’
By Spencer Ackerman
February 1, 2011 | 12:00 am

When the day began for Lt. Col. David Flynn on Oct. 6, Taliban insurgents were using three southern Afghanistan hamlets as bomb factories. By the time the next day ended, Tarok Kolache, Khosrow Sofla and Lower Babur had been eradicated from the valley where they once stood.

Flynn had ordered tens of thousands of pounds of bombs to rain down on the villages. Tarok Kolache was completely flattened, and there wasn’t much left of the other two.

Flynn says that he had little choice but to take the extreme step. The Taliban had rigged bombs all through the compounds in the villages, and placed tons of explosives in the vegetated fields nearby.

Efforts at clearing the villages of homemade bombs during the previous three months had failed. The fighters had evicted the villagers from their land, telling them, “you can’t get to the fields this year,” in preparation for the U.S. troop surge. Few residents still retained hope that they’d ever get to move back home.

“We never went in with the mindset that we’re going to flatten the villages,” Flynn tells Danger Room. “I have friends in this community now. The last thing I’m trying to do is wreck my friends’ lives.”

[kenny blankenship]

1. Oh we love the Afghan people, it's their villages we can't stand.

[FreakinDJ]

2. The Taliban had kicked the villagers OUT of thier villages

What he didn’t see also stuck with him: people. “The friendlies dispersed. They went to the four winds,” Flynn says. The Taliban had pushed the populace out, away from the pomegranate trees that provided their livelihood. Some went to Kabul, others to Kandahar, figuring that the area’s history of never falling to a foreign power meant the Taliban was here to stay. Others — including Tarok Kolache’s malek, or de facto leader — went to a village near Flynn’s base called Jelawar.

Those displaced locals became a source of information for Flynn that summer. He wouldn’t have known how densely placed the homemade bombs were without them.

Taliban had turned the compounds in the vacated villages into bomb factories.

I guess a "Bombed Out - then Rebuilt Village is better then no village at all"

[backscatter712]

3. "We had to burn the village in order to save it!"

We've seen this movie before...

[madokie]

4. Yes unfortunately we have

so sad that we have to rain this death and destruction down on people who for the most part did not deserve it. if I was an Afghani I would be doing the same things as the people there are which is trying to save what they have from the invaders, us.

[grahamhgreen]

5. How many more troops & kid should die for the corrupt Islamic republic we created in Afghanistan?

GTFO, yesterday. The entire plan for the mideast is going in the opposite direction predictedby the establishment in both parties.

What's happening over there is exactly as predicted by the dreaded professional left.

Get out now.

War for profit is a sick business.

[Prometheus Bound]

6. He says the Taliban had banned them from the fields but they looked pretty fertile before the bomb.

I don't want to imply Flynn is a liar, but the before picture tells a story.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. That strategy worked ever so well in Vietnam. Anybody for Agent Orange?