U.S. Marines Are Kicking Ass In Southern Afghanistan

Okay, it pains me GREATLY to have to link to ANY story from the rag, the New York Times here, but it was the only story up on the progress of the U.S. Marines that were brought into Afghanistan just a short while ago. Trust me, the NYT takes plenty of potshots at our Marines so reading the whole article may leave a bittersweet taste in your mouth but the facts in the article are OUTSTANDING and I wanted you to see them:

For two years British troops staked out a presence in this small district center in southern Afghanistan and fended off attacks from the Taliban. The constant firefights left it a ghost town, its bazaar broken and empty but for one baker, its houses and orchards reduced to rubble and weeds.

But it took the Marines, specifically the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, about 96 hours to clear out the Taliban in a fierce battle in the past month and push them back about 6 miles.

“They have disrupted the Taliban’s freedom of movement and pushed them south, and that has created the grounds for us to develop the hospital and set the conditions for the government to come back,” said Maj. Neil Den-McKay, the officer commanding a company of the Royal Regiment of Scotland based here. People have already started coming back to villages north of the town, he said, adding, “There has been huge optimism from the people.”

This obviously is great news and it is NO surprise - the Marines were brought in for this very reason - to get things done. I'm not downgrading the Brits or Canadians at all, because they have been undermanned but the Marines were brought in from Iraq because they had successfully flushed al Qaeda elements out of Ramadi and Fallujah and that is what they are doing here in southern Afghanistan.

The Taliban are not giving up but believe me, their number of dead will soar and at some point, the Taliban are gonna be in real trouble on supply lines to this area.

A BIG "waytogo" to the Marines in Helmand province - we're all proud of the ass kickin' you are doing!

Optimism Grows as Marines Push Against Taliban

This time, the performance of the latest unit of marines, here in Afghanistan for seven months to help bolster NATO forces, will be under particular scrutiny. The NATO-led campaign against the Taliban has not only come under increasing pressure for its slow progress in curbing the insurgency, but it has also been widely criticized for the high numbers of civilian casualties in the fighting.
The marines’ drive against the Taliban in this large farming region is certainly not finished, and the Taliban have often been pushed out of areas in Afghanistan only to return in force later. But for the British forces and Afghan residents here, the result of the recent operation has been palpable.

For the marines, it was a chance to hit the enemy with the full panoply of their firepower in places where they were confident there were few civilians. The Taliban put up a tenacious fight, rushing in reinforcements in cars and vans from the south and returning repeatedly to the attack, but they were beaten back in four days by three companies of marines, two of which were dropped in by helicopter to the southeast.
In the days after the assault began, hundreds of families, their belongings packed high on tractor-trailers, fled north from villages in the southern part of the battle zone, according to marines staffing a checkpoint. The Taliban told them to leave as the fighting began, they said. Hospital officials in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, reported receiving eight civilian casualties as a result of the fighting, including a 14-year-old boy who died from his injuries. The marines did not sustain any casualties, but one was killed and two were wounded in subsequent clashes.