• Watch Out for Scammers!

    We've now added a color code for all accounts. Orange accounts are new members, Blue are full members, and Green are Supporters. If you get a message about a sale from an orange account, make sure you pay attention before sending any money!

Combat FlipFlops - Written in Taliban Post

Leftie

Sergeant of the Hide
Full Member
Minuteman
Apr 26, 2019
187
175
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, and I only extremely seldomly post in the Bear Pit for so many reasons, but what was written by the Combat FlipFlops founders is too important not to share. I am sure that this is controversial and will likely inflame many readers, but I have not come across a more pertinent and horrifyingly truthful assessment of America's current predicament in Afghanistan that, word-for-word, contains more valuable wisdom and context for all of America (and the Free World) to take to heart, at least of late. This is also a masterful example of red-team analysis in the form of long-form writing.

I'm posting the link below to the Soldier Systems post, and also have copied and pasted the text of the post here.

While this is the Bear Pit, I ask that replies be respectful and pertinent to a discussion of the post, because there is a lot to digest here. I have no affiliation with Combat FlipFlops or Soldier Systems Daily, but applaud both CFF and SSD for having the courage to write this and continue to promulgate the post respectively:

https://soldiersystems.net/2021/08/16/combat-flipflops-written-in-taliban

Over the weekend Matt Griffin and Matt Chapman, founders of Combat FlipFlops posted a look at the current situation in Afghanistan written from the Taliban’s point of view. It went viral and in typical Technogarch fashion, social media censored it.


img_1212.jpg



So here it is. Read it all the way to the end.



Written in Taliban


The first time I saw you was in the Khyber pass. You came with your technology, elite fighters fueled by revenge, and the hubris to believe you could disprove history.


This was a war that you didn’t have the stomach to fight. But I’m glad you tried.


We bled you the same way we bled the Soviets in our Holy Land. We bled you the same way the Vietnamese bled you in their home land. We did it patiently and deliberately.


Patience. Something Westerners never learn.


Our history is millennial. We don’t yearn for an early victory when the Infidel ravages our Holy Land. Our victory is celebrated decades from now. We’ve endured, then ravaged every standing military that crossed our borders. Why? How? We’re patient.


In 30 days, we’ll be stronger, richer, and have control over precious natural resources that you need for your pathetic life that’s dictated by comfort. We will have women, riches, land, guns, and ownership of one of the greatest chapters in military history.


You lose.


If you want to try again, we welcome the challenge. You will fail regardless of how much money you burn in our deserts. For pity, here is free advice that may contribute to your future success; should you ever decide to invade again.


You recruit your warriors and supporters from a drug addicted, distracted, disillusioned population that’s obsessed with comfort and entertainment. A population obsessed with altering their mundane reality. Alcohol, marijuana, pills, and our new favorite — Tide Pods. Every time your doctors prescribe opiate painkillers, you line our coffers with gold. Your population’s thirst for our pristine heroin has never been more lucrative for our warrior tribes. We will keep feeding you poison for as long as you keep your hands out.


If your population wasn’t so spineless, undisciplined, and self loathing, then you might be able to compile a raiding party with enough tenacity to outthink ours.


Our fighters are born into war. Raised in it. It’s a way of life that evades your “first world” nations. They live a life of such immense misery and pain that they’re willing to fight barefoot in the snow for the opportunity to martyr themselves. They yearn for the opportunity to die. When they do have the blessed opportunity to sacrifice themselves, they sit above Mohammed at the right hand of God. Blessed in Allah for eternity


What honors do your fighters receive? Their empty sacrifice is remembered in the form of a “three day weekend.” The majority of your population uses this sacred time to get drunk and grow more fat as a way to celebrate their fallen warriors. Sadly, we pay tribute to their death more honorably.


The colored pieces of cloth you pin on their chests are similar to the jewelry worn by our women. What good are accolades and vanity if you don’t have the stomach to endure a fight? We don’t offer the burden of healthcare to our fighters as they often want to die for Allah. Your fighters fight to live. Their inability to reconcile the inevitable outcome of our patience leads them to kill themselves. Your medications, counselors and non-profits will never undo the pain and suffering you’ve forced them to endure. It will never remove the pain we’ve caused your broken nation. You are your own worst enemy.


We will give your fighters credit. Some are creative, tenacious, and fierce. They outgun us in every way possible. But again, we simply wait them out. Allah is patient. You cycle them through our Holy Lands every 3 to 12 months for their combat rotations. After their tour is complete, they return to the comfort of their warm beds and endless entertainment. If you left them here, in our Holy Land, with no way out but to win, then you might of have had a chance of success. The longer you poisoned our Holy Land with your presence, your “rules of engagement” only strengthened our position. There is only one rule in war – that is to win.


Your commanders made you fight with your hands tied behind your back. Your rules also confused our fighters too. “We’re clearly the enemy, why are they letting us go?” Thank you for your compassion as it allowed our fighters to kill more Infidels. We began to feel as if your commanders were on our side. We’re thankful your most vicious dogs were never allowed off their leash.


Your showcase Generals make us laugh. You spend millions of dollars flying them around our country inventing new ways to win, while ignoring the guidance of our most capable foes. Your Generals make decisions to minimize risk to their fragile reputation with the ultimate goal of securing a lucrative retirement–jobs with suppliers that fuel your losing force. A self-serving circle that’s built on the backs of your youngest and most naive fighters.


Your retired Generals “earn” tens of thousands of dollars talking to your political, industrial, and financial leaders about “teams, winning, and discipline.” It’s a mockery of the war they refused to fight. It’s a mockery of the Infidel warriors who died in our lands. We urge you to continue following their vacuumous personalities so we can further watch your once great nation collapse.


Your statesman and elected officials are spineless, narcissistic, and more cowardly than your Generals. They crave power over you above all else. They come to our country, hide behind blast walls, and only heed the word of the indiginous leader they put in power. I believe your soldiers call this a “self licking ice cream cone.”


They’ve burned billions of dollars in a wasted effort to bring clean water, electricity, business, education, agriculture, and exports to a region that didn’t ask for it. You should have saved yourself the effort and simply given the money directly to us. Don’t worry, your diplomatic friends gave us plenty of your American tax dollars. If you want to give it another shot with your “soft power,” send those with real experience, not fancy degrees and silver tongues.


Over the next few months, we will make the world understand that you failed worse than any fighting force that’s ever invaded our lands. Today we celebrate victory.


As you evacuate your embassy, our fighters will be standing in the shade. We thank you for the parting gifts. You’ll find surface-to-air missiles staged in the back of Toyota pickup trucks that you purchased for us. Our marksmen will be patient.


We saw what Extortion 17 did to your nation and the morale of your fighting force. Do your citizens even remember that victory? We’ll be repeating and improving upon our victory while your citizens and sympathizers evacuate in disgrace. Every one of your foes around the world will know exactly how to break you.


You are welcome to fly your empty drones, target our cell phones, and send your spies. But they, too, will ultimately fail. We’ll use their failures to show the world that you’re not all-powerful. You’re a false front. An empty shell. You lie, cheat, steal, and are easily defeated because you lack the spine to fight. This is your history now. We’re grateful Allah gave us the opportunity to show the world how to defeat the Infidels.


We look forward to seeing you again across the battlefield.


Praise be to God,


The Taliban


***Authors’ Note***


If you’ve read this far. Thank you. I’ve spent the past week trying to find a way to communicate this to the American people in a manner that would cause anger, rage, action, and understanding. Writing in the voice of a Taliban felt right.


If this made you angry, cry, or contemplative–then our goal is achieved. Our hope is that it inspires you to take action with your elected officials. They’ve been repeating the same failing playbook since World War II with your sons, daughters, and tax dollars. If you want this to keep happening, do nothing. If you don’t, then do something. If we all do a little, together we do a lot.


About the Authors:


Matthew Griffin is a 2001 United States Military Academy Graduate, Army Ranger, Combat Veteran with the 75th Ranger Regiment (3x Afghanistan, 1x Iraq), CEO of Combat Flip Flops, author, and 2019 Henry Crown Fellow with the Aspen Global Leadership Institute.


Scott Chapman is a 2000 Murray State University Graduate, Army Ranger Fire Team Leader from Alpha Company 2/75th Rangers (‘01 – ‘05), OGA Blackwater Alumni, entrepreneur, and author. Combat Veteran ( 21x Afghanistan, 1x Iraq)
 
I have spent 4 years 8 months and 23 days as a service member In Afghanistan defending my brothers and sisters to the right of me.

As much as this sucks to read it could not have been said better.

The first time I went there (November 2001) when we secured the Kandahar Airport. The ROE’s were pretty simple cross this line we will kill you. At that time we fought because we were pissed.

fast forward 18 years later to the last time I was there. If you drew your rifle you had to ask your self “is this worth a court martial”. By this time I was fighting for the honor of the brother’s and sisters I had lost.

How much money was spent on this war we will never know but!!!

I was offered plenty of jobs by most of the big companies out there to go to work for them. The lowest offer I received was $125k to drive a forklift!!!! (I was raised on a huge farm and can drive anything with wheels)

I am still a active duty service member now, and if I had to go back over there honestly I would say “I fighting to stay alive so I can come home so my kids can have a father, and my wife can have her husband”
 
Maybe not the mindless cave dwellers many took them for?
Hell, how many college degrees did Bin Laden have?..dude studied at Oxford...

I'm sure there are a lot of dumb fuck cave dwellers...

...But ide bet good money a lot of the shot callers have western educations, hell, probably paid for by some diversity scholarship or some bullshit.
 
  • Like
Reactions: D_TROS
Those cave dwellers have more common sense than any of our crooked worthless politicians! The school of hard knocks can teach a man much more than sitting on your ass in a classroom!
 
That's not written by a Taliban soldier/warrior or whatever they want to claim, it has too many American type references. I realize it was supposed to be "translated", but the next time you listen to their words translated, they don't speak that way.
 
That's not written by a Taliban soldier/warrior or whatever they want to claim, it has too many American type references. I realize it was supposed to be "translated", but the next time you listen to their words translated, they don't speak that way.
Boy, you got them there Inspector Clouseau.

Of course, this quote might have been a hint:
"If you’ve read this far. Thank you. I’ve spent the past week trying to find a way to communicate this to the American people in a manner that would cause anger, rage, action, and understanding. Writing in the voice of a Taliban felt right."
 
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, and I only extremely seldomly post in the Bear Pit for so many reasons, but what was written by the Combat FlipFlops founders is too important not to share. I am sure that this is controversial and will likely inflame many readers, but I have not come across a more pertinent and horrifyingly truthful assessment of America's current predicament in Afghanistan that, word-for-word, contains more valuable wisdom and context for all of America (and the Free World) to take to heart, at least of late. This is also a masterful example of red-team analysis in the form of long-form writing.

I'm posting the link below to the Soldier Systems post, and also have copied and pasted the text of the post here.

While this is the Bear Pit, I ask that replies be respectful and pertinent to a discussion of the post, because there is a lot to digest here. I have no affiliation with Combat FlipFlops or Soldier Systems Daily, but applaud both CFF and SSD for having the courage to write this and continue to promulgate the post respectively:

https://soldiersystems.net/2021/08/16/combat-flipflops-written-in-taliban

What is to dispute?

Follows in the tradition of Smedley D Butler "War is a Racket"

 
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, and I only extremely seldomly post in the Bear Pit for so many reasons, but what was written by the Combat FlipFlops founders is too important not to share. I am sure that this is controversial and will likely inflame many readers, but I have not come across a more pertinent and horrifyingly truthful assessment of America's current predicament in Afghanistan that, word-for-word, contains more valuable wisdom and context for all of America (and the Free World) to take to heart, at least of late. This is also a masterful example of red-team analysis in the form of long-form writing.

I'm posting the link below to the Soldier Systems post, and also have copied and pasted the text of the post here.

While this is the Bear Pit, I ask that replies be respectful and pertinent to a discussion of the post, because there is a lot to digest here. I have no affiliation with Combat FlipFlops or Soldier Systems Daily, but applaud both CFF and SSD for having the courage to write this and continue to promulgate the post respectively:

https://soldiersystems.net/2021/08/16/combat-flipflops-written-in-taliban


One of the reasons I believe a draft or some sort of citizenry soldier is necessary.

Our "professional" military now only suffers the whims of politicians.

Sure the Guard and Reserve is now way more important than when I served but still there are few with skin in the game.

Keep the costs limited and "hidden" people will go about their oblivious lives with no care in the world.

Put them at risk of being put in uniform......the ROE demanded will have the "professionals" clean out any nest of vipers before mobilization can actually occur.
 
i wasn't ever in the military but my job was to support the war fighter here at our local base. i remember we had some Marines in for support on a big project we had going on at the time. They were telling stories about everything going on over there (this was in 2009-2010) the stories were just interesting. not all Marines talked about it but the ones who did had interesting things to say. one that i remember was this one Marine said when they first got there, if they saw someone literally carrying a shovel (possible IED "engineer") they could fuck them up on sight. they said the old "rules" are what made them join in the first place.
 
I like the gist, but I think it misses the mark. As with nearly all wars, the 'will to win' is the most important weapon. In the short term, technology or superior numbers may gain temporary victory. In the long run, 'will to win' trumps all.
 
There is too much money to be made in war. To stop this you have to make them accountable for every fucking dollar. You say that is impossible, of course it is. They are not accountable for 100s of millions of dollars, its just gone. Until they show where the money went, why it was used, and what it accomplished this will continue.
 
Man, the real truth when you peal it back is that our Politicians not only saved them but basically paid them. It's become more about the money than anything else. And 20 years a trillions later and WAY to many lives it's back to the same place it was.
Just saying next time one of the Taliban steps a pinky toe over the line forget the rules lets just END them and re-establish that like it or not we run shit! How can we be the world power when we haven't won a fight in 76 years.
 
i wasn't ever in the military but my job was to support the war fighter here at our local base. i remember we had some Marines in for support on a big project we had going on at the time. They were telling stories about everything going on over there (this was in 2009-2010) the stories were just interesting. not all Marines talked about it but the ones who did had interesting things to say. one that i remember was this one Marine said when they first got there, if they saw someone literally carrying a shovel (possible IED "engineer") they could fuck them up on sight. they said the old "rules" are what made them join in the first place.
The ROEs weren’t as tight for everyone as you often hear. I was over on a deployment around that time. We didn’t have to wait to be shot at to engage, it was at times more of a “probable cause” or immediate danger situation. With the shovel, more often than not it was used for spotting. We didn’t shoot someone simply for having a shovel (they were farmers so it would have been a little fucked up to shoot everyone with a shovel) but if that shovel head seemed to point at, and follow our movements, he was spotting for a taliban shooter and we could drop him. Same with a guy walking with his arm pinned to his side under his man dress. As long as we weren’t out shooting civilians we were fine. We were also very isolated in a remove area of Helmand so not the slightest oversight.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DukeGSP
The ROEs weren’t as tight for everyone as you often hear. I was over on a deployment around that time. We didn’t have to wait to be shot at to engage, it was at times more of a “probable cause” or immediate danger situation. With the shovel, more often than not it was used for spotting. We didn’t shoot someone simply for having a shovel (they were farmers so it would have been a little fucked up to shoot everyone with a shovel) but if that shovel head seemed to point at, and follow our movements, he was spotting for a taliban shooter and we could drop him. Same with a guy walking with his arm pinned to his side under his man dress. As long as we weren’t out shooting civilians we were fine. We were also very isolated in a remove area of Helmand so not the slightest oversight.
yeah man i have no doubt things were different in the beginning. heard some crazy stories.
 
FWIW I have a pair of coyote floperator 14s inbound just now.
 
Was it in Black Hawk Down,

Just because I lack running water, don‘t think I am stupid … something like that, when you practice a craft for 100s of years, you might be pretty good at it, and if you never have a Woke crowd to stop the barbarity, the barbaric actions work pretty well to intimidate your enemy. It s a feature not a bug .
 
  • Like
Reactions: Leftie
Was it in Black Hawk Down,

Just because I lack running water, don‘t think I am stupid … something like that, when you practice a craft for 100s of years, you might be pretty good at it, and if you never have a Woke crowd to stop the barbarity, the barbaric actions work pretty well to intimidate your enemy. It s a feature not a bug .

"Don't make the mistake of thinking because I grew up without running water I am simple General. I do know something about history. See all this? It's simply shaping tomorrow. A tomorrow without a lot of Arkansas white-boys' ideas in it."

Pithy, but it really sums up what happened in Somalia and what's happening today in Kabul.

We in the west so often fail to see the arc of history, and we latch onto moments and give them some significance they really don't warrant. What did the killing of Bin Laden actually achieve? In reality, very little. He got what he deserved no doubt and he needed killing, but he was largely out of the power loop in Al Qaeda and ISIS was on the rise. So his death had little impact to the arc of history.

What is going on today will very significantly impact the arc of history. An arc that ties back to Saigon in 1975, peaks with 9/11 and ends at Kabul in 2021. This cycle will have geopolitical impacts for decades. And the talking heads will want to forget it, just like they did their best to forget Saigon, and will instead latch onto the next "great event", like the killing of Bin Laden, all the while ignoring the great arc of history.
 
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, and I only extremely seldomly post in the Bear Pit for so many reasons, but what was written by the Combat FlipFlops founders is too important not to share. I am sure that this is controversial and will likely inflame many readers, but I have not come across a more pertinent and horrifyingly truthful assessment of America's current predicament in Afghanistan that, word-for-word, contains more valuable wisdom and context for all of America (and the Free World) to take to heart, at least of late. This is also a masterful example of red-team analysis in the form of long-form writing.

I'm posting the link below to the Soldier Systems post, and also have copied and pasted the text of the post here.

While this is the Bear Pit, I ask that replies be respectful and pertinent to a discussion of the post, because there is a lot to digest here. I have no affiliation with Combat FlipFlops or Soldier Systems Daily, but applaud both CFF and SSD for having the courage to write this and continue to promulgate the post respectively:

https://soldiersystems.net/2021/08/16/combat-flipflops-written-in-taliban
burns me up
 
Why? The author is wrong. If it were not for US and it’s technology the Taliban would have been wiped out by the soviets 40 years ago. Russians don’t value life like we do. They would have killed them all.
 
Did they understand that war is not about actually winning its a business model similar to being a lawyer. You delay the case as long as possible to make billable time = $$$$$$$$$ Taliban were just used to make money for 20 years , its over and now and the camels run scared again of men in sandals .
 
Why? The author is wrong. If it were not for US and it’s technology the Taliban would have been wiped out by the soviets 40 years ago. Russians don’t value life like we do. They would have killed them all.
And we are up to our old tricks against the same russkies again.
 
Its a necro thread but what happened in August should never be forgotten.
Everyone involved in that mess should of been given their last rights before feeling the rope.......