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Fast-Roping 101
June 1, 2010 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 3:32pm | 94 Comments
Too soon?
Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
Too soon?
That is awesome. Definitely not too soon.
Too late.
LOL second visitor.
ugh, what a Charlie-Foxtrot. How does Israel, of all countries, give its enemies and detractors an Exodus? Martin van Creveld needs to bitch slap the entire IDF establishment for this one.
Tell me, animal, why don't you commit suicide?
This is pure awsomeness. Abu muqawama ftw.
I laughed my ass off the second I saw that graphic. Amazing.
Another intense Middle East moment represented by a hilarious visual:
Anwar al Awlaki giving the shocker.
Seen at:
bloggingthecasbah.blogspot.com/2010/06/anwar-al-awlakis-secret-sexual-language.html
Enjoy
Can someone make this into a t-shirt and sell it to me, please? The timing couldn't be better!
Oy, oy, oy...
Never an exocet when you need one.
Or a manpad.
I'm glad that other people noticed the peculiar fast-roping technique employed by the IDF. When I saw the second guy start down the rope, I wondered what was going through his mind after seeing the beating the first guy was taking. Something along the lines of, "Oh w.t.f?"
And yes, definitely not too soon.
More specifically: "Oy! w.t.f."
Wonderful graphic... Definitely t-shirt material!
And I would buy that t-shirt and my friends would be jealous.
And no, of course it's not in bad taste - it's hysterical.
In another context, it could be seen as black humour.
To play the devil's advocate, though, real people were hurt in this operation, on both sides.
Would everyone be giggling as much about an "Activism 101" cartoon showing folks getting killed with the x through it? I'm going to guess not so much.
I only regret that I can't find a Facebook Share button...
My God! it's...full of win!
This is chock-full-o teh awesome! Thank you for this, Andrew. I'm passing this around to everyone I possibly can here in Afghanistan.
And, I agree one of the Visitors - please oh please won't someone make this into a t-shirt?
Heh. You could add that its not necessarily a good idea to do things at night, in international waters, just because you can.
Im still waiting for the forensic reports to come out with exitement. As well as the names and nationalities of the dead and seriously wounded. Going on day 3 now, and still no details. Must be pretty bad.
MILNEWS.....I agree with your thoughts.....
Facts:
*Well advertised Military Blockade.
*Peaceful people run a well known military blockade of soveren country.
*Peaceful people know that sovern country will enforce blockade with possible ship boarding to inspect cargo.
*Sovern nation warns peaceful people that they are in violation of blockade.
*Sovern nation warns peaceful people again that they are in violation.
*Sovern nation sends soldiers to fast rope on deck of peaceful ships. Soldiers are armed with PAINTBALL GUNS.
*PEACEFUL people proceed to TRY TO KILL SOLDIERS with STEEL PIPES.
*Soldiers only have paintball guns (yes they have pistols too, not much defence for a peaceful crowd beating you with steel pipes) to defend themselves.
*Sovern nation calls in second group of soldiers to stop the peaceful people trying to kill their soldiers.
*Sovern nation treats wounded of both sides. Arrests peaceful people because they tried to break a blockade that they were warned about. Sovern nation inspects ship's cargo and passes cargo to destination...........
*Peaceful people throw up their arms in front of world's view and exclaim, "How could a Sovern Nation do such a thing !"
Add in confusion, anger, fear, and a long history of hostility..........
If the peaceful people wanted to give supplies to Gaza.......why didn't the peaceful people run the blockade in a peaceful way ? Example: We are peaceful people. We have ship load of goodies for needy people in Gaza. We request the Sovern nation enforcing the blockade to inspect our peaceful shipment, please board our ship and be happy that only humanitarian items are on board. Being only peaceful people, we respect your Sovern nation's need to defend itself
What was the responisbility of the peaceful people? Do you think the Sovern nation would have said no ?
PS....only a few ways to board a ship at sea......climb the side or fly from the top. Flying from the top is easier if you have the element of surprise or control your approach....that is were the Israelis screwed up.
Yah yah....I know AM.....Israel was set up to look bad and they fast roped into it....COIN BS 101.....
Doesn't that make the peaceful people as guilty as Israel ? That is the problem I have with this COIN stuff....the US solution is to buy off our enemy then expect them to go away. Really a sane person would realize that giving money away only creates more want for more money. Welfare is a narcotic.
In Lebanon, friends of mine refer to the Israeli army as "The Gucci Army" since they all kids drafted after high school and walking around in designer gear with not a clue.
This just adds to the weight that the Israeli military is incompetent. They cannot even send commandos onto a ship without getting beaten up by hippies and peace activists. The clip of one Israeli "commando" getting thrown over board is painful to watch in its humiliation.
Exactly the same in the case of the assassination in Dubai. The "secret agents" managed to get there faces plastered around every media outlet in the world for weeks. It seems Dubai police have problems directing traffic in an half efficient way but can still successfully identify Mossad assassins.
The attempts the "crush" Hezbollah also play into this narrative that Israels leadership (at a systemic level) don't the the slightest clue when it comes to performing military operations. At the end of the Day that is probably what will cause Israel the most damage.
Jesus, imagine if these incompetents actually tried to bomb Iran if they cant even deal with a ship of human rights activists...
Zak: Ummm, I still fail to understand how they killed 9 and wounded 30-60 seriously using only paintball guns. Its also quite telling that no video of the actual gunfight has been released, nor have any of the details of the deaths been released. Nor have any journalists been released yet either. And all their computers and mobiles were confiscated and propably wiped. So you are basing your narrative solely on the Israeli media, wich is under military censorship, and is working 24/7 in a coordinated open propaganda campaign. I dont believe a word they are saying, except that there was a fight when they boarded in International waters, propably between a group of Turkish nationalists and the commandos.
Im waiting for the forensic reports. And the names of the dead.
Maybe it's time to cancel the contract for spy surveillance with Elbit Systems on the US/Mexico border? (Elbit is a Boeing subcontractor)?
U.S. citizens assaulted by Israeli forces:
Ann Wright, Former US Army Col. and US State Department Official
Paul Larudee of El Cerrito, Calif, badly beaten.
Edward Peck, former Ambassador to Iraq and Mauritania.
Joe Meadors, USS Liberty Survivor.
Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement.
Hedy Epstein, Holocaust Survivor.
Emily Henochowicz, was shot in the face at a Gaza checkpoint and lost her eye while protesting the attack on the humanitarian ships.
Al Qaeda my ass.
"Would everyone be giggling as much about an "Activism 101" cartoon showing folks getting killed with the x through it? I'm going to guess not so much."
No, I don't think so. But thanks for raising the question, because it actually gets at a serious point. We can laugh at the Israeli commandos because they didn't get killed, they just got beat up. That's the sort of injury which, for better or worse, we laugh at all the time. We can't laugh at the activists - or at least I can't - because a lot of them got killed. And so what we can laugh at tells us something about the credibility of Israel's claim to "self-defense"...
@Zak:
It's spelled "sovereign". I know correcting typos is annoying, but it's also grating to see the wrong spelling repeated so many times.
But anyway, I'm not sure why you're using the word so many times. Israel doesn't have sovereignty over Gaza - even an acknowledged occupation would come with responsibilities which Israel certainly doesn't fulfill - and the attack didn't even take place in Gazan territorial waters, but in international waters. So what gives Israel the "sovereign" right to attack the ship?
Lastly, it's unclear to me what evidence we have that anyone was trying to kill the IDF commandos. The ship's passengers didn't use weapons that are good for killing, and they didn't actually kill anybody. It would appear that their goal was to get the IDF off the ship, at least temporarily; they did, in fact, throw somebody off.
I second the comments of Visitor at 8:32 a.m. on June 2. Clearly some people on the boat were violent, but we've been given a selective version of events, and Israel's confiscation of any other electronic record of the incident is suspicious as hell. It's something you'd expect from the Basij, frankly.
That whole stinking embargo aside, Israel could have picked a less dramatic method to stop the boats, like disabling rudders. The choice of commandos lowered onto the deck makes me wonder if Israel isn't basing its political and military strategy on getting film footage that make it's right-wing settlers cheer the loudest.
Anyway, not much about the flotilla raid can make me laugh, but this graphic did. Good work.
Thank you.....Vistor @ 8:32am.
The other side is waging a propaganda war too. That is what the ME is about.
If nothing has been released, then why a world wide conclusion to the nonfacts....we do this every time.
If I were Israel, I would take all the people and cell phones too. It is intel. More Intel the merrier. The smarter I get.
You would do it to, if you had the responsibility.....you're collecting facts now. Would you like to see the cell phones? Talk to the reporters ?
Vistor, your smart to hold your judgement, means your thinking not reacting. Are the reporters going to be objective ? Do we trust them blindly ?
Still.....the peaceful people ran a blockade........What is their responsibility and a liability ?
They could have asked to be inspected.....Gaza may have gotten their aid and the names of the dead may have never been written.
Gods. Ayalon just told 700 US jewish leaders that the convoy was a Iranian conspiracy. So now it was a joint AQ/Hezbollah/Hamas/Iranian fleet exercise, manned with suicidal european leftists? How deep down the rabbithole do they intend to go?
i cried and then i laughed. or maybe the other way around.
well played, well played.
Kal,
Thanks for the correction.....means you're listening and processing. I am guilty of spelling as charged...off to spelling prison for me. I will do it again....not the first or last.
Intent is a funny thing. Think Kal is waiting for more facts, he is smart.
Good to see folks looking for facts. Sounds like a lot of foks are going knee-jerk.
Steel pipe is a darn good killing machine. If they did not want to kill the IDF, then why not just grab them and throw them off the ship ? I saw news footage of peaceful people standing over the deck applying repeated blows. Are they throwing the IDF off the ship....through the deck ? Hit them enough times and expect them to roll sideways....up an over the railing by hitting downwards.
It is a judgement call. Maybe rubber hoses would have shown less intent by peaceful people.
Still.....if the peaceful people had asked for inspection....the pipes would not have been needed.
It is a blockade ....isn't it.
If a ship of plain old genuine refugees trying to get into the USA, or God Help them much of Europe - attacked the Coast Guard with steel pipes etc...they'd get their asses shot. Or an American Cop. Next time they should try British Bobbies, I hear they're quite the pushovers these days (sadly).
The Jews will nearly always be vilified, they might as well go for broke (this wasn't it).
Maybe we should organize a blockade run for communities of Christians being persecuted in the ME. I'd suggest Jews, but outside of Israel there aren't enough to fill a bus. Of course that got thrown under the memory hole bus, as it happened before Youtube, so it didn't happen.
The other problem is we'd be blown out of the water without the international whore community uttering a peep.
On the good news front, the EU is considering suspending or ending their aid to the PA if there's no breakthrough in the "peace process". As Israel isn't apparently about to surrender unilaterally even if it means bad press that's not likely.
Starve the Beast. Once the aid ends, Filastina ends. And the world is out of money. The EU has existential problems and may soon be facing Gaza's of it's own. And I don't think they'll have a friend in DC soon, it's about two steps behind the EU it so admires.
Zak: Thank you for response. To your points:
* It is basicaly counterproductive in these days to attempt a mediablack out because it really plays up to the narrative of the Israelis as Sith lords. You get the corageous AL Jazeera reports from the action, crescendo, then... Nothing. Nothing except open improvization on the PR front, with the various Israeli ministers all telling mutualy exclusive stories, and the international media desperately trying to get another side of the story as well. The fates of the activists, the names of the killed and wounded, all shut down by a Orwellian military censorship. I see what you are saying about intel, but I just cant see what intel is worth the insanely bad publicity. They dont seem to have considered the force of teh internetz, and since their supporters are mostly of the "Kill all hippies!" category they come across as even more ugly in their attempts to master it. (Read the commentsection of JPost or the posters at Israpundit.com.) Im sure that the Israelis are thinking military security first, but from without it looks like a neo-fascist military state a la Pinochets Chile.
* As for the point that they ran a blockade, thats not technicaly correct. They were heading towards an area with a intention to break a blockade, and got jumped in international waters. Thats going to be one hard act to defend, though I see Dershowitz is already on it. Anyways, this was (of course) a provocation, but it was a passive-agressive provocation wich let Israel choose its reaction pattern. I think most here agree that the pattern chosen was pretty dumb.?
I still just dont see how paintballs killed 9 people and wounded over 30 seriously. Theres a huge logical fallacy in the Israeli narrative. But again, Im waiting for the facts to come out...
The Irish are sending Guinness to neutralize this conflict!
Kal,
A steel pipe is a pretty effective weapon for death and certainly serious injury. If you've seen the video, you know that the peace activists weren't just giving love taps with the pipe.
The fast roping picture above still makes me giggle.
"Next time they should try British Bobbies, I hear they're quite the pushovers these days (sadly)"
Er, dunno where you've got that from. There are far more armed police in the UK today than there ever where in the past.
My question about the picture above.....
What if the little stick men wanted to go into the tall grass ? Then the check and the X would have to be swapped.
Guess the moral of the story is don't drop in to a place you think it might be safe....there might be gators in the tall grass waiting to eat you. Then again, if your intel buddies did not do their job.......the safe open place might be quicksand.
Always more to a story than meets the eye. Intel is always a good thing.
well obviously the left illustration option is absurd in this case, it was optional if the people on board were peaceful and not terrorists. i say isarel should have been much more agressive in this case.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI
well obviously the left illustration option is absurd in this case, it was optional if the people on board were peaceful and not terrorists. the IDF should have been much more aggressive in this case.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI
Damn, I love the new israeli definition of terrorism. Its now resisting being boarded in international waters. Its just a few weeks since they shot and killed a pitchforkwielding 15 year old terrorist in the West Bank. I seem to remember an instance where the US crews fought off a somali boarding attempt and got greeted as heros. Seems like they should have been sent to Gitmo instead? (I know, I know, the somalis were not flying a flag. But still...)
Lets imagine a scenario where Iranian fastboats comandeered a US vessel in international waters.
@ ZAK: This was not a blockade of a sovereign nation. If the protestors were trying to dock in Israel they would then be trespassing on the territory of a sovereign nation. Gaza, and the waters around Gaza, however, are being illegally blockaded by Israel. The protestors were trying to get to Gaza, not Israel, ergo they weren't trespassing on sovereign territory. Simply claiming you have the right to block international waters doesn't make it so. Get your "facts" straight brother.
JC;
You might want to read the Oslo agreement before you comment on the status of Gaza and its ports.
@Visitor, Zak:
Yes, you can kill somebody with a steel pipe. But in fact, the ship's passengers didn't. And the video, at least what I've seen, isn't conclusive one way or another as to whether they were trying. For one thing, you can't even tell whether they are in fact using steel pipes, or lead pipes (as I've heard elsewhere), or, like, foam bats. All you can see of the weapons is that they're stick-like. The pictures posted by the Israeli MFA only show wooden sticks as far as I can see: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Behind+the+Headlines/Seizur... - plus a collection of knives and axes that I imagine you could find on any ship and whose use is not evident in the video. For anything truly definitive we'll probably have to wait for the raw video taken on board the ship, which means the passengers' cameras and cell phones. Let's see if Israel ever releases that...
Let's take a step back. If I was planning a "terrorist ambush" of a bunch of IDF commandos, I would not arm myself with a stick, or even a lead pipe. And self-defense is a very strange concept to apply to any activity by a person who has just boarded somebody else's ship, in international waters, without their permission, by sliding down, armed, from a helicopter.
How about Leftists and the IHH (Turkish "Aid" organization) organize a land flotilla to breach the Egyptian blockade of Gaza from their side (for the same reasons)?? Have fun with that. Prove it's not Antisemitism by being even handed.
I once saw the side of the Palestinians and thought there was a deal to be made. The second intifada and nine - one - oops can't bring it up back down the memory hole changed that.
Seriously. Go try this business with the Egyptians. Anyone left can proceed next to Burma. Stop off for practice in Iran.
Bullshit. It's good Bullshit and Bullshit with legs right now, but since everyone knows it's Bullshit the faux outrage will pass.
@JC
Except that the area is under an Arms embargo... and thus, just like the US Navy did in the Gulf, there is a "right to inspection" to look for arms, even in International waters.
But, as someone who used to do this for a living, the onscene Commander REALLY messed up. You NEVER board into the middle of a crowd... just plain dumb.
I'll be curious to see what the final score in the US is on this one... The lesson of the 1968 Chicago Riots is that if an opressed minority riots and can be seen to apparently endanger lives on TV, the average American will back the cops when shoot-to-maim and shoot-to-kill orders are issued (by Mayor Daley, in that case).
I also notice that AM chooses to use this action as an example of bad IO. He could also, of course, use a more personal example: in his first book (on serving with the 10th Mountain in Afghanistan) he alienated many Canadian soldiers by quoting one of his own soldiers making an accusation that Canadians were commiting war crimes. Feet of clay, and all that.
Im still wondering more and more on exactly who the 5-9 non-turks they killed were...
The Visitor above who replied to Zak on the question of "steel pipes" was me. Sorry.
@Elf: A thousand-plus people did, in fact, organize a sort of "land flotilla" to Gaza via Egypt, known as the Gaza Freedom March. A few people got into Gaza, most were stopped. In the process there were some substantial conflicts with Egyptian riot police, but no deaths. Viva Palestina, one of the main groups behind the recent flotilla, has also separately organized more than one land convoy through Egypt.
I'm sorry to have to debunk your hippie-killing fantasy, but it's been tested, and in these particular circumstances, the ("most moral army in the world!") IDF has acted more brutally than Mubarak.
Poor innocent peaceful enlightened Turkey. They're just deeply concerned with human rights. What an outrage!
This can't be the same Turkey that has the honor of attempting the world's first major genocide, murdering 1.5 million defenseless people from 1915~1918 while trying to exterminate all the Armenians in Turkey.
Can't possibly be the same Turkey that religiously "cleansed" itself over the last ~60 years, driving out millions of Christians (99+%) and stealing their property, then effectively outlawing perpetuation of the orthodox church for those who refused to leave, by banning education/ordination of priests.
No, it can't possibly be that Turkey. Must be the other Turkey, the one that's our "ally".
Poor innocent peaceful enlightened Turkey. They're just deeply concerned with human rights. What an outrage!
This can't be the same Turkey that has the honor of attempting the world's first major genocide, murdering 1.5 million defenseless people from 1915~1918 while trying to exterminate all the Armenians in Turkey.
Can't possibly be the same Turkey that religiously "cleansed" itself over the last ~60 years, driving out millions of Christians (99+%) and stealing their property, then effectively outlawing perpetuation of the orthodox church for those who refused to leave, by banning education/ordination of priests.
No, it can't possibly be that Turkey. Must be the other Turkey, the one that's our "ally".
russn8r: I think a few native americans, indians and zulus might say that in that case, we in the west should all commit suicide.? Belgian Congo was the first eal genocide in western history, btw. An amazing reduction in population.
Turkey is a NATO member. So is Germany. The war against the kurds has been dirty, but thats another matter. They have the right to oppose Israel like they do.
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