About taxis in Afghanistan

Via Facebook  (with fisking by Chuck in italics):

Tim Lynch: It's still easy to take taxi around Kabul and it has never been safe to pack fobbits into Rhinos and drive them anywhere.

A rhino is what I rode around in yesterday,very armored and FAR, Far safer than a taxi.  

Nothing will protect you from a big enough blast (ask the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki about that.)

They wouldn't have been stuck in traffic if ISAF had not closed half the roads in Kabul (to protect their compounds) forcing all the traffic on 2 main east/west routes.

Closing routes canalizes the enemy as well as friendly forces. You can't be everywhere at all times, so limiting enemy axis of approach is critical to restricting his freedom of maneuver.

We could have saved billions and many lives by not spending 2 billion a week on a massive force protection system that has 6758 points of failure.

No force protection (or defense) is 100% effective. A determined enemy will breach it. The larger the area to secure, the more points of failure. Force protection can only limit the effectiveness of an attack or slow the frequency/ease with which the enemy attacks.

The Fobbits should ride to the airport in cabs like all the other westerners - it's safer, cheaper by millions, and if one is hit you don't lose so many people.

The number of attacks, as well as kidnappings, would increase. Smaller IEDs would kill more people in individual attacks. Rule #1 with IEDs is YOU HAVE TO SURVIVE THE BLAST. Sure, the number of US troops killed/maimed in the attacks would be smaller, which is acceptable--unless that person is you.

Armored vehicles do not protect people - people protect people and if you have zero people outside the wire, inside the community and looking out for your interests this is what happens. And there will be more, lots more, because the military refuses to understand the crippling effects of force protection dominance over all other things when it comes to evaluating commanders.

If Armored vehicles don't protect people, why do we keep making them? Could it be that the armored vehicles actually do protect people? By your logic, we shouldn't wear body armor, either. My lonely right nut disagrees with your assessment.

And, as has been noted for the past 8 years, the American intelligence agencies have no human intelligence capability at all. None. Just the folks who walk into the Fobs on their own and who knows what their agenda is?

And Fire doesn't melt steel, either. If we've no HUMINT capability, how did we find bin Laden?