Category: South

The ever alert FRI regular commentators picked up on this tragedy in near real time. Last Tuesday morning an Army patrol opened fire on a bus on the main road between Kandahar and the large ISAF base just outside the city. They killed four Afghans which sparked protests inside Kandahar City. The NATO statement is pasted below:

NATO said the bus approached a slow-moving military patrol from the rear at a high speed. Troops opened fire after the driver ignored flares and other warnings including flashlights and hand signals  to slow down, NATO said in a statement. It confirmed four people were killed, adding the alliance “deeply regrets the tragic loss of life.”

I have a problem with the “flares and other warnings including flashlights and hand signals.” If a fast moving bus is approaching a slow moving convoy, how much time does the turret gunner have to make a shoot/no shoot decision?  Subtract the time it takes to bring the machine gun to bear on target and fire, which is 3 to 5  seconds, and I have a hard time seeing how he armed and fired a flare, then used his flashlight, then used hand signals (which would not have been visible in the pre-dawn gloom) in the 20 or so seconds it took for the bus to close with the convoy. When you read the news accounts, the statements by witnesses from the bus sound much more credible. They said they were just driving along when the Americans opened fire without warning.

I have been shot at three times, once by the Brits (American Embassy project vehicle put out of commission – downtown Kabul, spring of 2005), once by the American army (warning shots into the hillside while in a Japanese Embassy vehicle with diplomatic plates and a very senior passenger – downtown Kabul winter 2006), and once by the ANA (last Monday when they shot at a car right next to me that had nicked their fender in a gigantic traffic jam).  The common denominator of those shootings was the lack of warning.  The turret gunners suddenly got behind their weapons and I thought, “Holy shit, they are going to shoot,” and they did.

One of those shootings produced the best quote I have to date from my years here. My Japanese client, the Chief of Party for JICA, shook his head and said, “Tim san, I do no understand how your army beat us in World War II.”   I launched into a spirited defense of the Fleet Marine Force, but he cut me off to make a phone call.  I was very fond of Mr. N and he knew better than to try and ride out a Tim san rant. 

Last week the Taliban culminated a series of ineffective IED and rocket attacks on the population of Jalalabad with a bicycle bomb detonated in a swarm of children – a  weapon supposedly directed against the Americans, one which could never even dent an MRAP, but could slice through unprotected children.  This week our guys pulled a bonehead move – one of which I have blogged about many times before – the shooting of civilians by convoy turret gunners.  With the dynamics on the ground, our stupid moves are costing more then the Taliban’s stupid moves. The good people of Jalalabad were pissed off about the bike bomb, but not enough to stage a protest and shout “death to the Taliban.”

That is the critical dynamic with which to judge how the people feel about us and the assorted groupings of bad guys who cause them much more grief and hardship, in their reaction to loss of life through stupidity.  When people react with spontaneous outrage to Taliban killings, then we will know the tipping point is well behind us. Until then the best thing we could do is to limit the number of military vehicles we put on the road by stopping the “commute to work” mentality found on Big Army FOB’s and by removing turret gunners.   As I have pointed out about 100 times or so, the tactic of shooting at VBIED’s to stop them before they hit a convoy has never worked.   ISAF gunners have killed hundreds of civilians and never stopped a single suicide bomber.

This summer the big push for ISAF will be Kandahar City. The urban terrain there looks just like the picture above of downtown Jalalabad.  Although you would not know it from this week’s tragic shooting, the American military has considerable experience in urban counterinsurgency fighting. That was what the Iraq surge was all about – taking back the cities to halt ethnic cleansing while simultaneously peeling Al Qaeda away from the Sunni population. The big message from General Petraeus at that time was to stop commuting to the fight and establish fortified positions from which to control neighborhoods.

Last night there was another series of attacks in Kandahar City, two car bombs, both of which were targeting the international community.   A VBIED apparently penetrated into a compound shared by the Louis Berger Group and Chemonics – a large USAID implementing partner.   Reportedly, three internationals and three Afghans were killed in the blast which was huge – this was a well designed, powerful VBIED which are rare in Afghanistan.  Another small IED detonated last night in Jalalabad very close to the site of last week’s bicycle bomb; it caused no damage or casualties because it was an act of intimidation.  I should say another failed attempt of intimidation because the local people really could give a damn about these nuisance attacks which, for all we know, could be (as E2 observed in the comment section) directed at Governor Sherzai.

What is happening in Jalalabad and Kandahar are two completely different events.  Jalalabad is experiencing a rash of small scale incidents designed to minimize casualties (with the notable exception of last week’s bike bomb), which are having zero impact on the attitudes of the local population.   In Kandahar there is clearly a well organized campaign designed to preempt the impending ISAF operation focused on Kandahar.

Last night’s attack in Kandahar was the third attack on an aid organization operating in the south in the last month. Two of these attacks targeted large compounds with multiple layers of security, the attempted attack on IRD in Lashkar Gah last month failed. The attack last night on Louis Berger did not.   By successfully targeting international aid workers, the bad guys are able to slow down and in some cases stop the “build” part of the “clear, hold, and build” tactic which is now the focus of ISAF.   By driving up the level of violence in Kandahar they can force ISAF and ANSF units to deploy into the city center without doing the methodical job of clearing street by street, erecting mobility obstacles to funnel all traffic into joint check points, conducting a census to establish who belongs where and who’s controlling the city. Thrusting units deep inside a hostile unstable city will dramatically increase the probability of another shooting event which ISAF can clearly not afford.

In the east things are not looking great either. The districts of Sherzad and Khogyani,  less than 20 miles away from the Taj, are under complete Taliban control. Our local nationals who are from villages in these district can no longer travel to their homes. Yesterday there was another small arms attack on the Jalalabad to Kabul road.  The attackers struck along the boundary which separates areas of responsibility between the French Army (Kabul Province) and American Army (Laghman Province), which resulted in only Afghan police responding to the attack while units of the Afghan Army were on holiday routine not 2 miles further down the road.   Make of that what you will, but enemy units that know how to work unit boundaries are demonstrating tactical competence.   As bad as things look in the south, all of it could change if we clear and hold Kandahar City and the major village complexes around the city while continuing to hold what the Marines have cleared in the Helmand Province. Driving out the forces sponsored by the Quetta Shura from their home provinces and keeping them out would be a devastating psychological blow to all the other bad actors   in the east and south east as well as a huge victory for Afghan people.

But here is the thing…..politics.   The linked article covers it pretty well.   What ISAF hopes to do is use international forces operating in conjunction with the Afghan Army to chase the Taliban out of the second largest city in the country. Simultaneously they want to replace the current racketeering-infected government with one which is recognized by Afghans as being more inclusive and less corrupt.  The first step in accomplishing that mission would seem to be removing Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai (AWK), from the scene which, apparently, is not going to happen. Instead, the military is going to attempt to work around and “contain” him. This is not because of his rumored association with the CIA, but because the military realizes it has no real knowledge of Kandahar’s mafia-influenced political scene and thus no ability to predict the ramifications of removing the guy perched at the very top.

ISAF wants to clear the city in a slow, deliberate, methodical fashion, spending lots of time in hopes of avoiding casualties. The Taliban appear to be trying to draw them into the city ahead of schedule and then bleed them.   If they are successful at inflicting casualties (and not even heavy casualties, just a few a day, a number which would have been irrelevant in past wars) then they will completely derail ISAF.   If that happens, RC South will want to throw the Marines into the fray and we’ll lose everything they have gained over the past 18 months in a bid to win Kandahar.   So we shall see. The way things look to me at the moment, the entire Afghanistan operation now depends on being successful at both eliminating the Taliban and the corrupt government from Kandahar. That is a difficult mission the military cannot accomplish alone.

I want to thank Amy Sun, the Fab Folk, and my kids Megan, Kalie and Logan for drumming up so much support for FRI’s run at this years Milbloggies award.   I also need to thank America’s First Sergeant at Castra Praetoria and Kanani Fong at The Kitchen Dispatch for their support for FRI’s first attempt at winning a milblog award.   For my readers who have not voted yet I’m about 20   down and can use some help (look for me in the “Veteran” category).   Vote early vote often – that is the Chicago Way.

The holding phase Operation Moshtarak in the Taliban infested area around Marjah has proven to be much more difficult than previous Marine operations in the Helmand Province. The clearing phase was successful despite problems with the new rules regarding artillery and air delivered ordnance. It is the holding phase  that is proving to be a problem. The Taliban still control most of the village hamlets and are exacting a heavy toll on local people who cooperate with the Marines or Afghan Government. The New York Times has a pretty good article on the problem here. The Marines have a limited number of options with which to deal with entrenched guerrillas. They did a good job of driving the Taliban underground. Their campaign against known Taliban leaders and fixers, which was conducted by the varsity SF guys was also very effective netting every named target on the Joint Prioritized Effects List (J-PEL) except one, who made it back to Pakistan despite being wounded. His code name is now Dr. Brydon.

Phase One of Operation Moshtarak went well. Now phase two is going to cost the Marines time, which is one of the three (time, ammunition, or manpower) most important combat commodities available to combat commanders. It seems to me that the only effective option would be to put “pseudo-operators” into the field just as the Selous Scouts did back in the 1970’s. False Flag Operations with Afghan fighters led by American Marines who look and operate like squads of Taliban roaming the countryside at night appeals to me. It would work too, but would take years to develop the American participants even if such a radical idea were every attempted.

As you read the NYT article on Marjah you note how important it is to get economic aid and cash money into the local economy. The lack of ability to successfully implement projects has been one of the biggest problems with the international community’s operations in Afghanistan. Nathan Hodge at the Danger Room blog wrote on this topic last February and described a possible solution.

Our success is driven by our M&E (monitoring and evaluation teams)  who conduct detailed planning followed by brief backs and inspections before going into the field. Our M&E teams operate independently of project management and their operational reports treated like classified information. They must have a cover story for use at Taliban checkpoints and that needs to be rehearsed and they need to be inspected to ensure they have nothing on their cell phones, cameras (cheap locally procured ones) in their wallets or pockets or bags which would in any way tie them to internationals. This is done to reinforce trade-craft plus it demonstrates to your Afghan team their safety is your priority.

There is another way of doing M&E that would required USG agencies to share satellite imagery and to access civilian programs like Goggle Earth from their SIPRnet accounts. After years of effort it appears that counter-bureaucrats inside the USG machine have successfully figured out how to make their products relevant in the challenging world of counterinsurgency stability operations.

Dr. Dave Warner from the Synergy Strike Force, which is loosely affiliated with the San Diego – Jalalabad Sister City foundation, itself loosely affiliated with the La Jolla Golden Triangle Rotary Club (I am not making this up) has been working the sharing issue with the National Geospacial Agency (NGA) for the past four years. The goal was access for collation of  Stability Operations partners to NGA imagery data. The problem turned out to be not classification but intellectual property rights. The commercial imagery provider had a “next view” licensing agreement with NGA which restricted distribution of the product to official users only but defining “official users” is always a complicated endeavor for any  Government agency. Yet the NGA management has started to chip away at the licensing agreement because they are paying a king’s ransom for the data and know they should be able to distribute it as they see fit.

NGA now has a site called DigitalGlobe RDOG Phase II which ISAF coalition implementation partners can access; write to them here to request imagery assistance.   These products are provided to qualified agencies free of charge.

This is White Intelligence which has a limited but useful role in Stability Ops. Check out the results of a poorly designed retaining wall/canal intake project on the Kunar River which has caused serious farm land erosion in the Bishud District of Nangarhar Province.

It is good to see success stories from large USG agencies like the National Geospacial Agency which are pushing the envelope to provide critical support without spending an extra dime of taxpayer money. That is the kind of mission focused production us taxpayers love to see (China too for that matter given the amount of our debt they are holding.) The products NGA provides may not be timely enough to solve all M&E requirements but it can clearly provide a lot of help in remote or contested areas.

I have been waiting for this; At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against counterinsurgency.   It was a matter of time before the losers in Washington DC and Kabul took their bureaucratic infighting   public by leaking to the press.  You send in the Marines, ask them to do a job nobody else has been successful doing, and what do they get?  A shank in the back.  My contempt for FOB-bound bureaucrats knows no limit, but at least the reporter presented a fair, easily understood accounting of the debate.   Not so for my boy Dexter “call it in” Filkins of the New York Times, which I will get to in a minute.     Check out this quote from the WaPo article on the Marines:

“We have better operational coherence with virtually all of our NATO allies than we have with the U.S. Marine Corps,” said a senior Obama administration official involved in Afghanistan policy.

Some senior officials at the White House, at the Pentagon and in McChrystal’s headquarters would rather have many of the 20,000 Marines who will be in Afghanistan by summer deploy around Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, to assist in a U.S. campaign to wrest the area from Taliban control instead of concentrating in neighboring Helmand province and points west. According to an analysis conducted by the National Security Council, fewer than 1 percent of the country’s population lives in the Marine area of operations.”

Are you kidding me?   Better operational coherence with NATO allies than our own Marine Corps?   ISAF would rather have the Marines redeploy to assist in the upcoming campaign for Kandahar?  Senior Obama Administration official airing out our dirty laundry to the press?   Stand by for a rant:

The 36 or so NATO countries operating in Afghanistan have in combination some 83 “caveats” which allow them to say “no” to any request from ISAF they do not feel like complying with.   Most of these “caveats” involve active combat and they read something like, “If you ask us to go outside the FOB and fight Taliban (especially at night) we will say no.”   This is why you have a NATO-staffed air base in Kandahar with over 20,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen, yet still not enough “boots on the ground” to deal with a growing insurgent threat.   The idea that the Marines have to move into the Kandahar area “because that is where the population is” makes as much sense as the Vietnam era debate about forcing the Marines into the Da Nang “rocket belt”.  It was a stupid idea then, and it is a stupid idea now.   Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan and if there is to be a fight for the city, it is best done with Afghan forces in the lead, not the Marines.   The Afghan Security Forces launched a huge operation over the winter of 2008 to bring the rule of law into Kandahar, which seemed to calm the place down for a bit.   All they need to do now is replay that operation and stay on the ground when the operation is over.

The Marines have demonstrated that it is possible to do COIN in Afghanistan and they have a huge advantage.  They own all the aircraft, armor, and combat service support they need to operate.  When they work in areas where tanks or AAV’s are not effective, they dismount the Marines from those units and use them as infantry.  The Marines were forced to operate as independent battalions working for the Army back in 2004/2005 in the Kunar Province.  That story is told in the excellent book Victory Point by Ed Darack.  I encourage you to read it.  Pay particular attention to the loss of the SEAL team during operation Red Wings.  Had the SEALs let the Marines handle the mission they had planned, or executed the mission the way the Marines planned it, they would have avoided losing almost  an entire team (the surviving team member wrote the book Lone Survivor).    The men from SEAL Team 10 were compromised on insert that day – clearly lady luck turned her head on these guys.  But when you read how and why  that mission came about you will learn why the Marines will not allow themselves to be parcelled out and left to the tender mercies of other services.  So, they are executing their assigned missions like Marines do, and it is making the other services look bad.  To which I say too bad.

I need to add this; the Marines are not alone in the Helmand.  They have plenty of American Army, Air Force, Navy, Brits, Canadians, and a French infantry officer who snuck over with the 2nd Marines (he is apparently an exceptional talent and the de facto S3 alpha for RCT 2) working with them.  Col Kennedy told me he has a couple of Army SF A teams in his AO and both of them are absolutely first rate, constantly outside the wire, constantly working with the locals, and frequently involved in big fights where they are always outnumbered and out-gunned yet they never lose.  He loves his SF teams and, therefore, I love them too.   I am sorry Lara Logan did not spend 3 months with them, because  her story on 60 minutes would not have been so damn embarrassing for the SF community, and I would not have gotten so much hate mail for blogging it.

The Marines are in the Helmand because that is where the Army leadership who runs the war sent them.   The Marines are sitting in Marjah because that is the key terrain for the drug trade, which fuels a good portion of the conflict.   They are sitting on the goose which lays the golden poppy eggs and “anonymous sources” now want them to move into the Kandahar area because the 20,000 troops they have there cannot manage to get off their asses and outside the wire?   Nothing brings out the long knives like success… here is another example.

New York Times ace reporter  Dexter Filkins assisted by one Mark Mazzetti came out with a piece titled “Contractors tied to effort to track and kill militants“. The story is about two of the biggest anti-military   jackasses produced by the war on terror – Canadian “journalist” Robert Pelton and former CNN executive Eason Jordon.  They apparently lost a DoD contract due to total lack of performance.   I took the piss out of Pelton last year while reinforcing Old Blue at Afghan Quest because of the completely uncalled for ridicule Pelton dumped on a Lieutenant who did not measure up to Pelton’s “man of action” paradigm.   Now that whining shitbird is complaining that, We were providing information so they could better understand the situation in Afghanistan, and it was being used to kill people.   Bullshit – that is complete nonsense.   Why would anyone in their right mind give Pelton millions of dollars to set up a web site?  If he did set up a website (I don’t think that he did – that part is unclear) how would he know who was doing what with the crap information he put on it?  And if he somehow did come up with anything of worth, why did his contract get cancelled?   But the story gets better,  Filkins did not rely exclusively on Pelton – he got lots of collaboration from the CIA station chief in Kabul who apparently is feeling serious heat from some sort of “contractor” run program.   My favorite action/thriller author Brad Thor took apart this bogus story today on the Big Journalism site – read it here – sour grapes of wrath indeed.

Dexter and his NYT chums need to start doing real reporting and stop phoning in bullshit from malcontents like Pelton and some loser CIA station chief.   Here is an example; On Afghan Road Scenes of Beauty and Death, which Dexter wrote last month.   I let this one pass when it was published, but now I am pissed so let me perform a 30 second critique.   I have driven that road maybe 500 times in the last five years.   I drove it before it was even paved and feel I am in the position to correct some of the crap phoned in from by our celebrity reporter… ready?  Well hold on a second, you have to read the article linked above so my hasty critique makes sense.   OK.   Ready?

1. The “Kabul Gorge” is west of Sarobi, centered on the Mahpar Pass; what you labeled as the gorge is in reality the Tangi valley.   Tangi is Dari for “dam” and every valley downstream of a dam is called the “Tangi Valley” which is why there are about 30 of them around the country.
2. When the British Army withdrew from Kabul in 1842 they went through the Latabad Pass, which is about 7 miles west of the Mahipar Pass.   The current Jbad to Kabul road did not exist back in the 1800’s.
3. It is impossible for vehicles to reach high rates of speed required to “sail through the air”  when driving through the town of Sarobi.   It is too crowded, with too many turns, and the ANP would not tolerate that kind of recklessness anyway.   I have seen plenty of bad accidents on the Jbad to Kabul road, but never seen or heard of one inside the village limits of Sarobi.

Do you see how easy it is to recognize BS when you are not confined to FOB’s or luxury hotels Dexter?   The reason I am so upset about the reckless CIA article is it describes operators with backgrounds and experience similar to the several thousand of us internationals who work and live outside the wire.   Everyone of us now has a big bulls-eye on our backs.   Guess what happened yesterday?   An international NGO compound in Lashkar Gah was attacked by two gunmen who had a slew of hand grenades, AK 47’s and one well-designed and constructed suicide vest.   The NGO in this compound ran a popular agriculture project and were not involved in poppy eradication or road building – two activities which normally run afoul of the Taliban.   Let me make this perfectly clear: it is highly probable that one or more innocent internationals who works outside the wire is going to be targeted and killed because Dexter is carrying water for dumb-as-dirt CIA man and a Canadian shitbird.   If I sound like I am pissed off, I am – we now have to dedicate scarce resources which should be going to Afghan reconstruction for counter-surveillance, we need to switch up cars, we now need to vary our movement patterns, and we need to avoid the FOB’s.   No more workouts, no more pecan pie and ice cream and a lot more risk because some New York slimy dirtbag is phoning in horseshit in his quest for Pulitzer dust.

Now for an interesting outside the wire story.   On 24 February Panjawaii Tim was called to the Kandahar PRT to see if he could help mitigate the damage caused by flooding to the irrigation system of northern Kandahar Province.   Knowing why he was going, he called the USAID official in Kabul who adminsters the cash for work program Tim and company are implementing to see if he could free up some cash for a massive emergency project.   The AID official immediately gave him permission – to the credit of USAID they do work with incredible speed when they have a vehicle in place which is proving successful.   Tim arrived at the PRT and was asked how soon he could get workers to clear 36 canals of an estimated 600,00 cubic meters of silt and debris.   The conversation went  something like this:

PRT SgtMaj (Canadian Army):  “When can you get started, eh?”

Tim: “Tomorrow, eh?”

SgtMaj: “No, Tim, I mean when can you really get started, eh?”

Tim: “Tomorrow SgtMaj no shit, eh?”

As promised Team Canada was on the job the next day. Yet they still had to deal with senior guys from other agencies who seemed to be upset by the speed at which they got a massive project off the ground.   Every day Team Canada expats are out in the bad lands performing the time intensive task of monitoring and evaluation.   As usual, they travel in local garb without armored vehicles or armed PSC escorts (PSC gunmen raise your profile, which increases risk for very little gain in security).   They did not have to do this job, they are not paid more cash for taking this additional risk, they could have said no and saved themselves hundreds of man hours of additional work for which (I need to stress this point) they receive not one penny of additional compensation.  Team Canada is comprised of mission-focused former Canadian soldiers who look upon these dangerous tasks as yet another opportunity to perform.  That is what military men are raised to do – accomplish any and all assigned missions to the best of their ability.  You would think for doing this they would receive at least a hearty handshake and an ata boy, not a ration of shit from senior bureaucrats who could not manage to do the same no matter how much time and money is thrown at them.

The Marines have found a way to do COIN while avoiding the increasing threat from IED’s by getting off the FOB’s, out of the MRAP’s and patrolling on foot the areas they have cleared.   A senior DOD official has found a way to provide critical intelligence which our 16 or so national intelligence agencies cannot get from their FOB-bound operatives. Team Canada, ably assisted by USAID managers in Kabul, are able to immediately start work on restoring a critical irrigation system in the dangerous Kandahar Province while putting 5,600 military aged unemployed males to work.   What is the common thread in these stories?   The long knives coming out to stab these able, hard-working, mission-focused guys right in the back.  Mission-focused people and organizations specialize in getting things done with speed and efficiency.  Bureaucrats focus on process, procedures, their individual careers and guarding rice bowls.  Nothing upsets bureaucrats more than success by anti-bureaucrats who work the system to achieve the results they are unable to deliver.

And let me insert a word about “contractors”.  Team Canada, Mullah John, Raybo and their colleagues are the Marines of the current reconstruction effort.  There are a few thousand men and women outside the wire getting the job done, despite the myriad of difficulties which all of us work through everyday.  But to mainstream media and the do-nothing bureaucrats who infest the FOBs and Kabul Embassies, “contractors” are de facto scum bags.  Let me insert this cool paragraph from a column posted by Ed Gillespie today on National Review online which has nothing to do with what  I’m ranting about but is connected to the targets of my scorn:

“Thus, it should come as no surprise that in films and on television, trial lawyers are cast as virtuous crusaders while American soldiers are bloodthirsty villains or hapless victims. University professors are almost always noble and underpaid, corporate CEOs corrupt and overpaid. Wealth is only inherited, never created, and people are poor only because they were born that way, never because of bad decisions or behavior. Conservative politicians are usually unbearable hypocrites, people of faith are for comic relief, and our environment is under constant assault by capitalism’s wantonly wasteful ways.”

The legacy media, just like their elitist fellow travelers in Hollywood have constructed a preferred narrative about contractors based on a few bad examples and their own inherently biased world view.  Their callous disregard for those of us who accept the risk to get important work done is disgusting.  They could give a shit if their agenda-driven screeds lead directly to the deaths of brave men and women who demonstrate more courage and commitment daily than they will in a lifetime.  Do you believe that Pelton or Filkins, or Eason Jordon (what the hell kind of name is Eason anyway?) or that fat ass know-nothing CIA station chief would double their work load and triple their level of risk for no additional compensation?  Would they even consider it?  Of course not…they probably think Team Canada is a bunch of rubes … and in turn I think they are a crew of elitist scumbags who lack courage, commitment, and personal honor.

I remain optimistic about our chances for success in Afghanistan, but as Mullah John remarked after reading my post about the 2nd Marines, “Optimism is a sign that you are not fully aware of the situation.”   He said that in jest (I think) because he likes being clever.  The three stories above lead me to believe John isn’t clever, he is clairvoyant.

My morning email contained a heads up from Mullah John who is home on R&R. 60 Minutes had broadcast a show on the American Special Forces last night and the segment was “disheartening” to quote the good Mullah. After watching it I was left speechless – it was worse then “disheartening,” it was awful. It is hard to know what to say when you see stuff like this but not knowing what to say has never stopped me before so here it goes….

The segment was called “The Quiet Professionals” which of course is a great name for an organization that invites 60 Minutes for a two month embed. Hit the link above to see the piece, because I doubt anyone reading this blog caught it when it aired last night on CBS. It appears to be a 13 minutes of Lara flirting with SF dudes or as a commenter on the CBS website noted about Lara’s narration “It’s like listening to a child explain black holes.”

Of course the segment has all the annoying crap one associates with Special Forces – only use first names, wearing sunglasses to “protect their identity” and digitized faces for all the Americans not wearing sunglasses. Does anyone believe that the Taliban is going come to America and hunt these guys down some day? Of course not but the Taliban routinely hunt down ANA Commandos in their home villages but none of them have their faces digitized or identities hidden. Why?

The 60 Minutes crew caught three shootings on film which are all in the segment. The first victim was one of the SF team leaders who was shot during a raid by one of the Afghan soldiers they are training. The second shooting was an Afghan Commando who shot himself in the foot during another raid. The final shooting was committed by a member of the SF team who shot two children who were sitting in the back of a vehicle that was approaching a village where the rest of the team was “catching an important Taliban commander.” He was shooting at an approaching vehicle with a suppressed weapon to warn it to stop… great thinking, but we’ll get to that and a recent shooting of an imam in Kabul last week later.

Everything the “Quiet Professionals” did in this story was (to me) suspect, from shooting at targets down range while Afghans are standing right next to the targets, to screaming obscenities at them, calling them “fucktards” and inflicting group punishment because they couldn’t master the “load, unload” drill, which I know from experience your average 11 year old can master in little under an hour of professional instruction.

Want to know something our ‘elite’ SF guys don’t seem to know? Afghans don’t cuss. To call an Afghan a motherfucker (a word used frequently in every conversation in the American military) is a grave insult that would, in the local context, need to be atoned by blood. I cannot stress this point enough and if, during my frequent forays into the tribal bad lands, I used that word even in jest I would have been killed long ago. One of the secrets that I and my fellow outside the wire expats use in the contested areas is respect for local culture coupled with big confident smiles;  that’s why we are able to do what every USG expert contends cannot be done.

I could go through this piece point by point, harping on quotes like wearing beards is “a mark of respect among the locals”  which nonsense but why bother? The piece speaks for itself so let’s get back to this shooting business.

Let me set this up; one of the SF team along with an ANA soldier is pulling security on the road leading into a village where the rest of the team is looking for a ‘high value target’ (HVT in mil speak). When an old truck rumbles down the road towards him the SF guy fires ‘warning shots’ from his rifle which has a suppressor on it. When he runs up to the truck he discovers there were two young boys in the back and he had shot them both.

What should the guy have done when a truck load of males is approaching at “high speed” on the rutted bumpy dirt road leading into the village? He should have done what we do – walk out to the road with a big friendly smile, hold up your hand, have them stop and then tell them to sit tight until the Americans are done. It is that simple – the biggest weapon us Americans have in Afghanistan is a warm smile and the ability to at least say “Tsenga Ye?” (“How are you?” in Pashto). I have been in this exact situation about 100 times over the years and so viewed this incident with no small amount of disgust.

What if the truck is full of Taliban? That’s what binoculars are for. A truck full of bad guys is a target easily defeated by two riflemen who are weapons free and waiting for them within hand grenade range. They are in a truck and can’t use their weapons effectively until they are out of the truck. In other words they would be sitting ducks. That is not true if they stop at some distance away and deploy from the truck which is the Taliban MO. But the truck in this instance didn’t do that – it just drove down the dirt road as fast as the dirt road allowed until the kids in the back started screaming and a crazy American popped out of a treeline and started running towards them. The driver is not going to hear shots fired from a suppressed weapon so until he sees something to make him stop the firing suppressed warning shots tactic is pointless.

There is one more aspect to this story which I find deeply disturbing as a military professional. The SF guy whacks a 14 year old kid dead center in the chest with his main battle rifle from less than 50 yards away and when he runs up to the vehicle the kid pops up and starts giving him shit about it? What the hell kind of main battle rifle are we using these days? Don’t get me wrong; I was pleased to see the child survived, as was the guy who shot him, and everyone else involved. But when you shoot someone in the chest with a military grade rifle then that someone is supposed to go down and stay down. Whatever cartridge, barrel length, and suppressor combination that team is using is obviously less than adequate. They should be carrying 7.62×51 mm rifles. If they can all press twice their body weight then they can handle a few extra pounds of proper battle rifle and ammo. They also can probably handle the strain of carrying binoculars too – killing children is bad on morale especially when you could avoid shooting them using standard infantry techniques like making friend or foe determinations with binoculars.

Better yet they may want to consider slowing down enough to issue a proper raid order with brief backs and inspections. You have to be a 10th degree ninja master to pull a two man covering element job by standing in the middle of the road day dreaming about Lara Logan which is how this unfortunate incident started.

Which brings us to the latest bad news from Kabul; the shooting of an important imam who was in his car with a bunch of his children when a convoy driving down Jalalabad road shot him dead. He reportedly failed to slow down when approaching the convoy which is the standard story you hear from ISAF every time they shoot up a car load of civilians. I think the body count is well over 600 at this point and not one of these unfortunates did anything unusual by Afghan driving standards. You can read about that here.

Here is the thing – I can’t think of any incidence in which a suicide bomber blew himself up in Afghanistan with passengers in the vehicle. I also can’t think of a single incident in Afghanistan in which a military gunner successfully stopped a suicide bomber from driving into his convoy. This escalation of force was senseless. I can recall examples when gunners have been killed leaning out of their cupolas exposed while trying to engage suicide VBIED drivers while the rest of their crew survived the explosion. They would not have been killed had they ducked down inside their armored vehicle.

I am as fond of brave fighting men as the next guy and admire the courage those kids showed trying to protect their fellow soldiers. But the escalation of force tactics currently being used are stupid and should be changed immediately. What happened in Kabul is murder – you can not justify shooting a driver who has a car load of children under any circumstance. We have too much history here and should know what a VBIED looks like – this shooting is just as stupid as the shootings involving Italians in Herat last summer, or the Blackwater guys in Kabul last spring.

When you live behind walls everything on the other side of those walls is a threat. When you isolate your forces from the population you are supposed to “protect,” then your forces have no ability to distinguish friend from foe; threat from normal routine or the good from the bad. Gen McChrystal can gob on all he wants about the importance of “COIN” and, “getting to know the people” blah blah blah…. it doesn’t matter because he sets the operational rules here and under his rules no conventional American troops can leave a FOB unless they have at least four MRAPS and 16 riflemen. How are you supposed to, “protect the people” if you can only roll around in large road-bound convoys? How can you, “protect the people” if every night all your people have to be back on the big box FOB’s eating ice cream and pecan pie?

These SF guys are supposed to be the ones who know how to operate outside the big bases with the local population but did you notice where they are living? On a big box FOB; isolated and removed from their Afghan charges – which was obvious because none of them spoke a word of Dari or Pashto. My children can get through formal greetings in both Pashto and Dari and they were here for just a few months – it’s just not that hard to learn these things when you live in the local environment. Those SF teams should be out here free ranging with guys like The Bot, Mullah John, Panjiwai Tim and myself. They are good troops being poorly served by commanders who keep them isolated and removed from the people they are supposed to be protecting. They will never be able to gain the situational awareness required to do real COIN if they remain confined to the Big Box FOBs. That is the real story, and as usual CBS missed it.

The string of failures starting with the Jihadi attack on Fort Hood by an American Army Major, followed by the fiasco of incompetence demonstrated by multiple agencies in the Christmas Day undie bomber attempt, followed by the CIA FOB Chapman attack were huge strikes.   Three strikes, but nobody is out because that is the nature of bureaucracies.   The only time large bureaucracies hold individuals accountable for major failures is when they can pin the blame squarely on a junior member – that is the way it is.

Major General Michael T. Flynn, USA has followed up his blunt criticism of the intelligence portion of our Afghan operations with a solid paper, co authored by Captain Matt Pottinger, USMC, and Paul Batchelor of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), on making   intelligence relevant in Afghanistan.   These men are at the forefront of the counterbureaucracy battle fighting against the tide of mediocrity that has defined our military efforts to date.   I am compelled to point out that the picture on the cover of an Army general officer who is engaging some key elders while wearing body armor, helmet, SUNGLASSES, and with a rifle strapped to his chest is illustrative of exactly how not to conduct COIN.   I don’t know if that was done  on purpose or not, but the last thing a general officer should be doing is showing up in his Ivanhoe armor and a rifle strapped to his chest to talk with local leaders.   No body armor, no helmet, no  rifle, and certainly no sunglasses is how a senior leader demonstrates calm, trust in his men, and physical courage in this environment.   My kids who have spent months at a time here could tell you that.

The Flynn paper defines the problems plaguing our efforts with insight and clarity.   The authors describe the efforts of several battalions who have gotten it right.   They focus on the 1st Battalion 5th Marines, who after clearing   Nawa of Taliban focused on identifying local centers of gravity which they could influence to improve the security situation on the ground for the local Afghans.   This is an important distinction – they focused on making the environment safe for the people, not for them, which in the context of Afghanistan military operations is not the norm.   ISAF forces focus their effort on “red” incidents not “white” information.   Red incidents mean IED strikes, which is to say the entire effort of most units is to find and kill IED syndicates, so they can drive around in their MRAPS without losing people.   White information is all about the human terrain on the ground, i.e. who is in charge of what, what are the major concerns of the people, what factors are degrading security for the average Afghan etc…     White information can only be gained by sustained contact with the local population which is exactly what 1/5 did when they settled into Nawa after clearing out the Taliban.

Faced with rifle companies spread thinly on the ground and without access to buildings, computers, internet, or even reliable electricity, the Marines adapted by spreading their intelligence thinly and tasking the rifle companies to provide the atmospherics needed to gain an understanding of exactly what was impacting the local population so they could deliver security customized to the needs of the Afghan villagers.   In a summer which saw a dramatic increase in casualties from IED’s countrywide, the Marines of 1/5 drove down the IED incident rate to zero.   The local people actually chased off Taliban IED teams themselves.   That is nothing less than astounding.   There were similar successes posted by American Army battalions which are highlighted in the paper too.   But I have to add that kind of success cannot last forever in an active insurgency – there were loses in Nawa this week to IED’s.

This white paper is full of good things but all good things must come to an end and at the end of this paper there are no good things which I can detect.   As the new Obama surge comes into the theater it  will bring with it massive new headquarters – a MEF forward for the Marines and an airborne divisional headquarters for the Army.   Of the 30,000 additional troops thrown into this fight, at least 5,000 of them will be found in these two headquarters units alone.   Adding layers of additional bureaucracy to the already bloated, essentially useless staffs here now will render the immanently reasonable suggestions contained in Gen Flynn’s paper moot.   Which brings us back to the consistent pattern of failure which defines the Central Intelligence Agency, The Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Council.   Eric Raymond at the Armed and Dangerous blog defines the problem succinctly:

“When I look at the pattern of failures, I am reminded of something I learned from software engineering: planning fails when the complexity of the problem exceeds the capacity of the planners to reason about it. And the complexity of real-world planning problems almost never rises linearly; it tends to go up at least quadratically in the number of independent variables or problem elements.

I think the complexifying financial and political environment of the last few decades has simply outstripped the capacity of our educated classes, our cognitive elite, to cope with it. The wizards in our financial system couldn’t reason effectively about derivatives risk and oversimplified their way into meltdown; regulators failed to foresee the consequences of requiring a quota of mortgage loans to insolvent minority customers; and politico-military strategists weaned on the relative simplicity of confronting nation-state adversaries thrashed pitifully when required to game against fuzzy coalitions of state and non-state actors.”

There are few things in the world more complex than the  web of Islamic extremist organizations currently at war with the governments and peoples of the west.   One of those things  that is more complex is the situation we now face in Afghanistan.   We are supporting Afghan government officials who may or may not be more of a problem then the Taliban, we are trying to engage the population based on tribal affiliations which are not always clear or relevant, and we are identifying, targeting and killing “commanders” who have proven to be easily replaced.   William McCallister, in an interview by Stephen Pressfield does the best job of defining the complexities of the Afghan human terrain:

“Tribal identities exist in Afghanistan, but local communities and interest groups may not necessarily organize themselves based on these identities. Individuals tend to define themselves in terms of a group identity. A qawm, or solidarity group, is a collection of people that act as a single unit, which  is organized on the basis of some shared identity, system of values, beliefs and or interests. It can describe a family group or reflect a geographical area. It can specify a group of people united by a common political or military goal under one jang salar or martial leader. Members of a village; the inhabitants of a valley; a warlord and his retainers; a strongman and his followers; a bandit and his forty thieves, or the local chapter of the Taliban are all aqwam (plural).”

Afghanistan is a complex place where the situation on the ground can range from actively hostile to completely benign depending on the district, valley, town our isolated village.   An intelligence system designed to collect against a peer level threat with its associated defense, intelligence and political structures is not the optimal organization to employ in the counterinsurgency environment.   Add to that system layers and layers of additional bureaucracy and the results are a system designed to fail.   This comment from FRI regular E2 paints a bleak picture for the intelligence specialists assigned to the FOB’s.

“I read MG Flynn’s paper as well, and while he makes some excellent points, he failed to mention that part of the reason our intelligence sucks is that all our collectors are mostly stuck on the FOB.   That’s why we’ve become so hooked on technical intelligence. The kind of relevant intelligence that Flynn yearns for comes from meaningful interaction with the populace, period.   In my experience with Afghans, especially Pashtuns, if you suddenly roll up into their village with your MRAPs, Star Ship Trooper suits, and “foreign” interpreters (even if your terp is from Afghanistan, if he’s not from the neighborhood, he’s “foreign”), they will tell you two things: jack and sh*t.   We are reminded constantly that Afghanistan is a country broken by decades of war; no one trusts one another.   But trust is only obtained by building meaningful relationships with people, and our current force protection policies make the process of building rapport impossible.   As I sit here at my desk, on an unnamed FOB in Regional Command East, I would dearly love to grab a few of my soldiers and head out to the local market to see what’s going on in town today.   Perhaps I could report back to my leadership that local farmers are concerned about a drought next year because of the light snowfall this winter, or that the mullah down the street is preaching anti-coalition/government propaganda.   I’d get this information from shop keepers and kids that I’ve built a relationship with over the past few months.   But I cannot just walk off the FOB because that would be the end of my career. Instead, I’m going to check out BBC.com, call a couple guys I know like Tim, and continue to be disgruntled that I have NO idea what’s going on outside my FOB.”

Now here is the thing – as poor an effort as we seem to be making there are more then a few places where district level governance is developing into an effective effort.   I am almost certain that back in late 1986 the Soviets had won the Afghan War.   They were already committed to pulling out by then and nobody was really assessing the situation on the ground with an eye towards staying.   But as often happens in a counterinsurgency war, they had won, but did not know it.   I mention that only because it is impossible to say with certainty just how good or how bad we are doing in Helmand or Kunar or Paktia.   The only meaningful measurements are found at the district level which means sustained engagement.   If we can get off the FOB’s and do that….who knows?   I bet that when the tipping point comes we will not see it.   If ISAF can adapt by decentralizing their forces off the FOB’s and hardening in every district center it will change the trajectory of this war.

The pending Afghanistan election is heating up. The main challenger Abdullah Abdullah has suffered three attacks in three days on different offices around the country and one of his senior aides claimed that if Karzai won they would take up their rifles and fight in the streets of Kabul.   The other serious challenger, Ashraf Ghani   (a Columbia graduate and   a dual citizen of  Afghanistan and America) has hired on the Little Dog James Carvelle (he whines too much to be a big dog and no Afghan  understands a word he says due to speed, pitch, volume and ludicrous content)  over here working for him.   The Raging Cajun has been babbling something about change, or it’s the economy, or whatever the locals have no idea what he is trying to say so the TV anchors smile politely and say the foreigner said interesting things and he helped elect Bill Clinton.   Afghans are mesmerized by Bill Clinton they cannot believe he got on international TV and cried over something as trivial as forcing a subordinate to perform a sex act on him.   The public crying thing is what they cannot get over but then he remained in office acting as if the whole thing had never happened.that is a very Afghan thing to do.   The MSM was dead wrong to call him our first Black President he was our first Afghan president and the fire sale of presidential pardons he had at the end of his term (aided and abetted by our current Attorney General) proves it.

ISAF is focused on election security which is what the mini surge brigades have also been tasked to facilitate.   The UN and many of the local NGO’s are also focused on the election and are spring loaded to immediately displace to Dubai at the first sign of instability or general unrest.   Wild rumors swirl around the clusters of outside the wire expats about potential problems, advancing Taliban, the cutting off of the booze supply (we’re good at the Taj) riots at the polls etc.. and they are very nervous.   The Afghans are not, in fact they are more concerned with the coming summertime Ramadan.   Ramadan is something in which the boys take great pride in enduring but they get surly and bitchy about it.   I think it is going cold turkey with the cigarettes that gets to them the most but the length of the day and heat it’s going to suck and the smart expat goes home for a month if he can.

I have never claimed to be smart so I am sticking it out to the bitter end like a man.   Good thing too because it is turning out to be an interesting summer.   This week the press reported that the Taliban have released their very own rules of engagement which when you read them appear quite sensible.   Thirteen chapters, containing 67 articles with pearls of wisdom like; “Every Muslim can invite anyone working for the slave government in Kabul to leave their job, and cut their relationship with this corrupt administration. If the person accepts, then with the permission of the provincial and district leadership, a guarantee of safety can be given.”   If Mullah Omar and his Shura actually controlled the various groups of armed combatants who operate under the Taliban flag I would be worried.   But he doesn’t and the new Taliban ROE is just another demonstration that the Taliban can do Information Warfare much better than ISAF can.

There are also press reports from the new Commanding Generals soon to be released assessment of what needs to be done to win in Afghanistan.   Here are the money quotes.

The biggest change urged in McChrystal’s report is a “cultural shift” in how U.S. and foreign troops operate — ranging from how they live and travel among the Afghan population to where and how they fight, a senior military official in Kabul said Friday.

Using intelligence less to hunt insurgents and more to understand local, tribal and social power structures in the areas where they operate. McChrystal is considering concentrating troops around populated areas rather than going after sparsely populated mountain areas where Taliban hide.

Getting troops more active in fighting corruption. U.S. forces will need to take care in their dealings with local Afghan leaders to ensure that they are not perceived by the Afghan population to be empowering corrupt officials.

This sounds familiar and people like me who have been saying this for years would be heartened were it not for the fact that it is complete nonsense.   Based on years of “effects based” observations (actions speak louder than words)   the priorities of the US Armed Forces in Afghanistan are as follows;

1. Force Protection
2. Health, comfort and welfare of the troops
3. Protecting the careers and reputations of senior officers
4. Getting ahead of the curve in submitting documentation for awards and medals
5. Accounting for all the extra money and equipment every unit receives to accomplish their mission here.

There is no way one General officer can conduct a cultural shift in the American military. Especially when it comes to how they live and travel amongst the Afghan population.   And Gen McChrystal has admitted as much check out the quote from him I found on the Abu Muqawama blog;

Q.  Is the lonely fire base in the mountains fighting Taliban a thing of the past? Are you pulling out to get . . .

McChrystal:  In some cases it might be — in some cases. Some it might not be. If the population is in the valley, sometimes putting the small fire base in the mountains accomplished the ability to accomplish security for the population. What I don’t think you will see as much of is big unit sweeps or operations where you sweep them, then come out. Historically it doesn’t work, but almost every counterinsurgency tries it and relearns the lesson.

I suspect that after rigorous analysis and thousands of PowerPoint slides it will turnout that in all cases the fire base on the hill, isolated from the population, will be the way we accomplish security for the population. the price for separating our forces from the people is that we must deal through the Afghan political leaders, all of whom are Karzai appointees, which means we are perceived by the Afghan population to be empowering corrupt officials because we are empowering corrupt officials. I don’t even want to think about the “fighting corruption” comment.   Given the way our current administration is running if we wanted to “fight corruption” the place to begin would be back in Washington DC (using the ballot box as our constitution mandates.)

But one can hope and for me that hope rests with the United States Marines.   I am writing once again from Camp Leatherneck, and at the risk of irritating a few of my loyal readers, feel compelled to make a few observations.   The first of which is that there were two brigades sent here as part of the “mini surge” the Marine Brigade and a Stryker Brigade from Fort Lewis Washington.   The 5th Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division is trained and ready according to what I can find on the net…just one question?   Where the hell are they?

Here is something which most of you probably do not know.   Last December there was no 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.   Gen Nicholson and Eric Mellinger found out they were going to form the 2nd Brigade around the 15th of December 2008.   The Marine Corps is not big enough to have standing brigades instead they train and fight as task organized units.   The Marines will change up their task organization while deployed and in contact as the situation dictates which is something we have been practicing in live fire exercises in 29 Palms California for the past 40 or so years.   General Nicholson and Eric had to build their MEB and that involved some serious cherry picking from around the Corps (Eric did a tour as the ground monitor so as a member of the Manpower Mafia he has great insight as to who he could steal and how to get them reassigned.)   The maneuver battalions assigned to the MEB come from both the east and west coast and are organic to both the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions which is typical of task organized combat formations – all the senior officers and enlisted SNCO’s know each other anyway – fighting for an East Coast or West Coast MEB makes little difference to them.

We had a mini surge scheduled to help out during the 2009 fighting season and to also help out with security during the Afghan presidential elections.   The Marines – who did not even have units assigned to this task until about 8 months ago have stood up, trained, certified, and deployed a 10,000 man brigade.   That brigade has arrived in Afghanistan, sorted itself out, and launched into the field a month ago where they took the Helmand River Valley away from the Taliban and where they have stated they intend to stay. The Army contingent who is supposed to be around Spin Boldak is, as far as I can determine, still in the United States.     They are a real Brigade which was formed years ago yet have still not made it to the fight – how the hell does that happen?

I do not know how the Marines are setting up in these forward areas they have taken nor how they are interacting with the local population.   I suspect that when I do get a chance to see for myself what I will find is not isolated combat outposts (COP’s) from which the troops fight but seldom venture.   The reason I say that is because fighting that way is stupid it costs men, material, and lots of money for which nothing is gained.

But that has been how ISAF has been operating.   This article covers a recent report from the British   House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee about Afghanistan and here is their money quote:

“We conclude that the international effort in Afghanistan since 2001 has delivered much less than it promised and that its impact has been significantly diluted by the absence of a unified vision and strategy grounded in the realities of Afghanistan’s history, culture and politics,”

Writing pithy commentary about where we are going wrong in Afghanistan is the easy part.   The hard part is understanding that you have to fundamentally change the way your troops deploy, live and fight.   Gen McChrystal has gotten to that point already but the hardest of the hard part is to actually put those pithy words into action. This the Brits are not doing – they are on isolated COP’s from which they patrol regularly and during these patrols they often fight.   They are not having any meaningful interaction with the locals, they are not bringing security to the people, and they are not winning the fight.   This excellent post by Mike Yon who has been the Brits for the past month describes with great writing and even better pictures that exact phenomenon.

Last week I was in the 2nd MEB operations center waiting to give Mike and Eric a lift to the air head.   A squad was in contact down to the south, they had suffered a IED strike, had no casualties, and were aggressively maneuvering to catch the dumb asses who had tried to ambush them.   The watch officer told this to Mike who said “let me know if they need anything” and went onto other business.   The company commander was running the fight and the platoon commander was en route with reinforcements.   I did not hear anyone else from outside the rifle company on the net with the exception of a brief call by (I think) the battalion commander asking if they needed any help.   The answer was no – the company could handle this on their own.

This is not the way the Army fights – stories   of units being micro managed from on high are legion. Here is my favoriate example from Vampire Six who writes the blog Afghanistan Shrugged.   If the US Military and her allies really want to start to fight in the manner Gen McChrystal says he wants to fight then the first step is to immediately stop all micro management of units in contact.   What the 2nd MEB is doing when it allows a company to fight its own fight with no interference from on high is developing trust and confidence of all the Marines in that unit for their chain of command.   You cannot successfully deploy little detachments of infantry in a large geographical space and expect them to fight and behave within the frame work of their commanders intent   unless they know their commander trusts them to do the job.   The commander can tell them he trusts them all he wants but actions speak louder than words.   If he insists on micro managing units when they are in contact the message he is sending is “I do not trust you and do not think you will make the right calls in combat.”   The first step towards being able to fight a proper counterinsurgency is to deploy units in the field whom you trust and do not micromanage.   There is no other way and I do not care how many Colonels in Bagram there are who will tell you differently using all sorts of anecdodal stories to illustrate why they are compelled to control fights from on high. In the counterinsurgency fight   junior leaders have got to be left alone to do what junior leaders are supposed to do – fight when they have to and figure out how help the local population when they are not fighting.

Patrolling out of a COP where you get contact with the enenmy within   minutes after leaving the wire is not counterinsurgency warfare it is attrition warfare.   A war of attrition is a war we can never win Central Asia, we do not have the manpower, money or time for that.     The Marines are poised to be the game changers but they are going to take casualties doing this thing and let us hope that the body count does not allow our political leaders to force them back into the “force protection” mode.   If the mission in Afghanistan remains “force protection” than everyone who has made the ultimate sacrifice here have done so in vain and the Afghans have much more to worry about than a summertime Ramadan.