Category: Tim

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What Are We Fighting For?

Don’t ask me  I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam.

I loved that song when I was a kid. I didn’t agree with the sentiment but it was easy to sing, simple to remember, witty and had a fun beat to it. It expressed the dominant narrative of young Americans from the Woodstock generation. They continued to feel strongly about the war and the draft until there was no draft. Once the risk of interrupting and then risking their lives by being drafted into the Armed Forces was removed they started feeling strongly about other things.

As The Vietnam War series continues we’ve been offered several examples of why the men who fought there served. Karl Marlantes interrupted his Rhodes scholarship work to resolutely serve as a Marine rifle platoon commander. He had strong reservations about the war but they did not trump the obligation he felt he incurred when he accepted a ROTC scholarship and attended Marine OCS. His combat record was exceptional and he showed no regret about his decision despite being haunted about killing an NVA soldier at close range during a fierce battle when his blood lust was up.

Karl has made several appearances with Mac on All Marine Radio. He tells a story about bonding with his platoon which is too good not to share. Shortly after his arrival he had demonstrated the tactical savvy and leadership Marines in combat appreciate. He knew this when he and his Marines were cleaning their weapons shortly after he had took over his platoon. One of his squad leaders walked up to him and asked; “Sir is it true that you went to Yale and are a Rhodes Scholar”?  Karl admitted that was true. The Marine replied “and now your here? Sir you have to be the dumbest fucking Rhodes Scholar there ever was”.

Karl laughed, his men laughed; Karl sheepishly admitted you could make that case. He knew at that time he had just been accepted as their leader, the one who would now make the decisions on which their lives would depend. That had to feel good. Considering Karl’s feelings about the war that achievement was beyond impressive.

We also heard from Tim O’Brien, a draftee who served as an army infantryman and is the author of the excellent Vietnam book The Things They Carried.   Tim also was against the war and also carries significant guilt; not about what he did in Vietnam but for not having the intestinal fortitude to go AWOL and escape to Canada. I don’t understand that sentiment but respect the man for having the courage to admit it.

When talking about Canada Burns mentions in passing that over 5000 Canadians joined the American armed forces to fight in Vietnam. My first 1st Sergeant in Charlie 1/9 was one of them. 1st Sgt Daily had his own office between the company commanders office and the platoon commanders bull pen – a large office area where each lieutenant had a desk and access to a shared typewriter. There was a hole in the wall next to the 1st Sgt’s desk with a piece of wood which he could slide back and forth. When the wood slide open and the words “Mr. Lynch, a word with you sir” boomed out from the 1st Sgt’s office I knew the fitness reports or other reports I had just submitted had been found lacking. The ensuing corrective lecture was going to be brutal; the smart lieutenant kept his mouth shut and took it like a man.

I once asked 1st Sgt Daily why he left Canada to serve in the Vietnam war. We were in the field and the 1st Sgt had things to do so his answer was terse. “There was a shooting war going on lieutenant where would you want to be”? I didn’t press him on the point knowing that I would get a 15 minute lecture on the deficiencies of young infantry officers who waste the valuable time of their company 1st Sgt when they should be attending to more important duties. When the 1st Sgt wanted to sit around and BS (which he did often) it was best to wait for him to come to you.

I never questioned his motivation; I felt the same way as did all my peers. Iraq wasn’t that different from Vietnam in the sense that the military was committed  for spurious reasons while ham strung by constraints imposed for political expediency. It would appear we learned nothing from the Vietnam experience, Rumsfeld was no different then McNamara, the Joint Chiefs were again sidelined in the decision making and rolled over just like their Vietnam era predecessors. Yet when Mac and I were discussing this on his show one day my response was “there was a shooting war going on Mac, where would you want to be’?

There are no longer antiwar protests of note which I attribute to there no longer being a draft. That fact puts the antiwar protesters in a less favorable light than the Burns documentary portrays but (as the grunts in Vietnam would say) there it is. We have an all volunteer force (actually a professionally recruited force), only around 0.4 percent of the citizens serve in the military. That may account for the lack of protests. Not many Americans have skin in the war game anymore so what is there to protest about?

Many of the officers I know didn’t agree with the reasons, force levels or tactics used in Iraq and Afghanistan yet none of them had a problem joining the fight. Why?

I’ve been thinking about this for several days and found a partial explanation while reading the latest post from John Del Vecchio concerning the Burns documentary. Check this out:

Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation.

John was writing about the photograph of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan I discussed in my prior post. Now consider these three iconic photographs from three different wars:

World War II  (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal)
Vietnam War Photo by (AP Photo Eddie Adams)
Iraq Conflict (photo by Michael Yon)

The Rosenthal photograph was controversial when it was published. Many thought it had been staged propaganda knowing it to be the second flag raised that day.  Had it not been for Sergeant Bill Genaust, a Marine combat photographer who was standing next to Joe Rosenthal (and who was killed during the subsequent fighting) recording the flag raising with a 16mm movie camera the most iconic picture of WW II may not have withstood the scrutiny it first received. But it did and it spoke to all who saw it by capturing the courage and tenacity of the American fighting man in WW II.

The photograph from Vietnam also spoke to all who saw it but it did not speak the truth. I blogged about the full back story here as John Del Vecchio does here. As brutal as that image is it was a legal act under Vietnamese law and the law of land warfare. Read the two linked posts to find out why.

The third photograph was not controversial. Unlike the other two it did not win the photographer, Michael Yon, a Pulitzer. Michael is a blogger, not part of the establishment media so despite shooting the iconic photograph of the Iraq conflict he received no love from the Pulitzer Prize committee.  Yet the photograph is every bit as powerful as those above it. It encapsulated our efforts in Iraq perfectly in the form of an army infantry officer comforting a little girl who had been hit by an insurgent IED. Efforts to save the child were futile just as our efforts to save the Iraqi people from each other proved to be.

When you study the three photographs above you can’t help but conclude the Vietnam Vets got a raw deal because their iconic photograph told a story that was not true. Fate is fickle, it is not fair, it is just there and sometimes deals a rotten hand. The Vietnam Vets were dealt a dead hand when fate put Eddie Adams in Saigon during the 68 Tet Offensive.

The Vietnam War series has dumped a metric ton of information, interviews, data and supposition into a giant pile for the viewer to sort through. There are no answers, there are no lessons, there is a liberal slant to the presentation but you have to know a lot of history to detect it.

What were we fighting for? It wasn’t for the constitutional freedoms Americans have always enjoyed. Vietnam was not a threat to them then just as the Taliban and ISIS are not threats to them now. Contending that Americans are fighting and dying overseas to allow the rest of us to knell during the national anthem or protest whatever it is people are protesting today is rubbish. Yet we’re still fighting…..why? Why does the country seem to be as divided today as it was during the tumultuous years of 1968 and 1969? Have we truly learned nothing?

There’s something happening here

What it is ain’t exactly clear

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The Walking Dead

The Ken Burns Vietnam series wrapped up it’s first week featuring a story I know well, the destruction of Bravo company 1st Battalion 9th Marines (1/9)  in the Leatherneck square on July 2nd 1967. 1/9 (pronounced one nine in Marine speak) was known as The Walking Dead back then as it was in 1987 when I joined the battalion as a rifle platoon commander. 1/9 took more casualties than any other battalion in Vietnam but their nickname did not come from the unfortunate stat.

Ho Chi, Minh gave 1/9 the Walking Dead handle in early 1966  when 1/9 was working out of  Hill 55,  which was 16 km southwest of Da Nang, in the Qung Nam province. The French had occupied it years before and had lost 2 battalions on that hill to the Viet Minh. Later in the war it would become famous for the sniper school established there by Captain James Land. Graduates from that school included  Carlos Hathcock and John Roland Burke; both Marine Corps sniper legends .

When 1/9 arrived on Hill 55 the area was under solid VC control. While establishing defensive positions on the Hill a lineman from 9th Engineers was captured, tortured, mutilated and killed by local Viet Minh. He was left (one presumes) as an example to intimidate the Americans who were new to the area.  It had the opposite affect, the enraged Marines started a series of aggressive small unit patrols throughout the river valley area. They took heavy casualties in those patrols but not that many prisoners.

On the 12 May 1966 a 14 man patrol from Bravo 1/9 located and attacked a giant Viet Minh base camp/training area complete with classrooms, ranges, barracks and a hospital. The rest of 1/9 piled on this camp starting what turned out to be a four day brawl that gutted the 324B NVA Regiment. Hanoi Hana, the Vietnamese version of Tokyo Rose,  during one of her nightly broadcasts said of 1/9 that Ho Chi Minh had called them “Di bo chet” (The Walking Dead) and promised them they would all be dead before Uncle Ho’s birthday which was 19 May.  1/9 pulled back to Hill 55, dug in and waited; the promised attack never came.

This is the same unit patch we used in the late 80’s when I was a member of 1/9

On the 2nd of July, 1967 Bravo and Alpha 1/9 left the wire of Con Thien on a unit sweep. About a mile outside of the wire Bravo walked into a vicious, well coordinated battalion sized  ambush, the commanding officer, Captain Sterling Coates and 3 of his platoon commanders were killed early during the contact by an artillery round, the remainder of the company was pinned down. The NVA then used flamer throwers to set the brush around the Marines on fire forcing them to break cover where they were hammered by both direct fire and indirect fire. Alpha 1/9 moved in to help but they too got pinned down by heavy direct and indirect fire.

A  hastily assembled reaction force comprised of Headquarters and Delta companies 1/9 along with 4 tanks charged out of the wire to help. A young Lieutenant by the name of Frank Libutti from Charlie company (which was detached guarding the base at Dong Ha but would fly in later that day) was at the Battalion HQ and part of that force. Twenty years after this battle Frank Libutti was a Colonel, the commanding officer of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) and his Battalion Landing Team was the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines.

I was a platoon commander in Charlie 1/9 on that deployment and the company commander for B 1/9 was Bob Coates. The commanding officer of Bravo 1/9 back in 1967 had also been named Coates. I always thought that to be one hell of a coincidence as did Col Libbuti. What he stressed to us when he talked about that day was that the Bravo 1/9 of 1967 could not be compared in any way to Bravo 1/9 of 1987. The difference in the proficiency of the 87 Bravo company from the 67 Bravo company wasn’t superior leadership or more advanced weapons; it was due to the most contentious issue in the Vietnam War. The use of the individual replacement system of personnel management.

In their book Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army, written by Major Richard A. Gabriel and Lt. Col. Paul L. Savage, the authors write:

‘The rotation policies operative in Vietnam, virtually foreclosed the possibility of establishing fighting units with a sense of identity, morale, and strong cohesiveness….Not only did the rotation policy foreclose the possibility of developing a sense of unit integrity and responsibility, but it also ensured a continuing supply of low quality, inexperienced officers at the point of greatest stress in any army, namely in its combat units.’

The rotation policies were driven by two factors; the draft (which mandated two years of service) and the refusal of the Johnson administration to mobilize the reserves to give the commanders on the ground the men they were asking for. A two year commitment meant that draftee’s could be deployed for 12 months max when mobilization, training and demobilization is factored into the time line. The Marines were not using draftees at this point in the Vietnam War which was why Marine combat tours were 13 months instead of the 12 month Army tour.

Prior to Vietnam American infantry units were formed, trained together and then deployed together into combat. This built unit cohesion, trust in the chain of command, developed the leadership abilities of small unit leaders before combat, and allowed for casualty replacements to be integrated into already functional combat units. Battalions that train together and fight together are giant families designed to withstand the shock of war and function in the face of incredible adversity.

In Vietnam individual soldiers and Marines rotated into battalions that were a conglomeration of individuals serving out their time. Officer came in as individuals too but they tended to have shorter tours (6 months on average) to free up combat command opportunities for other officers. New joins in Vietnam, just like new joins in every war experienced higher casualty rates. Junior officers, sergeants, staff sergeants and more senior SNCO’s always experience high casualty rates in all wars at all times. When rotated into combat units as individuals they did not last long. This rotation policy meant there was no established cohesion or pride at the battalion level. Those battalions were stripped of experienced small unit leaders.  It is remarkable these battalion still fought as well as they did.

The Burns series includes multiple requests from General Westmorland for more troops. It ignores what he wanted to do with those troops and that was to get Americans away from the populated regions and into Cambodia and Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail and take on the NVA.  John Del Vecchio covers this well in his most recent post which can be found here and is essential reading for those who want to understand the context surrounding the tactical decisions in Vietnam.

Calling up more troops required committing the reserves who had trained together and had developed unit cohesion. Using them to go after the NVA in their “safe spaces” may well have given the South enough space and time to get organized. That option was taken off the table because President Johnson was afraid it would draw Chinese or Soviet ground forces into the conflict, a probability that, given the million plus casualties the Chinese had suffered in Korea, was remote.

Our 7th President, Andrew Jackson (the only president to pay our national debt) once said “never take counsel of your fears“. Sage advice that as was General MacArthur’s saying that it is “fatal to enter any war without the will to win it”. The biggest complaint by the military during the Vietnam War was the feeling we weren’t fighting to win but instead doing just enough not to lose.

Part of the McNamara’s whiz kids genius strategy was using remote sensors on the border of the DMV to detect NVA formations moving south. To support that dubious plan the Marines moved up to the DMV, well within the artillery fan of the North Vietnamese, to establish fire bases. Those fire bases then supported undermanned battalions as they swept the DMZ to clear out NVA formations. But there weren’t enough of them to secure the ground they swept which allowed the NVA to move into newly swept areas knowing they could stay there for weeks or months before the area was “swept” again. 

The 1/9 Marines were cool long before  Zombies stole their nickname

Which brings us back to Bravo 1/9 and what the Burns documentary called “The Marketplace Massacre”. I’ve never heard the Bravo 1/9 ambush called that, never seen it referenced that way in historical accounts and if you google the name it is used to describe an event in Sarajevo. Regardless what did happen was that Bravo 1/9 walked into a hornets nest and got hammered. 

In the documentary the claim is made that Charlie and Delta companies went out and extracted Bravo and Alpha companies but because they could’t get to all the fallen they had to return two days later to recover 34 bodies. That is not what happened; the narrative presented by Burns is flawed on this point.

It is true that on day one of the battle, after 3/9 was flown into that area and had attacked the NVA battalions who had ambushed  1/9, the battalion pulled back and found they had 34 missing in action (the battalion not just Bravo company). It is also true that it wasn’t until 5 July that 23 Marine KIA were recovered (the nine remaining Marines were never found).  What is not true is Marines left the field on day one and the bodies were not recovered by some half ass effort sortieing out from Con Thien three days later.

When  1/9 pulled back into Con Thien on July 2nd the commanding officer of Alpha company, Albert J Slater pulled the survivors of his company, the survivors of Charlie company (who had flown into the fray from Dong Ha) and a detachment from 3rd Reconnaissance company together and went back out to join the battle.  3/9 had remained in the field and was joined by the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 3rd Marines. Captain Slater took his company to the northwest looking for good dirt (key terrain) and when he found some they dug in, fortified and then concealed their positions. The NVA had no idea the Walking Dead were back in play.

The maneuver battalions (3/9, 1/3 and 2/3) stayed on the offensive trying to maul what turned out to be the 90th NVA Regiment before they could get back to safe haven on the other side of the DMZ.

On the 5th of July a 400 man NVA battalion came across the DMZ in an attempt to flank the Marine maneuvering elements and walked, in column formation, right into Alpha 1/9’s prepared defense. The Walking Dead then got some payback and destroyed the NVA battalion with direct and indirect fires. The NVA 90 Regiment soon broke contact and withdrew some after marking the end of Operation Buffalo.

I know these kind of details are not going to make a PBS documentary about Vietnam. What is remarkable about this battle is not just the tenacity demonstrated by Capt Slater and the surviving members of a battered battalion. What is remarkable is they performed this way under constraints placed upon them by a President and DoD leadership who were arrogant in their unfounded faith of systems analysis, ignorant about the realities of war and dismissive of the senior military leadership who was supposed to be influencing the effort via sage council.

It seems to me that Burn and company are giving McNamara and LBJ a pass on their disastrous decision making which stemmed from politically motivated assumptions. The men who fought in Vietnam got the short end of the stick then and they are getting it now. They deserve better.

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Getting Offended – The Ken Burns Vietnam Documentary

My good friend Mac (Mike McNamara) at All Marine Radio had me on a couple of days ago to talk about the Ken Burns Vietnam War series and the President’s UN speech. Mac is great at providing perspective and I’m pretty good at ferreting out obscure facts that I find offensive and using those to make a larger point. Mac called me on this saying I might be missing the forest by concentrating on trees.

I wanted to be offended but that’s not possible when dealing with Mac and it also not a normal response by reasonable adults who are good friends. Mac and I consider ourselves normal guys, others my quibble about that but we’re certain we’re standing on solid ground concerning this issue.

After thinking about this a bit I suddenly remembered seeing a video of Ken Burns talking about being offended. I mean no disrespect to JP Sears from the Ultra Spiritual YouTube series but look at the pictures below and tell me if anyone has ever seen these two men together in the same place at the same time?

Ken Burns
A guy claiming not to be Ken Burns

See what I mean? A little heavy makeup and some lighting and just maybe…. But wait you have to hear Ken I mean JP Sears and then listen to Ken Burns (not playing JP) and you tell me if they are not the same man.

 

I’m kidding of course but when I hear JP doing his Ultra Spiritual parodies and then listen to Ken Burns I hear the same condescending, morally superior tone combined with the same syntax and facial expressions. Ken isn’t doing parody – he’s a true believer which makes his 18 episode program scary (to me and many others).

My interview with Mac is pasted below. For those of you who have been following my posts on this series I highly recommend following John M. Del Vecchio too. I get offended by Burns; so does John but he brings a comprehensive understanding of history combined with efficient, sharp writing to the table. Me? I just go off like a rocket which is what Mac was pointing out during our time together. Here’s the latest in Mr Del Vecchio’s series and it is one of the best reviews I’ve ever read concerning propaganda masquerading as histroy:

https://www.peakingat70.com/lets-talk-america/2017/9/20/burning-history-deceptions-and-a-teaspoon-of-sand

http://allmarineradio.com/2017/09/19/thoughts-on-president-trumps-speech-at-the-united-nations-tim-lynch/

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Déjà Vu

Last night the first episode of the Ken Burns Vietnam documentary titled Deja Vu aired and it was pretty good. It was visually stimulating, had an excellent musical score and told a sweeping (yet selective) narrative of history leading up to the American involvement in Vietnam.

The back story on how we became entangled in Vietnam is rather straight forward. In hindsight it seems to be a series of miscalculations and poor assumptions. How could we, after supporting Ho Chi Min and his Viet Minh fighters in their fight against the Japanese in World War II turn against them in support of French imperialism? Part of the reason, which is covered in the documentary, was our experience with communist aggression in Korea and Europe.

Communism was perceived as an existential threat to the West at the time and for good reason. That it would ultimately fail was not a foregone conclusion and as we look back it is hard to put decision making in the proper context. To illustrate the point; in 2003 how many Americans thought that invading Iraq to remove a brutal dictator was a bad idea? I didn’t, the democrats in congress didn’t, most of America didn’t…in fact one of the few people in the country who did was Marine General Tony Zinni who, unfortunately, had just retired.

What is not examined in the Burns film was why the French allowed Cambodia and Laos their independence. Knowing why that happened may have explained why they chose to make a stand in Vietnam. What is also not examined or explained is why North Vietnam continued their aggression in the south. South Vietnam was content to consolidate it’s holdings; they didn’t attack the north or fund subversive elements in that country in an effort to destabilize it.

South Vietnamese political corruption, which included the execution of hundreds and imprisonment of thousands, was mentioned last night as was the trials in North Vietnam of land owners and the redistribution of land to the peasant class. What was not mentioned is the death toll from the North’s pogroms, the famine that followed (as it has at all times and in all places after communist land reforms) or the reduction camps in the North. What will never be mentioned in the 18 episodes of Ken Burns film is that every socialist regime in history has been irredeemably corrupt. It’s a feature; not a bug.

The brief interview excerpts of Americans and Vietnamese who fought in the war and quick snap shots of iconic photographs set the tone for subsequent episodes. In the American interviews former Marine Roger Harris recounts telling his mother that he would not be coming home as he is sure to be killed. Former soldier Tim O’Brien talks about his fear of getting up and walking through the country side. The impression is that these men were out classed by an enemy who was invisible, tactically better, tougher and more dedicated.  This is the liberal anti Vietnam War narrative that was dominate back in the day, perpetuated in popular films like Platoon, and the origins of the myth that war destroys all who participate.

Jordan Peterson gave an interesting take on men put into “warrior mode” when they are committed to combat. On psychological level when a man advances on an enemy who can do so as a predator or prey.  Obviously being in predator mode is preferable, it opens up different neurochemical approach circuits, enhances performance and is a good indicator of a positive psychological outcome (such as no PTSD).

The Burn’s documentary indicates clearly the men he interviewed felt they were prey. I bet those same vets take issue with that characterization but they didn’t control the editing process so there it is. Nowhere in the companion book are there indications of American units taking the field in predator mode with one glaring exception. That is when they are killing unarmed civilians instead of taking on the NVA or Viet Cong. Nothing could have been further from the truth and there are several stories in the companion book I flat out do not believe but we’ll get to them in due time.

There are dozens of novels written by Vietnam veterans that dispute this interpretation. My favorites include The 13th Valley by John Del Vecchio, Fields of Fire by James Webb and Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (Karl is one of the interviewees in the Burns documentary).

John M. Del Vecchio, in an excellent post on the peaking at 70 blog has this to say about Burns’ documentary.  “Pretending to honor those who served while subtly and falsely subverting the reasons and justifications for that service is a con man’s game . . . From a cinematic perspective it will be exceptional. Burns knows how to make great scenes. But through the lens of history it appears to reinforce a highly skewed narrative and to be an attempt to ossify false cultural memory. The lies and fallacies will be by omission, not by overt falsehoods.”

The iconic photos from last nights show includes this Pulitzer Prize winner of  Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s Chief of National Police.

This is a great example to unpack and examine in detail. In the companion book the picture is describe as follows:

The prisoner was brought before him (General Loan). He was an NLF agent named Nguyen Van Lem and may have been the head of an assassination squad. (He had been found with a pistol adjacent to a hastily dug grave that held the bodies of seven South Vietnamese policemen and their families.) He and Loan exchanged words that no one else heard. Loan ordered one of the soldiers to shoot the prisoner. When the men hesitated, Loan drew his own pistol and shot him through the head.

Everything in the explanation is sort of true except the “may have been” part in describing Nguyen Van Lem as the head of a assassination squad. This is a classic example of lying by omission. Here is a more comprehensive background on Mr. Lem:  note what has been left out by the Burns team.

In the morning of the second day of Tet, January 31st, 1968, when general Nguyen Ngoc Loan was leading a fierce fight near An Quang Pagoda in Saigon’s Chinese quarter, two of his officers brought to him a communist cadre who had murdered many innocents in cold-blood in the past couple days. He was Captain Nguyen Van Lem, alias Bay Lop.

Minutes before he was captured, Bay Lop had killed a RVN policeman’s wife and all of his family members including his children. Around 4:30 A.M., Nguyen Van Lem led a sabotage unit along with Viet Cong tanks to attack the Armor Camp in Go Vap. After communist troops took control of the base, Bay Lop arrested Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tuan with his family and forced him to show them how to drive tanks. When Lieutenant Colonel Tuan refused to cooperate, Bay Lop killed all members of his family including his 80-year-old mother. There was only one survivor, a seriously injured 10-year-old boy.

Nguyen Van Lem was captured near a mass grave with 34 innocent civilian bodies. Lem admitted that he was proud to carry out his unit leader’s order to kill these people. Lem was in his shorts and shirt. His arms were tied from the back. The pistol was still in his possession. General Loan executed Nguyen Van Lem on the spot.

America was appalled by that photograph and the accompanying video footage. The fact that the man being shot had admitted to killing dozens of people to include young children was studiously ignored. That General Loan was the Godfather of six of those young children who were murdered that morning was never mentioned. What General Loan did that day was legal under Vietnamese law and also accepted within the Geneva conventions. This is the explanation from the Geneva Convention concerning summary executions:

However, some classes of combatants may not be accorded POW status, though that definition has broadened to cover more classes of combatants over time. In the past, summary execution of pirates, spies, and francs-tireurs have been performed and considered legal under existing international law. Francs-tireurs (a term originating in the Franco-Prussian War) are enemy civilians or militia who continue to fight in territory occupied by a warring party and do not wear military uniforms, and may otherwise be known as guerrillas, partisans, insurgents, etc.

AP photographer Eddie Adams, that man who took the picture of General Nguyen Loan and knew him well went on to apologized in person to General Loan and his family for the damage it did to his reputation. When Loan died of cancer in Virginia, Adams praised him:

“The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.”.

What America didn’t know was Loan was a fierce patriot and one of the few of his rank who was not corrupt.  He was no American puppet and refused to give Americans special treatment in his jurisdiction. Severely wounded later in the war (he ended up losing a leg) he was not evacuated when America withdrew from Vietnam but did manage to escape by piloting an abandoned plane (he was a respected Air Force pilot before being assigned leadership of Saigon’s police forces) to freedom.

General Loan arrived in America with a family, the clothes on their back, one leg and not much else. He quietly re-built a modest American life by opening and running a small pizzeria in Northern Virginia. In 1991 he was identified by the “Democracy Die in Darkness” Washington Post.  Proto social justice warriors then drove him out of business. He died soon after that.

As an American I am embarrassed at how one of our allies, a man of courage and conviction, was treated by my fellow citizens. Many of us believe that, if placed in similar circumstances, we would “do the right thing” and not summarily execute a captured terrorist who had his hands bound behind his back. I’m not one of those people and know I’d smoke check that murdering bastard (under similar circumstances) in a heartbeat. I know what I’m capable of and knowing my demons; overcoming them and controlling them is what makes me a good human. If that sounds crazy to you take 3 minutes to let Dr Peterson explain the concept to you.

The vast majority of the men who fought in Vietnam were good men who did a hard job in an unpopular war. Ken Burns was given millions of dollars and several years to do a documentary about them. But they were ignored by Burns and his crew in favor of justifying the narrative of the anti war left. That is a damn shame; our Vietnam Vets deserved better.

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“We are Killing Terrorists.” That’s Half a Plan

Last week in one of the stronger passages of a solid speech President Trump said “We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists.” Most Americans, to include myself normally like bold, unambiguous statements like that. Our nation building efforts in Afghanistan have not born much fruit, Americans don’t, as a general rule, like terrorists. Killing them is, in theory, not a problem.

What is a problem is defining who is or is not a terrorist in the context of Afghanistan today. The US and her allies do not have reliable human intelligence networks in Afghanistan resulting in a 15 year run of raiding Afghans who are not connected to the Taliban and also killing some of the strongest supporters we had in that country. For example Razi Khan, the district governor of Chora district in the Taliban controlled Oruzgan province. Razi Khan had fought the Taliban all his life and was a strong ally of the Australian military who were assigned to Oruzgan province. He was killed by the Australian SAS during a night raid that was based on faulty intelligence.

There is also the problem of tribal leaders who are congruent with our goals in Afghanistan but rejected government officials sent by Kabul who the locals viewed as little more than criminals. Ajmal Khan Zazai, Canadian citizen and head of the tribal federation in the Zazai valley of Paktia province is one of those. As I wrote here back in 2010 he was considered an AOG (Armed Opposition Group) leader by the US Army and thus, today, could be considered a “terrorist”.

Ajmal checking in at FRI (forward) back in 2010

The American military in general and Secretary Mattis in particular is not adverse to learning bitter lessons, adapting to those lessons and overcoming them in time. But it is not an institution that values creativity which results in change in small increments. The military attracts smart, orderly people who master the discipline they work in but view change as micro steps of improvements to the existing structure. People like this fit well inside the evaluation structures these institutions use to judge performance.

That is a function of human nature. The military, like all bureaucracies, is chocked full of conscientious people who can work very hard at going the wrong direction for years on end. Creativity is a high risk, high gain game best played by highly creative people. It is much safer for the high intelligence segment of the population to find a functioning entity and operate as a cog within that entity. Highly creative people tend to go off on tangents all the time but the probability that one of those tangents is exactly what is needed at the exact time it is proposed are ridiculously low. The most reasonable response to the tangential ideas from a highly creative person is “that’s stupid”.  Take a few minutes to listen to one of my favorite Canadians explain this dynamic in detail.

Damn, I just went off on tangent again. The purpose for that was to, once again, point out that dismissing creative solutions like the one Eric Prince proposed is to be expected but that doesn’t mean it is necessarily well informed.

It is important to note that our stated strategy of preventing a terrorist organization from planning and launching attacks against America from Afghanistan is a red herring.  As friend of FRI, J Harlin pointed out in the comments section, the 9/11 attacks were planned in Hamburg, Germany; controlled from Yemen and the vital training for the attack took place in Arizona and Florida. Afghanistan housed bin Laden, the founder of al Qaeda, which was a good reason to go there and smoke check him. It is also the reason we should have never let him slip away once we had him trapped in Tora Bora.

Second, focusing on the application of force alone to “win” is not a coherent solution to our commitment in Afghanistan. The war there will end with a political settlement, not a military victory. Crafting that settlement will take creative diplomatic thinking that isolates the Taliban affiliated tribes and clans from the rest of the Afghan population. All the military can do now is provide the space for these efforts by keeping  the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in the fight.

Do we have the talent resident in our diplomatic corps to take advantage of the time/space being generated by military? We have people with the requisite language skills, connections and time in country seeded throughout the various government establishments (DoS, DEA, CIA, NSA, USAID, etc…) to foster an acceptable endstate. Are these people being sent back into the fray? Is there a plan or even a single unifying leader with the authority of a Viceroy to implement a plan?

The answer, I fear, is no because the idea of splitting the Taliban from the rest of the population while playing India off against Pakistan is, in the eyes of our federal bureaucracies, stupid. Yet in the eyes of creative, strategic thinkers it is the only plan that will work. Inshallah somebody with the traits of the later will emerge to shepherd the efforts of the former to a logical end.

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Bellum Romanum

Bellum Romanum is all-out war without restraint as Romans practiced it against groups they considered to be barbarians. I came upon the term a few days ago listening to a Dan Carlin  Hard Corps History podcast about my ancestors titled the Celtic Holocaust. He starts the podcast by asking “what are you willing to die for”? He then ups the ante by asking “what are you willing to sacrifice everything for? That question, although profound, is an alien concept in the western world today.

I recommend downloading the podcast, it’s a long one but fascinating. Although the topic involved the epic slaughter of my ancestors it is hard, these thousands of years removed, not to admire the Romans. Could you imagine going into battle, at hand to hand range, with a people who were 6 inches taller and commensurately stronger than your side? That had to be terrifying; as is the thought of being forced to take a stand where everything you know and love hangs in the balance.

Which brings us to Afghanistan. The Voice of America published a solid article recently which explains what an additional 4,000 American troops will most likely be doing when deployed to Afghanistan:

“We need guardian angels,” said Lt. Col. John Sandor, deputy senior adviser for the Afghan Army’s 201st Corps, referring to security forces that would protect U.S. training teams so they can work alongside Afghan brigades.

….Sometimes, said Maj. Richard Anderson, operations adviser for 201st Corps, the Afghan answer is: “Let the Americans do it.” In early spring, when U.S. forces asked the Afghan army to step up its pursuit of IS militants in Nangarhar province, they encountered resistance. Demoralized by an IS attack that killed 16 Afghan soldiers in April, Afghan commanders wanted the American and Afghan special operations forces to carry the fight. But ground units are needed to hold territory, so U.S. advisers were forced to spend weeks cajoling the Afghan Army to join the battle.”

It appears we are sending more American troops to protect their fellow American’s from the Afghan troops they are training and trying to get to fight. The Afghan soldiers apparently are not willing to die for a central government in Kabul that is not only corrupt but is also, in the eyes of most Afghans, not legitimate. How could they view it as anything else when it was installed and maintained by infidels from the west?

For American troops the question of what they are willing to die for is easily answered. Each other. That is the harsh reality of a military system designed to promote small unit cohesion by linking directly to unit histories, traditions, discipline and military virtue. The American military can fight effectively with or without the support of the American people. The support and appreciation of the military by the public helps mitigate the sacrifices soldiers are asked to make but it is not required. Most importantly soldiers know that if they are killed in battle their families will be provided for by the government who placed them in harms way.

The ANA is taking a beating which contributes to their low morale and inability to generate combat power

Afghan troops do not enjoy the advantages of their western mentors. Afghanistan is not a cohesive country; it’s a disparate group of tribal peoples living inside an artificial boundary dictated by foreign colonialists over 100 years ago. Their army has no winning tradition, no lineage to draw upon, lacks competence at all levels and is unable to generate sufficient combat power to confront its internal enemies. The Afghan soldiers know if they are killed in battle their families are on their own. If wounded and unable to bribe the hospital staff to feed them soldiers will linger and die a protracted, agonizing, completely avoidable death.

The various groups that comprise the Taliban do not operate under the same circumstances as their countrymen in the Afghan military. They have built-in cohesion based on the tribal/clan structure from which they come. They often flock to successful commanders giving them rudimentary esprit de corps. The Taliban make an effort to look after the families of their fallen and although their medical capabilities are poor they are consistently applied. No Taliban fighter convalescing in a Pakistani or Iranian hospital is going to perish because nobody fed him.

Most importantly the Taliban are facing, in their minds, Bellum Romanum. They are fighting for their land, their families and their way of life. They view the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) as puppets of western infidel powers bent on their total destruction. What’s the counter-narrative to that?  There isn’t one.

The only course of action that would make any sense is placing private military mentor/trainers at the battalion (Kandak) level and leaving them there long enough for those units to develop cohesion around their mentors.  Add to that combat enablers in the form of indirect fire, some decent snipers, effective tactical air and the lift needed for dust offs (medical evacuation) and combat resupply and maybe, just maybe, you can develop a security force that has the cohesion required to generate and sustain combat power.

Doing that would not take many men; it would take the right men, which could have proved difficult to find, incentivize, and retain. For now that option appears dead in the water so the point is moot. What is not moot is what it will take to achieve a military solution in Afghanistan. It would take some form of Bellum Romanum; a zero sum campaign that matches the zero sum attitude of the other side in this conflict. The American military cannot and will not fight that kind of war. We have fought like that in living memory and here is a story about what that looks like from my Dad, MajGen J.D. Lynch USMC (Ret).

When I was a first classman at USNA (somewhere around 2 centuries ago), during an aviation class, an instructor reminisced about WWII and his time as a carrier pilot flying Hellcats. When asked by one of the guys what he considered his most dangerous and for that matter, frightening experience during the war. His response was that, early in the war he was Admiral Nimitz’s pilot. After the Battle of Tarawa, the admiral was so concerned about the casualty figures that he was flown to Tarawa to see for himself (he traveled by sea planes in those early days of the war). In any event, the pilot, now an instructor at Navy, said that he left the plane with the admiral’s party and walked the Tarawa battlefield  …. he said that was his most frightening experience of the war …  the Marines just stared at everybody and seemed ready to kill anybody at any time with little or no reason.

Could you imagine front line troops so formidable that they scared a pilot (from their own side) who made his living landing on aircraft carriers? I can’t and we’re not going to see that kind of infantry anytime soon. We’re not going there because we don’t have to go there. The ANSF security forces aren’t going there either although they need to. In our enlightened modern world where history is little known and often twisted to fit the political narrative of the day we believe that war can be fit inside of some magical box that excludes butchery, savagery, hatred and slaughter. We believe we are above Bellum Romanus even in the face of Islamic terrorist who fight with the same methods and ferocity of the barbarian tribes that contested Roman rule.

Those who believe the arc of history will deliver us to an enlightened state where Marines in contact will always be tame enough to make senior naval officers comfortable inside their lines are deluded. Granted front line American infantry today does not resemble the Marines on Tarawa; it doesn’t have to as we’re not fighting an existential threat (yet). Our divided country, with its fractured culture and forgotten history, will be tested again. Most likely by a unified culture fighting under the banner of Islam. When that happens we will fight like the Roman’s fought, like the Vietcong fought, like we fought on the hellish islands in the Pacific or we will be vanquished. Then we will learn what the Romans knew; Vae victis (woe to the vanquished).

Sending more trainers to Afghanistan to watch over the trainers already there so the trainees don’t kill them is not a viable military strategy. It is, however about the only option available to the Axis of Adults given the the fiscal and manpower constraints the Pentagon operates under today.

The only diplomatic effort that could possibly break the current stalemate would involved  way outside the box ideas like advocating for a Pashtun and Balouch (and a Kurdish while we’re at it) homeland that would erase the artificial lines drawn on the world map (by the west) over a hundred years ago. That would cause enough disruption in the status quo to get Pakistan, Turkey and Iran worked up to the point of hysteria while aligning ourselves with the insurgents goals. I like the idea of turning the insurgents back on their creators while we occupy the moral (these people deserve their own homeland) high ground.

It would also be sticking our thumb in the eye of the UN, an organization for which I have little use. But that’s not going to happen, outside the box thinking like that is no longer accepted by the ruling classes. It is a threat to their grip on power and prestige despite its practicality. They will fight to the last American to defend a system that is collapsing right in front of our eyes.

America can sustain the deployment of 10 to 15 thousand troops into Afghanistan indefinitely but we have a critical center of gravity. We will not tolerate excessive casualties. If the Taliban are able to do what Afghans have always done; if they isolate and destroy in detail a military unit, our adventure in Afghanistan will come to a rapid end. If they are not able to inflict large numbers of casualties on us then maybe we can run the clock on them to the point that even the Taliban are tired of fighting. Maybe….but betting on the Taliban growing weary of war, when all they know is war and they seem to be winning said war, is like financial planning via buying lottery tickets. It could work but the odds (and reality)  are against it.

 

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The Trump Plan: The Devil is in the Details

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Last night President Trump gave a solid speech about why he is committing American power and prestige to continue fighting in Afghanistan. It was a good speech that outlined some reasonable goals and contained the kind of one liners guys (and gals) like me appreciate. “We are not nation building again. We are killing terrorists”. That sounds great until you think about who, exactly, are these terrorist we’re going to be smoke checking. Depending on how you look at it the “terrorists” could be every non Hazara Afghan residing beyond the confines of Kabul.

One of the other components of the speech was the refusal to give out specific numbers regarding the increase in American forces in Afghanistan as well as what these forces are expected to do. The most common number in the press, based on pre-speech background briefings, was an increase of 4,000 troops. Some of these troops are supposed to be supplied by our NATO allies but that’s not going to happen. There are only a few of those allies who have troops that can fight and they have no reason to go back for Operation Groundhog Day.

These boys are now adults and in the fight but on which side? Photo from Balk province during the summer of 2006

What will these troops be doing on the ground? It sounds like they are going to fight but who will would be doing the fighting, where are they going to fight, how long will they be fighting? We really can’t do that much fighting because we have a center of gravity that the Taliban understands well. We cannot afford to take casualties. The American people are not behind this effort and they are not going to tolerate a steady flow of body bags into Dover.

The stated goal of our continued effort in Afghanistan is to prevent the repeat of a 9/11 type of attack on the American homeland. 9/11 was planned and coordinated in Afghanistan by al Qaeda and some of them, as well as an ISIS franchise, remain in the country. But it is impossible to believe that, even if the Taliban took control of the entire country, one of those organizations would be allowed to plan and launch attacks on America. We are to continue fighting villains until we have “exposed the false allure of their ideology”. That too is not going to happen; their ideology is based on the Koran; there are no countervailing Koranic interpretations evident in Islam today that would push back against the Jihadi narrative.

Talking about changing our approach to Pakistan, increasing cooperation with India and holding the Afghan government accountable sounds like a reasonable course of action unless you know something about Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. How do you make the Kabul government “more accountable”? How can you get the Pakistani’s to stop funding cross boarder mayhem while at the same time inviting India to assume a much bigger role in Afghanistan? Pakistan will once again be critical to the logistical effort required  for putting even more boots on the ground and thus holds the trump card in any dispute with us concerning what they are or are not doing in Afghanistan.

The strength of the Prince Plan was embedding trainers/mentors with the Afghan Security Forces at the battalion level and leaving the same team in place for years on end. That would have allowed the mentors to gain front specific knowledge regarding the tactics and personalities at the granular level and that in addition to their access to combat enablers (Tac Air and Artillery) could have been decisive.

Extended time on the ground in the same place also renders the number one Taliban weapon (IED’s) ineffective. Fighting on the same turf for years at a time provides the knowledge required to avoid IED’s as well as complex ambushes. Increased dwell time = increased tactical proficiency = decrease in combat casualties from IED’s. Increased dwell time is no longer in the cards meaning units who venture outside the wire during their 6 to 9 month rotations will take casualties they could have avoided had they been on the ground longer.

This is a fuel station built on a foundation of Soviet BTR armored vehicles. How long before we see old MRAPs re-purposed for the same task?

The Trump plan is not going to result in enablers at the battalion level; it will augment the Corps level training missions while (apparently) allowing those forces to sortie out of their FOB’s and take on Taliban formations when they deem the conditions favorable to do so. Job number one for all deployed forces in going to be avoiding casualties; focusing on the enemy and exploiting his weaknesses will be a secondary consideration which means “favorable conditions” will not necessarily translate into decisive defeats of various Taliban formations.

The Trump plan is placing the responsibility for our continued efforts in Afghanistan squarely on the shoulders of the Pentagon. But the Pentagon has major problems that are starting to manifest themselves. The latest evidence of this was the USS John S, McCain which collided, in broad day light, with an oil tanker in the Strait of Malacca.

Having transited the strait a couple of times aboard Naval shipping this accident is impossible for me to comprehend. The Strait has always had a huge pirate problem and when in the strait the normal navy watch crew (aboard gator freighters) is augmented by armed Marines. The McCain had no armed Marines but should have had an enhanced watch section with the crew on hair trigger alert to go to general quarters. That has been the standard operating procedure for over 50 years. We are hearing (just like the last ship collision) that maybe this was an intentional attack. That should have been expected and avoided and is probably not going to prove to be true. What is happening to the Navy is, I fear, the chickens coming home to roost.

The extract below from an excellent article in City Journal by Bob McManus sums up the current problem:

“….eight years under the leadership of a Navy secretary, Ray Mabus, whose social-justice priorities almost always took precedence over tradition, morale, training, and operational readiness. Under Mabus, according to the Navy Times, the service prioritized shipbuilding—not a bad thing, necessarily, but it came at a cost. The secretary “made a policy of directing money away from operations and maintenance”—that is, away from training of the sort that clearly could have prevented at least the Fitzgerald tragedy. (What happened on the McCain remains to be seen.) “At the same time,” the editorially independent publication reports, “Mabus pushed hard for major cultural shifts inside the fleet, including the inclusion of women in combat roles in the Navy and Marine Corps, unisex uniforms, gender-neutral ratings titles and opening the services to transgender service members.”

Pushed to the point of obsession, the Navy Times might have added. As a result, the Marine Corps ended the Obama years in a state of near-mutiny over the administration’s insistence on shoehorning women into front-line combat roles despite convincing evidence that they aren’t up to the task. Meantime, the Navy has developed a serious pregnant-sailor problem“.

The American military is no longer able to shoulder the burden of putting Afghanistan back together again. Our diplomatic service lacks the leverage to force change in countries who are not aligned with our goals. The Taliban have no reason to end its armed opposition to a central government that is weak, corrupt, and entirely dependent on foreign aid dollars. There is little hope on the horizon for the people of Afghanistan.

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The McCain Plan: Dead On Arrival

The plan put forth by Senator John McCain is the perfect example of big government incompetence. The Prince plan is, in contrast, a perfect example  of free market competence. Eric Prince and his team have done the hard work of mission analysis by developing tasks from which to build  a table of organization and equipment (TOE) to meet a clearly defined mission with an articulate endstate. His plan has annual cost of less then 10 billion. His efforts developing his plan have not cost the taxpayer a penny.

Senator McCain and his staff have developed a plan without any mission analysis, any TOE, any idea of the total numbers it will take or the amount it will cost. His office staff plus the staff of the Senate Armed Services committee wrote his plan and assuming most of them worked on it for a few months McCain’s plan has already cost the taxpayer millions of dollars; every one of which might as well have been flushed down a toilet.

As predicted in my last post his plan is fraught with stupidity and fuzzy logic while ripping off ideas from the Prince plan. For Example:

In the short term, establishing U.S. military training and advisory teams at the kandak-level of each Afghan corps and significantly increasing the availability of U.S. airpower and other critical combat enablers to support ANSDF operations; and In the long term, providing sustained support to the ANSDF as it develops and expands its own key enabling capabilities, including intelligence, logistics, special forces, air lift, and close air support.

Kandak is a Pashto word meaning a  battalion and McCain apparently agrees with Prince on the need for trainers/mentors at the battalion level. The Prince plan includes introducing low cost, effective tactical fixed wing fighters as well as low cost helicopter support. The Afghans need this desperately and without the injection of tac air and logistic/dust off assets they will continue to lose ground to the Taliban.

Senator McCain’s plan calls for increasing U.S. aripower while ignoring the fact that our airpower is currently in crisis and does not have the ability to surge back into Afghanistan. Our fighters lack spare parts and there are no operating fabrication lines to make more. Pilot flight hours, on every platform in the inventory, are lower then the baseline needed to maintain proficiency .  Historically low morale among aircrews is reflected by the inability to keep experienced pilots in the services regardless of the amount of retention bonuses offered.

Mr. Prince did the hard work to come up with a solid dollar amount that is a fraction of the projected spending on Afghanistan. Senator McCain did zero work on the details and has come up with a plan that will require ten’s of thousands of additional military personnel and will raise the price tag to well over 100 billion a year.

The numbers required to fulfill Senator McCain’s vision are, of course, unknown but we can make a good guess. The pending merger of the Afghan Border Police (ABP) and the Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP) into the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) will add 12 brigades to the 24 brigades currently staffed by the ANA. Each brigade is supposed to have 4 maneuver battalions as well as logistic units and organic fire support (mortars and artillery). There are also SOF brigades, artillery and armor battalions, brigade and corps level headquarters that will all need mentors. Add in the typical tooth to tail ratio for the American military (around 20 to 1) and we get well over 100,000 men (and women) to staff  and a support this “plan”.

The McCain plan illustrates the disconnect of policy leaders from inside the wire from realities outside the wire.

The remainder of this plan consists of bullet points that are nothing more than Master of the Obvious (MOTO) statements. For example:

Establish security conditions in Afghanistan necessary to encourage and facilitate a negotiated peace process that supports Afghan political reconciliation and an eventual diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan;

Forge a regional diplomatic consensus in support of the long-term stabilization of Afghanistan through integration into regional patterns of political, security, and economic cooperation.

Bolstering the United States counterterrorism effort in Afghanistan

Increasing the number of U.S. counterterrorism forces in Afghanistan

Providing the U.S. military with status-based targeting authorities against the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other terrorist groups that threaten the United States, its allies, and its core interests.

Is there anyone, who has been paying attention to our efforts in Afghanistan, who believes we have not been trying to do exactly this for  the past 16 years?

The McCain plan will increase costs exponentially. The FOB’s that were once established to support 100,000 plus troops were torn down or handed over to the Afghans. Reestablishing those FOB’s will take so much time, money and effort that it is mind boggling. Plus we will need to put large convoys of American troops on the roads of Afghanistan where they will be hit by IED’s and ambushes long before they ‘mentor’ a single Afghan soldier. Smart contractors are better able to use those same roads without being easily targeted. There are dozens of post on this blog dating from 2008 to 2012 that explains that in detail.

Were I a conspiracy theorist I’d speculate that McCain put this “plan” out there to ensure the Prince plan is adopted. It is clear, when you compare the two, that Washington is incapable of coming up with a workable solution to Afghanistan.  We do not have the air assets, troop numbers, money or national will to even consider the McCain plan. It is also clear that the only person with a viable plan for Afghanistan is Eric Prince.

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The Prince Plan: Strengths, Weaknesses and Probability

The privatization of the Afghanistan War is still generating headlines  and the majority of the coverage is hostile, uninformed, inaccurate and basically ad hominem attacks on Mr. Prince. Did you know that Betsy Devos, the current Secretary of Education is his sister? Can anyone explain what that has to do with Afghanistan or why it is a standard feature in almost news story about this plan?

When looking at these stories one realizes that trying to explain this program to the media and general public is like trying to explain quantum physics to kindergartners. It appears to be a hopeless task but FRI has the advantage of an informed readership. With that in mind we’ll cover the details in the hopes that you, my dear readers, will have additional ammunition should you chose to engage friends, family or co-workers on the topic.

The Prince plan involves putting trainer/mentor teams at the battalion level of the Afghan National Army and augmenting their helicopter and tactical aircraft with some 90 additional high speed, low cost aircraft. The plan takes the current projected annual price for supporting the Afghan military from 40 billion down to 10 billion. Reducing the hemorrhaging of tax money to stabilize a losing effort is the strong component of a workable the plan.

The AN 29B Super Tucano platform – I like this bird and inshallah shall see it in action in Afghanistan.

The second benefit of the plan is reducing the stress on our tactical air assets. The Marine Corps air component is currently in crisis. Average flight hours for pilots have gone from well over 80 hours a month (on average) when I was on active duty  to around 10 hours and that is not enough flight time to maintain proficiency. The primary Marine tac air platform, the F-18, is so worn out that Marines are going to museums to strip parts that are no longer in production to keep their birds in the air. The Navy, who wisely went with the F-18 Super Hornet instead of waiting for the trillion dollar F-35, is in slightly better shape.  The Air Force also has serious readiness issues and all the services are hemorrhaging experienced pilots. Taking the load off the our tactical air fleet is an imperative.

Also part of the plan is a helicopter fleet for combat resupply and dust offs (medical evacuation). The Afghans had dust off’s when the Americans (and NATO allies) were there in force. They have none now which means Afghan troops, who would have survived their wounds in the past, now die. That is a moral killer and unquestionably contributes to the high desertion rate then ANA is experiencing.

Another component of the plan is embedding large teams of trainers/mentors at the battalion level where they will eat, sleep, train and fight with their Afghan colleagues. We have never tried this before with the exception of the high end Afghan Special Forces units. The embedded mentor teams of the past fought with the Afghans but did not live, eat or sleep with them. They  were housed in secure FOB’s inside the Afghan FOB’s where Afghans were not welcomed and could go enter.

This was an ANA training accident with 81mm mortar that claimed the life of the photographer, army Specialist Hilda Clayton. Embedded trainers at the battalion level should be able end incidents like this if they are the right trainers.

The costs associated with maintaining mini FOB’s inside Afghan FOB’s with KBR DFACs (chow halls) that served excellent American food (to include pecan pie and unlimited mint chocolate chip ice cream) flown into the country from who knows where were astronomical. I assume the Prince Plan is not duplicating that failed strategy and base the assumption on both the cost savings and the amount of experience Mr. Prince has doing this sort of thing in the third world.

The final strength of the plan is the fact that contracted Private Military Companies (PMC’s) have proven they work. Global piracy rates are plummeting due to PMC’s. Boko Haram is getting its ass kicked in Nigeria because of a PMC. Joseph Komey was broken and damn near killed by the Ugandan’s who had received specialized training from a PMC. Egypt was kicked out of Yemen back in 1962 by a PMC that started with only six former Brit SAS men and ended up with less than 50.  These are facts that should matter but in the echo chamber PC based hysteria that dominates our national discourse they are are studiously ignored.

Added bonus for the proposal is that the DoD is already sending armed contractors to Afghanistan to mentor (another hat tip to Feral Jundi). Here is an example from Raytheon who is looking for “armed S2 mentors”. S2 means intelligence and what they are proposing is these guys arm themselves and then mentor Afghans on an individual basis. That’s not only crazy it illustrates the hypocrisy resident in DoD opposition to the Prince plan.

The weakness of Price’s plan is not the plan itself but the way the U.S. Government (USG)  handles contracts like the one he is proposing. Unless they give it to Prince as a sole source contract it will be open for bidding. A sole source contract means the contractor is the only business that can provide the services needed. Based on my observations of the performance other US PMC contenders in Afghanistan I would argue that Prince should be the sole source. But that probably won’t happen in the highly charged political atmosphere in DC today. If a contract, based on this plan, is let for bid companies with demonstrated poor performance will be allowed to bid and if they come in with a lower cost than Prince they will win. Other international companies will bid too despite the fact that they cannot conduct the proper pre-deployment training (due to restrictive weapons laws in their home country). Because they can’t train up their people they will not incur the costs associated with that training and will naturally come in lower than Prince.

I saw this play out on the Kabul Embassy security force contract and would explain that debacle in detail were I not terrified of lawyers and law suits. If the DoD or DoS  or whoever lets the contract chooses the lowest bidder the plan will fail, the savings evaporate, the quality of the embedded trainers will be poor and the results will be a dismal, expensive failure.

There is also the problem of ad hominem attacks on Prince because of the Nisour square incident. I addressed why those attacks are uninformed gibberish in this post. What I want to stress is I’ve been on both sides of that problem. I know well the gut wrenching fear of watching an Opel gun it’s engines and come after you in Nisour square. I’ve had two SUV’s shot out from under me in Kabul – one by the Brit army and one by the American army.  I urge you to read the linked post to get some perspective, from a guy who has been on both sides of the situation, on the Raven 23 incident.

I rate the probability of this planning moving forward at 50/50. The reason for my optimism is that there are no other rational alternatives available. The Pentagon has proposed more of the same thing they’ve been doing which is clearly (by their own admission) failing. Senator John McCain, a man I hold in extremely low regard, is threatening to come up with his own plan and I can promise you his plan will be fraught with stupidity and fuzzy logic. He’ll take parts of the Prince plan and try to shoe horn military trainers into it resulting in a 40 billion increase vice a 40 billion decrease in spending…watch and see if I’m not right.

News reports from inside the administration indicate little enthusiasm from Secretary Mattis and the DoD. That may or may not be true. Our legacy media has zero credibility with me and the vast majority of my fellow citizens.  If they are saying Mattis is opposed to the plan odds are he’s not. But if he is opposed he’ll need to come up with a better plan and he knows that he doesn’t have one.

The one legitimate obstacle appears to be General McMaster; the current head of the National Security Council and author of the book  Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. McMaster appears to be opposing President Trump on many of his policies which you’d expect from a guy who wrote a book about weak generals who sucked up to the presidents they were serving. It also appears that McMaster is tolerating zero dissent in his office, firing anyone holding contrary views, retaining Obama appointed deadwood and refusing to use or acknowledge the term “Islamic Terrorist”. One would not expect that from the guy who wrote Dereliction of Duty. But just because a guy writes a book about flaky generals doesn’t mean he’ll end up not being a flaky general. He may not even be a flaky general, who would you know? Reading chicken entrails is easier then deciphering media reports these days.

Generals are weird; I don’t know McMaster so I’ll focus on one I do know.  If you told me that my former boss John Allen would, as a former four star general,  speak in support of Hillary Clinton at a democratic national convention I may have throat punched you (metaphorically given my fear of lawyers and law suits) for bad mouthing one of my heroes. There was no way those of us who knew John Allen as a junior officer could have imagined him morphing into a political general with such spectacularly poor judgement.

I mention that to say this. The “Viceroy” portion of the Prince plan – the one government official who resides over the entire Afghan effort in order to break up the petty rice bowl guarding, slow decision making, and multiple agendas? That guy needs to have serious chops and John Allen is the only man I can think of who could do that.

Our country is so politically polarized that rational discussions have become almost impossible. The recent firing of goggle engineer James Damor who wrote a well researched piece concerning liberal group think and intolerance in an organization he was obviously devoted to is the latest example of this. The Afghans need some serious help to stabilize their country and the Prince plan is the only rational plan that will but them the time they need to stand on their own.

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