The IDF: Modeling Competence over Equity

I join the freedom-loving peoples of the world in congratulating the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)  for eliminating the genocidal bastard Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar was the head of Hamas and claimed that when the time came, he would stand and fight, dying as a martyr. When the time came, he was running away with a fake ID and a pocket of donor dollars, hoping to go to the ground in Rafa. You remember Rafa, the town the spinless cowards running the United States, United Kingdom,  France, Canada, and Egypt told the Israelis to avoid. Cackling Kamala even warned Israel about Rafa, saying, “She had studied the maps,” whatever that meant.

Yahya Shin-was after playing a game of FAFO with a competent military.

Israel is modeling the consequences of valuing competence over diversity in national leadership, intelligence organizations, and a hard-fighting army. They are not constrained by ridiculous rules of engagement from on high. Compare and contrast what we have watched the IDF do over the past year to how we handled fighting terrorists embedded inside Afghan communities. This conversation between Shawn Ryan and Nick “The Reaper” Irving is most informative on that exact topic. You should watch all five hours of this podcast to understand the quality of the human capital wasted by our feckless national leaders and their yellow generals.

There are enough warning signs about our hollow military and its morally bankrupt leadership for a hundred blog posts. From drone swarms loitering over our military bases. unmolested, the Pentagon killing hundreds with an experimental drug treating a virus that was not a threat to servicemen, to an army helicopter rotor washing civilian hurricane relief supplies, the signs that our military is broken cannot be ignored. But I want to focus on the one area I find the most upsetting: women in our combat arms.

West Point and the Naval Academy will roll into the weekend with undefeated football teams. If you look at those teams, you will notice they resemble Israeli combat formations in that they are all male. Our military leadership insists that there are no differences between men and women in mental capacity or physical strength despite several millennia of human experiences and our own lying eyes.

Men and women are born with dramatically different capabilities, which can be seen every time a woman’s national soccer team is beaten by an under-15 boys’ squad. It’s not polite to mention that fact, which most of us find merely amusing. But when women are inserted into ground combat units, the delusions of our elites are no longer funny. One of the many reasons our military faces a recruiting and retention crisis is this callous disregard for the lives of enlisted men who are saddled with females in combat zones.

The boys who thumped the women’s team were Texans which might explain it maybe. . .

Let me tell you about women in combat. On a warm summer day, I witnessed a Marine Corps patrol walking through the Nawa Bazaar in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. I could see the point man was furious, as were the men behind him, and stopped to watch. Then I saw why; the men were carrying the weapons and body armor of their female “Lioness” Marines. The women were stumbling in a gap-mouthed stupor, hanging onto the body armor of the man in front of them. The locals crowding the bazaar were laughing and openly mocking the Marines. It was such a sad spectacle that I couldn’t take a picture of it; I was too embarrassed

What’s the current perception of the Marine Corps Lioness program? A quick Google search reveals dozens of articles about the trailblazing female Marines or the Special Ops: Lionesses TV show. That TV show stars Zoe Saldaña, who is 45, Nicole Kidman, who is 56, and Morgan Freeman, who is still kicking at 86. Can you imagine people that old on the battlefield? It’s a joke, insulting to our intelligence, but it’s a reality for too many of the idiots comprising our elite managerial class.

So, how is the recent deployment of paratroopers into the Middle East going? Unlike my deployment to Beirut in 1983, the current mission is not the subject of informed debate in the regime media. We have no idea where these troops are or what they are doing. Everything the Pentagon does now is top secret. Whatever these troops are doing, it does not impact the conflict that allegedly caused their deployment. One more display of gross incompetence at the national command level.

The Marine Corps Lioness program paid dividends only because our generals were incapable of the tactical adaptation of warning residents in targeted areas to get out before we came in. No military in history has done more to prevent civilian collateral damage than the Israelis. But once warned by them, the civilians who stay risk becoming collateral damage because the Israelis prioritized winning battles and preserving their troops over rules of engagement designed to appease their political masters.

Congressional cowards reacting to protestors who are not from Antifa or Black Lives Matter or unhinged women shrieking at conservative Supreme Court nominees.

The IDF is delivering a master class on intelligence operations and conducting ground combat operations. There are no women at the pointy end of their spear, just as there are no women from Ukraine or Russia slugging it out in the trenches of Ukraine.

There shouldn’t have been any American women at the pointy end of our spear during the 20 years we spent replacing the Taliban with the Taliban. But our senior generals aren’t as competent as Isleali generals, so they came up with workarounds that made female congresspeople swoon while leaving our best warriors like Nick Irving alone, exposed, and unable to call in the fire support they needed to survive. A military organization that places winning collegiate football games over the lives of its soldiers and Marines is not worthy of our support or admiration. They have earned nothing but our contempt.

Targeted: Beirut

I wrote my last post about Beirut the day before Jack Carr released his book on Targeted: Beirut. I had pre-ordered the book, so I immediately read it for his opinion on the debacle. My assessment that: “Nobody in that operation knew what we were supposed to do on the ground in Beirut” was spot on. My assessment may have been a bit wordy and awkward, but  I’m no Jack Carr.

Beirut October 1983

Targeted: Beirut was excellent reading, and it transported me back to the moment I first heard about the barracks bombing. I was driving into the Newport Naval Hospital, where I would be standing duty in the medical laboratory for the next 24 hours. It was a beautiful fall morning, and as passed Easton’s Beach I heard the news on NPR. I don’t remember much else about the day other than I was upset and angry at the attack on our Marines.

101st Airborne arriving in Cyprus September 2024

I was the Leading Petty Officer of the hospital’s Mobile Medical Augmentation Readiness Team (MMART), a collateral duty that allowed me to wear Marine Corps camouflage utilities once a month, which I thought was cool. We were mobilized after Grenada to augment Mobile Surgical Team 11 from Norfolk after they were overwhelmed by casualties from the Ranger contingent of that invasion. My other distinct memory of that time was the Personnelmen processing us before we deployed (who were women; the Personnelmen rating was changed to Personnel Specialist in 2005) were in tears. They thought we were heading into harm’s way, which wasn’t the case, as we would spend the deployment on the USS Guam LPH 9.

Marine wounded in Beirut October 1983

Our contribution to the Beirut story was a minor part of Targeted: Beirut, which focused on the Marine Amphibious Unit that was attacked on October 23, 1983. Carr weaves the book around the stories of several Marines and sailors as they endure their deployment ashore. Some of those men made it home, the others did not, and you don’t know who the lucky ones were as his face paced narrative unfolds. It is a masterful display of storytelling that will interest anyone curious about how the war on terror started.

Having been a participant, I knew most of the story but was unprepared for the one thing that immediately caught my attention. The difference in how the military and our government handled combat deployments in the 80s. There was severe tension between the State Department and the Pentagon; putting the Marines ashore in Beirut, where they were sitting ducks, was unpopular. The Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t want the Marines ashore; the National Security Council and State Department thought it a splendid idea, and that played out in the press.

101st Airborne arriving in an undisclosed location September 2024

President Regan sent the Marines in, and he made repeated primetime addresses to the nation explaining his rationale. The Marine position at Beirut International Airport was flooded daily with American press and TV crews from National, regional, and even local media. The media environment was so different 40 years ago that reading about it today was jarring.

Something I did not know was that Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger ignored a Presidential finding that ordered him to retaliate for the Beirut Barracks bombing. Our intelligence agencies had intercepted message traffic that pinpointed precisely who had ordered and carried out the attack. President Reagan then ordered the navy to retaliate, but at the last moment, Weinberger ordered them to stand down, explaining, “I just don’t think it was the right thing to do.”

Beirut October 1983

In one of many speeches after the Beirut bombing, President Regan said:

“Let no terrorist question our will, no tyrant doubt our resolve. Americans have courage and determination, and we must not and will not be intimidated by anyone anywhere.”

Cap Weinberger didn’t have the courage or determination to do a damn thing. His unilateral action undermined the President, and the ensuing 40 years of terrorist attacks have revealed him to be a petty, naïve, Ivy League fool. We have a surplus of over-credentialed nitwits in our country who have sacrificed the lives of thousands of servicemen by declaring preposterous concepts like “proportional response” or “courageous restraint” viable military strategies.

When we were in Beirut with the 22nd MAU there was no proportional response. The gloves were off and the Marines responded to every provocation, no matter how small, with overwhelming force. My friend Mike Ettore and his platoon were assigned to the University Library where the local Amal Militia commander would taunt them by having dinner every evening across the street from them. After his militia attacked the Marines one too many times Mike got permission to take him out. He called in a sniper team to shoot the fool in the face when he sat down for dinner. Mike if I have that story wrong don’t correct me, its too good to retract.

101st Airborne somewhere in the Middle East September 2024

President Regan and the faction supporting the deployment of the Marines were dead wrong. That was made clear by Carr when he explained how we ended up with Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, a feckless alcoholic with a libido problem worse than Bill Clinton’s. Amin replaced his capable brother Bashir Gemayel as President after a car bomb killed Bashir.  

New York Times reporter Milton Freedman wrote that Bashir was “something of an expert in gangland murders.” That may have been true; the New York Times was considered a legitimate news organization back then. What was also true was Bashir had the respect and cooperation of the other ethnic minorities in Lebanon. His drunk-ass playboy brother had no support among the Shia, Druze, or Sunni minorities. Treating him like a legitimate partner for peace was a fool’s errand, just as it was with the leaders of Iraq and Afghanistan. Believing that a battalion of Marines could accomplish anything was likewise ridiculous. However, in 1983, that controversy played out in the press, allowing the American people to have an informed opinion.

Compare that to last week’s deployment of the 101st Airborne to the Middle East. Do you see any discussion about placing American troops in harm’s way to accomplish an undefined mission in today’s gaslighting media? No. What does the Pentagon think about this deployment? Who knows? These days, everything the Pentagon does is classified. Do you know where those troops are? What they are doing? Why they are there? Nope, all we know is they were deployed “out of an abundance of caution.” Weasel words that mean nothing describing a deployment that will accomplish nothing, ordered by an unknown member of a failed administration.

Beirut October 1983

I’ve salted this post with pictures from Beirut and the few images I found of last week’s deployment of troops into the Middle East. Have you noticed the difference between the two? Forty years of “diversity is our strength,” DEI mandates, witch hunts for nonexistent white racists, and race crime hoaxes have resulted in the tip of the spear being lily white. How the hell did that happen? I liked it better when the infantry was multi racial.

101st Airborne somewhere in the Middle East September 2024.

But that isn’t the worst of it. Today, Our military is less capable by orders of magnitude than in 1983. We don’t have a fleet oiler to refuel our Atlantic, Mediterranean, or Red Sea ships. We don’t have the amphibious ship lift to move more than a puny Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), the smallest Marine formations once available for crisis response. Today’s Marine Corps MEU lacks enablers like tanks, engineers, medium-lift assault helicopters, Armored  Amphibious Tractors, snipers, or organic mortars. Marine infantry battalions are 41% smaller than they were in 1983. And those infantry battalions are saddled with the dead wood of female infantry, inflicted on them by yellow generals who believe that the difference between men and women is a mere social construct.

As you read Jack Carr’s excellent historical account, you will frequently see quotes from parents and generals expressing the hope that the Marines did not “die in vain.” Likewise, you will see a standard trope: “Where do we get such men?” when reflecting on the sacrifice of the Marines in 1983. Yet those men died in vain, as has every service-member lost during the war on terror. We may well have a handful of “such men” serving in today’s hollow force, but not many, and they will be chased out by the DEI mandarins who despise competency because it threatens the bankrupt concept of equity. When you cannot do what is important, the unimportant becomes important. That sums up our broken, hollow, woke military today; it’s a national disgrace somebody’s children will pay dearly for in the near future.

But don’t let my glum assessment of today’s armed forces be the last word. Buy Jack Carr’s new book and enjoy an excellent read about a day gone by. I promise you’ll enjoy every minute spent with this page turner.

The FRI Guide to Dangerous Places: The United States of America

The United States has never been weaker, or more vulnerable in my lifetime. The President is clearly incapacitated, yet he refuses to step down, our DEI centric military lacks the manpower, weapons, or leadership to be a credible deterrent. I enlisted in the navy in 1978, during the days of the low morale, high drug use, “hollow force”. Back then we had (literally) twice the number of ships, tanks, artillery pieces, amphibious vehicles, and infantry battalions but the units were undermanned and poorly led. Marine officers carried loaded sidearms while on duty and had every expectation of needing them.

Ole Doc Lynch pulling liberty on Saint Patricks Day, 1984, in Haifa, Israel. Brawling in shady bars was an expectation back then but the Israelis were so damn nice to us that I don’t think anyone got into a ruckus. Hard men aren’t necessarily violent, just violent when necessary.

In the late 1970’s the military fell on hard times when full of hard men who, when they had their sailors at sea, or their Marines out in the field, established good order and discipline the old fashioned way; with their fists. I did it myself because it was only one way to get your peers to stop blasting music after 2300 in the Bethesda Naval Hospital enlisted barracks. The modern military may still have a few hard men, but they would never receive tacit support or encouragement from their chain of command to use traditional old school discipline to establish and maintain good order and discipline.

We live in soft times, more disconnected from nature than ever before, with a military full of soft men/women/undecided who are uninterested in and unfamiliar with interpersonal violence. The current military is incapable of repeating the miraculous transformation into a highly competent, well funded, and drug free force, that occurred during President Regan’s military revitalization in the early 80’s. Public confidence in the military, extraordinarily high since the mid 1980’s is trending back down to where it was after Vietnam. Confidence in all the institutions that matter, the press, congress, the legal system, academia, “The scienceTM”, and Medicine are at historic lows. It’s so bad regional law enforcement agencies will no longer share information with an FBI they do not trust.

Proving the FBI has IFF (identify friend or foe) issues two FBI agents paid a visit to a friend of mine yesterday who is the hardest Marine Corps infantry officer I ever knew. Asad Khan was a legend in the Marine Corps known for an impressive work ethic, exacting standards, and tactical savvy. I was huge fan and when suddenly bumped up to the 1/8 operations officer while still a young captain then Major Khan graciously gave me a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) saving me untold of hours of tedious staff work. He wasn’t a dick about it either despite knowing that I knew he would never take another battalion’s SOP knowing he could write a better one.

That’s as close to a smile as you’ll get from Asad when he’s wearing the uniform. Not that he smiles much on his podcast now that I think about it. . . .

Asad led the first Marines into Afghanistan landing in Bagram where they boarded rented buses to drive to Kabul and re-claim the American embassy. On the way there they ran into a one tank roadblock in a wadi crossing with a sign demanding payment to pass. LtCol Khan, a fluent Pashto speaker, walked over to the tank, knocked on the crew hatch and asked the lone occupant inside what he needed, the old man said shoes. Khan gave him chow and water and told him to wait there until he returned with shoes and in the meantime to put the main gun in neutral position and let the Americans coming behind him pass unmolested. The old man agreed and was inside the tank days later with Asad returned with shoes, clothes, a coat and some money. Khan was both hard and smart – I don’t think any other Marine officer of our generation could have navigated that situation so well back in 2001.

I ran into Asad several times in Afghanistan, in fact I met his son in Kabul when he showed up with then Colonel (now retired LtGen) Dave Furness who was working in the congressional liaison office at the time. Asad hosts the Sentinel podcast on Youtube and you should listen to a few episodes to get a feel for what the FBI considers “anti-American” these days. You can listen to him describe the FBI visit here and when you’re done you tell me if you’d like to see Asad investigated by the Feds or moving into the house next door.

Some pictures are truly worth a thousand words

We are watching the government/media/academia axis of evil employs brute digital force to whitewash the disastrous incompetence of the Biden regime and it’s new leader Kamala Harris in real time. Already the allegedly non partisan GovTrack has deleted her ranking as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. Axios spent years calling Kamala the Border Czar now insist that they never said that and she was never really the border czar. Amazon has suddenly banned an unflattering book on Kamala as the media’s Soviet style airbrushing of the most unpopular Vice President in history continues.

The Orange and Velvet revolutions foisted on various countries by the U.S. Department of State targeted regime legitimacy through incremental non-violent means to generate a preference cascade leading to regime collapse. It is useful to remember this when reviewing the mountain of disinformation, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories we have had to endure since Donald J Trump announced his candidacy in June of 2015. A trendy acronym from the recent pass explains the ramifications of gaslighting American citizens: POSIWID: The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. If the ends pursued by the Regime are functionally identical to the ends of warfare, then the Regime is waging war. Ask LtCol Asad Khan USMC (Ret) about it, I’m sure he has an interesting take.

The purpose of regime media propoganda is to demoralize to opposition

Years ago progressive America declared war on biology with their refusal to accept the reality that gender is not a social construct and men and women are not interchangeable. Biology in this context is a synonym for nature and it’s Mother Nature who determined woman would never be as physically capable as men because they are designed and built differently . The difference between the sexes emotionally was just demonstrated during the FBI/Secret Service congressional hearings. US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle took such a beating that she resigned the next day, but she lost her job not because she’s a woman, but as a woman she never had to learn how to fight at the apex predator level. Showing poor tactical awareness she allowed herself to be ambushed at the Republican convention when she arrogantly strode the floor, assuming she had the juice to do so unmolested. When confronted by her ridiculous prior statements concerning roof slopes she was clearly embarrassed. When attacked by both sides of the isle she was unable to mask her emotions.

Mother Nature is tough on the small, the weak, the stupid, and the defenseless.

FBI Director Christopher Wray strode into the capitol and not only obfuscated shamelessly he smirkingly added this poison pill to his testimony:

I think with respect to former President Trump there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit his ear.” 

Utter rubbish concocted out of thin air that was walked back the next day but it wasn’t meant to be taken literally. That was Wray sending congress a two word message, first word starts with F and the second is You. He was telling congress they didn’t intimidate him and he would counterattack anyone who crossed him. That kind of naked bureaucratic power can only be wielded effectively by men who fought their way to the top of a meritocratic system. Women reach the top of federal agencies by other methods, not by consistently outperforming their male peers every step of the way for decades on end.

Regardless of who is in charge of our massive federal bureaucracies they are not going to allow the Trump/Vance ticket to gain landslide sized momentum unmolested. Their bizarre attempts to stop him have already surpassed the surreal, but have only made him stronger. The next four months are at the very least going to be weird, but I’m afraid the progressive establishment will reach for the last tool they have; political violence. Our country is leaderless, the people adrift in uncharted waters with DEI hires at the helm and FBI agents at the door; this can’t possibly end well.

The FRI Guide to Dangerous Places: President Trump Rallies  

All my life I assumed that one of the safest places in the world would be anywhere near an American President. I remember being mere feet away from President Regan once and felt totally intimidated by his secret service detail because of their size and demeanor. I’ve attended high speed shooting schools with FBI, DEA and Secret Service agents and always thought them to be great Americans. But time, experience, and the reality of last weekends gross incompetence has changed that. I left the FBI firearms instructor course with 2 cases of .45 cal golden saber rounds and level 3 body armor. Normally once bought I stay bought so when discussing the FBI on All Marine Radio years ago I was the only pro FBI voice. I’m no longer bought, I’ve unfriended the FBI and every other three letter agency.

I was given the armor because I was heading to the intermountain west on recruiting duty and the agents thought it best I carry body armor (and lots of guns) in the trunk of my government vehicle. That would have got me a court martial if caught but I appreciated the concern even though I figured (correctly) the people out west didn’t have any problems with the Marine Corps.

Here’s a picture of president Regan’s USSS detail in action in Augusta Georgia, I remember them being much larger and meaner looking in person.

What are we to make of the attempted assassination of President Trump? It’s hard to say because of the lack of trust Americans have in their institutions. Is there anyone in this country who believes the FBI will complete a competent, transparent, investigation and then share its finding with the American people? No, we expect the FBI to lie and cover up inconvenient facts that counter Government/Media Disinformation industry. The FBI claims that antifa is just an ideology  while (according to the head of the FBI) “the largest “chunk” of the FBI’s investigations involve white supremacist groups.

President Trump reacts to getting shot in the face. This is why he will win in a landslide, courage in contagious.
Congressional cowards react to the January 6th incursion and this is why America despises its congress. Cowardice is also contagious, unseemly and un fucking American.

What kind of white supremacists’ groups? The AGGAVE (other) groups I wrote about in my last post which is to say Trump Supporters. How the hell does an organization handle a real domestic terrorist when it had calibrated itself to see the victim (President Trump) and his supporters’ as domestic terrorists? It’s impossible to say or even imagine yet here we are.

It is also impossible to imagine how a gunman could low crawl on a roof to gain line of sight of the President from just 150 meters away. Or why President Trump’s secret service detail was stacked with obese women with poor gun handling skills who were too short to shield Trump which is their primary function. Actually the performance of the Secret Service last Saturday is easy to explain using Jerry Pournell’s  Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which states:

“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.” 

Add to that the results of the Federal Government”s obsession with DEI which mandates when meritocracy and diversity come into direct conflict, diversity must take priority. The results are a steady erosion of institutional competency, causing America’s complex systems to fail with increasing regularity. The Secret Service performance on Saturday just another manifestation of the competence crisis collapsing yet another complex system. Why else would the head of the secret service make hiring women her priority when they are totally incapable of doing the job? And in case you thought the head of the USSS a remotely intelligent person her justification for ignoring a snipers perch just 130 meters away was the roof was slopped and therefore ‘dangerous‘. You cannot make this stuff up; American liberal elites are bat shit crazy.

Poor gun handling results from a training regime that failed to imprint muscle memory. Holstering a weapon under stress is simple for shooters who took their training seriously and continued to practice at home. There are thousands of Americans today who have extensive gunfighting experience and will recognize gross incompetence when they see it. Why is this woman even doing a job that calls for large aggressive men? I remember watching President Regan arrive in Bethesda when I was a corpsman and his secret service detail scared the shit out of me being all huge dudes with serious attitudes.

One consequence of this failed assassination is a subtle shift in the Overton Window of public discourse. Jack Black and his partner Kyle Gass (Tenacious D) have cancelled their tour and may be deported from Australia after Gass said “don’t miss Trump next time” on stage in Sydney over the weekend. Both John Deere and Microsoft have eliminated their DEI departments. The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart is a best selling book with the author making regular appearances on various podcasts without facing violent protests, personal assaults or 24/7 liberal media harassment. And in the utterly amazing department a democratic senator has been convicted on federal corruption and bribery charges in New Jersey of all places. Senator Menendez has escaped accountability for his blatant lawlessness for years but now he’s suddenly convicted just as the lawfare cases against President Trump collapse. Weird that.

As the Trump Train picks up momentum it is hard to anticipate how the permanent Washington bureaucracy and their handmaidens in the press will react. And things just got worse for our democratic/media/academic axis of evil; President Trump just picked a former Marine Corps Corporal as his running mate. It’s time to make America Great Again, if we can keep our candidate alive until election day, maybe then our federal institutions will be gutted of deadwood and once again exist to serve, not gas light, the people.

Brookings Institute Fires a Broadside at Haqqani and Misses

General John Allen, USMC (ret) who is the president of the Brookings Institute, lashed out at the New York Times for publishing an  Op-Ed  Sirajuddin Haqqani. His article, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Terrorist was an unfortunate response that reinforces a growing narrative regarding incompetence in the elite, ruling class.

The most glaring mistake in General Allen’s  attack on the New York Times was repeating the thoroughly debunked “very fine people on both sides” hoax. That hoax was spread by the legacy media despite the fact that President Trump was talking about people protesting the removal of Confederate battle monuments.  He specifically condemned the white supremest’s if you listen to the whole quote.  General Allen is the direct descendant  of a Confederate Cavalry officer (I forget his name but remember he fought at Culpepper), for which is he justifiably proud and I suspect he , too was not happy about the removal of confederate battle monuments.  I know General Allen, he was my boss at the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course, I respect and admire him greatly so it is disturbing  to see him trafficking in hoaxes.

Worse was his endorsement of Forever War by implying we should renege on our Peace Agreement with the Taliban. This is his discussion of the Haqqani group:

This organization was and continues to be a central component of the Taliban, a major connecting file into al-Qaida, and a darling of Pakistan’s ISI. The Haqqanis, the Taliban, and al-Qaida endorse a radical interpretation of sharia that deprives women of any meaningful rights, to include the right to an education, and the freedom to pursue their own wants and interests, such as, for example, the legal profession. Countless lives were lost – and many, many more were wounded and otherwise terrorized – at the hands of this group and its peer terrorist entities, and had they not been formally designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, we would have had little means to diminish their influence and stop their violent activities. And at the very center of this violence was Sirajuddin Haqqani, operational commander of the Haqqani network as well as the #2 of the Taliban.

All of that is true and every bit of it irrelevant if we intend to sign a peace deal with the Taliban. It is none of our business if the Afghans decide to reconcile withTaliban leaders including Sirajuddin Haqqani. Haqqani is a bad man, so is Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, who reconciled years ago, and ran in the recent Presidential election. The notorious warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has been a member of the Kabul government when he wasn’t in exile dodging human rights tribunals, is a bad man. He was nominally on our side, so he’s a good, bad man, but to the Afghans he’s little better than Haqqani.

What the Afghans do to reconcile the rift in their civil society is their business. If they want to reconcile with and guarantee the freedom of warlords like Haqqani it is their right to do so. There are reasons to doubt Taliban commitment to a more inclusive civil process, but again, it is no longer our concern.

It is important to acknowledge the reality on the ground and that reality is the Taliban cannot win militarily and the same holds true for the Central Government. Given that context I believe it is time to let the Afghans work this out for themselves.

The Afghans Want To Solve Their Problems The Old Fashioned Way

This is the favorite FRI post of Afghans who stills read through this blog. It has aged well.

Panjwayi Tim sent an article the other day worthy of serious consideration at the State Department if it were capable of serious consideration. It outlines a way forward in Afghanistan that has the following advantages:

  1. It would work
  2. It would reduce the amount of future fighting and dying to near zero
  3. It costs the United States nothing
  4. It would allow us to bring all our deployed units home
  5. It would not benefit Iran or Pakistan

Because quantity has a quality all it’s own lets take a look at another plan for ending the fighting in Afghanistan and bringing our forces back home where they belong. I know I’ve posted a ton on this topic before but what the hell; I’ve got nothing better to do.

The article was an interview with former Afghan warlord Ismail Khan and he states an obvious truth; even centuries of foreign presence cannot fix Afghanistan.

“The Americans should leave,” Khan said. “There can only be peace and security in Afghanistan if there is a just government in place that is backed by the majority of the people and is chosen through elections or a loya jirga (national council). It cannot be reliant on a foreign military.”

…He said foreign forces, which he described as “girls,” had failed in their fight against the Taliban.

I have written before about how the Afghan war will end and that will be when the people present a united front against the current belligerents. Historically this has been done when a militia or groupings of militia’s gain the peoples support. That is how the Taliban took control of most of the country back in the 90’s.

Ismail Khan is the one mujaheddin commander still standing who could build a coalition of Muj commanders, force an “understanding” on the Taliban, and win the support of the population. He is ready to re-mobilize his militia if given a green light from Kabul and if he can get the majority of his fellow mujaheddin commanders to do the same there is no question it would work.

Ismail Khan fought the Soviets, fought the Taliban, fought General Dostum who fought for and against both the Soviets and the Taliban and has never had allegations of human rights abuse directed at him. He is a Tajik and the former governor of Herat province who is highly regarded in Western Afghanistan, an area from which 90% of Afghanistan’s saffron crop originates. Saffron makes farmers a ton more money than opium which is why I mention it. He would need to incorporate the current Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF)  and central government into the effort but that is not a hard job for prominent warlords; they have thousands of years tradition and a lifetime of experience on their side.

If the Afghans could figure out a way to link his militia to the Afghan Army and use them as auxiliaries they could probably clean up the Helmand province in a few months. Not because Ismail Khan’s militia is proficient but because Ismail Khan knows how to use the ulema (the body of Mullahs who are the interpreters of Islam’s doctrines and laws and the chief guarantors of continuity in Afghan communities) to reach the people. He carries series weight with the Afghan people and the people and the ulema are the only entities that can force peace in Afghanistan. In the context of ending the current war with the Taliban the Afghan military and central government are irrelevant.

Ismail Khan; tanned, rested, fit and waiting. (Photo from Khama.com)

The Marines in Helmand are winding down their tour and are a bright spot of good news for our military efforts in Afghanistan. Good news because they have taken no casualties while accomplishing the mission they were assigned. The LA Times ran a good story on them last Saturday; an incident described in that article is a perfect example with which to compare and contrast what would work against what is not going to work.

From the LA Times story linked above:

One recent morning, two convoys of Afghan security forces traveling south toward Lashkar Gah came under fire from a house inside the village of Malgir. Inside a windowless, high-ceilinged room at an operations center near Shorab, Marines, Afghan officers, and American civilian contractors watched footage from a U.S.-made ScanEagle drone hovering above the village.

Once Afghan troops in the area determined the shooters’ location and that there were no civilians nearby, officers in the control room requested airstrikes, which were carried out by U.S. Apache helicopters. One of the shooters was killed, two were wounded and two escaped, said Afghan army Maj. Abdul Wakil.

All that technology, all those assets, all those people deployed at lord knows what cost to kill one guy shooting small arms at a convoy? You get that with our efforts in Afghanistan and it’s old news; let’s focus on the village and read between the lines of the story.

Malgir, the village where the Marines directed an air strike with army Apaches, is in Nad Ali district near Gereshk. The area around Malgir belongs mostly to the Barakai tribe (who for the most part are pro government) with significant areas of Ishaqzai/Poplazai  (who are mostly pro Taliban) tribal dominance . There is a concentration of Shia Hazara peoples in the southern end of the district who seemed to be on the short end of the stick regardless who controls the area.

In 2009 the British launched an operation aimed at Malgir to clear out Taliban. The Taliban ‘moved in’ after the collapse of the Barakzai militia who had been running the place until 2008 when they stopped getting paid. The Barakzai had over-taxed non Barakzai locals in the area which probably had something to do with their getting their stipend from the provincial authorities cut off. There were three prominent Muj warlords in the area at that time, Haji Kadus (Barakzai/Shamezai tribe), Qari Hazrat (Ishaqzai tribe and local Taliban commander) and former provincial governor Sher Mohammad Akhundzdza (Alizai from Northern Helmand and at that time a Taliban commander).

Haji Kadus was a favorite of the American Special Forces having dime’d out all his local rivals as ‘Taliban’ (most weren’t)  which had landed them in Gitmo. When the British started planning their operation Haji Kadus divided up Malgar with Qari Hazrat allowing him to protect his communities. As the operation unfolded the British made Haji Kadus a Major in the Afghan police and then maneuvered into the village of Haji Gul Ehkitar Kalay.

The British decided to establish a patrol base in the house of Haji Gul Ehkitar (the village was named after him) and negotiated a fair rent which was paid to Haji Gul’s nephew Sur Gul, who happened to be a Taliban commander. The only Taliban mahaz commander to fight the British was Sher Muhamad’s who had been cut out of the pre-invasion deal making. Haji Gul’s Taliban did not fight but he, reportedly, used the British Army rent money to buy IED’s which he turned against his renters. Haji Kadus, who knew what Haji Gul was up to, said nothing to the Brits. When the foreigners went home Haji Kadus was not going with them so he had to make accommodations that made sense in the long game. A smart Indian doesn’t crap in his own tepee.

This is all very complicated right? But here’s the point; Muj commanders like Ismal Khan know this history and know how to put minor Muj commanders on a short leash without much (if any fighting). Know who else knows this entire inter-tribal history inside and out? BGen Roger Turner, the commanding officer of TF Southwest. The British learned from their mistakes and developed a detailed order of battle with comprehensive dossiers on every player inside their former AOA (area of operations). They spent the time and money to fly to North Carolina to bring Roger Turner and his staff up to speed.

Here’s the point. The intricate knowledge of tribal dynamics is not knowledge Gen Turner and his Marines can act on in the context of their current mission.  It is good that they know how things got to be the way they are but that hard won knowledge is meaningless to the Marines now. They are locked down on the bases focused on improving the performance of Afghan Security Forces.

Ismail Khan, on the other hand, can use this knowledge to sort out recalcitrant Muj commanders quickly. He can generate change to the local tribal dynamics in a manner that the change sticks. He would probably be able to do so without any serious fighting. If he had to fight he would incorporate local tribal fighters because that’s the way Afghans fight. Those tribes on his side would be rewarded, those against him punished, in both cases this would involved acquiring or losing land. Nothing else matters in the Helmand; land ownership and water rights are the only game that matters.

Boost airfield where the Marines working with the Afghan Police are based. There were very few houses around the airfield in 2011 when I was last there. Now there are hundreds of houses built outside the wire of the airfield. These are a problem as they can be used to shield an attacking force massing to overrun the airfield. They also impeded our ability to use supporting arms against attacking infantry given the number of civilians who would be caught in the cross fire. Another good reason to get out now why the getting is good.

Getting the Department of State to understand that offers like the one made by Ismail Khan should be taken seriously is impossible.  As Upton Sinclair famously said “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. State Department mandarins are not salary motivated but they are power motivated and giving up power is anathema to them. That is a crying shame; we’re running out of time and are already out of money for further adventures in Afghanistan. We should be giving Ismail Khan a shot a solving the Afghan problem we created. It will cost us little and is the only route to peace available now.

The Manning’s: Chelsea and Optimal

Yesterday morning there was another article in the American Thinker website that went after Secretary of Defense Mattis. Titled Mattis Attempts To Normalize A Severe Mental Disorder.   It was written by the same author as last weeks hit piece, David Archibald and the article dinged Mattis for establishing a panel of experts to examine the issue of transsexuals serving in the military rather than just processing the individuals out of the service. Also in the article was this link to a recent GAO report: “Navy Force Structure: Actions Needed to Ensure Proper Size and Composition of Ship Crews.”

In light of the recent rash of Naval shipping incidents I found that link interesting and it referenced the Navy’s “Optimal Manning” program that ran from 2003 to 2012. Researching this program revealed a plan that, given the current problems with basic seamanship in the Navy, was alarming.  This article from a 2004 addition of Military Times explains why.

Now, instead of training sailors in large classes for narrowly defined jobs, the Navy will be looking for people who match its precisely defined “skill objects,” and have the ability and motivation to train themselves, using computer courses available worldwide.

For example, a sonar operator needs to know how to operate sonar equipment, apply deductive reasoning, understand acoustic principles and be qualified in specific hardware and software, among other skills.

In turn, those skills define performance standards that the Navy can apply to sailors’ evaluations and career progression.

Optimal manning, and the training to achieve it, are not confined to the newer ships. Experiments aboard existing ships such as the guided-missile destroyer Milius, for example, have reduced the crew size by about half.

Capt. Albert Thomas, deputy director of the Human Systems Integration Directorate.

“Right now, our entire process is based on recruiting 18-year-olds, keeping 30 to 40 percent of them and having them work full careers.” In the future, he said, “We’ll be looking to recruit 30-year-olds to perform specific functions as well.”

Computer-based training will give sailors greater career mobility, Thomas said. “Right now we tend to send [sailors] to the same kind of ship, over and over again,” he said, because of the expense of sending a sailor to a new training course. Now, “if a sailor really wants to change from one class of training to another, it will be easier to do.”

Remote training based on self motivation? Recruiting 30 year old’s for specific skill sets? Decreasing the crew of a Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer by half????!!!!! I’m not sure if that drastic reduction ever happened; information of that specificity regarding manning levels is difficult to come by (as it should be) but it sure sounds like a recipe for disaster. Which may help explain the recent disasters incurred by the 7th fleet.

The optimal manning program was designed to tackle the persistent problem for all military branches of P2T2. P2T2 stands for patients (personnel in hospital), prisoners (personnel in the brig) training (personnel in schools), and transfer (personnel moving from one duty station to the next). The service personnel who fall into one of these categories are not available to the fleet (or combatant commands for the other services) for assignment thus the desire to keep P2T2 numbers as low as humanly possible.

The optimal manning program attacked the problem two ways, it reduced the numbers attending and teaching at formal schools while simultaneously cutting the manning levels for the ships in the fleet.  Leveraging new technologies to accomplish those goals is commendable but any solution that promised to cut the manning levels of a ship by 50% should have been viewed as too good to be true.

What also falls under the ‘too good to be true’ category is the hope that unsupervised self directed study on a computer will yield technically proficient sailors capable of performing those same duties aboard a naval combatant at sea. There is a reason that military personnel have to demonstrate mastery of the subjects taught them at formal schools and one of those reasons is so they won’t drive into commercial ships traveling at 8 knots in congested sea lanes.

Planning to recruit middle aged people to serve as first term enlisted personnel is also foolish. The military has enough history accessing in older folks to know that statistically they fair poorly. They don’t tolerate having people much younger than them telling them what to do. They can’t handle advanced rank well because they don’t have the 10 or so years of service knowledge needed to be at that rank. They are a poor bet but that’s not the main problem; screwing up your sales force and sales systems by going after a low potential demographic is. That is also the same problem with establishing quota’s for females and transsexuals.

Our military is not an all volunteer force. It is a professionally recruited force and recruiting is a difficult business where only those who establish effective sales system and train a serious sales force with that system will thrive.

The Marine Corps takes this task seriously which is why a healthy percentage of Marine General Officers are prior recruiting station commanders. It’s hard to make it to the top without checking that box (for the ground pounder’s that is – pilots have a different career progression).

I did put a guy over 30 in while on recruiting duty. He needed massive waivers to be considered; ten years prior while attending college on a ROTC scholarship he had been involved in a DUI accident where one of his classmates had perished. Since that time he had become a national spokesman for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, never touched a drink again, and had been trying for years to enlist as being a Marine remained a major goal in his life. He did well in boot camp and went on to become a commissioned officer.

 

Catching up with the current head of Marine Corps recruiting and my best friend MajGen Paul Kennedy in DC last month. He wouldn’t give up any juicy tidbits for this post but did catch me up on all sorts of insider shenanigans he knows I’ll never write about. He’s such a dick like that but I love him anyway. I hope he continues on up the chain – the country and our Corps will be better off if he does.

But the only reason he got in was the Marine Corps needed him. I put his package in during February, a tough recruiting month and at that time (1998) the Marine Corps was the only service making its annual recruiting mission. I had made mission already but the district needed another shipper that month and I offered him up as one we could process and ship the same week. The district commander gave him a shot and he got a chance to accomplish a life long goal. But it wasn’t about him; it was the needs of the service that allowed him in and had we not been desperate to meet our recruiting mission that month he would have never set foot on the recruit depot in San Diego. The fact that he was a good man and ultimately made a fine Marine was and remains irrelevant.

The needs of the service drive manpower requirements which brings us to the Chelsea Manning part of the manning problem. Regardless of ones opinion concerning the mental health of the transgendered population the fact remains the service has no requirement to bring them into the force structure. By definition they will spend more time in P2T2 status if we allow them to transition to what they think they should be. More importantly the argument about their potential service is focused on them, what’s ‘fair’ for them, demands of respect for their choices etc… The military isn’t about individuals and it is sure as hell not ‘fair’; it’s about the military and what it needs.

I suspect that Secretary Mattis is working the system to come up with a policy on transgendered service people that will withstand both push back from hysterical know-nothing politicians as well as the test of time. What is more important is what he is doing about the current crisis with his Navy’s basic seamanship skills. I suspect the solution is going to require re-establishing formal schools and enforcing rigorous standards to graduate from those schools. Something in the current mindset of the navy will have to change to accomplish that and one of those things, I suspect, is the current fad of getting as many women as possible assigned to ship’s crews.

As of 2016 16% of the women assigned sea duty have become pregnant which means they cannot go to sea. If the navy has already reduced manning levels by 50% with their optimal manning program that additional loss of manpower is crippling. The catastrophic accidents we have seen this year are thus inevitable.

The problems with ship driving in the navy will be rapidly corrected. They have to be. The question with the other manning issue is this; if we cave to political pressure to recruit individuals we don’t need where will it end?

Our neighbors in the great white north provide a good example of where it could end. They provide the perfect example of neo-Marxist political dogma evolving into social lunacy. A bill called C-16 is being floated in Canada as an amendment to its human rights code. It is based on the dogma that gender is a social construct and makes it a hate crime for not referring to an individual with one of the 70 and counting manufactured pronouns for expressing non-traditional gender preferences.  It amounts to compelled speech, which should be anathema to a free peoples, while ignoring the fact that if you keep extending ‘rights’ you weaken existing rights and soon will have no rights.

One of the positive aspects of this strange social experiment is the emergence a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto named Jordan Peterson. He is now a YouTube star who came out of nowhere after posting 3 videos about his refusal to cooperate with compelled speech codes. Millions of people around the world, including me, have been receiving a world class education on psychology, sociology and making a coherent argument from his lectures, interviews and testimony before the Canadian Human Rights commission. A sample is pasted in below.

Canada can afford this kind of liberal cultural group think for a number of reasons not the least of which is they don’t need a functioning military; they have us next door and we’ll take care of them in a pinch. We have no big brother on our boarder and need to take our national defense seriously. The needs of the service should trump all other considerations concerning who gets to serve in our Armed Forces.

That imperative keeps getting harder to recognize in this age of a hostile congress more concerned with moral preening and buying votes then national defense. That will change only after we incur a military disaster big enough to force change. I don’t think North Korea is a big enough threat to do that and shudder to contemplate what will be.

History doesn’t care about feeling or about who is right or wrong; it doesn’t care about anything; it just happens and those who have prepared the best to deal with the worst survive.  The rest…..they’re history.

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