Sic Semper Tyrannis

Assassins win again in Kandahar

 
"The death of Hamidi will raise further concerns about whether military gains by the US military in the Kandahar region, particularly in districts adjoining the city, will be undermined by the remorseless killing of top public figures.

The death comes weeks after the killing in their homes of two powerful politicians in the south: Ahmed Wali Karzai and Jan Mohammad Khan, an ally of the Karzai family and a key figure in neighbouring Uruzgan province. In April, Kandahar's police chief was killed by a suicide bomber who entered police headquarters."  Guardian

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Well, pilgrim, how many is that in the last weeks?  First there was the chief of police.  Then, there was Ahmad Wali Karzai, then a tribal leader allied with the government, now this man, an Afghan-American accountant.

The NATO led coalition is trying to take Kandahar Province away from the Taliban coalition.

Are we there yet?  pl

PS How are things in Marja? 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/27/kandahar-mayor-killed-explosives-turban

 

We can finish off Al-Qa'ida - True

 
"The US is now ''within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda'' and the American focus has narrowed to capturing or killing 10 to 20 crucial leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, the US Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, has said."  Washpost

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The four wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, ROW CT) that we are now fighting are being run by people who have little or no understanding of Islamicate civilization or its history.  Some of them are just ignorant generally.  For these, comprehension of the world is limited to Power Point slide briefings and Tom Clancy novels.  For another group, the poisoned chalice of "international relations" and "political science" as educational background is fatal to the possibility that they will understand Islamicate civilization for itself on its own terms, the terms on which Muslims live and act rather than the "rational actor" paradigm that describes Muslims as being motivated exactly as are all humans.

 
Revivalism in Islamicate civilization has follwed a sine curve of ferment followed by combat against the West, followed by defeat, followed by quiescence, followed by ferment as the memory of defeat wears off.  This pattern has been clearsince the rise of the West as a truly formidable opponent for the 'umma.

This will be no different.  pl

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/alqaeda-defeat-within-reach-says-new-us-defence-secretary-20110710-1h8wb.html#ixzz1RidXSabi

"Against the clock in Afghanistan" - Ignatius

 

(LTG) "Rodriguez, who’s finishing his second tour here................., says his main regret is that the United States didn’t implement its current strategy faster. “When I first got here, I didn’t know 10 percent of what I needed,” he explains. “We poured money in here without the proper governance systems.” The United States has learned lessons, but late in the game."  Ignatius

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How sad the quoted admission is.  Ten years we have been at this in Afghanistan and just now this honest man admits that he and his colleagues at the top of the "food chain" in NATO's war in Afghanistan have been incompetent to their task. 

It is implicit in his admission that they had thought they knew what Afghanistan was about.  They had thought that their unfortunately typical American assumption that "people are all the same,' would suffice on the "roof of the world," but this "melting pot" assumption has proven inadequate to the task of knowing and understanding Afghanistan.

What about all the c--p that was fed to the leaders by third rate academics and retired junior officers who had read a book or two and written a book or two?  What about that?  What about the fat consulting contracts given to such people, the rides in special mission aircraft, the all expenses paid travel to gather the "wisdom" that shaped pur policy in Afghanistan?  Can we "re-capture" some of the money?  Sadly, no, we cannot.

I still am occasionally asked to attend various government meetings.  These meetings are filled with the next generation of "advisers" who will "help" the next generation of generals like Rodriguez.  The chatter of the academical class at these conclaves is interesting.  The "Rational Actor" model is alive and well among the thirty-five year old Ph.D.s who infest such meetings.  Any suggestion that Afghans, Yemenis, Libyans, Hottentots, Masai, Mescalero Apaches or Ruritanians might act rationally on the basis of assumptions other than those sacred to the political science/international relations "sciences" is greeted with scorn.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/against-the-clock-in-afghanistan/2011/06/30/AGZtTmsH_story.html

Will President Obama's Afghanistan Strategy Prove Effective? - National Security Experts

 
Will President Obama's Afghanistan Strategy Prove Effective? - National Security Experts.

"It don't matter. It don't mean nothin."

 
"Nunez swallowed his beer, let out a stream of profanity before landing on a sentence that he repeats a lot these days. “It’s worthless, and it’s never going to end.”"  Washpost

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The title of this post is something that survivors of the Vietnam War remember well.  The immortal riflemen of that war were often heard to mutter this as they passed in their weary ranks.  It expressed well the nihilism of the "blooded" combat soldier.

PFC Nunez is a lot like a soldier of those long gone days, weeks, months, years, etc.  He joined the US Army to know what war was.  Now he knows.  He has "seen the elephant."  He can go home now, if he can manage the trip.

War scars more than the body.  Doors are opened that can never be closed.  Paths are walked that can never be forgotten.  How trite such statements are, but... 

It is remarkable that discharged combat veterans cause so little trouble in civilian society among people for whom they have little remaining sense of kinship.  Whatever damage they do is usually limited to destructive things they do to themselves.

Armies are necessary because humans are not angels and cannot be trusted to behave well.  War is, and will be.

Policy?  Obama's policy?  Bush's policy?  PFC Nunez has learned well the irrelevance of policy to those who must live with the results of any leader's war policy.  For people like Nunez, policy, any policy is a sick joke no matter how well intentioned it may be.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/obamas-afghanistan-plan-gets-mixed-reviews-from-grunts-at-fort-campbell/2011/06/25/AGZyaWmH_story.html?hpid=z1

 

Ignatius on the Hidden Cost of CT

 
"What worries me, thinking about the future that Obama outlined in Afghanistan, is U.S. reliance on the harshest weapons in our arsenal — the killing machine that is America’s counterterrorism force."  Ignatius

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COIN (military led nation building in someone else's country) has been described on "Sic Semper Tyrannis" by Dr. Michael Brenner as being favored by two main American groups, "the deludeders, and the deluded."  I would describe David Ignatius over the last years as having been among the deluded.  I mean no disrespect in writing that.  I have known him for a long time and hold him in high regard, but in regard to COIN he appears to me to have accepted in the past the argument of NEOCOIN theorists that COIN is the humane form of war, the progressive form of war, a form of war that is benevolent in its intentions and largely in its methods, and a form of war that will be effective.

That has been delusion.  COIN is far too expensive, takes too long and is premised on the false idea that alien populations are "hiding" their universal human characteristics behind outmoded customs and folkways that can relatively easily be changed to ways consistent with our own and acceptable to us.  This is not a new delusion.  We tried COIN in the age of Kennedyesque romanticism in the 20th Century.  We tried it in many places.  It never worked very well.  Now we have tried reborn NEOCOINism in Afghanistan (not Iraq) and it does not work in that desolate country either. 

Has Obama decided against NEOCOINism as the "theme song" of his efforts against Islamic terrorists?  Yes, apparently he has.  For the deluders, the time has come to look for other "fields" in which to work.  Perhaps "global warming" might provide alternative careers.

Flash! Obama declares COIN dead - Again.

 
“Over the last decade, we have spent $1 trillion on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times,” he said in a 13-minute address that sounded at times like a campaign speech. “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.” Barack Obama

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-to-order-home-10000-troops-from-afghanistan-officials-say/2011/06/22/AGUuRCgH_story.html

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"the reason why I don’t think we can win with a counterinsurgency strategy, is in fact because I think that, three or four years down the pike, if we apply that strategy, all you good people, and your fellow citizens across the country are going to look at this, going to say, are the Taliban, or whatever it is we’re calling the Taliban, are they really our enemies, in the sense that al-Qaeda was? Is this really what we want to do? And when that happens, I suspect that what’s going to happen is you’re going to tell your members of Congress that you’ve had enough of this, and then they will vote the end of the war as they did in Vietnam."  W. Patrick Lang at the IQ2 debate on Afghanistan policy, 6 October, 2009.

"...time to focus on nation-building here at home.”

With those words, President Obama turned America's back on the failed NEOCOIN dreams of the last decade.  As I said in New York City eighteen months ago, COIN is too hard, too expensive and takes too long to be a fruitful method of warfare unless the counterinsurgents either own the land and people fought for or hope to do so.

Afghan Endgame : Current state of play - FB Ali

The endgame continues to unfold in Afghanistan, as it has now for over a year. Writing in May last year, I had discussed the goals and objectives that the various players in the Afghan conflict (and the factions within each of them) wanted to achieve in this endgame. In this past year these goals haven’t changed, but the methods that the players are adopting of trying to achieve them have changed with the changing situation. This is an appropriate occasion to review how the endgame is being played now.

In May last year President Obama had sided with the war faction (led by Secretary Gates and the generals), and allowed them to pursue their strategy of sufficiently weakening the Taliban to permit the US to safely hand over the country to a friendly Afghan government and its army (backed by US airpower and SF). He had ruled against the ‘minimalist’ faction, led by VP Biden, that wanted an expeditious US pullout on the best terms that could be negotiated with the Taliban. Now, Obama has adopted the Biden goal as the ultimate aim, though, in typical fashion, he has compromised by letting the generals take one last kick at the can. However, he has given them firm deadlines for drawing down US forces in Afghanistan, and has clearly signalled that, for the US, the Afghan war is now finally over.

Another Reading from the Book of COIN: Iraq...

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

Yesterday reports came in that there were two more bombings in Iraq that killed at least twenty four people.  While sporadic violence, if not escalating violence, is to be expected as the various divisions and factions, including the sectarian, continue to jockey for position and resource, the strategic failure that we leave behind in Iraq is directly tied to COL Lang's post from earlier today about Afghanistan.

In November of 2009 COL Lang and I were both panelists and participants at New York University's Center on Law and Security's Counterinsurgency: America's Strategic Burden conference.  I was on the first panel on COIN Theory and Applications.  COL Lang on a later panel dealing with the history of COIN.  Everyone else on my panel had been key contributors to FM 3-24 (Undersecretary of Defense Davidson, Dr. McFate, Dr. Crane, and LTC Nagl)**.  I was not part of that endeavor, but have contributed revisions to several related field manuals since then.  When LTC Nagl gave his remarks he zeroed right onto the upcoming Iraqi elections.  He stated they would go smoothly (they didn't), that when the new government was seated we would be able to negotiate a proper status of forces agreement and that would allow us to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq for an extended period.  I was looking out at the audience and I can only say that no description of COL Lang's expression would do it justice.  Needless to say, as the WaPo story about the bombing indicates, there will not be an extension of any significant number of US forces under the current government (and I do NOT consider 10K or so to be a significant number if that's the number of forces left to do security force advising) as the Sadrists will bring down the governing coalition.  Here's the link to the conference page and there's supposed to be video links that work at the bottom:

http://www.lawandsecurity.org/law-and-security-conferences/vw/3/itemid/61/d/20091120

(full embarrassment disclosure: I had a Freudian slip in my remarks - I was referring to a French friend whose father had been a French general.  She is several years older than me and once got very emotional while visiting and watching a documentary on Vichy France and how they did not teach that in school when she was a girl.  While referring to her being older I intended to say: as its not polite to give a Lady's age I do not want to provide a date for her and it came out as "I don't want to date her" my mouth got ahead of the brain...)

* Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College.  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College or the US Army

** Full Disclosure: I used to work with and for Dr. McFate as she was one of my two supervisors when I served on the PM's staff of the Army's Human Terrain System, the other COL Fondacaro was also a panelist later in the day.  Dr. Crane is now a professional colleague at the US Army War College, this event was the first time I met him.

John Nagl and the prospect of unending war in Afghanistan.

 
John McCain went on at length yesterday about "isolationists" who wish to turn their backs on the noble Afghan peoples fighting for the re-birth of their "nation" that never was.  Afghanistan has been a state for almost a century but it has never been a "nation."  It is many nations.  McCain tells us that if the American people continue to support the present level of NEOCOIN nation building for another year and another "fighting season" after yet another winter, then "we" will have won the game.  IMO these statements reflect the life experience of the generation that McCain and I belong to more than anything else.  We do not want to lose again.

But McCain is not the ultimate expression of the "fight to the last Talib" attitude.  No, the main man is John Nagl the retired lieutenant colonel who heads CNAS, the leading NEOCOIN "think tank" and lobby here in Washington.

As is shown in this video of last night's Newshour, Nagl is opposed to any (my judgment of his position) withdrawal from Afghanistan and firmly believes that US military engagement in Afghanistan should continue  for "many years."  His opinion matters.  He continues to advise the NEOCOIN generals.  He, and CNAS, have great influence in policy formation.

IMO he has little choice but to hold such a position firmly.  His book "Learning To Eat Soup With A Knife" was a key element in the re-birth of the much failed 20th Century doctrine of counterinsurgency (nation building).  Nagl left the US Army to become a major prophet of a doctrine that could explain the world and foreign peoples to people who are basically ignorant of anything that is not fed to them in small doses.  Such people rarely understand what they see.  The nonsense generally believed about Iraq is a case in point.  The "surge" in Iraq did not improve the situation there.  Petraeus returned to Iraq from Leavenworth with the intention of applying NEOCOIN methods there but that doctrine was not what improved the situation.  Traditional colonial methods of "divide and conquer" (the "awakening" and the Sons of Iraq) did that.  COIN had little effect in Iraq except to line many pockets in Iraq and the US.  Nevertheless,  NEOCOIN methods are being applied in Afghanistan with religious devotion.  Nagl is the chief priest of that religion and Petraeus is the anointed commander in this crusade.

Several years ago I told Nagl (after our debate on Afghanistan policy) that he reminded me of John Paul Vann, the high priest of COINism in VN.   I knew Vann.  I was wrong.  Vann loved the Vietnamese people.  I don't think John Nagl loves the Afghans.  pl

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june11/afghanistan2_06-21.html

There will be lies and rumors of lies.

 

"But Sen. John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is among a growing number of congressional leaders urging Obama to take full advantage of progress achieved over the past 18 months by narrowing the mission’s focus.

These lawmakers argue that, at a time of fiscal stress at home, the administration should concentrate on targeting al-Qaeda and protecting other U.S. security interests in the region, rather than on maintaining the broad military deployments across much of southern and eastern Afghanistan and the costly nation-building elements of the counter-insurgency strategy."  Washpost

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lawmakers-push-for-afghan-strategy-rethink/2011/06/10/AGtahoQH_story.html?hpid=z1

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"In sum, the quick exiters get the big 30,000 or so number, and the die-harders get one last year-plus at near full strength to weaken the Taliban. Ain’t democracy grand? Officials caution that since no announcement will be made for almost a month, and since Obama is still being battered from all sides, the projected withdrawal total and end dates could change somewhat. No one, not even Obama’s most intimate national-security aides—Tom Donilon, Denis McDonough, and Ben Rhodes—can be certain of their boss’ final calculations, but key officials feel confident that the president’s secret thinking will generally hold."  Gelb in the Beast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-06-11/obamas-secret-afghan-exit-formula-leslie-h-gelb-with-exclusive-details

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Well, boys and girls.  Well. 

Obama (still a sucker for those guys in "star suits") will evidently continue to follow them down the primrose path in Afghanistan, and, just about anywhere else they want to lead him.  (irony alert) The NEW AFGHANISTAN will rise from the ashes of donkey dung fires to shine its light on the world, a third "shining city on the hill" (after Baghdad of course).  Following on the smashing success of our revolutionary efforts in Iraq, the COINistas are now well on their way to achieving the "critical mass" of transformed Muslim countries needed to change the world.  it will only take a few more decades in Afghanistan.

Leslie Gelb (usually well informed) appears to claim that Obama is deliberately deceiving ordinary Americans in this matter.  Could that be?  He also implies that Hillary Clinton is doing much the same.  Can that be?

Representative Dana Rohrbacher (?/CA?) (does it matter?) said recently that Iraq should reimburse the US for expenses incurred in the intervention, subsequent insurgency, CT operations and re-construction (of the damage we did).  The Iraqis seem unwilling to pay.  "A humiliation!"  Ah, well everything is a humiliation to them.  "The US should pay us!"  Buena suerte, amigo!, mumkin f'il mishmish.  Where do they find candidates for Congress like this man Rohrbacher? 

Ah, well, I am actually more interested in the "Waterfront Re-Development Plan" here in Alexandria.

 
BTW, for the interest of the gun people here, I bought the Henry .17 HMR.  Also, BTW.  This is a range gun for me.  i haven't hunted for a long time.

Oh, yes, once again, there are good, worthwhile and sensible wars and then, there are the other kind.  pl

 

 

Karzai, another "marker" down.

 
"In demanding that the U.S.-led coalition stop all airstrikes on Afghan homes, President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday drew his government closer than ever to direct opposition to the United States presence in Afghanistan, a position that could complicate President Obama's looming decision on how quickly to withdraw American troops.

The immediate provocation for Karzai's remarks was a U.S. military airstrike in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province that killed at least nine civilians, including children."  Washpost

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NATO and especially the US face a major challenge to the legitimacy of their efforts in Afghanistan and all the Afghanistans that may lie in wait.

We have made a long effort to convince the Afghans, the world and most importantly ourselves that the Karzai government is sovereign.  There has been a lot of skepticism over this "sovereignty."  Widespread corruption has occurred in the employment of US funds sent to Afghanistan (and Iraq before Afghanistan).  This corruption has added to the skepticism over Karzai's government.

Lately Karzai has "reared up on his hind legs"  to defy the NATO command over its policy in the war in his country.  So far, he has been ignored.  The threat of an anti-NATO insurgency sanctioned by his government is explicit in his latest statement about the bombing of Afghan houses.  That statement took the form of a command from a sovereign government.  He has been "waved off" again.

Do we and our NATO friends really think that we are that grand?  pl

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015198014_afghanistan01.html

Pakistani Leader Rebuts Criticism Over bin Laden - WSJ

 
"Pakistan's prime minister sought to assuage spreading anger at home over the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a defiant speech to parliament, rejecting accusations that Pakistanis shielded the al Qaeda leader and suggesting the terror network was created by the U.S."  WSJ

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Comments?  pl

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703864204576313153255249860.html

#The idea of counterinsurgency is deader than Osama Bin Laden - Paul Mulshine

 
"The contrast between the two approaches could not have been more obvious after an elite unit, the Navy SEALs, dispatched Osama bin Laden the other day without losing a man. Meanwhile, our conventional forces remain bogged down in a couple of countries, losing men and blowing through billions while achieving little of strategic importance to the United States."  Mulshine

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2011/05/post_103.html

 

#Pakistan in the light of day

 
"Pakistan’s army chief warned Thursday that any repeat of the type of U.S. commando operation that killed Osama bin Laden would be viewed as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty and would imperil military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries.

The combative statement came as a senior U.S. defense official said Pakistan would have to take “very concrete and visible steps” to persuade Congress to continue providing $3 billion in annual military and economic assistance."  Washpost

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"It's nice to be nice to the nice."  Frank Burns

Let's see...  What does Pakistan do for the US? 

1-They let our Main Supply Route to Afghanistan run north from their ports to the Khyber Pass and to Quetta.  This is a major vulnerability for us.  With the size force we have in Afghanistan, we would have a difficult time supplying that force either through Russia or by air.  Pakistani companies make a lot of money in the haulage on this MSR.

2- Pakistan's military keeps it's existing and future nuclear capability out of the larger world game.  As has been discussed at SST many times, Pakistan either has or will soon have the real world CAPABILITY of ranging Israel's target set.  They have around 100 fully engineered and manufactired deliverable nuclear weapons.  They have aircraft and missiles (Shahiin 2 improved) that would do the job.  The missile launchers are fully mobile.  The US has zero control over this nuclear strike force.   Logically, the willingness of the Pakistan military to keep this "piece" off the chess board is a major boon to the US.  We do not want to see that willingness change to something else. 

Breaking News: bin Laden Dead

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

According to all the major news networks the President is preparing to make a televised address that Osama bin Laden is dead and that he was killed as a result of US military actions.

Here's a link to the breaking news:

Sources: Osama bin Laden is dead

* Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College.  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College or the US Army.

#Some Thoughts on the Kandahar Jailbreak, De-radicalization, & Detainee Operations

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

I wanted to just take a minute and follow up on COL Lang's post and comments regarding the jailbreak in Kandahar.  While the CSM report does not go into great detail about how the detainee operations were conducted, it does make clear that criminal and political prisoners were separated.  What it does not specify, however, is how the political prisoners were treated.  And by treated I mean not just were they give three meals a day, exercise time, prayer time, access to reading material, health care, etc, but if their incarceration included attempts to de-radicalize them, disaggregate them from the insurgency, and eventually be able to release them back into their communities.  The latter two aspects of detainee operations were successfully established and used in Iraq by Task Force 134.  Initially conceived and laid out under the command of Maj. Gen. Stone, the idea was to move beyond a crime control process of just getting the insurgents off the street and holding them were they could not do any more damage to actively trying to identify who the detainees were (extremist, non-extremist, religious, non-religious, reconcilable, non-reconcilable) and then utilize appropriate rehabilitation (for lack of a better term) methods to achieve these goals.  Essentially the detainee operations were a version of COIN applied within the detention facility.  TF 134 had some real success with this approach and it appears that it was copied in Parwan, Afghanistan.  Whether this was being used in the Kandahar prison is not determinable from the CSM article on the jail break.

 

#Jailbreak in Kandahar

 
"The escape is a particular blow to NATO and Afghan forces who have ratcheted up their campaign against the Taliban during the past year and hoped to expand their gains this summer. While NATO forces captured many of the Taliban fighters who were being held in the prison, the escape cast doubts on the ability of Afghan forces preparing to take more responsibility for providing security.

“I would call this a shameful incident for the Afghan government,” says Ahmad Shah Khan Achakzai, a former member of parliament in Kandahar. “It is impossible for the Taliban to get 500 men out of prison without anyone’s help. I believe there are some people from the prison or the government who gave the Taliban support.… It’s now clear to everyone how corrupt the government is.”"  CSM

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The marines and ISAF headquarters say that "progress" is being made in south Afghanistan; Helmand Province, Kandahar Province, etc.   I don't think so.  Kandahar city is the largest population center in that region.  The Taliban were able to dig a thousand foot long tunnel there without detection.  This took five months to do.  The tunnel ran under a main road, under buildings, etc.   Nobody in the city noticed or warned the authorities.  Having dug the tunnel into the political section of the prison, the Taliban emptied it out, taking several hours in the process.  Guards, prison authorities, etc. were strangely oblivious to all this. 

There are 541 more Taliban back "in the game" today.  Who is kidding who about "progress" in south Afghanistan?  pl  

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2011/0425/Taliban-tunnel-frees-Kandahar-prisoners-in-blow-to-NATO-and-Afghan-forces

#Something’s happening.......... FB Ali

The media’s preoccupation with the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan, followed by the protracted nuclear crisis, had hardly subsided when the Arab Spring burst into bloom with its tense standoffs, between the old order and the new, erupting into violence, and actual war in Libya, with the West as a participant. All this drove the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan off the news, except for a brief flurry of reporting following Pastor Terry Jones’s incendiary exploits. (Personally, I don’t think there is anything to the story that the Quetta shura has made the reverend an honorary Taliban in recognition of his services to the cause).

However, the war in those distant lands has been grinding on in its usual fashion ‒ IEDs and suicide bombers killing soldiers and civilians (though there was the odd case of two US soldiers being killed by a US drone), coalition air strikes and SF night raids killing insurgents and civilians, the Pakistan army’s operations in its tribal areas continuing unendingly, young Taliban suiciders blowing up Pakistanis. The political and strategic games between the main players in the war have also been continuing, though it appears that they are now starting to take a significant new turn.

 

#Qur'an and the Muslims

 
For nearly all Muslims, the Qur'an is the UNCREATED word of God.  The Ibadhis in Oman and a few others do not believe that but they are a small mimority.  For the "orthodox" majority the Qur'an is really not a "book" at all in the sense that a volume of Shakespeare's poetry, the Bible or "Huckleberry Finn" are books.  The fact that the Qur'an is printed or transcribed and exists between covers means nothing.  These are mere appearances and physical attributes of this manifestation of the divine here on earth.

For the Muslims, the Qur'an has existed in the mind of God from all eternity.  It has existed in these exact words from all time or from before time if one can imagine such a thing.

Christians believe that the Bible is a divinely inspired book, that it contains great truths, but they all (so far as I know) believe that the Bible was written by people.

That is not the case with the Qur'an and the Muslims.  They believe that the Qur'an descended from heaven and was transmitted by the angel Gabriel (Jibril) to the prophet Muhammad in the very words in which it had always existed as an aspect of God's "mind."

Therefore, when Jones deliberately destroys a copy of the Qur'an they see this as an attack on God himself.  Such an action can easily be characterized in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) as deserving death.  That is why it is possible to assemble a mob for violent action.  Karzai should have known better than to say what he did, but his motives are obscure.  The fact that Jones hardly represents "The West" means nothing to the Muslims.

American political tradition protects such acts?  For most Muslims that is simply irrelevant.   They would say that we should not have such traditions.  For me this is reminiscent of the nuns who tried to educate me before Vatican II.  They often said that Freedom and Liberty were all very well so long as one did what was acceptable and "correct," in other words, what the Catholic Church wanted.  Liberty that became "license" (their word) was not liberty.  It was moral anarchy.

A new and different interpretation of Islam is very likely to emerge in the US.  This society is endlessly and remorselessly absorptive and synergistic but that "new" Islam is still "a borning."  When people like Jones do things like this they are asking for trouble.  Other people, in Afghanistan, are paying for his stupidity.  pl

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/0404/Terry-Jones-How-his-Quran-burning-helps-the-Taliban

Some Real Afghan Blowback

Adam L. Silverman, PhD* On the 20th of March everyone's favorite Floridian clergyman finally burned a Quran.** Unlike his aborted previous attempt leveraged for maximum publicity, this time the Reverend Jones' actions did not get as much press due to wall to wall coverage of Libya, Japan, and a presidential election that is over a year away. This time Jones put the Quran on trial, found it guilty, and administered the penalty: burning. While Jones' actions didn't make much of a splash here in the US, it did get the notice of Muslims in Central and SE Asia. In Afghanistan three clerics in Mazar i Sharif exhorted members of that community to seek revenge against Americans. Given that there are few in the area, a number of incensed locals took their anger out a Western target of convenience: the UN Headquarters. Reports indicate that at least twelve are dead. And if you want to know what the UN workers are themselves thinking, then the despondent comments of one staffer is very enlightening: "The UN mission is done".*** Aside from noting the blowback from Jones' bigotry, there are two important issues that we need to keep in mind. The first is that all communication is strategic communication. Everything we do or say conveys meaning. In this case Jones' extremist stupidity conveyed that Americans are at war with Islam. And the result is that people lost their lives. Had their been Americans in the area, or personnel from our coalition allies, then they too would likely have been attacked. While Jones, and others like him, have the right to say or do anything that is within the Law, their actions are putting not only American lives at risk, but also those of our military allies, and civilian allies like the slain UN workers as well. The second important point to keep in mind pertains to just what it is that Jones did. The Quran is considered to be an uncreated text. By that I mean that it is considered to be an aspect of the Deity. This is akin to the Christian concept, as delineated in the Gospel, of: "In the beginning was the Word". So lets turn the map around a little bit and consider if Muslim anger over the mishandling of the Quran. If non-Christians, claiming to believe that Christianity was evil, violent, and destructive were to burn the New Testament exactly what do you think the reaction would be in the US? We don't have to think long or hard about this as we have a recent example to view. Last October the Smithsonian first exhibited, then pulled amid an outcry a privately (that's right I wrote PRIVATELY) funded artistic film, made over a decade ago, about the early days of the AIDS crisis. In one scene a plastic crucifix is shown covered in ants. While the creator of the work has stated that this was an allegorical depiction of suffering drawing on Mexican Christian/Cruciform imagery, prominent Christians in the US were outraged and the Smithsonian quickly pulled the film from the exhibit. There were even calls in Congress to defund the Smithsonian.**** Too often we see the professionally outraged in the US, both religious and non-religious, make the most outrageous statements about Muslims not denouncing terrorism or Islam justifying violence. Usually these claims are accompanied by statements that Islam is a religion that promotes violence or is somehow inherently evil, but seldom do we see any reflection or discussion about what happens when the shoe is on the other foot. In January, in Spokane, a white, Christian, anti-government extremist/supremacist tried to blow up marchers at an MLK Day Parade***** - did anyone feel the need to ask a prominent Christian or a prominent white person to apologize on behalf of all other Christians or white people? No, and it would have been absurd had anyone made the demand. What the Reverend Jones' actions exemplify is another well known passage from the Gospels pertaining to hypocrisy: "first remove the beam from your own eye..." * Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College or the US Army. **http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/world/asia/02afghanistan.htl?r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/world/asia/02afghanistan.htl?r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss ***http://www.undispatch.com/this-attack-is-different ****http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/12/controversy-over-video-censored-by-smithsonian-continues-to-build-steam.html *****http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/jan/18/fbi-says-backpack-spokane-parade-route-was-bomb/ I apologize for no hyperlinks. I'm traveling, only have my iPad, and can't get the rich text format to work in Typepad while using it from my iPad.

#Afghanistan in the 80s

 
I just heard Chuck Todd of the idiot MSNBC network assert as a predicate to a question that the Mujahid groups that the US supported against the USSR BECAME the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida.

NO!  NO!

The groups we supported were defeated by the Taliban in the civil war that followed Soviet withdrawal.  The Taliban and Usama bin Laden were supported by the separate "Sayyaf" group of Mujahideen supported by Saudi Arabia and Deobandi fanatics in Pakistan.

But, what the hell, why bother with facts?  pl

#"The Kill Team" - Rolling Stone

 

Colonel Jack Jacobs today said on one of the 24/7 news entertainments that the behavior of this platoon was "worse than Abu Ghraib."  IMO he is exactly correct.  In that prison men were abused by MP reservists who amused themselves by humiliating them in a multitude of disgusting ways, but they did not kill them.

In this instance the men of this rifle platoon (40 men more or less) decided to kill unarmed Afghan villagers because they were bored, hated these strange beings, and thought they could get away with it.  In one instance they picked out an unarmed 15 year old boy as a victim and then revelled in mocking and defiling his corpse while the company commander stood by and watched.

This story is all about leadership, bad leadership as well as the baleful effect of ignorance about the local people, and the degeneration in moral standards that US Army commanders in the chain of command above this unit had allowed to occur.

No commissioned officers have been charged for conspiracy or neglect of duty?  What a farce!  This is all about their failures, all of it!

In the last few days I have had the sorry experience of watching a group of senior US Army officers preen and strut and glory in the stature allowed them by high rank.  They do not remind me of the senior officers of my youth, men who led troops by example and with a sense of the responsibility that they carried for the honor of the Army.

In my big war, a lot of officers died on the battlefield.  I can remember two major generals (Ware and Casey) who died within a few months in 1968-69.  Senior officers in these wars are more likely to die from IED incidents than anything else.

These men do not seem like the men of that time.  They seem to be a caste of uniformed Walmart managers and executives, each maneuevering for whatever is to be had in the consultant work that awaits them in retirement.  They band together to arrange such work as a perquisite of their "success."

The enlisted men involved in these bestial murders must be punished but the officers who let this happen should be punished with them.  pl

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327?page=8

 

 

Regarding the costs...

 
David Hackworth and I shared a platform in Plano Texas a couple of months before the 2003 invasion. He had taught me ranger patrolling when I was a cadet and he was a captain. It was a reunion to remember. The occasion was a "reward' for a local bank for their customers, kind of a "pep rally" for the coming war. The thousand or so Yahoos in boots, beltbuckles and hats were visibly stunned when the two old soldiers told them that they were fools and that the US government was made up of fools who had no idea what the costs would be to all concerned; the Iraqis who inevitably would be killed, maimed and otherwise ruined, and the costs that would be paid by the US soldiers involved. Those costs would reveal themselves more slowly and they would be higher in direct proportion to just how much one fought. God knows Hack had paid a high price in psychological damage. We told them that so far as we could tell there was nothing in Iraq dangerous enough to justify what would happen there.  When we were through, a Yahoo asked if that meant we would not serve if needed. That was both insulting and ignorant. People like Hackworth serve until they are destroyed. pl

Dealing with change - FB Ali

Barack Obama was elected as the apostle and agent of change. He hasn’t been able to bring about much change, but is now likely to get his fill dealing with it ‒ not in the US, but in the Muslim world. What has happened in Tunisia and Egypt is not some passing phenomenon. There is a wave of change surging through Muslim countries, and it is likely to ebb and flow for a long time. Obama (and his successor) are going to have their hands full coping with it. As will other powers. For this is the latest phase in the relationship between the Muslim world and the rest.

Differential Societal Organization: A Response to Carl O

Adam L. Silverman PhD[1]

Carl O asked if an entire society could go insane.  In many ways what he’s asking about and describing is what Sutherland, one of the fathers of modern criminology, described as differential social organization.  For instance, poor neighborhoods are not disorganized or mal-organized, rather they are organized in line with the structural conditions found there: differentially organized.  This then drives the creation of a set of behavioral drivers (values) that are rooted in the social, political, economic, religious, and physical differences in characteristics.  All together they create the conditions for the development of values that are specific to that neighborhood.  Once this occurs the normal process of social learning takes over. 

This is actually a very good question given the events in Egypt and Tunisia, and a number of other places of interest, over the past several weeks.  One of the real questions that Egyptians and Tunisians will face, that the US has faced in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that will be faced in other places, is how does a society, and its component social elements, make the transition from tyranny and despotism to freedom and liberty.  Egyptians, like the presumed denizens of the poor neighborhood I referenced above, have been living in a society that has been socially, politically, economically, religiously, and physically distorted by over forty years of military authoritarianism.  Egyptians are socialized and normalized to this structural and behavioral reality.  And while they certainly have an understanding and appreciation of what freedom and liberty are or could be (depending on their own life experiences of travel, study abroad, ex-patriotism, etc), as Egyptians in Egypt, many, if not most given the youth bulge, have lived only under this set of structural and ideational conditions.  Whatever happens in Egypt over the next several months in terms of who will stay in power or come to power it will be bound within the context of a population that has been treated and ruled despotically and tyrannically.  When they do finally break free and set up new systems and institutions and remake their societies, despotically treated populations often set up new tyrannies or take a long time to exorcise the despotic, tyrannical, and authoritarian impulses from their structures, institutions, norms, and values. 

When we use the term reconstruction, whether in a post Mubarak Egypt, a post US draw down Iraq, or in Afghanistan we have to keep in mind that it is the social and societal reconstruction that is really the hard work.  It is not so much winning the hearts and minds of the local populations, to turn the COIN phrase, but rather to educate, normalize, and tether the societal elements to new and hopefully less despotic structures and understandings of society.  This takes a lot of hard work and a lot of time.  This is NOT about victim blaming, but recognizing that the victims of tyranny and despotism, as well as those who have engaged in it but have to be reconciled to the new state of society, have a lot of hard and difficult work to do.  The success or failure of liberation movements, revolutions, even our 3^rd party population centric COIN efforts is really going to hinge on how serious the social reconciliation efforts are combined with how resilient the tyrannical and despotic structural and ideational vestiges are.

---

[1] Adam L. Silverman is the Culture an Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College.  The views expressed here are his alone and do not necessarily represent those of the US Army War College or the US Army.

 

Dewey Clarridge and the "Spookery"

I have been asked to comment on this NY Time story on Duane Clarridge's ongoing participation in the intelligence trade.  I should say that I never worked for CIA and do not know Clarridge

The intelligence business at the US national level is pathologically afflicted with the "mature bureaucracy" syndrome.  The national agencies (CIA, DIA, NSA and the imagery thing - whatever they call it this week) have existed long enough to become risk averse self protective management cliques in their upper echelons. These agencies are also badly infected with political correctness in personnel selections and often choose people in ways that have little to do with competence.

i wrote about some of these problems in an unpublished essay entitled "Artists versus Bureaucrats." 

Because of these defects the national IC does not do well in undertaking large scale and risk laden tasks whether these are analytic or in the operational HUMINT field. In fairness, the recent Iran NIE struggle seems to indicate some improvement in the agencies.  Clapper must be doing something right.

To compensate for those deficiencies the IC, the JCS, etc. "farm out" many  difficult pieces of work to private companies who can employ retired talent (among them me occasionally) and who are not bound by all the daily trivia of bureaucratic Washington, a place where dispprovals are much easier to obtain than approvals.

In short I don't have any objection to what Clarridge is doing.  i would have only two questions about it:

1- Is he doing a good job?

2- Is it legal?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/world/23clarridge.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=world

Download Artists Versus Bureaucrats...

The tunes they’re whistling - FB Ali

In late December Col Lang posted here a piece of mine entitled Whistling past the graveyard.... This was a reference to the recently published overview of the Obama administration’s review of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even though this summary dealt in very general terms with what path the USA proposed to follow in the future, I commented that it gave little hope that this would be any more effective than past efforts in dealing with the real dangers and problems the US and the West faced in this area. 

Since then, various reports appearing in the media, and some actions on the ground, enable one to make a more accurate assessment of what policies are likely to be pursued after this review. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise to see that the principal players appear to be planning to follow different paths that suit their own particular interests. Since none of their policies are likely to deal effectively with the risks and issues looming in the area, it is apparent that, even though the tunes they’re whistling are different, they are still tiptoeing by the graveyard, each hoping that they’ll be safely past before the ghouls and banshees come charging out. 

Straw in the wind - FB Ali

Salman Taseer, governor of Pakistan’s biggest province, Punjab, was gunned down by one of his own bodyguards on Jan 4. The treacherous deed done, the guard (belonging to an elite police commando unit) calmly threw down his weapon and surrendered (as prearranged with his fellow guards, according to reports). He said he had done it because the governor had publicly demanded the repeal of the country’s blasphemy law (often misused to settle personal scores). A few days earlier, religious parties had held countrywide demonstrations and enforced shutdowns to protest against the governor’s outspoken criticism of the law; one cleric even offered a reward for his assassination. 

Darryl Issa and American Graft in Afghanistan

"...the fact that Washington has somehow institutionalized waste, fraud and abuse is indicative of how broken this place has become,” Issa said in a prepared statement."  LA Times

---------------------------------------------------

Really!  There is fraud. waste and abuse in the federal government?  Well, 'round up the usual suspects!"  It has always been such and will continue to be such so long as peopl and not angels are in charge of government.  The only REAL questions about this have to do with the identity of the wasters, fraudulent actors and abusers as well as the nature and amount of the thefts ond foolishness.  

In my opinion Issa is just another wasteful, fraudulent ad abusive partisan politician looking to increase his "name recognition."

No?  Well if that is so let's see him go after the amount and identity of American corruption in Defense Department contracting in relation to Afghaistan.  Let's see it! pl 

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/08/news/la-pn-issa-chairman-120810

 

"Army edits its history of the deadly battle of Wanat" Greg Jaffe

"The final history, released in recent weeks, drops many of the earlier conclusions and instead focuses on failures of lower-level commanders."  Jaffe

----------------------------------------------------

In other words, the platoon leader, a lieutenant of infantry, is now held to have been largely responsible for what happened to him and his men.  His father, a retired colonel of Army aviation, has every right to be outraged.  I have studied this action to the extent possible.  It seems clear that the wilfully ignorant and incompetent actions and neglects of the officers now relieved of responsibility for the action at Wanat have in fact been rewarded.   Tarnish on the blade.  Tarnish on the blade.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/28/AR2010122804334.html?hpid=topnews

 

"War on terror mired in graft as Pentagon billions are probed" The Australian

"A separate US army investigation into protection payments made by some transport companies is continuing. "If shown to be true, it would mean that the United States is unintentionally engaged in a vast protection racket, and as such may be indirectly funding the very insurgents we are trying to fight,""  The Australian

-------------------------------------------------

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  pl 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/war-on-terror-mired-in-graft-as-pentagon-billions-are-probed/story-e6frg6so-1225977395812

 

Whistling past the graveyard....... FB Ali

The graveyard of empires, that is. The Obama administration’s recent review of the Afghan war amounts essentially to little more than that. The bizarre aim of the war, formulated by Obama in 2009, is repeated: dismantling al-Qaeda! This weirdness permeates the whole report. It mentions, almost in passing, the two main pre-requisites for success (eradicating insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan, and establishing half-decent governance in Afghanistan) and then, without coming to grips with them, hurries on to claim all-round “progress” in the war. While this published overview is obviously a (rather futile) PR exercise, there is no evidence that the full review was any more realistic. 

The US has now been fighting this war for nine years, and is prepared to continue it for another four; it presently has some 100,000 US soldiers fighting there at an annual cost of some 100 billion dollars. All in order to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda? Al-Qaeda? In Afghanistan and Pakistan? The ridiculousness of this proposition compelled Joe Biden a few days later to publicly clarify that he, at least, knows that, whatever the danger from AQ, it doesn’t come from this region. 

"Why are we still here?" Jaffe

Earlier this year, Lt. Col. Joseph Ryan concluded that his 800-soldier battalion was locked in an endless war for an irrelevant valley.

"There is nothing strategically important about this terrain," said Ryan, 41, a blunt commander who has spent much of the past decade in combat. "We fight here because the enemy is here. The enemy fights here because we are here."  Jaffe

***********************************************************************

"... new strategy for eastern Afghanistan focused limited American resources on those areas where governance, police and economic development efforts have shown promise in recent years.

The Pech Valley wasn't one of those places. Even the Afghan government's commitment to the valley seemed shaky. The police were so poorly equipped that they begged the Americans for blankets. The Afghan army refused to patrol without the Americans.

Senior U.S. officials still have not reached a final decision to leave the valley, though a significant reduction in U.S. forces seems likely.

Ryan envisioned two possible outcomes following a U.S. pullout. In the best-case scenario, army and police forces would be able to hold off the recently bloodied insurgents, retain their bases and figure out how to meld into the insular and tribal valley society. In the worst-case scenario, the Afghan forces would collapse, he said.

"I came in looking for a counterinsurgency victory," Ryan said. "But here, there is no such thing."  Jaffe

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

LTC Ryan is described as having spent most of the last decade in combat.  Such experience clarifies the mind.

These two articles tell a grim story.

Waste, corruption and a lack of strategic vision mark these wars.

At the same time troops are all too often committed against campaign objectives that have become self-justifying, proverbial "self licking ice cream cones."  Officers find themselves asked to accomplish goals that reflect the ideology of the COIN disguise now worn by jacobin neocon philosophy.  President Obama evidently accepts such goals as his strategy overseas.  Instead of restricting Amercan military action to the pursuit of our enemies wherever they are found, we appear to be intent on the reformation of various alien societies.

At the same time the US is sinking economically under ever heavier burdens of debt in a world in which we are no longer the principal economic power.

Will Republican victories in Congress and in 2012 improve the situation?  That does not appear to be the case.  The Republicans seem to appeal to jingoistic nationalism even more than do the Democrats.

Is it not obvious that the chimeras of the "existential" threats posed by Islamic fanaticism and miniscule regional powers like North Korea must not be allowed to exhaust the strength of the United States in overseas adventures?  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122602622.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-honda-afghanistan-20101215,0,3512544.story

 

"The Anderson Platoon"

I happened to watch this old film in streaming video on the Netflix website last week. The contrasts in it to the material in the film "Restrepo" are striking.  pl 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Platoon

 

We wuz right! - Afghanistan

"Journalist Bob Woodward, author of "Obama’s Wars," took note of this fact at a CNAS forum he moderated Wednesday with Barno and Exum. “Joe Biden reads this report and he’s going to say, ‘Hey, this is exactly where I was last year.' "  CSM

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah!  So there!  Biden and me wuz robbed!  We had it right last year.  COIN is cool, just not possible except in a country the size of a playground.  It also helps if you own the playground and do not leave after pacification ends along with recess.

"We" are still listening to CNAS?  The chief of policy in the five sided "Mixmaster" is a former chief-priestess there?  What is Woodward doing?  Mocking them?  Setting up quotes for his book on "how we lost in the kebab wars?"  

It will be tough to end this.  Petraeus knows that his place in history depends on making it seem that he was responsible for success in both places.  As Dr. Brenner points out in this weeks NJ blog, that was not the case in Iraq.  So...  It has to be made true in Afghanistan.

The services have turned themselves inside out trying to become a COIN army. Emotional commitments have been made.  Generals have made their careers on this stuff.  Are they now going to reduce forces and adopt Bidenism?

Is it any surprise that this report on "progress" is what it is?  The Intelligence Community demurs?  How dare they?  Soon it will be said that "only the commander's estimate matters."  I have heard that before.  The "Commander's Estimate" will, in July, in effect, say that we must stay the course because victory beckons.

President Romney, or President Palin or President Huckabee and the Yahoo faction in Congress who will be sworn in there in early 2013 may well wish to "stay the course" rather than follow a more modest course of action.  pl 

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2010/1216/Pentagon-shifting-Afghanistan-war-strategy-to-shoot-more-bad-guys/(page)/2

 

 

National Journal Blog - 14 December 2010

http://security.nationaljournal.com/2010/12/afghan-review-tipping-point-or.php#1820829

 

 

Cordesman "sobers up" on Afghanistan AND IRAQ.

Holbrooke is dead. Even in great pain he could not avoid schmoozing the surgical team about his diplomatic task and how obsessed with it he was.   This a man who truly let his work kill him.   All you Type A people out there!  Pay Attention!  Nobody is that important or necessary.

Anthony Cordesman should be appointed to replace Holbrooke.  He is equally self important and although he was an enthusiastic cheerleader for the "transformational" neocon goals of the wars of our time, he now professes to see the light of rational limitations on national folly.

He, too, likes the sound of his own voice and will make a suitable "guest" for Farid Zakariya and that Rose fellow.  

Send him, Lord.  pl 

http://csis.org/publication/americas-wars-afghanistan-pakistan-and-iraq

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkpoint-washington/2010/12/holbrookes_final_words_on_the.html

A Few More Thoughts on Restrepo - Silverman

Adam L. Silverman PhD[1][1]

I finally got a chance to see Restrepo two weekends ago.  Shortly thereafter I took the opportunity to speak with a senior colleague who was serving in Afghanistan on the joint staff during part of the time period in which the events in Restrepo took place.  I specifically wanted to ask him about several items that stood out to me.  The first question I asked, of course, was if he’d seen the movie.  He said he had and had also read the book.  In fact he recommended that I, and anyone else who really wants to get a much deeper and more nuanced understanding of what actually occurred in the Korengal over that year should read the book that goes with the film and expands on what is presented on screen. It also provides much more of the history of how the 173^rd got into the Korengal, what its assignments were, and the tactical and operational history of what went on. He also made it clear that to really understand why the video documentary is put together in the way that it is, one really needs to see the interviews that Junger and Hetherington gave explaining why they made the documentary, which was to get as much of the reality of what was actually happening into the faces of those in the US and to try to show just what it is really like for soldiers in Afghanistan.  Several of those interviews can be found at:

"Restrepo" and "Taliban," a contrast

I have given my opinion as to what is to be learned by watching Junger's film:

- egocentric type A officers unable to deal with village elders.

- Poorly built and organized defensive positions.

- inadequate fire and logistical support for Outpost Restrepo.

- An apparent lack of rotation of troops off Restrepo.

- Surprising reactions to combat stress.

People tell me that these airborne infantrymen were not at Restrepo to make friends and influence people and that Green berets were supposed to "pass through" the area to do that for them.  Well, that is not how that works.  You have to live with the "objects of your affection" and become like them as they become more like you. You don't acquire "allies" by sitting on your hilltop, shooting at their valley and then occasionally treating their elders with disrespect.

Now we have this film made by a Norwegian "indie" who ends as I expected by having to convert to Islam to save himself from beheading by AQ "visitors."  This journalist gives us a photographic record of true Afghan Nuristani Taliban as they are, not as the creatures of our nightmares.  These are the very kind of men who are just over the ridge in the next valley in "Restrepo."  These men fight coalition forces because coalition forces are the foreign, alien intruder.  This Norwegian makes his way into their midst to film for a couple of weeks.  He sees and films their lack of serious equipment and training.  He sees the ineffectiveness of their atttacks by fire on vehicles.  He watches them chatter on VHF/UHF hand held radios like "schoolgirls" without any communications discipline at all.  "Hey, Ahmad, how is it going?"  etc.  Such radios are child's play to intercept.  The odd AC-130 shows up to shoot up the general area.  Well, duh!  What took so long?  These men wear wrist watches.  How would they know what time to set on them?  Broadcast radio maybe from Kabul?  Think about it.  i am more used to tribals that one had to teach the concepts of; time, distance and number.  Watches?  A Talib Qadi makes his way to the little camp where he tells that Norwegian that in his Islam the rules are not the same rules as in AQ Islam.  Think about it.

What are we playing at?  The inept battling the incapable?  pl 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/27/rare-taliban-video-reveal_n_696939.html

 

Nawa? How much for how long?

"Many civilian officials who track the war at the White House, the State Department and the CIA remain unconvinced that other parts of Afghanistan will turn around as quickly as Nawa has. They argue that weak local governance, tribal rivalries, inept development projects and incompetent Afghan security forces remain the norm." Washpost

-------------------------------------------------------------

The question has never been whether or not COIN can work.  Of course it can work. The question is - how much are you willing to pay for success?  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/11/AR2010121103041.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010121103059

 

Restrepo - 2

Having watched "Restrepo" again and having re-read the available material on the operations of 2/503 PIR as part of 173rd Airborne Brigade in the Korengal Valley of Kunar Province of Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 my conclusion is that the letters of reprimand given to the commanders of 173rd Airborne Brigade, 2/503 battalion (LTC Ostlund) and 2/503 C company in connection with the action at Wanat were deserved.  (see my earlier posts on the battle of Wanat) 

Furthermore, the level of leadership and planning displayed in the operations of B 2/503 as reflected in the "Restrepo" film are unimpressive.  Neither LTC Ostlund, (the battalion CO) nor (then) Captain Kearney (B Company) seem to have been able to comprehend the need to maintain firm but respectful relations with village elders and tribesmen in the AOR.  Both Ostlund and Kearney are shown in the film in interactions with these people.  In these settings they are aggressively confrontational, disrespectful in speech and posture and unwilling to really listen to the other side or understand what they are saying.  The incident involving the death of a farmer's cow at Restrepo is representative.  When approached by elders with a request for compensation, the battalion or brigade command refused payment in specie and instead offered to pay in mess hall supplies.  This is inherently unfair since the cow was a capital good for the farmer and the food supplies were consumer goods.  At other points in the film Captain Kearney decides during operations to employ tactical air against buildings likely to house family members of local farmers.  As a result several children and villagers are killed or wounded. Kearney is seen in the film saying that he needs to learn to do this better.  He was correct.

The general impression given by this film is that the officers of these paratroops were particularly inept in the command tone that they imparted to relations with the villagers in the Konergal Valley.  LTC Ostlund was quoted in the news reporting about Wanat as saying that he was puzzled by the villagers and determined to impose his will on them and make them faithful supporters of the Kabul government. This attitude imparted to his command (2/503) in both the Wanat and Restrepo situations probably contributed to the continuing willingness of the villagers to participate in combat operations against 2/503.

There are, in fact, some curiously and sadly humorous moments in the "Restrepo" film.  Captain Kearney's "high school" locker room pep talk to his men represents a particular low in the display of troop leading skills.

I could continue on such "issues" as the inadequately dug in position at OP Restrepo. One of the NCOs on the position actually says in the film that the locals could over run them at any time.  How often were these particular men rotated off Restrepo for rest?  After a while they started to act more than a little squirrelly up there. What were the available all weather fires for close in defense of this position? etc.

I will welcome corrections of fact but not interpretation about all this.

We lost in the Konergal Valley?  This should not be a surprise.  LTC Ostlund and his officers were not of the Major Jim Gant variety.  Too bad.  pl 

The Grocer and Alice’s Cat - FB Ali

It was the dawn of 2010, and the ISI had a problem: Pakistan’s spy agency was losing control over some of its Taliban proteges. The previous year the British and some Europeans, wearying of the unending war, had prevailed upon the UN representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, to get peace negotiations started between the Karzai government and the Taliban. With the assistance of the Saudis, Eide arranged some meetings with a few former Taliban leaders and also involved some Afghan officials. These didn’t bother the ISI; what was getting them worried now were reports that the Taliban’s No. 2 man, and operational commander, Mullah Baradar, was involved in these talks. 

Restrepo the movie

 
I think this film should be required as an experience of the present war in Afghanistan.  I think the production by Junger and Heatherington is very good.

At the same time I have questions about what I see in the film.  I know that according to some famous dictum it is impossible to observe something without changing the thing itself.

Nevertheless, I have spent a lot of time in my "sort of life" hanging out with combat troops in combat, ours, theirs, etc. and this film disturbs me in a number of ways. 

This half platoon of parachute infantry and the officers who stuck them out on the end of a ridge finger in "apache" country for a year without apparent relief seem odd to me.

I am going to write some more about this after I see the film again and read the comments of the veterans who visit this place.  pl

http://restrepothemovie.com/platoon/

Endless war in Afghanistan

"
The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan formally adopted a transition plan Saturday designed to turn over control of the war to Afghan security forces by 2014 but continue heavy financial and military support for the indefinite future."  Washpost

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On MSNBC General McCaffrey said today that in five years or so we might have made some progress in creating self-sustaining insititutions in Afghanistan, but the creation of an Afghan army would take a decade or more. Alternatively, he also said creation of a self sustaining Afghan state might be an open ended task.  This is all paraphrase.

Well, the NATO sheep signed up for this.  Does anyone think that their economies or people will endure such a thing?

Now it is revealed that Pakistan has refused requests for expanded scope for drone attacks in their country.  "They don't know how patience is running out on our side" an American official is quoted concerning the matter.  Or what ought to be the response.  Or what?

Are we really so stupid as to do something that might trigger a coup against the present regime in Pakistan?  Are we really that stupid?  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/20/AR2010112001164.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010111903160

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/19/AR2010111906268.html?hpid=topnews

Armoring Up

 
"The United States is beefing up its firepower in Afghanistan by employing heavily armored tanks in Afghanistan for the first time in the nine-year war, a military spokesman said Friday.

The U.S. Marine Corps plans to use a company of M1A1 Abrams tanks in restive Helmand province by early spring."  CNN

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I think this is a good idea.  The idea of confronting a guerilla enemy on more or less even terms does not appeal to anyone who has fought.  That big friendly beast growling along behind you is a mightily comforting thing.  COIN is about hearts and minds?  Yes, but COIN is not about losing a lot of men and any number of little engagements to men dressed in rags who build roadside bombs out of junk.  Every engagement that one is seen to lose to the insurgents adds to belief in the the locals that you are going to lose over all in the long run.  That does not mean that the tanks should be used to destroy villages en masse.  A little finesse would be a good idea.  pl

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/19/afghanistan.tanks/?hpt=T2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrams_tank

 

"Karzai wants U.S. to reduce military operations in Afghanistan" Partlow

 
""How come we are now so luxury-oriented today?" he asked. "The transparency of contracts is not there. Why is the U.S. government giving contracts to the sons and relatives of officials of the Afghan government? We don't do those contracts. I don't have an authority over a penny of those contracts. . . . and we've been protesting against this for years.""  Partlow

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This is the dirty big "secret" of this era of war without end.  In the last nine years of war in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world, the borrowed US Government money has flowed and flowed and flowed.  Some of it has gone into extravagant but understandable expenditures for O&M, equipment, force expansion, bureaucratic growth in the federal government, etc., but a lot of it has gone into the pocket of predatory US, European, and Australian contractors and their local allies in these various god forsaken places.  what Karazai has pointed out here is that we have encouraged the natural rapacity of the elites in these countries by participating in their corruption.  The rot and profits run very high up the civilian authority structure on our side.  There is so much money that it, in itself, is a silent factor in policy decisions.

Smedley Butler would recognize this phenomenon.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/13/AR2010111304001.html?hpid=topnews

Today's Washington Post

President Obama is a mystery.  His enemies have never stopped claiming that he is secretly a Muslim and ineligible for the office of president because of his supposed foreign birth. His approval ratings are in the basement.  In response he travels to Indonesia for what he says is a kind of homecoming.  He gives speeches there about his outreach to Muslims and visits a mosque.  How did this man become president?  He seems to lack any real "feel" for the political process in the US.  He seems to want to be a statesman rather than a politician.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110901388.html

There will be a review of "progress" in Afghanistan next month but according to the article below no significant changes will be made in policy.  i fearlessly predict that a lot of  "progress" will be reported.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110906893.html

No government in Iraq yet.  Maliki wants to continue to wield the power we more or less handed to him.  McCain and his buddy Joe L. are in Kurdistan trying to persuade the Kurds to give up the presidency to Allawi whose people are making vaguely threatening noises.  Iran watches with interest.  119 Iraqis killed last week in car bombings.  Hey!  Mission Accomplished!  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110901751.html

 

 

"US Republicans to target Afghan withdrawal timetable" AFP

"And Republicans "will continue to hold the administration accountable for developing appropriate metrics that accurately judge the security and political situations on the ground as we approach July 2011," said the aide."  AFP

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Let me state the clear implication contained in this instant statement of intent on the part of Congressman McKeon.

Petraeus and his COINista allies in Washington have been dealing with the Republican minority in Congress outside the chain of command and behind the back of the constitutional commander in chief.

What wonderful soldiers they are.

The COINista generals want more time to build a better Afghanistan, and evidently the mores and obligations of their profession mean little to them in the context of that blessed goal.

Can there be any doubt that the COIN "industry" here in Washington is encouraging them in this behavior?  pl 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101103/pl_afp/usvoteafghanistan

 

"U.S. Marines begin to hand over small bases to Afghan army in southwest" Washpost.

"U.S. Marines have begun handing over some of their small bases to the Afghan army in this once-volatile district in the country's southwest, a transition that top military commanders intend to cite as proof that the Obama administration's troop escalation and counterinsurgency strategy are succeeding."  Washpost

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The level of pressure from Petraeus and company on Obama will depend on the success or failure of this effort to progressively hand over responsibility to the Afghan security forces.  If it is relatively easy to do this, then Obama will easily be able to order a withdrawal based on his July date.  If the Afghans cannot hold the ground and population in this and other districts then there wil be tremendous pressure on the president to give them more time, money and men.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/01/AR2010110106069.html