Operation Enduring Quagmire

I don't have a lot of commentary to offer on Afghanistan.  I was there, I served, and I came home.  Mine is the typical Air Force Fobbit story:  I worked on stuff, had a few harrowing convoy experiences, and found myself in the random rocket attack, one of which hit the sewer dump and also blew up two British Harriers at Kandahar.  I even managed to sleep through a few...

People who have spent a substantial amount of time in the field are calling BS on the official government story.  Afghanistan is a hopeless cause.  The latest damning report from the field comes from Lt Col Daniel Davis, who just got back from a one-year deployment.

"That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers."

There's more...

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.

“What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”

As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed.

“No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!”

According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.

No, it's not a Hollywood farce, put on for our entertainment. Karzai and the Taliban are playing us for fools as they rob us blind. Time to leave them to their own devices.

I am not a warrior, but I served with quite a few. I can tell you that leaving that God-forsaken place to whatever fate awaits it would not be a betrayal to anyone who died or was wounded there. We kicked the Taliban’s ass and then we gave the benighted inhabitants a chance to improve their lot. They failed. Our fighting forces, especially the Army and the Marines, fought like the heroic lions they are. Nothing to be ashamed of. We win, they lose. Our forces return to the greatest country in the world, and they remain stuck in the toilet we tried to pull them out of. 

James Traub concludes US Can Live with an Afghan Loss

And it's true. Despite the heroic efforts of our warriors, Afghanistan will continue to be a 6th century Hobbesean world ruled by ignorance and the sword. No better and no worse than before. China, Pakistan and Russia will feel the negative consequences, as will the Taliban, who has been feasting off of our largess all the past years.

We, on the other hand, will be materially better off. Richer because we no longer dump billions down that South Asia toilet, strategically smarter, and militarily stronger for the experience.

Having said what I said earlier, I have to admit that Afghanistan has haunted me, less and less as time goes by, but I was shocked to see how many posts I had written about the graveyard of empires where I used to live...

Many a crisp mountain morning I would view the snow capped Hindu Kush and sadly ponder how this would be a great tourist location if it weren't for the people trying to kill you...

Afghanistan: Moving towards a distant endgame
http://armedforcesjournal.com/2012/02/8904030

4th of July Weekend - Afghanistan

Please forgive the self-indulgence of this post, but since that one 4th of July weekend back in 2005 at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, Independence Day will always hold special meaning for me.

I was up there to work on an ASOC air to ground system that had been giving us lots of problems.

The frenetic search for Navy SEAL "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell was on-going.  I was not involved in the effort, but I talked with those who were when I had to go into the Joint Operations Center to troubleshoot and test the operator console end of the communications system I was working on.  It added extra urgency to what we were doing.

I also stood on the flightline that evening, with everyone else, tears in our eyes and saluting, as they loaded the flag draped caskets containing the bodies of the SEALS who had died trying to rescue Petty Officer Luttrell.  The Taliban had a golden BB moment, shooting a rocket into the open door of the helicopter before the rescuers could unload.  It was the greatest single-day loss of Special Forces troops in the history of the United States.

Navy SEAL Petty Officer Danny Dietz

Two 4th of July's later, I stood with my wife and kids in Littleton, Colorado.  The city dedicated a park, along with a bronze statue, to fallen hero and Navy Seal Petty Officer Danny Dietz, one of Luttrell's SEAL team members who died in Operation Redwing.  His remains were recovered by Combat Search and Rescue on the 4th of July, 2005

I was just a support troop, but I was there.  Regardless of what the critics say, our efforts there were noble.  Like every war, the politicians screwed it up.  Our fighting forces were tactically brilliant but our government was strategically stupid.   Getting the hell out does no disrespect to those who have fought and died there.  They were selfless heroes who fought to give Afghans a shot at a better life.  We did our part and it's not our fault if the people failed to grasp the opportunity we presented them.

Mark Steyn sums up my feelings.  We should leave...

...the mullahs, warlords, poppy barons, and pederasts to have at each other without the distraction of extravagant NATO reconstruction projects littering their beautiful land of charmingly unspoilt rubble.

After the C-17 took off with the caskets, I wandered by the pax terminal and took this picture of the back wall.  I don't know who painted it, but it sums things up beautifully

Caption:
This is a tribute to all who have fallen during Operation Enduring Freedom
Live a life worthy of their sacrifice.

Amen

Do What You Can, Stick to What You Know

Now that our SEALs have put down the diseased dog and dumped him in the ocean, talk of getting out of Afghanistan has increased.  Regardless of where you stand on that issue, this is a time for us to reassess our strategic posture and shape our military accordingly.

Americans are good at war and not very good at remaking other countries in our image. It's an invaluable revelation that has yet to be incorporated into our approach to foreign policy and national security. (Steve Chapman - Bin Laden's Big Mistake)

Remaking a society that does not want to be remade is a fool’s errand and we should officially take the pledge and swear off any future nation building.

We should retool our defense establishment with recent lessons in mind. We can continue defense cooperation with willing partners, dispatching special forces teams, intelligence gathering, and terrorist bug swatting as needed. Big footprints and occupations should be regarded as relics of the past, to be dusted off only in case of an immediate and existential threat to the United States of America.

Bogging ourselves down in stone age toilets diminishes us, wasting valuable national resources and killing good soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. Technology is a double-edged sword.  We exploit it well when we swoop down out of the shadows, lean, light and lethal.  It works against us when we deploy big static masses of troops, 70% of which are support tail, sitting vulnerable to the bad guys' employment of cheap, available technology.  A big fat presence no longer plays to our strengths.

Keep our superstitious enemies paranoid

A big foreign presence also removes the mystique of US power.  The 21st century US military needs to be about speed, stealth, mobility, and surprise.

I want the bad guys and the superstitious hordes who cheer and shelter them to think our soldiers are hiding underground right now spying on them, ready to come up through the soil and strangle them at any moment. I want these 7th century obscurantists to believe we can read their thoughts, see through the walls of their grimy cinderblock huts, and swoop down and grab them at any time with trained invisible eagles. I want them jumpy at the thought that every crawling bug and slithering reptile is a trained US spy.

It's not so far-fetched. The primitive Muslim throngs blamed the shark attacks off an Egyptian coastal resort on Mossad-trained predators. If the gullible dingbats actually believe Israel made a pact with King Poseidon to produce a trained flotilla of sharks just to wreck Egypt's tourist industry, they'll believe anything.

The Stage is Set for Smart Defense Cuts

Defense cannot be exempted from budget cuts. Vietnam veteran Col. Douglas MacGregor (US Army, ret.) lays out some smart ideas on how to do it. Reducing overseas presence, eliminating whole headquarters while downsizing others, as well as collapsing the creepily named Department of Homeland Security and returning some functions to where they came from while abolishing others. He also recommends consolidating intelligence functions and reducing redundancy.

I worked at a combatant headquarters in the Middle East. We were lean and mean with no bureaucratic overhead. Paperwork was minimal. We actually did real stuff like engineer combat communications solutions, and then we deployed into the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq to build and fix commo used by the warfighters.

I’ve also seen non-combatant headquarters, and they are the complete opposite. They are stilted, sclerotic bureaucratic sinks that are increasingly reliant on contractor support, even as they grow their military and DoD civilian rosters.

There is plenty of fat there to cut as we put our military on a leaner, deployment-focused footing. Especially if we swear off global community organizing.

We Have Met the Dhimmis, and They are Us

It's time to leave the people of Southwest Asia to stew in their own fetid toilet

Close interactions with the umma have poisoned our culture and goaded the Muslim world to even higher levels of purple-faced rage.

Despite our bowing and scraping, and our  military leadership slapping hijabs on our female soldiers, the Muslim hate meter is still pegged. I am tired of our government's spasmodic self-flagellation at every Islam-fueled temper tantrum, and the serial apologies are making me sick.

Our government has fallen all over itself paying obeisance to Islam over a koran burning, but has said not one damned word about an Afghan policeman killing two of our soldiers.

Mark Steyn Says it Best

I don’t like the wholesale reprinting of articles posted elsewhere, but Mark Steyn says it so much better than I can in his brilliant and succinct post at The Corner, Winning Hearts, Minds and Trigger Fingers…

here’s a headline from today’s New York Times:

Afghan Police Officer Turns Gun on American Soldiers, Killing 2
 
These are the Afghans who know us best — the ones selected, trained, and funded by us for a decade.

What did these soldiers die for? That their commander might offer even more abject prostrations of apology over “any disrespect to the Holy Qur’an”? Would it help if General Petraeus stuck a couple more apostrophes in the approved spelling and began his press releases with, “In the name of Allah the most merciful . . .”?

We have internalized our enemies’ psychoses — that we are the unclean ones.

Related:
Andrew McCarthy – No More Dhimmitude
Michael Graham - Fired Up Over Nothing