To begin with, this is your president. This ought to be one of the most shameful things ever said by a sitting president.
"Do you have any words to the victims of the hurricane?"
BIDEN: "We've given everything that we have."
"Are there any more resources the federal government could be giving them?"
BIDEN: "No." pic.twitter.com/jDMNGhpjOz
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 30, 2024
We must have spent too much money on Ukraine to help Americans in distress. I don't…… [read more]
lbn Muqawama cites the latest report by Chandrasekaran at the Washington Post, lamenting the following quote:
The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan soldiers. But thus far, the Marines have been allotted only about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems “a critical vulnerability.”…Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived. State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer.
The comments to this post are interesting, many wondering who is responsible and how we botched the attempt to get more ANA troops, as if we can flip a switch and make reliable ANA troops magically appear. Then the following important conclusion appears in the post: “The lack of Afghan government forces and civilian reconstruction experts doesn’t bode particularly well for any lasting effect from this operation …”
Regular readers of TCJ know all about the drug addiction problems and incompetence of the ANA, and general unreliability of their operations given the current state of the ANA. But the summary statement at Abu Muqawama gives insight into the supposed strategy (since CNAS is advising the Obama administration).
Concerning lasting effects from the operation, this is only a problem if the cornerstone of the strategy is a rapid turnover of operations to the ANA, or at least, keeping U.S. troop levels down while relying on the ANA to be a replacement for U.S. troops in operations in Afghanistan.
We have seen this before in Iraq where the goal was training and turnover to the Iraqi Security Forces. Note however, that Marine operations in the Anbar Province didn’t start with ISF assistance, or even end with it. Given national patience and the fortitude to see the campaign through, there is no reason that the Marines need anyone else to perform counterinsurgency operations in Helmand – at least, not right now. It’s no different from the campaign in Anbar.
Eventually the Marines will leave, just as they left Anbar. But we are at the beginning stages of true COIN operations, and The Captain’s Journal is no more surprised at the lack of functional, reliable ANA troops to accompany and be mentored by the Marines than we are dismayed by the lack of ANA support for the Marine Corps operations. Surprise and dismay at this development underscores a basic naivety concerning where we stand in Afghanistan. If the administration, or CNAS, or anyone else, is relying on the ANA to be part of the force that currently can and will fight the Taliban and provide security for the population, then the strategy is in deep trouble. They wouldn’t last a month against the Taliban.
As we had previously discussed, a recent visit by National Security Advisor Jim Jones to the front lines in Afghanistan was an opportunity to say, one Marine to another, you get no more support from us. You’re on your own.
During the briefing, (Brig. Gen. Lawrence) Nicholson had told Jones that he was “a little light,” more than hinting that he could use more forces, probably thousands more. “We don’t have enough force to go everywhere,” Nicholson said.
But Jones recalled how Obama had initially decided to deploy additional forces this year. “At a table much like this,” Jones said, referring to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, “the president’s principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan.” The principals — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair — made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson’s Marines.
Soon after that, Jones said, the principals told the president, “oops,” we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan army.
“They then said, ‘If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,’ ” Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000.
Now suppose you’re the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel?
Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room. Nicholson and the colonels said nothing.
Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have “a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.” Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF — which in the military and elsewhere means “What the [expletive]?”
Nicholson and his colonels — all or nearly all veterans of Iraq — seemed to blanch at the unambiguous message that this might be all the troops they were going to get.
To which The Captain’s Journal responded:
It’s his job – while all of the other principals are outlining a strategy and force projection that they believe will be endorsed by the President – to be whispering in the ear of the President: “Listen to them, but only so far. Iraq has taught us that this is harder than we think it will be on our first or even second or third take. If they’re telling you that the Afghan National Army can substitute for our own troops, they aren’t accounting for the drug addiction, incompetence and treachery of the Afghan Army. This will be long term, protracted, part of the long war. Iraq was long and hard, and Petraeus rightly said that Afghanistan would be the longest engagement in the long war. Fully expect for them to come back asking for more troops, because they will need them. You are a wartime President, sir.”
But his malfeasance in office gets even worse, and we recently learned about the apparently extent of the error in his Afghanistan narrative.
How this is Obama’s war as opposed to America’s war we aren’t told. Nor are we told how sending more troops to kill Taliban and secure Afghanistan is risky to the campaign in this horrible report. The report is mostly worthless, except for what we learn about Jones, who said:
The arrival of new troops, coupled with a strategy that is much broader, and that is more multifaceted, has the potential to turn this thing around in reasonably short order.
Really? Seriously? In reasonably short order? Remember those words. So what is this new strategy?
“This will not be won by the military alone,” Jones said in an interview during his trip. “We tried that for six years.” He also said: “The piece of the strategy that has to work in the next year is economic development. If that is not done right, there are not enough troops in the world to succeed.”
This statement is remarkable not for what it advocates – the softer side of counterinsurgency and nation building – but for what it doesn’t. Michael Yon’s most recent report from Afghanistan shows the need for a vibrant economy in order to prevent low level insurgents from earning money by working for the hard core Taliban. But Jones misleads us when he states that we have tried military action alone for six years.
There has been significant effort put into construction, projects (consider for instance the Kajaki Dam and the effort placed into reclaiming the ring road), and nation building (see The U.S. Department of Agriculture Does COIN). More could be done, but it isn’t correct to assert that there has been no effort placed into economic development.
It is equally incorrect to say that the military option has been tried. No, the high value target campaign conducted by clandestine SF operators against mid-level Taliban commanders has been tried. Classical counterinsurgency with significant military force projection (like with the Marines in the Anbar Province of Iraq) hasn’t been tried until now. And hence, the reason the Marine Colonels went ashen when they heard Jones say that they had all of the troops they were going to get. They come from the Anbar Province, and they thought that they were going into the Helmand Province of Afghanistan to conduct classical counterinsurgency. Apparently not, and so there will remain vast amounts of territory in the hands of the Taliban.
As for economic revitalization while the Taliban still roam free, Philip Smucker gives us a look into what this means.
QALA-I-NAW, Badghis province – At dusk when the sun slips over the parched hills in northwestern Afghanistan, spreading a pink hue over the land, families and caravans stop to spend the night in the poorest province in the poorest country of Asia. The wells are dry, lights do not burn and hopes remain muted.
This is a story about people living in an arid, unforgiving moonscape; one that could be mistaken for the middle of nowhere, but could one day be a major stop on one of the most important highways in Asia.
For three years, the United States, China, the Asian Development Bank and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have promised the residents of Badghis province integration with the rest of Asia. They have vowed to complete the last link of Afghanistan’s national ring road, which will connect western China and Central Asian countries through Afghanistan with Iranian seaports and world markets.
Blocking the way, however, is an expanding Taliban insurgency, which feeds off the idea that the world does not care enough to complete the work. As attacks on road workers have increased and US-led NATO offensives have failed to pacify the region, the stakes have grown ever higher.
“Promises have been given and most of them have been broken,” said Monshi Ramazan, the embittered head of the Badghis’ provincial council. Meanwhile, Taliban attacks on government and NATO’s mostly-Spanish forces are up by 300% in the past three years.
Halima Ralipaima, the head of Badghis’ Women’s Affairs Department, said that she had been “unable to travel in the province for two years” and that her workers were now being kidnapped and held hostage by the Taliban. She said the Taliban were threatening to destroy even small educational gains for girls made since late 2001 when the Taliban were driven from power.
Delays in completing the road – effectively managed by insurgents determined to stop it – have led Western analysts and NATO officials to warn that the Taliban are gaining steady support across Badghis. Once far-removed from the fighting elsewhere in Afghanistan, Badghis, they say, has become a new insurgent base and the Taliban’s “gateway to the north” – the same route to conquest that the insurgents took in the mid-1990s when they rose to power.
There are signs, however, that with an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Taliban fighters now lying in wait for Chinese and Afghan road workers, NATO and the United States military are finally taking the threat – and their own promises – seriously.
… it wasn’t until five months on the job, last September, that 55-year-old Tucker of Charlotte, North Carolina, realized that “we had given the highways away to the enemy. I was shocked,” he said in an interview.
Tucker found out the hard way when he asked for air support in northwest Afghanistan from the massive NATO and US base in Kandahar and was told that the helicopters he needed were required for southern resupply operations. “I told them that they should resupply by vehicle and the answer back was that, ‘we don’t control the roads’,” said Tucker, who sniped that the Kandahar base had become little more than a NATO “R&R facility”.
“That is what happens when you are running around trying to kill the enemy in a zero-sum game and you don’t have enough troops,” he said.
Worse still, even though Jones knows that the Colonels need more troops and that economic revitalization won’t occur without security, his narrative is that some economic development can “turn this thing around in reasonably short order.”
If we have learned anything from the experience in Iraq, it is that there must be national and institutional patience. Counterinsurgency done right takes a long time, and Petraeus himself said that of the campaigns in the so-called long war, Afghanistan would be longest.
I did a week-long assessment in 2005 at (then Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld’s request. Following our return, I told him that Afghanistan was going to be the longest campaign of what we then termed “the long war.” Having just been to Afghanistan a month or so ago, I think that that remains a valid assessment. Moreover, the trends have clearly been in the wrong direction.
So not only has James Jones told the Colonels that they don’t really need the troops they say they need, and not only is he purveying the wrong narrative about what we have done in Afghanistan, he is asserting that the “new strategy” will turn the campaign around in reasonably short order with Petraeus asserting that it would be the longest of the campaigns in the long war.
Jim Jones is not a serious man. He is clearly way over his head in the office of National Security Advisor, and the narrative that he is peddling is not just wrong – it is dangerous because it is so misleading. It’s time for Jones to tender his resignation as National Security Advisor and allow someone to tackle the job who is up to the job. It’s time for the General to retire.
Richard at Defence of the Realm is furious over British warriors perishing in Afghanistan, because they didn’t have to die. They were killed by an IED while aboard a Viking Amphibious Vehicle.
I am sorry if it offends – and it certainly does upset some of the military types, and the “consultants” and designers responsible for the Viking and the decision to deploy it to Afghanistan – but, on the basis of all the evidence we have, Booker and I both have come to the conclusion that Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond should not have died.
That they did die is the greater offence and, while it must always be remembered that the proximate cause was a Taleban bomb, in a cold-blooded act of murder, the neglect of the MoD and all those involved with the deployment of this vehicle is a contributory factor. Thus does Booker in his column today point the finger squarely at the MoD.
From Mick Smith (and others) in The Sunday Times, we get the first published confirmation of that which we had already worked out, that Lt-Col Thorneloe was riding in the front passenger seat of the Viking. With his driver, they were in two of the most vulnerable positions in a dangerously vulnerable vehicle.
In other circumstances, writes Smith, Thorneloe would have travelled by helicopter; but it appears none was available. He notes, however, that the MoD declined to confirm or deny this.
Without this facility, and wanting to “get up among his boys at the first possible opportunity,” Thorneloe found that, “A resupply convoy was going up there and he hitched a lift on that.” As the Viking approached a canal crossing, it passed over a hidden IED which destroyed the front cab. Thorneloe and the driver, Hammond, died instantly.
The lack of helicopter notwithstanding, if Thorneloe had not been in the vehicle, someone else would have died. And the incident would already have been a footnote in the history of the campaign, blanked out by the operations being mounted, not least the big push by the US Marines further south.
As for the Viking, this was originally produced as an amphibious assault vehicle and delivered to the Royal Marines in 2001, for use in the Arctic Circle as a mobility platform when reinforcing the Nato northern flank, assisting the Norwegians against a Soviet invasion. It was a Cold War machine, designed for a different purpose.
In that role, the question of protection had been considered – and the machine was armoured against ballistic threats. However, within the “Littoral Manoeuvre” parameters set at the time, a decision was made deliberately to skimp on mine protection to save weight. This was to enable the machine to be lifted by a Chinook helicopter and to maintain the amphibious free board clearances.
Richard goes on to point out that the Viking doesn’t have a V-hull like the more modern MRAPs fielded by the U.S. forces.
Big fan: Marine 1st Sgt. Eric Rummel stands near a Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected (MRAP) truck in which he survived a blast from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2008.Courtesy of Eric Rummel
Eric Rummel knows just how effective the V-hull can be at directing the force of the blast away from the vehicle.
It took a matter of seconds to make 1st Sgt. Eric Rummel a true believer.
The marine was driving through southern Afghanistan last year when his truck hit a roadside bomb buried in a gulch. The vehicle shuddered, popped into the air, and settled back down again in a cloud of desert dust.
The whole thing was over before he knew what happened, but Sergeant Rummel and the two other men in the truck that day all walked away. The truck was a Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected truck (MRAP) – a 16-ton behemoth that came to be regarded as the soldier’s lifeboat in Iraq, its V-shaped hull saving lives by deflecting the blast of roadside bombs.
Rummel’s story points to the same success in Afghanistan. “God bless the MRAP and what it does,” he says.
But the mammoth trucks are built for Iraq, where troops are fighting a largely urban insurgency on city streets. Afghanistan’s insurgency is rural, and the Pentagon is in a race to completely redesign the MRAP for its new duty, making it lighter, with a beefier suspension and better off-road capabilities for troops who launch missions into fields and up hillsides – often with no roads.
The effort, however, calls into question one of the bedrock tenets of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s regime: He wants to prioritize equipment that saves troops’ lives. But experts wonder if, in the process, he is saddling the military for years to come with a fleet of vehicles that can be used in only one spot on the globe.
“It’s not so clear that we can develop a new class of vehicles every time we go to a new country,” says Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a policy group in Washington.
The initial program to come up with a new breed of Afghan-friendly MRAPs, called Multi-Purpose All Terrain Vehicles, or M-ATVs, will cost $2 billion. The MRAP program has produced more than 16,000 vehicles in two years. This month, the Pentagon is expected to finalize a contract that would put more than 2,000 M-ATVs in Afghanistan – some by this fall.
The logic is clear: Roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan are up some 80 percent over last year.
The day Rummel’s truck was hit, he was using his MRAP as an ambulance to evacuate war wounded near the town of Now Zad in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, an area of intense fighting. Before his truck had even arrived in the gulch, four other improvised explosive devices had detonated in that area; two marines later needed amputations.
The explosion surprised Rummel, particularly because the Humvee in front of him had just driven through the same gulch unscathed.
As much as he loves the truck that protected his life, Rummel says the current MRAP isn’t the right truck for Afghanistan, adding: “It’s just too big of a vehicle.”
The Captain’s Journal hasn’t any wisdom to convey regarding whether the newer all terrain MRAP should go forward, or whether the existing MRAPs should be made to work. But either way, the use of amphibious vehicles in Afghanistan is about as stolid as I can imagine. At least the MRAPs have been relocated to Afghanistan, and more and better ones are on the way.
Ultimately though, the best counterinsurgency is done on the ground. Dismounted patrols must be conducted in force, by more troops that we currently have (or have planned) in order to ensure an acceptable outcome. Infantry belongs on foot.
U.S. Marine Cpl. Brian Knight, of Cincinnati, Ohio, with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, 1st Battalion 5th Marines, pauses briefly in the heat to rest with his heavy pack filled with mortar equipment, ammunition, food, and water in the Nawa district in Afghanistan’s Helmand province Saturday, July 4, 2009.
This Marine is carrying his backpack filled with food, hydration system, clothing, etc., and is also carrying ammunition, weapon, body armor, and other equipment. He is likely going “across the line” at 120 to 130 pounds. He is suffering in heat and with heavy battle space weight. For weight lifters like me, let’s put this in terms we can understand. This is like putting three York 45 pound plates in a backpack and humping it for ten or fifteen miles in 100+ degree Fahrenheit weather.
Battle space weight is a recurring theme at The Captain’s Journal, and will remain so. Money should be devoted to the weight reduction of SAPI plates in body armor and other low and even high hanging fruit. The weight of water is decided by God and cannot be altered.
Another salient point bears down on us. This is why women are not allowed in Marine infantry (or Army Special Forces), and why women suffered an inordinately high number of lower extremity injuries (leading to ineffective Russian units) when they deployed with the Russian Army in their losing campaign in Afghanistan. Just like God decides the weight of water, He also decides the physiques of men and women.
Jules Crittenden has an important report concerning the view of Operating Enduring Freedom from inside the administration.
During the briefing, (Brig. Gen. Lawrence) Nicholson had told Jones that he was “a little light,” more than hinting that he could use more forces, probably thousands more. “We don’t have enough force to go everywhere,” Nicholson said.
But Jones recalled how Obama had initially decided to deploy additional forces this year. “At a table much like this,” Jones said, referring to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, “the president’s principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan.” The principals — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair — made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson’s Marines.
Soon after that, Jones said, the principals told the president, “oops,” we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan army.
“They then said, ‘If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,’ ” Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000.
Now suppose you’re the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel?
Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room. Nicholson and the colonels said nothing.
Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have “a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.” Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF — which in the military and elsewhere means “What the [expletive]?”
Nicholson and his colonels — all or nearly all veterans of Iraq — seemed to blanch at the unambiguous message that this might be all the troops they were going to get.
Jules goes on to cite some “folksy” counterinsurgency quotes, something with which we have also dealt concerning Operation Khanjar. He also mentions that Woodward buried and obfuscated his lede. True words – let’s unpack them a bit.
We learn several things from this article. First we learn the limitations of Woodward’s reporting, or the editing at the Washington Post, or both. This report is monumental. Obama ran against the campaign in Iraq, unequivocally stating that the troops needed to be in Afghanistan. This was stated too many times to count, in too many different venues and publications to recite. It’s now clear that he will allow somewhat less than 70,000 U.S. troops to deploy to Afghanistan at any one time, regardless of what might have been advocated half a year earlier.
In a separate but roughly parallel evolution, Dr. John Nagl was advocating 600,000 troops for Afghanistan based on the model in FM 3-24. The Center for a New American Security saw the advent of Dr. Nagl as its President, along with Andrew Exum as a fellow. CNAS now advises the Obama administration, and will likely never again advocate 600,000 troops for Afghanistan. They are assisting the administration in the development of a strategy that doesn’t rely on the force size advocated in FM 3-24, regardless of what might have been advocated half a year ago.
There is his story. Woodward has written books on less than this, but the main story gets buried in the balance of the report.
Next, we learn that National Security Advisor James Jones isn’t qualified for the job. It’s his job – while all of the other principals are outlining a strategy and force projection that they believe will be endorsed by the President – to be whispering in the ear of the President: “Listen to them, but only so far. Iraq has taught us that this is harder than we think it will be on our first or even second or third take. If they’re telling you that the Afghan National Army can substitute for our own troops, they aren’t accounting for the drug addiction, incompetence and treachery of the Afghan Army. This will be long term, protracted, part of the long war. Iraq was long and hard, and Petraeus rightly said that Afghanistan would be the longest engagement in the long war. Fully expect for them to come back asking for more troops, because they will need them. You are a wartime President, sir.”
But he didn’t whisper these things in the ear of the President. Instead, he sat at a table with Marine Colonels who didn’t give input to the strategy and told them that to Obama, Afghanistan is a WTF? war. Learning and evolution by the administration or troops in the field are not options. You get no more forces. It’s time to put a serious man in the office of National Security Advisor. Jones isn’t it.
Finally, most of America doesn’t listen or know what is going on in either Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom, and certainly they wouldn’t be able to describe the differences between the U.S. and the ISAF. All they see are the reports on Television, and even the military families don’t know the real status of things in Afghanistan, most of them. But CNAS has no excuse. They know.
Like us, they know that the Afghan National Army is shot through with drug use, even during combat operations and patrols. For a pictorial depiction of what Exum himself called depressing, see this video of the incompetence and drug use. Like us, they also know that Afghanistan may not be able financially to support an Army as large as the one envisioned as the replacement for U.S. forces. Then there is the treachery, such as at the Battle of Bari Alai where it is believed that Afghan troops colluded with the Taliban to kill U.S. troops. CNAS knows that the Afghan National Army is no replacement for U.S. troops, and that the campaign in Afghanistan is under-resourced. Jim Jones knows it too, as the Colonels have told him so, even if he chose not to hear it.
So we now know that the current administration sees Operation Enduring Freedom as the WTF? war. We know that the National Security Advisor doesn’t have the fortitude to whisper the hard things in the ear of the President. We know that the President doesn’t really want to deploy more troops to Afghanistan, and we also know that the Colonels want more troops to cover their area of operations.
This sets the stage for the coming phase of the campaign. We have seen this before in Iraq: hasty turnover to the ISF and more difficult counterinsurgency than had previously been planned. The dissimilarity is a President who was willing to send the necessary forces to get the job done.
The Huffington Post links our Operation Khanjar category in their coverage of the most recent Marine Corps operations in the Helmand Province, as well they should. We have extensively covered, analyzed and commented on the campaign in Afghanistan for several years now, including detailed coverage of Marine Corps operations in Garmser and Now Zad for about a year (and beginning with reports that couldn’t be found in the MSM).
One Twitter post is interesting: “It is cool that the new Afghan operation is named “Khanjar“, an Arabic word. Anyone else think this will drive the right-wing media crazy??” Drive the right-wing media crazy as it did with Operation Al Fajr, or Operation Alljah? Seriously? Does anyone know any media analyst or reporter, right or left wing, who is driven crazy by the names of operations?
But continuing with our main point, the commenters extend the love to the U.S. Marines.
I’ve said before that our combat Marines are doing a job that 99.99% of us are either unwilling or incapable of doing ourselves. They’re doing a great job and I hope their mission is successful …
Get some, Marines! I wish I could be there with you …
Hooah! …
Maybe, finally my friends and neighbors will rest in peace …
There are a few dubious comments too. But another Huffington Post article early in 2008 (linking the LA Times) cited Marine Major General Gaskin saying that the gains in Anbar were permanent. Essentially, mission accomplished. No comments, except one asking if we were “Tired of the NeoCons getting away with their crimes?”
Some of this love would have been nice in 2004 – 2008 when more than 1000 Marines perished in the Anbar Province of Iraq. Ah, but that wasn’t Obama’s war, was it?
As for Obama’s war, Jules Crittenden has linked and commented on a Washington Post article that is stunning in its revelation about how the Obama administration sees this and similar Afghanistan operations.
During the briefing, (Brig. Gen. Lawrence) Nicholson had told Jones that he was “a little light,” more than hinting that he could use more forces, probably thousands more. “We don’t have enough force to go everywhere,” Nicholson said.
But Jones recalled how Obama had initially decided to deploy additional forces this year. “At a table much like this,” Jones said, referring to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, “the president’s principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan.” The principals — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair — made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson’s Marines.
Soon after that, Jones said, the principals told the president, “oops,” we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan army.
“They then said, ‘If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,’ ” Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000.
Now suppose you’re the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel?
Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room. Nicholson and the colonels said nothing.
Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have “a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.” Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF — which in the military and elsewhere means “What the [expletive]?”
Nicholson and his colonels — all or nearly all veterans of Iraq — seemed to blanch at the unambiguous message that this might be all the troops they were going to get.
So much for the love from the Huffington Post to the Marines – they only love them sometimes. And it appears that Obama doesn’t share the same love, at least in terms of supplying them with troops … even if they ask for more.
U.S. Marines from 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, RCT 2nd Battalion 8th Marines Echo Co. run to a new position as they take enemy fire during the start of Operation Khanjari on July 2, 2009 in Main Poshteh, Afghanistan.
About 4000 U.S. Marines have been unleashed from Camp Leatherneck into the Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The Marines have been in the Helmand Province, home of the indigenous insurgency, for more than a year, in both the districts of Garmser and Now Zad. But Operation Khanjar – “strike of the sword” – is the largest one time systematic deployment of U.S. Marines since Vietnam.
There are various (perhaps slightly conflicting) narratives. On the one hand, “Our focus is not the Taliban,” Nicholson told his officers. “Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet.” But it will be a long, long time before the Afghanistan government is on its feet and relatively free of corruption, and perhaps even longer before the Afghan National Army is not deeply affected by drug use and addiction, even during patrols and other operations. It is also believed that at the battle of Bari Alai the Afghan Army was treacherous in their behavior, even colluding with Taliban fighters to kill help U.S. troops.
It has also been said of the new operations that “the measure of success will not be enemy killed. It will be shielding the Afghan population from violence.” But population-centric counterinsurgency suffers from a singular focus rather than allowing many different focii in the campaign, including killing the enemy.
Our job is to get in there and get it back [from the Taliban] … We don’t want to give the enemy one second to think about what he’s going to do. Because we’re going to be pushing so goddamn hard on the enemy. Our job is to go in there and make contact with the enemy — find the enemy, make contact with the enemy and then we’ll hold on. This is an enemy that’s used to having small-scale attacks and having the coalition pull back. There is no pullback. We will stay on him, and we will ride him until he’s either dead or surrenders …
There’s a hell of a lot of IEDs out there. As we get in there, we’re going to get a better feel for who these people are who are putting them out. We’re going to work the networks. And we’re going to kill the guys that have a chance to go out there and lay them …
We’ll kill and capture a hell of a lot of enemy over these next couple of weeks, I’m confident of that. And I hope the enemy does try to go chest-to-chest with you. It would be a hell of a big mistake …
Good. The Marines come from their experience in the Anbar Province, Iraq. Stay out of their way, don’t burden them with excessive red tape, provide them with logistics, and just sit and watch. The story is about to get interesting.
