Archive for the 'Marine Corps' Category

The Captain’s Journal prides itself on being both well connected with and an advocate for the enlisted man.  Based on recent communications with enlisted Marines (of various ranks), a perspective is developing around the current rules of engagement for Afghanistan.

There is no such thing as air or artillery support any more.  The ROE General McChrystal has set in place is killing Marines.  Sure, there was the ROE in Iraq, but Marines were genuinely encouraged to think for themselves, assess the situation, and ascertain the best course of action independently.  This is not being done in Afghanistan, where rules are micromanaging the tactical situation.  Many Marines with combat experience in Iraq are leaving the Corps for various reasons, but at least one reason for the exit can be traced to a lack of willingness to deploy to Afghanistan under the current circumstances.  Deploying Marines to Afghanistan are mostly inexperienced.

Now.  To regular readers of The Captain’s Journal who follow our rules of engagement coverage and analysis, this isn’t news.  What is news is that the experiences are gradually being transmitted from front line back to the states, and it is causing a deleterious affect on morale.  In four years I cannot remember a more morbid time, even in the worst days of the campaign for Anbar.

Although hope for military campaigns springs eternal, I must say that for the first time my view of Operation Enduring Freedom is now rather dark.  To be sure, problems are always discussed here in the spirit of finding solutions.  But this depression is different.  Unless something changes, the enlisted U.S. Marines are suspicious of the campaign and its leadership, and are close to checking out – at least, mentally.

The title of the Navy Times article is Amphibious ops to become default mode for MEUs, but the import is much larger than that.  It’s more than just about MEUs.  The Commandant wants to return to amphibious roots – generally.

Determined to get Marines directly involved with the fight against pirates and other threats at sea, the Corps is reinventing its seven expeditionary units.

Major changes, some already underway, will make the MEUs even more potent and versatile than they are now, equipping them with the latest weapons, gear and capabilities while ensuring they’re thoroughly trained to be the premier on-call first responders for any number of worldwide contingencies.

Officials want to shift their focus away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — many MEUs have cycled through multiple combat tours during the past several years — and back to being “Soldiers of the Sea.”

A new policy issued in August updates the baseline MEU structure with new and future weapons systems and redefines its core capabilities to include 16 essential missions, along with special operations tasks already in high demand today. It’s the first big overhaul since Sept. 25, 2001, and touches on everything from pre-deployment training to the specialized skills Marines will need to get these jobs done.

“Amphibious forces are increasingly likely to be tasked with counterterrorism, counter-proliferation and counter-piracy missions,” Marine officials wrote in “Amphibious Operations in the 21st Century,” a doctrinal paper released earlier this year. “These will likely involve amphibious raids conducted for the purposes of destroying terrorists and their sanctuaries, capturing pirates or other criminals and seizing contraband, rescuing hostages or securing, safeguarding and removing materials to include weapons of mass destruction.”

Deployed MEUs serve as key “theater reserves” overseas, ready to respond to regional contingencies or crises. Each is designed as an air-ground task force with the capability to operate and launch missions at sea within six hours or operate ashore for a month before needing any resupply.

“A lot has changed in the last eight or nine years,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Impellitteri, MEU policy officer in the Expeditionary Policies Branch at Plans, Policies and Operations at Marine Corps headquarters. “We wanted to streamline the [mission essential task list] to make it basically say … this is what the MEU needs to do.”

MEUs will continue to be centered on battalion landing teams, and while the new policy outlines basic structure — still about 2,200 Marines composing air combat, ground combat and logistical combat elements, plus a special operations element — the MEU commander can tailor the force to fit his expected needs. Increasingly, there is a host of new assets from which to choose.

The 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, for example, left its home at Camp Lejeune, N.C., in May with the MV-22 Osprey, the first MEU ever to take the tilt-rotor aircraft on an overseas pump. Navy SEALs, once a routine component of amphibious ready groups, have largely disappeared, but the creation of Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command and the re-emergence of Force reconnaissance offer comparable capabilities.

The U.S. may not need to conduct a hostile amphibious assault on a foreign shore anytime soon, but an MEU’s ability to decimate enemy forces or, with help from the Navy, quickly dole out humanitarian aid in the aftermath of a natural disaster, preserves the Corps’ role among the services as the expeditionary force in readiness.

Moving forward, amphibious ops will be the MEUs’ default mode.

“As the generals are fond of saying,” said Col. David Coffman, who commands the 13th MEU out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., “if there’s a sword to be drawn at sea, shouldn’t a Marine be wielding it?” …

The MEUs’ aviation and ground mix also is in transition.

As the Corps modernizes its inventory with new equipment, such as the UH-1Y Super Huey, AH-1Z Super Cobra and eventually the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, MEUs will begin to look and operate differently.

“You basically have an entirely new [air combat element], platform by platform,” Coffman said. “We have to decide what that mix is like again.”

His 13th MEU was the first to deploy with the UH-1Y, providing an operational test as the fleet grows, but none of the current units training or deployed have a Super Huey aboard. The 22nd MEU has a squadron of Ospreys, but with several years to go before that aircraft arrives at West Coast bases, Olson’s 11th MEU left San Diego with CH-46E medium-lift helicopters as its aviation core.

Coffman wants to see the MEUs expand their ISR — intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — assets, to include unmanned aerial systems. His battalion landing team had smaller drones, but adding systems such as the Scan Eagle would only strengthen intelligence gathering.

My commentary has been opposed to MEUs as they currently exist, as well as wasteful spending on the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.  The Commandant wants to return to their expeditionary and amphibious roots, but against what enemy?  If the enemy is a stable nation-state with the power and industry to deploy mines, and employ air ordnance and air power against the landing team, sending EFVs and LCACs would be disastrous.  The U.S. is not prepared for the thousands of Marine deaths that would result from a conventional, full bore amphibious assault on a state even smaller than a near peer, much less a large and powerful near peer.

If the nation-state is unstable (or even essentially non-existent), then it’s unlikely that air artillery and air ordnance would be employed against an amphibious assault, and so the EFV is unnecessary.  It’s not that the EFV design is not state of the art, but rather, that the art doesn’t match the need.  But if I’ve been opposed to the EFV and the notion of full bore amphibious assaults, I have also advocated that the Marines be prepared to retool the Amphibious Assault Dock and air power and support to air-based landings farther inland.

That’s why, after seeing the maintenance problems with the V-22 Osprey in Iraq along with its inability to navigate the high elevations of Afghanistan, I have recommended that the U.S. Marine Corps not be so quick to retire its currently fleet of helicopters (Marines can fast rope from the CH-46 but cannot from the Osprey), and plan for a new fleet of helicopters.  The Osprey can serve some functions (it’s faster and can fly higher and further), but cannot replace the helicopter (certainly not as a weapons platform).

But I have also recommended that the U.S. Marine Corps rethink how it does MEUs.  The current practice of deploying entire Battalions of Marine infantry on board amphibious assault docks to float around the Mediterranean, Gulf of Aden and Persian Gulf for nine months so that pilots can get flight time, the Navy can get ship time and the Marines can waste time in every bar between here and there is worse that wasteful.  It’s an immoral expenditure of U.S. tax dollars.

If there is actually a need for a Battalion of Marine infantry in some certain circumstance, e.g., fighting pirates, then a MEU should be deployed with very specific mission orders for landing, sea-based fighting, etc.  But writing white papers about fighting pirates is one thing.  Actually fighting them is another.  I have previously mentioned that I interviewed one Marine Scout Sniper who had a pirate in his sights but refused even to ask for permission to fire because of ROE, and because “no one wants to deal with the lawyers.”  Reality is not the same thing as white papers written by Lieutenant Colonels sitting in the Pentagon.  We will finally have to deal with the issue of ROE or deploying MEUs to fight piracy is yet another waste of time and resources.

Next, I’m not convinced that training to utilize amphibious landing equipment (such as the LCAC) requires nine month deployments of entire Battalions of Marine infantry.  There are better uses of Marine infantry than sitting them on board Amphibious Assault Docks awaiting deployment orders for forces in readiness that never come, and hasn’t come in decades.

It’s one thing to be amphibious capable, and entirely another to be amphibious obsessed.  The future of the U.S. Marine Corps is to be a ready strike force, capable of deployment any time, anywhere, via any platform, with skills that cannot be duplicated otherwise.  This might include an amphibious component, but the focus shouldn’t be only on amphibious operations.

So at least in part I disagree with the vision of the Commandant, and I certainly don’t support the use of infantry trained Marines to perform humanitarian missions.  But I also strongly believe in resourcing the campaigns before us.  The Marines have left Anbar, having done an extraordinary job in what I believe to be one of the most remarkable counterinsurgency campaigns in history.  More than 1000 Marines were lost in Anbar.  They will never be forgotten.  For this fight to have been for the Army alone is inconceivable.  It is equally inconceivable that Afghanistan would belong exclusively within the Army’s domain when so many Soldiers are so exhausted, and so many Marines are currently aboard Camps Lejeune and Pendleton planning for their next amphibious operation that in all likelihood will contribute essentially nothing to the security of the United States.  I know that it shouldn’t be this way – and so does the Commandant.

Prior:

Strategic Decisions Concerning Marines and Expeditionary Warfare

Arguments Over the EFV and V-22

Navy and Marines to Part Ways Over Expeditionary Strike Groups?

Kill the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle

In our coverage of the pictures posted by the Associated Press of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard I called the AP editors who chose to publish the photo liars.  To me the rule they broke was fairly clear.

” … as long as the service member’s identity and unit identification is protected from disclosure until OASD-PA [Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Public Affairs] has officially released the name. Photography from a respectful distance or from angles at which a casualty cannot be identified is permissible.”

The last clause stands on its own.  Embedded reporters may not publish photos prior to notification of the family, and also may not publish them even after notification if the terms of the agreement are violated, i.e., if the casualty or the unit can be identified.

They chose to break the pre-embed agreement they signed, and thus did they lie.  Now the Washington Post is carrying a clarification of the position of the U.S. military and ISAF.

The U.S. military command in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday imposed a new ban on publication of photographs taken by embedded journalists that identify American war casualties.

The restriction is outlined in ground rules for reporters embedded with U.S. forces battling Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistani border. The new rules say that “media will not be prohibited from viewing or filming casualties; however, casualty photographs showing recognizable face, nametag or other identifying feature or item will not be published.”

The new rules mark a change from a broader rule issued Sept. 30 that said, “Media will not be allowed to photograph or record video of U.S. personnel killed in action.”

The restriction on publishing was prompted by controversy over an Associated Press photograph of a mortally wounded Marine. An embedded AP photographer took a picture of Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard during a firefight with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan’s Helmand province in August, and the AP published the photograph last month over the objections of Bernard’s family and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

“After that incident, we felt that for the sake of the soldier and the family members that was what we needed to do,” said Lt. Col. Clarence Counts, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in eastern Afghanistan. He said the earlier rules “left it too wide open with regard to protecting the soldier and his family members if we had a KIA,” he said, referring to a service member killed in action.

Before the incident, the command’s rules had stated that the news media would not be prohibited from covering casualties provided several conditions were met, including gaining written permission from the wounded before publishing any images that could identify them and waiting until after the notification of next of kin to publish photographs of those killed in action …

The revised ground rules ease the Sept. 30 restriction by allowing casualties to be photographed, but the publication prohibition remains. The new set of rules appears contradictory, though. Another provision permits release of images of wounded troops if they give permission, stating that “in respect to our family members, names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without the service member’s prior written consent.”

I had gone on record saying that if I was proven wrong concerning the rules at the time of publication of Joshua’s photo, I would retract my charge that the AP editors are liars.  It appears to me that the “clarification” issued by the military is just that, or in other words, additional wording that makes it unappealing for the media to lawyer their way out an agreement.

I’m still waiting for proof that the rules at the time of the embed didn’t spell it out in enough detail to be damning by itself.  If the AP wants to send me the agreement I will study it and issue a retraction if it can be proven that I was wrong.

Brian Palmer writing at the Huffington Post takes issue with my assessment of the situation surrounding the publication of the photos.  More correctly, he lets the reader make his own mind up concerning whether Joshua’s face is identifiable.  Brian correctly says I “hammered” the AP.  And so I did.  I will hammer anyone who steps on the parents of military men who are fighting our wars in contravention of their signed agreements.

As a final note, Brian says that contributors to The Captain’s Journal have been critical of his own reporting from Iraq.  Well, perhaps, but this isn’t the full story.  Brian’s reporting from Anbar was admirable and informative, but I took issue with his characterization of the rules of engagement (Recon by Fire, otherwise called the Drake Shoot) as potentially killing noncombatants without also acknowledging that the tactic of hiding in a field wouldn’t be used again by the insurgents after this incident.  There are both intended and unintended consequences to every event.

Prior:

Concerning Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard

Publishing the Marine Photo: Remember the Words of Christ

Good friend of The Captain’s Journal John Bernard is in the news.

NEW PORTLAND, Maine — It was the last way John Bernard would have wanted his voice to gain prominence in the national debate over the war in Afghanistan. The retired Marine had been writing to lawmakers for weeks complaining of the new rules of engagement he believed put U.S. troops at unacceptable risk in the insurgency-wracked country. He got little response.

Then Bernard’s only son, 21-year-old Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard — a Marine like his dad — was killed in an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan’s volatile Helmand province, the latest victim of a surge in U.S. combat deaths.

Three weeks later, Joshua became the face of that toll when The Associated Press published photos of the dying Marine against his father’s wishes and John Bernard was thrust into a national debate about the role of the press in wartime.

Suddenly, for all the worst reasons, John Bernard’s voice was being heard.

The loss of his son and the furor over the photo have given new resonance to his view that changes must be made in how the war is fought before President Barack Obama sends any more troops to battle the Taliban and al-Qaida.

“For better or for worse, I may be the face of this. That’s fine,” said Bernard, sitting on his porch as he drank coffee from a Marine Corps mug. “As soon as someone bigger can run with it, they can have the whole thing.”

Bernard’s criticism is aimed at new rules of engagement imposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, five weeks before Joshua Bernard was killed. They limit the use of airstrikes and require troops to break off combat when civilians are present, even if it means letting the enemy escape. They also call for greater cooperation with the Afghan National Army.

Under those rules, John Bernard said, Marines and soldiers are being denied artillery and air support for fear of killing civilians, and the Taliban is using that to its tactical advantage. In a letter to his congressman and Maine’s U.S. senators, Bernard condemned “the insanity of the current situation and the suicidal position this administration has placed these warriors in.”

“We’ve abandoned them in this Catch-22 where we’re supposed to defend the population, but we can’t defend them because we can’t engage the enemy that is supposed to be the problem,” he said in an interview with the AP …

The Taliban “are tenacious and you have to fight them with the same level of tenacity,” Bernard said. “If you’re going to try to go over there as a peacekeeper, you’re going to get your butt handed to you, and that’s what’s going on right now.”

[ … ]

It’s been a little more than a month since Joshua was buried in a small cemetery about five miles from their 1865 farmhouse in the rolling hills of western Maine, where the leaves of maples, oak, birch and poplars are turning fiery red, orange and yellow.

Bernard has accepted the loss, but his grief is obvious. He pauses from time to time to take deep breaths as he speaks of his son. Several times, he closes his eyes, as if remembering …

Bernard, 55, joined the Marines in 1972 and served 26 years on active and reserve duty, leading a platoon as a scout sniper in the first Gulf War in 1991. Physically fit, with closely cropped hair and a Marine Corps tattoo on his arm, the retired first sergeant remains a competitive shooter.

He and his wife, Sharon, raised Joshua and their daughter, Katie, 25, in New Portland, population 800. The family attended Crossroads Bible Church in nearby Madison.

Father and son shared the same philosophy: service to God, family, country and Marines — in that order, Bernard said.

Joshua was quiet, polite and determined. He led a Bible study in Afghanistan and earned the call sign “Holy Man.”

It looks as if the family is happy and having fun, Josh is physically fit and has a medium-reg haircut.  This is good.  It’s the way he should be remembered.  Visit John at Let Them Fight.

Prior:

Concerning Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard

Publishing the Marine Photo: Remember the Words of Christ

In recently released article Why are we in the Helmand Province? I a argued for the legitimacy of the Marines’ presence in the Helmand Province, contra the pronouncements of the population-centric counterinsurgency proponents who wish to deploy U.S. troops to population centers such as Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Jalalabad.  We must go where the insurgents recruit, train, raise their largesse and take safe haven.

Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette later discussed the fact that we mustn’t let Kandahar become like the cities in Anbar, Iraq, controlled by the insurgents, before we take action (to which I responded on one issue raised by Greyhawk in Insufficient Numbers of Marines).  But the fall of Kandahar is proceeding apace, and my arguments for deploying U.S. Marines in the Helmand Province are not to be construed as arguments against deploying them in Kandahar, as sufficient numbers of Marines are available to accomplish both.

Tyler Hicks is reporting from Kandahar, and the streets are anything but secure and bustling with trade.

Tyler Hicks has three rules when photographing in a dangerous, unstable city like Kandahar, Afghanistan. Keep moving, watch the crowd and always listen to your translator and driver.

“It doesn’t matter where you are in the city — there’s always a possibility that you’re moments away from being killed,” said Mr. Hicks, 40, who has been working in Afghanistan for The New York Times since 2001. “So you shave off risk anywhere you can. It’s that bad.”

Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, was the Taliban’s headquarters from the mid-1990s until its overthrow in 2001. Today, Islamic militants are once again operating inside the city, planting roadside bombs, almost daily, and carrying out a number of suicide attacks.

Mr. Hicks prefers working early in the morning when there are fewer people on the street, dressed in traditional clothing and traveling in a car. He often photographs from the window or limits his time on the street to just minutes, but is still able to create images with a startling intimate feel.

“Working is very difficult because no matter how much you try to fit in, once you get out of the car with your cameras, you’re identified and faced with a lot of unfriendly stares,” Mr. Hicks said.

Kandahar doesn’t see or interact with many foreign troops.  In fact, Michael Yon also reports from Kandahar on just what happens with the troops based around Kandahar.

Slowly, surely, the city is being strangled.  Signaling the depth of our commitment, security forces are thinner in Kandahar than the Himalayan air.  During the days and evenings, there were the sounds of occasional bombs—some caused by suicide attackers, and others by firefights.  The windows in my room had been blown out recently and now were replaced.  We came here to kill our enemies, but today we want to make a country from scratch …

An American convoy of MRAPs approached from the front and a soldier in the lead vehicle shot a pen-flare, causing everyone to pull off the road.  The convoys are more menacing from the outside and in fact I kept the camera down and this is exactly why Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is concerned about adding too many troops.  Can’t argue with his reasoning; convoys and troops truly are menacing despite that U.S. and British soldiers are very disciplined.  It must look far worse to Afghans.  Most Afghans never talk with foreign soldiers and those who do normally only see us in passing.  In fact, most soldiers never leave base.  Our forces at KAF (Kandahar Airfield) have a base so large that this commercial jet is about to land there after flying dangerously over this unsecured road.

It isn’t the number of troops that’s the problem, it’s what they are doing.  More correctly, the number of troops is the problem in that there aren’t enough of them to secure Afghanistan, but the ones who are there are doing the wrong things.  So there are two large  problems, and both need to be fixed in order to be successful.

Kandahar is badly in need of two or three U.S. Marine Regimental Combat Teams with Air Task Force support.  There is a need for Army mechanized troops – perhaps in other parts of Afghanistan, but the debate between mechanized and foot-borne (or dismounted) soldiering is more than merely academic.  Kandahar badly needs to see troops.  Afghans in Kandahar need aggressive policing.  They need to speak with troops, observe them patrol every day, and feel the protection afforded by Marines with rifles who will fire them at the Taliban.  They need to see the Afghan National Police teamed up with the Marines and interacting with the people rather than tearing out through the city aboard trucks like Yon observed.

Kandahar needs to be a dismounted campaign.  Living on large mega-bases and patrolling in vehicles just won’t do.  No protection from the Taliban is afforded by Soldiers in MRAPs, and no policing and population control can be conducted from the seat of a vehicle, any more than intelligence can be gleaned from mounted patrols.  Kandahar is slowly falling to the Taliban, and the only alternative to ceding this human and physical terrain to the enemy is aggressive, large scale troop presence conducting dismounted patrols.  But for the patrols to be effective, General McChrystal’s tactical directive limiting fires in certain situations must be rescinded.  The Marines and smart and adaptable, and don’t need McChrystal’s advice, as they have been doing and winning counterinsurgencies longer than has McChrystal.  The good general is trying to teach his granny to suck eggs.

Lt. Col. Christian Cabannis fully adheres to and advocates the doctrines of population-centric counterinsurgency.

Christian Cabannis met a social worker before deploying to Afghanistan. Not for his own wellbeing, but to better understand the task at hand. It was his mother’s idea.

Her son is a lieutenant colonel in the US marines and the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion 8th Marine Regiment.

He is in charge of perhaps the most dangerous part of Afghanistan and also one of the poorest. So his mother wanted him to better understand what it is that motivates the poor and how to win their support.

He describes this mission as “armed social work”; providing hope for the needy and defence against the Taliban …

It is pure, modern counter-insurgency strategy (Coin) and what American and British generals believe is the key to winning this war. Lt Col Cabannis says that until recently the mission lacked the right focus.

Three years ago, Garmsir market was shot up and abandoned; the scene of pitched battles between British forces and the Taliban. But today UK and US troops have driven them away from the town and Garmsir is held up as a success story.

In the past three months, US marines have built on British efforts to establish meaningful local government …

He believes that many insurgents can be persuaded to put down their weapons and re-join society and there are discussions under way as to how to achieve this.

The marines’ success is in part due to sheer size; having the force strength to push into new areas, to stay there and to engage in what they call “consent-winning activities” on a much larger scale than Britain has been able to.

There is much left out of this account of the battle for Garmsir, Afghanistan.  The facts left out of the account actually causes this account to skew the interpretation and may change the context the reader places around the events, thus affecting the import of the story.

The British were unable to take and hold Garmsir, and so in 2008 the U.S. Marines 24th MEU initiated large scale operations to take it from the Taliban.  The operations relied on heavy kinetics, but was welcomed by the people of Garmsir.  The drive against the Taliban continued in such heavy military operations that the fire fights were at times described as full bore reloading by the Marines.  As if speaking to population-centric counterinsurgency experts who believe that they must win the population by nonkinetic means, town elder Abdul Nabi told the Marines “We are grateful for the security.  We don’t need your help, just security.”  The 24th MEU killed some 400 Taliban during their deployment.

In 2008 the Marines were doing the right things – they certainly didn’t lack focus.  But the 24th MEU had to leave, and they turned over to the British, who once again couldn’t hold the terrain, either physical or human.  Thus more U.S. Marine Corps operations had to be initiated in the Helmand Province in 2009.

Accompanying the fantasy-narrative that the lack of focus in the past has given way to a brilliant new strategy to win Afghanistan is a robust defense of the rules of engagement by Lt. Col. Cabannis.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

This is a big change since the spring. All U.S. forces in Afghanistan are now being told to protect civilians even if the enemy gets away. Over the last eight years, Afghans have been outraged by civilian deaths and it’s a big reason the U.S. is not winning.

“Killing a 1000 Taliban is great but if I kill two civilians in the process, it’s a loss,” Lt. Col. Cabaniss said.

Asked how many enemies have been killed so far, Cabaniss said, “I have no idea and it’s really irrelevant.”

“Body counts not something that you track?” Pelley asked.

“It doesn’t tell me that I’m being successful. It doesn’t tell me that at all. The number of tips that I receive from the local population about IED’s in the area, Taliban in the area, that is a measure of effectiveness,” Cabaniss explained.

This is an important exchange, and we should spend some time dissecting and analyzing it.  The reason the U.S. is not winning is force projection, or lack thereof.  There aren’t enough troops, as we saw with the 2008 campaign for Garmsir in the Helmand Province.  The ANP and ANA cannot possibly hold the terrain once it has been taken and won’t be ready for quite some time.  In fact, there is some indication that the locals themselves are a bit disgusted by the ROE.

But even for population-centric counterinsurgency advocates, this exchange is full of nonsense.  To be sure, the population may be one means of marginalizing the insurgents, getting intelligence on them, and then conducting intelligence-driven raids, killing or capturing them.  This was done en masse in Iraq, especially in 2007.  But in the interview Cabannis makes a leap from an enabling feature of counterinsurgency to the end or purpose of it.

If a Province has 1000 Taliban and the U.S. Marines kill them all, and along with them the Marines inadvertently kill two noncombatants, it’s preposterous to suggest that this is a loss.  This suggestion is tantamount to saying that for every noncombatant we kill greater than five hundred pop up in his place.

Further, why did Cabannis use the values of 1000 and 2?  Would it have been acceptable to have killed a single noncombatant if we had killed 1000 Taliban?  If so, is he suggesting that the ratio of generation to kill rate of insurgents is greater than 500: 1 but less than 1000:1?  Or perhaps if these suggestions sound a bit pedantic, it’s more likely that he is simply using theatrics and hyperbole to make a point.  But if one has to use theatrics, the point itself suffers from lack of credibility.

Finally, why is killing Taliban great?  If it’s great because it assures the population that they are protected, then we should endeavor to do more of it.  Killing noncombatants is never a good thing, but giving the insurgents safe haven amongst the domiciles of villages sends the opposite message than we intend.  It gives them operating space, and it tells the villagers that we won’t pursue the insurgents on their own terrain, and thus there is no protection from them once they come into your homes and villages.  The very time you need the protection is precisely the time we will abandon you to the enemy.

From Islandpacket.com:

Drenched in sweat, Army Capt. Aaron Hall peeled off his soggy socks and applied a liberal dose of foot powder before slipping on a dry pair and rallying his troops back to their throbbing feet. For an outfit used to being ferried from fight to fight in armored vehicles, a 50-mile march through the Appalachians was a little much.

Perhaps no unit better exemplifies the challenges presented by the Army’s transition from desert warfare in Iraq to rugged mountain campaigns in Afghanistan than the 3rd Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade, whose tanks and Bradley assault vehicles were among the first to rumble into Baghdad in the 2003 invasion.

Under a 2007 plan to grow the Army and diversify its forces, 4th Brigade is the only mechanized unit being ordered to ditch its tanks and Bradleys and relearn how to move through a war zone on foot.

Which is how Hall and his soldiers found themselves zigzagging through the mountains of north Georgia, trying to cover 50 miles in three days. Even after serving last year as a platoon leader in Iraq, Hall wasn’t used to that kind of exertion.

“Whenever they said ‘road march,’ it was pretty much get in your Bradleys and ride 20 miles,” said Hall, 28, of Canton, N.C. “Now, it’s put on your boots and your rucksack and start walking. We’re our own transportation.”

Commanders say the retooled brigade should be ready to deploy again late next year.

About 40 percent of the 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment’s soldiers are holdovers from the unit’s previous incarnation as the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment.

After the unit returned from its third Iraq deployment in December, its tank drivers, gunners and mechanics transferred to other units as the switch to light infantry took hold. Many infantrymen trained to fight with Bradleys, tracked vehicles that resemble small tanks, stayed and now are getting used to fighting on foot.

As a mechanized infantry unit, each soldier had a designated seat in a vehicle. As light infantry, a rifle company of 135 troops has just five vehicles — Humvees and trucks — to share.

1st Sgt. Chad Brown learned to count on the Bradley’s speed and lethal weaponry during his three tours in Iraq. His soldiers would travel to drop-off points shielded by the vehicle’s thick armor, then conduct foot patrols under cover of its mounted machine gun and 25 mm cannon.

“Going from mech my whole career to light infantry, there is a concern of, ‘Oh man, where is the heavy firepower?'<2009>” said Brown, 34, of Kingsley, Mich. “I’ve been shot at sitting in Humvees and in Bradleys, and obviously I feel much more comfortable sitting in a Bradley.”

For soldiers used to the protection of armored vehicles, getting them comfortable with the added exposure of maneuvering on foot is mostly about back-to-basics training, as that’s how troops just entering the Army learn to fight, said Maj. John Grantz, executive officer of the 3-15 Infantry.

Captain Hall is doing Marine-style humping.  But wait … WAIT … WAIT!  Maybe not.

In the interests of prompting, promulgating, promoting, protracting and prolonging highly destructive inter-service rivalries, I must ask the question, “where is the body armor?”  You know, that extra 32 pounds of weight (with the IBA) that drags you down?  And I see a day-pack (with hydration), but not the full backpack that comes in at 75+ pounds.  Tisk … tisk …

Recall our Marine in Helmand with 120 pounds plus a mortar plate? 

Okay, so much for the internecine rivalries.  I will be out of pocket for the weekend carrying a little bit less weight on my back through the Pisgah National Forrest and avoiding anything electronic or web-based including this web site.  Have a great weekend.  Go Army!  Go Marine!

Washington Post Associate Editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran penned an article entitled Go all-in or fold.  In it he touched on recurring themes here at The Captain’s Journal.  Excerpts are reproduced below.

There were two battalions to the north of Kandahar city. Another to the far south. Canadian forces were going to swing to the west. About 5,000 new U.S. troops in all.

“But there, there and there,” the officer said, pointing to towns just outside a belt where the Americans and Canadians were stationed, “and there,” putting his fist on the city, which with 800,000 residents is the country’s second-largest population center, “we don’t have anyone.”

If more forces are not forthcoming to mount counterinsurgency operations in those parts of the province, he concluded, the overall U.S. effort to stabilize Kandahar — and by extension, the rest of Afghanistan — will fail.

“We might as well pack our bags and go home . . . and just keep a few Predators flying overhead to whack the al-Qaeda guys who return,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “There’s no point in doing half-measures here” …

McChrystal’s 66-page confidential assessment makes the case for a far more expansive counterinsurgency mission, one that would involve sending more troops and civilian reconstruction personnel to Kandahar and other key population centers to improve security, governance and economic opportunities for Afghans. Although the general never used the term in the assessment, his strategy amounts to a comprehensive nation-building endeavor.

He wants U.S. and NATO personnel to expand training programs for Afghan soldiers and policemen, reform the justice system, promote more effective local administration and ramp up reconstruction. If that occurs, he and other counterinsurgency experts contend, then Afghans who have sided with the Taliban out of fear or necessity will eventually switch sides and support the government. Building an effective state, in McChrystal’s view, is the only way to defeat the insurgency.

The opposite view, espoused for some time by Vice President Biden and a growing number of liberal Democrats, is that such an effort has a slim chance of success given Afghanistan’s size and complexities: the suspicion of outsiders, the harsh terrain, the lack of an educated civil service, the endemic corruption and the tribal rivalries. Instead, they argue, the United States should scale back its operations and focus directly on trying to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda, the core counterterrorism goals for Afghanistan that Obama endorsed this spring. Special Forces teams and combat aircraft would remain at the ready to target any terrorists with international ambitions who seek to set up shop in the country.

Such an approach, proponents say, would result in far fewer U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, and it would reduce the strain of repeated deployments on the American military.

Given the profound gulf between those options, and the political risks entailed by either, some in the Obama administration, as well as Democratic leaders in Congress, have begun to look for a way to split the difference, to do “counterinsurgency light” or “counterterrorism plus” …

The fold approach — to engage simply in counterterrorism operations — is riddled with its own drawbacks: The Taliban would effectively control the country’s south and east, and a civil war would probably resume among it and ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras for control of the west and the north. Counterterrorism missions would be hindered by a lack of on-the-ground intelligence. Pakistan could be further destabilized as the Taliban reverses its operations and starts using Afghanistan as a base from which to launch attacks across the border.

The last paragraph is the most salient and clear-headed.  As we pointed out with Senator Kerry’s approach and many times before, the light footprint will end in danger for SOF troopers who cannot get logistics, supplies or reliable air support.

With a small footprint of only SOF located in Afghanistan, logistics would be the first to go, and our troops wouldn’t have supplies for more than a couple of months.  Every person who has ever driven a fuel supply truck for us will have been beheaded.  The Afghan National Police will be killed by the population within a few months as retribution for the corruption, and the Afghan National Army will last a little longer – maybe three months.  Rescues will be attempted as a means of egress for the American HK (hunter-killer) teams lest they die.

The proposal to conduct mini-COIN operations from offshore “assumes first that in using SF and SOF we have the actionable intelligence and logistics to support their interdictions, raids and HVT killings.  We will not have that with a small footprint.  Intelligence sources are killed in small footprint campaigns because their is no force projection on the ground.  Logistics would be nonexistent because every participant in trucking supplies into the FOBs or launch points for these operations would have been beheaded or shot.  Thinking that this can all be done from offshore platforms is not serious analysis.  It’s wishful and even mythical thinking.”

As one of the first to predict the Tehrik-i-Taliban focus on the Khyber pass and Torkham Crossing to interdict logistics, I have watched as NATO lethargically engaged Russia, refusing to engage the Caucasus in order to create new lines of logistics.  The Northern logistics route into Afghanistan is now beginning to suffer from security problems due to the lack of NATO force projection and troop presence.

But an important question comes up for Rajiv Chandrasekaran during an online chat about this very article.

Fort Dix, N.J.: Sir,

Does the U.S. Army even have 45,000 troops available to send to Afghanistan?

ArmyVet

Rajiv Chandrasekaran: Good question. I’ve heard different things from different folks at the Pentagon. Some contend that we don’t have those forces at the ready. That’s true, but could some units being readied for Iraq, and others on training rotations, be quickly retooled to go to Afghanistan? Probably. A ramp-up in Afghanistan would also probably mean a modest acceleration in the withdrawal from Iraq.

It’s important to parse the arguments and objections.  The conversation becomes confused when too many objections are thrown out without the proper response – perhaps something at which the opponents of the campaign in Afghanistan are aiming.

I have addressed the issue of force availability before, but let’s do it again for good measure.  Not since before Operation Iraqi Freedom have so many Marines been aboard Camps Lejeune and Pendleton.  The Marines are essentially out of Anbar (except for a few remaining at places like al Asad air base).  The Marines have more than met their recruiting goals, and there are currently so many Marines at Camp Lejeune that many units cannot be garrisoned in the same barracks.  More barracks are being constructed, but not fast enough.  If Marines are not at Camps Lejeune or Pendleton, they (entire Battalions of Marine infantry) are aboard Amphibious Assault Docks as forces in readiness, awaiting orders that never come because of policy decisions that orient the U.S. away from using our forces in readiness.

The forces are available to pacify Afghanistan.  Several more Marine Regimental Combat Teams and/or air-ground tack forces could be deployed to the Helmand Province, and even several more to Kandahar.  The two provinces that constitute the home of the insurgency could be pacified by the U.S. Marines with the right commitment of resources.

So if the objection is that the campaign will incur losses, then the national conversation should be preoccupied with that problem.  The rules of engagement are another issue entirely, and without changes it’s doubtful that even the Afghans will believe that will be protected from the Taliban.  But the national conversation should forthwith jettison the notion that America doesn’t have the forces.

Greyhawk (in a smart read that addresses the slow fall of Kandahar to the Taliban) comments on Why are we in the Helmand Province (where I was nonplussed by Nagl’s comparison of Fallujah 2004 to Kandahar 2009 and lobbied for seeing Helmand as a necessary element of the campaign) that Kandahar isn’t as bad as Fallujah was, nor should we allow it to get to that point.

Granted.  But the argument focused on the concept of center of gravity, and I still see the campaign as needing multiple lines of effort.  That brings me to the main point since more Marines would be required to address the campaign in this manner.  Greyhawk also comments:

Mr Smith has never noted a problem whose cause couldn’t be traced to insufficient numbers of Marines – and fixed by more. That last part has a kernel of truth, but there are other considerations.

Greyhawk understands me well … but perhaps a clarification is needed.  There are always other considerations, and so it would be more accurate to say that “Mr. Smith has never noted a problem in which a contributing cause couldn’t be traced to insufficient numbers of Marines – and fixed by more.”

The Marines can’t fix every problem, but lack of them in counterinsurgency dooms even the possibility of other lines of effort to be successful because of lack of force projection.

In Bank of America Removes American Flags Honoring Dead Marine and More on Bank of America Dishonoring the U.S. Marine Corps we covered a Bank of America branch in Gaffney, S.C. whose manager apparently followed corporate policy and removed American flags honoring a funeral procession for fallen Marine Lance Cpl. Chris Fowlkes.

This issue went viral and not only was this topic covered at many web sites and in many discussion forums, but one thing is clear beyond mere lack of patriotism.  Bank of America got caught in a lie.  They have said that there was a miscommunication in corporate policy that caused a branch worker to remove the flags, but that explanation doesn’t pass muster.  It might have been plausible if the branch wasn’t able to explain the reasoning behind it, but the justification for the action was that some of their customers “might be offended.”  The corporate communication also equivocates concerning the action itself.  It wasn’t merely a branch worker who said that the flags violated corporate policy.  It was the branch manager.

Furthermore, The Captain’s Journal had some hard questions for Bank of America in our original article, and after publication of this article, Bank of America network domains from across the country visited this page.  We demanded that a full account be given and no company executive has weighed in and given one.  They have had the chance to provide more than the lame excuse that they originally gave and have refused.  In separate but related news, the Cherokee County Council voted to close their Bank of America accounts.

Finally, we appreciate the attention and links that this article got, including but not limited to:

Mudville Gazette

Oklahoma Shooters discussion forum

FFCobra discussion forum

SCHotline Mobile

Patriot Guard Riders

Jenny Marie’s Blog

Glock Talk

The Gill Report (archived)

Michael Brown Today

The Guns Network

Frisco Online

AR15 Armory