Archive for the 'Marine Corps' Category

This is the sixth in a series following the U.S. Marines through the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit try to take shelter from a sand storm at forward operating base Dwyer in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan Wednesday, May 7, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Report

The Marines are continuing their success in the Garmser area of the Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

Rosie DiManno
Columnist

KABUL–American jarheads are either prudently pacifying a swath of Helmand province or kicking out the doors and ratcheting up the insurgency.

Depends on whom you ask.

From the distance of the capital, it’s impossible to confirm anything firsthand. But the commander of the 24th U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit came all the way to Kabul yesterday, both to proclaim initial combat success and to quash reports of extensive hardship visited upon a fleeing populace.

According to Lt.-Col. Kent Hayes, the known scorecard reads thusly: Marine casualties: 0. Civilian casualties: 0. Displaced persons: “Very, very few.”

Those citizens, Hayes adds, were already on the move when Marines set out to clear key transit routes – for arms and fighters crossing over the border from Pakistan, just to the south – in Garmser district. “I can’t even speculate as to the reason why, or where they went. I can tell you that they have not been leaving from any area that we have control over.”

While Hayes wouldn’t give out Taliban body counts from the past fortnight, the provincial governor puts the figure at 150, most of them allegedly foreign fighters.

Hayes merely agrees not to quibble with that.

“As practice, the Marines don’t use that as our way of determining success. We judge our success by what our mission was. The bottom line is, we fight them, we defeat them.”

British troops, who have charge of Helmand under the International Security Assistance Force – Canadians next door in Kandahar – had not been able to secure that area.

The U.S. Marines, 2,400 strong and many of them battle-hardened from combat in Iraq, were recently parachuted in at the urging of NATO, desperate for fighting-capable reinforcement.

… the Taliban are shoving back hard, which is a rarity since the insurgents avoid conventional confrontations, unable to counter heavy weapons and supporting air strikes.

“They are consistently engaging us in small numbers. It’s just continual, constant contact. And we’re defeating them. What we have set out to do, we have accomplished.”

No Afghan troops have been involved in this mission.

Hayes insists the effectiveness of the aggressive American approach is already evident on the ground. “We have seen that they are starting to have trouble reinforcing and getting arms.”

Intelligence gathered, some of it from Afghan military authorities, indicates the Taliban are pulling in their own reinforcements from other districts, perhaps other volatile southern provinces, maybe inadvertently easing the threat in places such as Kandahar, though this remains to be seen.

“Because we’ve seen fighters coming in from other areas, the rest of Helmand, rather than from just around Garmser, that is telling us about the success we’re having, that we are affecting and disrupting them,” said Hayes. “We are defeating the enemy when they oppose us and, when they reinforce, we’re defeating them as well.”

Garmser has long been used as a planning, staging and logistics hub by the neo-Taliban. Choking off Garmser is the Marines’ mission, though some diplomatic – even military – observers have questioned the long-term impact of a muscular offensive that alienates the local population …

There is no indication how long this Marine-led operation will last or how far south the Taliban will be chased.

“This is the start,” said Hayes. “We started in Garmser. As far as ending it, I will tell you that it’s not time-driven. We will leave Garmser at the time and place of our choosing.”

Analysis & Commentary

As a brief comment on the method of transport of the Marines to the theater and then to Helmand, they did not parachute in.  The unit is not airborne (except for MARSOC).

As we previously noted, the caterwauling about the aggressiveness of the Marine operations is expected and will subside when the success of the mission becomes apparent.  Regarding the history of success, it is too easy to forget who pacified the Anbar Province.

It is a very positve sign that the Taliban are deploying forces to Garmser to assist in their defenses, and it casts light on the propaganda recently spewed by the Taliban concerning this operation, proving it to be lies.

The Taliban have suffered their first major loss in this year’s offensive, but they are putting on a brave face, even spinning the setback as a triumph in their broader battle against foreign forces in Afghanistan …

The Taliban … claim the loss of one base is not critical, and anyway, for NATO to hold on to its gain it will have to commit thousands of troops to the outpost, which is located in the inhospitable desert, if it is to effectively guard the lawless and porous border through which the Taliban funnel men, arms and supplies.

It doesn’t help the Taliban if the Marines are generally confined to this area of operations if they too are so confined because they have decided that Garmser really does play an important role in their plan.  In other words, the Taliban are as tied down as the Marines, and in this case they are losing.

The report of Taliban moving fighters into this area is confirmed by other accounts.

Maj. Tom Clinton Jr. said the Marines would be in Garmser for several more weeks. It means the Marines might not take part in an operation that was planned in another southern province this month.

“The number of fighters that stood and fought is kind of surprising to me, but obviously they’re fighting for something,” Clinton said, alluding to poppies. “They’re flowing in, guys are going south and picking up arms. We have an opportunity to really clear them out, cripple them, so I think we’re exploiting the success we’re finding.”

U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, has said he needs three more brigades — two for combat and one to train Afghan soldiers, roughly 7,500 to 10,000 additional soldiers.

When the Marines eventually leave Garmser, any gains the 24th has made could be quickly erased unless other forces from NATO or the Afghan government move in.

“We can’t be a permanent 24/7 presence. We don’t have enough men to stay here,” said Staff Sgt. Darrell Penyak, 29, of Grove City, Ohio. “We would need the ANA (Afghan army) to move in, and right now the way we’re fighting, there’s no way the ANA can come in. They couldn’t handle it.”

Afghanistan’s army and police forces are steadily growing, but are still not big — or skilled — enough to protect much of the country. Spokesmen for both forces said they were not aware of plans to send forces to Garmser.

Col. Nick Borton, commander of British forces in the southern part of Helmand, recently visited U.S. positions in Garmser, where he told the Americans he’d be happy if they stayed on.

“If they’re here for only a short time, we can’t build very much off that,” he said. “Their presence for a few days doesn’t really help us.”

A representative of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. government aid arm, told Marine battalion commander Lt. Col. Anthony Henderson that “people lose faith if you pull out.”

The next day, at a meeting of Marines and Afghan elders, the bearded, turban-wearing men told Marine Capt. Charles O’Neill that the two sides could “join together” to fight the Taliban. “When you protect us, we will be able to protect you,” the leader of the elders said.

This last paragraph is stunning.  Note well how closely what the Afghan elders said matches professional counterinsurgency doctrine.  “When you protect us, we will be able to protect you.”  This statement comes from the elders very soon after operations by the Marines, and it is indicative of pregnant possibilities.

Yet the Marines must leave, presumably to conduct other kinetic operations elsewhere in Afghanistan.  The force size is not large enough, and it seems doubtful that the British will be able to hold the terrain once the Marines leave.

This most recent account of the Marines in Helmand breathes life into a languishing campaign with rapid and remarkable success, but it also shows the need for force projection and properly resourcing the campaign.  Taking the terrain will help little if we cannot hold it, and leaving will possibly hurt counterinsurgency efforts when the Taliban re-enter the town and kill those who have cooperated with the Marines.  Taking the terrain next time may not be so easy.

Prior:

Marines Mired in Red Tape in Afghanistan

Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province

Operation Azada Wosa – “Stay Free”

Following the Marines Through Helmand

Following the Marines Through Helmand II

This is the fifth in a series following the Marines through the Helmand Province.

Marines on patrol near Garmser, Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Marine operations are expanding outward from Garmser into other parts of the Helmand Province.

Fighting between U.S.-led coalition forces in southern Afghanistan and the Taliban is intensifying, as U.S. marines push to cut the insurgents’ supply lines in Helmand province, officials in Kabul said Tuesday.

The coalition said in a statement that its troops opened fire and called in air strikes Monday after observing militants trying to set up an ambush. A dozen militants were killed, the statement said.

The troops also discovered weapons and ammunition in a search of compounds in the area, the statement said.

More specifically, operations are pushing towards the Pakistan border.

International and Afghan troops forged ahead with an offensive against the Taliban near the Pakistan border on Tuesday, with a governor insisting 150 rebels had been killed in the past week.

US Marines and British troops under NATO command launched a significant new operation two weeks ago in Garmser district in southern Helmand province, a key battleground for a Taliban-led insurgency and an opium-producing centre.

Soldiers in a separate US-led coalition have also reported several engagements in the area in the past week. They said Tuesday they had killed a dozen rebels in Garmser on Monday.

The international forces helping Afghanistan fight an insurgency led by the Al-Qaeda-backed Taliban normally do not issue death tolls from their engagements, saying they want to avoid a “body count.”

But Helmand governor Gulab Mangal told AFP on Tuesday that 150 Islamic rebels, most of whom he said were Al-Qaeda-linked Arab and Pakistani fighters, had been killed in military action in Garmser in the past week.

“In the past seven, eight days, we have killed about 150 insurgents, most of them foreign fighters,” he said, citing “intelligence.”

“We have intelligence reports that more than 500 enemy fighters, most of them foreign terrorists, are in the district,” he said. “The operation will continue until the district is cleared of these destructive elements.”

The Marines said: “While we are continuing operations to clear the Taliban from the Garmser district, it is not ISAF nor US Military policy to comment on enemy casualties as we do not consider this a reliable measure of success.”

Information is difficult to independently confirm in Garmser, a remote desert province where there are few roads and government authority is limited.

The military says Garmser is a rebel gateway into Afghanistan, bring fresh recruits and weapons from Pakistan where extremist rebels are said to have bases …

A local resident contacted by AFP by telephone said “more than 100 Taliban have been killed in the past several days.”

“They were killed in several different attacks and air bombardments,” said the man, who identified himself as Abdul Baqi.

He was speaking from Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital located about 50 kilometres (35 miles) north of Garmser, where he was taking refuge from the fighting.

Prior:

Marines Mired in Red Tape in Afghanistan

Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province

Operation Azada Wosa – “Stay Free”

Following the Marines Through Helmand

This is one more in a series at The Captain’s Journal following Marine operations in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.  A brief synopsis of their accomplishments thus far can be found here.

A U.S. Marine fires at a Taliban position near the town of Garmser, a main assembly and staging point for jihadists entering Afghanistan (AP Photo).

U.S. Marines fire on Taliban positions from a sand berm, May 2 (AP Photo).

The Marines continue to take the battle to the Taliban in Garmser.

The spring offensive is well launched – by NATO.

Or, put another way, pre-emptively provoked by the U.S. Marines Expeditionary Force.

If the best defence is a good offence, American troops recently arrived in the southern provinces have wasted no time taking the battle to the Taliban, putting an entirely different complexion on combat tactics in the heartland of the insurgency.

Joining forces with British troops who have responsibility for NATO operations in Helmand province, these battle-hardened Marines – many of them veterans of fierce combat in the Iraqi city of Ramadi two years ago – hurled themselves into the insurgency cauldron last week, with the objective of dislodging Taliban fighters from strongholds north of the border with Pakistan.

Although the British have a base in the town of Garmser, NATO’s most southerly outpost, and have battled strenuously to maintain it against encroachment, the vast surrounding district, much of it inhospitable desert, has been essentially free movement territory for the neo-Taliban.

Garmser is a main assembly and staging point for jihadists as they enter Afghan soil. It is also a key transit route for smuggling in arms and smuggling out opium – the vascular network that pumps blood into the insurgency.

The claims and counterclaims – success versus failure – have been fast and furious. While American authorities claimed on the weekend to have killed nine militants, Taliban spokesperson Qari Yosuf asserted it was the insurgents who had killed nine Americans.

There have been no official reports of U.S. casualties from the fighting. But provincial government sources, along with aid workers in the region, accuse the Marines of conducting aggressive door-to-door searches, rousting civilians from their homes, arresting innocents and forcing upward of 15,000 Afghans to flee into the hot desert for safety.

None of these claims has been confirmed. However, the U.S. propensity for using air strikes and artillery and mortar barrages in support of their ground troops has much of the domestic media here caterwauling about a suddenly “Americanized war” in Afghanistan.

Caterwauling indeed.  The British didn’t really hold any terrain inside Garmser proper, and their role in this specific operation was transport (h/t Rogue Gunner).  “Although British framework operations are currently focused further north, in the areas of Lashkar Gar, Sangin, Gereshk and Musa Qaleh, the British Task Force has had an important role to play facilitating the move of the MEU down through the province.”

This report on the Marines is somewhat amusing.  Whether the “claims and counterclaims” have been fast and furious being quite irrelevant, the success of the Marines has been fast.  The Provincial Government is fabricating information about the operation because they don’t know what else to do, but the shock of rapid success will hopefully give way to an understanding of what a change in strategy can accomplish.  It is certainly the case that the combat action has been directed and aggressive, with the Marines “unleashing earsplitting barrages of machine gun fire, mortars and artillery” at Taliban positions.

O’Neill, the company commander, says all-day potshots by Taliban fighters are little more than nuisance attacks. The militants use binoculars and have forward observers with cell phones to try to aim better at the Marines, he says.

“This is pure asymmetric harassment,” he says. “They’ll pop out of a position and fire a rocket or mortar.”

But in a bleak British assessment of Garmser a week ago, the UK is said to be losing the battle.

In Garmser, the Scottish infantrymen hope to push the Taliban back and fill the town with people again. The continuing marine operation may help that objective.

But the main British effort is concentrated in northern Helmand, and local governance is weak in Garmser, where most of the town elders and administrators have fled to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

And as the poppy harvest draws to a close, commanders expect a fresh spurt of fighting in the coming weeks. Combined with the stream of Taliban from Pakistan, British officers recognise they are only holding the line.

“I’m under no illusions. We are not stopping the movement north,” said Den-McKay. “We’re just giving them something to talk about.”

Perhaps an alternative picture is emerging for the chaps in the UK – that of aggressive contact with the enemy by enough troops on the ground to accomplish the mission?  One can only hope that NATO is watching closely.

Prior:

Marines Mired in Red Tape in Afghanistan

Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province

Operation Azada Wosa – “Stay Free”

In Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province we discussed the beginnings of the Operation Azada Wosa (“Stay Free” in the local Pashto language) by the U.S. Marines in the Helmand Province.  The operation is going forward with success without serious Marines Corps casualties thus far.

The Taliban aren’t giving up without a fight. In groups of three and four, they open fire at the Marines with assault rifles or rockets, then flee. Sometimes they attempt infantry maneuvers, trying to draw the Marines in one direction with a feint, then attacking from another direction. “They were tactically sound,” Moder says. “It shows that they’ve done it before, that they might have been trained.”

Moder estimates his men have killed 30 Taliban fighters. Maj. Tom Clinton, executive officer of the Marines’ infantry battalion, could not confirm Taliban casualties, but he says the Marines are getting reports that wounded Afghan men are seeking medical treatment in Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah.

So far, U.S. casualties have been relatively light. Through Thursday afternoon, no Marines had been killed in the operation, although two died last month when a roadside bomb hit their supply convoy.

Six Marines had been injured, none critically: One was shot in the foot, perhaps accidentally; one suffered a concussion from a Taliban rocket or mortar attack; one was bitten by a dog; one fell from a roof and broke an ankle; two broke their legs; and two more sprained their ankles.

The nagging injuries and intense heat are sometimes a more immediate threat than the enemy itself, troops say. “Imagine carrying 75 to 120 pounds of gear and playing a football game where each quarter lasts three hours,” says 1st Lt. Mark Matzke, 21, of Arlington, Va.

Keeping them supplied with water, ready-to-eat meals and ammunition is a full-time operation. From Camp Dwyer, a handpicked team of two dozen Marines runs convoys to infantrymen in the field.

“We wanted to be called ‘The Nomads’ but they gave us ‘Wagon Wheel’ ” instead, says Gunnery Sgt. Javier Duarte, 34, of Miami. Before every convoy, Duarte usually gives the Wagon Wheel team a profanity-laden pep talk, then introduces the chaplain for a prayer.

The convoy heads outside Camp Dwyer’s concertina wire and into the desert on the way to the Marines fighting on the outskirts of Garmser. Along the way, they pass Afghans working in the fields, harvesting the poppy that could be turned into heroin and sold in Europe and the United States.

Back at Camp Dwyer, a special team of combat surgeons, doctors, nurses and medics plays cards and lounges in scarce shade, relieved that light casualties mean their skills haven’t been needed. Some of the doctors have trained in emergency rooms in Los Angeles and Baltimore, treating victims of gangland shootings.

The picture below is taken from DVIDS.  Click for high resolution version of the photograph.

Marines with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, NATO – International Security Assistance Force conduct operations in Garmsir District, Helmand province, Afghanistan.

We recently discussed the first combat engagement of the Marines in Afghanistan, involving a town named Garmser.  The Marines are fully prepared and will push the operation through to success.  However, false doctrine dies hard in war, and the problems associated with the Afghanistan campaign become clearer with passing time and attention.  The Canadians are concerned about the recent addition of the Marines.

Bush has come to shove in southern Afghanistan (Editorial note: This is a pitiful pun – TCJ). The U.S. commander-in-chief has sent in the marines.

It’s reported that this has made NATO forces operating there uneasy.

It’s not that the Canadians and British and the rest of them don’t appreciate the extra manpower the 3,500 U.S. marines will provide, or the extra aircraft and light armoured vehicles they’ve brought.

But the other NATO forces have been told they have to learn to operate in what’s called “the American way” alongside the marines, and they’re not quite sure how this is going to make the job of winning hearts and minds any easier when the Americans have left in seven months when their “mini-surge” is over …

The United Nations envoy, Kai Eide, has just warned that everything won in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was overthrown seven years ago is in danger of being lost because of the fragmented international approach to securing and rebuilding the country and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The president himself had to be hustled away from the scene of an attack by insurgents near his palace in Kabul on Sunday while all those Afghan soldiers ran for cover.

And in the eastern part of the country yesterday, 19 members of a poppy-eradication team under NATO guard were killed in an attack.

Gen. Dan McNeill is the U.S. army officer who commands NATO troops in Afghanistan, and it’s he who says things must be done there, now, the American way.

Specifically, he wants the Canadians and other forces to deploy their soldiers for longer periods, make more effort to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppies and get more involved in reconstruction and humanitarian work.

The marines are under McNeill’s direct command and seem to have the same gung-ho approach that they exhibited in Iraq, where many of them served. McNeill himself has said they’re in the southern part of the country to “stir things up.”

In March last year, about 100 marines, it was reported, were sent packing for responding to an ambush using “Iraq rules” that violated the less violent rules of engagement that were supposed to be in place in Afghanistan.

It looks as if the Afghan war, at least for the next seven months, is to be played by Iraq rules, which don’t seem to have endeared a lot of people in that country to the American invaders.

Restoring security and rebuilding a country is a long, slow process. First, a region has to be cleared of insurgent fighters, then it has to be held to provide the security under which the third stage, rebuilding, can take place.

The marines might be in Afghanistan long enough to rout the insurgents where they are concentrated.

They might even be able to stop or reduce the traffic in fighters, arms, opium and money.

But when they have gone, someone else is going to have to hold what they’ve gained and someone else is going to carry on with the rebuilding.

When the marine mini-surge was announced in January, a Pentagon spokesman said it was to be “a one-time deal — that’s it.”

Maybe we should hope it’s not. Maybe we should hope that the Americans will be persuaded — if only because their allies aren’t up to the job — to stay long enough to finish what, after all, they started.

The Captain’s Journal has been critical of General McNeill, but we appreciate his sentiments and applaud his perspective with the deployment of the Marines.  He has a tough row to hoe because of the strategic differences within the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Canadians seem to assume that they couldn’t adopt a posture like the U.S. Marines on the one hand (such that they would be rather lost without the Marines in place), but on the other hand, seem to criticize the Marine posture as if it somehow cannot be successful because of failing to win hearts and minds (which begs the question why the Canadians want the Marines to stay?).  The Canadian narrative is so confused and contradictory that it brings into question just what the Canadians themselves would propose.

That question is also recently answered for us.  The Canadians want to talk to the Taliban.

Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban for the first time, military and diplomatic officials say, as Canada softens its ban on speaking with the insurgents.

After years of rejecting any contact with the insurgents, Canadian officials say those involved with the mission are now rethinking the policy in hopes of helping peace efforts led by the Afghan government.

The Canadian work on political solutions follows two separate tracks: tactical discussions at a local level in Kandahar, and strategic talks through the Kabul government and its allies. Neither type of negotiation appears to have made progress so far, though efforts are still in the early stages.

The Afghanistan campaign has faltered and proceeded haltingly when negotiations are pursued with the Taliban, most recently when the British used this approach in Musa Qala.  What affect has this approach had on the recent Pakistani negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban?  In this instance, Baitullah Mehsud has used the stand down in combat operations to his advantage.

Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, based in the South Waziristan tribal area, has ended peace talks with the Islamabad government, just a week after ordering a ceasefire against security forces. A spokesman for Mehsud is reported to have said the talks broke down because the government refused to withdraw troops from the tribal areas, the strategic backyard of the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan.

Under a well-orchestrated program, the Taliban “switched off” their attacks on politically vulnerable Pakistan this month and they patiently allowed the Western-sponsored game of carrots and sticks involving tribal peace accords to play out, even letting anti-Taliban politicians into their region. For the Taliban, it was just a matter of buying time until the end of April to put the finishing touches to their spring campaign in Afghanistan.

It should be pointed out again just who the U.S. engaged in negotiations in the Anbar province.  The peace accord involved the tribes and muktars, not the more religiously motivated al Qaeda or Ansar al Sunna fighters.  Again it bears repeating: negotiations were never engaged with al Qaeda.  Not a single time.  Negotiations with the Taliban will not redound to success in the campaign any more than they would have with al Qaeda.  Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan doesn’t refer to the Taliban.  It refers to everyone but the Taliban.

It should also be remembered that between the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the only province where major combat operations have ceased and the enemy has been vanquished is the Anbar Province where the Marines were assigned.

Even if confused by the more aggressive posture of the Marines, the Canadians appear to be concerned not about the fate of the Taliban, but of themselves.  The Marines might have a long term Afghanistan presence in their future.  A one-time seven month deployment may not be nearly enough.

After sitting idle mired in NATO bureaucratic red tape for six weeks, the U.S. Marines have finally been deployed into the Helmand Province where they have targeted a Taliban stronghold town called Garmser.

US Marines pushed into a stronghold of extremist Taliban resistance in southernmost Afghanistan Tuesday in their first major operation since deploying to Afghanistan last month …

Garmser in southern Helmand is an area of difficult desert terrain that extends down to the Pakistan border across which Taliban reinforcements and weapons are said to arrive to enter a growing insurgency.

Soldiers with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based in the neighbouring province of Kandahar, were airlifted into forward bases in the area last week or moved in on convoys, ISAF said.

From there they launched the operation named Azada Wosa, which means Be Free in the Pashtu language of southern and eastern Afghanistan …

Military officials say Helmand is a nest of hardcore Taliban fighters supported by international Islamic “jihadists” and the centre of Afghanistan’s booming opium and heroin trade.

But for reasons recommended by The Captain’s Journal in October of 2007, the Marines aren’t after poppy according to Major Tom Clinton.

The Marines are entering an area lush with opium poppies. The Marines don’t want to antagonize the local population by joining U.S.-backed efforts to destroy the crop. “We’re not coming to eradicate poppy,” Clinton says. “We’re coming to clear the Taliban.”

The town of Garmser has been under the control of Taliban fighters who have been expecting a fight for some time.

The Taliban presence in Garmser has been a running sore for British forces for the past year, but British commanders have not previously had the combat forces available to push the Taliban out.

The Taliban claims to have several hundred fighters in the area, with prepared bunkers and tunnel complexes that have proved resistant to frequent Western aerial bombing raids.

The Telegraph was able to interview two Taliban commanders operating in the Garmserarea last month, who said they expected to resist any assault by Western forces.

“It will be really difficult for the British,” said Mullah Ghafour, not his real name. “We have 20 kilometres depth of defences, with all kinds of mines. They have tried before to push us back. In Garmser it is a face to face fight.”

But the Taliban are facing the U.S. Marines, many of whom are veterans of the Anbar Province.  Being dug in is not helping the Taliban, who lost their command center today.

In one short engagement this morning, the Marines took rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire, and a Marine scout helicopter killed two insurgents with rockets and .50-cal machine gun fire.

The battle for the Taliban command center raged all day today, said Lt. Anthony Henderson, who commands the 1st Battalion 6th Marine Regiment, the core infantry unit of the 24th MEU.

Henderson said the Marines gradually pushed the Taliban back into a corner of the facility and then called in air strikes by Cobra attack helicopters with Hellfire missiles.

The Taliban are learning what General George Patton knew years ago, namely that fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity.  Inch by inch, room by room, the Marines are prepared to complete the battle, both kinetic operations and reconstruction of the area.

The Marines had prepared on Monday by cleaning weapons and handing out grenades. The leader of one of the three companies involved — Charlie Company commander Capt. John Moder — said his men were ready.

“The feeling in general is optimistic, excited,” said Moder, 34, of North Kingstown, Rhode Island. “They’ve been training for this deployment the last nine months. We’ve got veteran leaders.”

Many of the men in the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit served in 2006 and 2007 in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq. The vast region was once the stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq before the militants were pushed out in early 2007.

Moder said that experience would affect how his men fight in Afghanistan. “These guys saw a lot of progress in Ramadi, so they understand it’s not just kinetic (fighting) but it’s reconstruction and economic development.”

But on the initial assault, Moder said his men were prepared to face mines and homemade bombs and “anybody that wants to fight us.”

One Marine in Charlie Company, Cpl. Matt Gregorio, 26, from Boston, alluded to the fact the Marines had been in Afghanistan for six weeks without carrying out any missions. He said the mood was “anxious, excited.”

“We’ve been waiting a while to get this going,” he said.

A while indeed.  Six weeks mired in red tape.  But progress has started, and the Taliban in this AO will surrender or die.

**** UPDATE ****

Welcome to Hugh Hewitt readers and thanks to Hugh for the link.  Also welcome to Pajamas Media readers.

The demarcation between “conservative” and “liberal” over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has not only made for strange bedfellows in recent months and years, it has caused the twisting and spinning of evidence and data to fit into a political model, this model being derived by political party operatives not for purposes of clear delineation and advocacy of strategy and tactics regarding the global war on terror, but rather for purposes of victory in the U.S. electoral college.

In the discussion that follows, we will provide three examples of this phenomenon and then an analysis of these examples to show how the traditional boundary conditions of “conservative” and “liberal” no longer suffice as an adequate explanation or descriptor of the positions advocated by an individual or party.

Examples

The first example pertains to whether the Sunni insurgency was primarily indigenous Sunnis or al Qaeda.  On or about July 2007, we released Al Qaeda, Indigenous Sunnis and the Insurgency in Iraq.  The primary point of this article was not to berate the talking points of the administration or Multinational Force, but rather to point out that much of what had been called al Qaeda in Iraq or al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was actually indigenous Iraqi Sunnis.

The next example pertains to the state of the U.S. Army and Marines.  Mid-2007, Gen. Peter Pace, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conducted his own review of our military posture and concluded that there has been an overall decline in military readiness and that there is a significant risk that the U.S. military would not be able to respond effectively if it were confronted with another crisis.  Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen gave warning in October of 2007 that the Army and Marines were weary.  Speaking of his visits to soldiers and marines in Iraq and Afghanistan … Mullen said: “They’re tired. They’ve been doing unbelievably great work for our country. And we need to make sure we take care of them and their families.” Regarding prolonged and repeated deployments for the ground forces in Iran and Afghanistan, he said, “The ground forces are not broken, but they are breakable.”

General Pace above was cited in the testimony of Lawrence J. Kord of the left-leaning Center for American Progress.  But W. Thomas Smith, Jr., an analyst who can hardly be called liberal, recently authored an analysis which calls the Army and Marines “war-weary” and “worn thin,” both in terms of human and materiel exhaustion.  This assessment is disputed by Major General Bob Scales, a Foxnews contributor, who uses re-enlistment statistics and other intangibles to conclude that the Army and Marines are resilient rather than broken.  Scales’ view is disputed in the superlative by General Richard A. Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff, who said that the heavy deployments are inflicting “incredible stress” on soldiers and families and that they pose “a significant risk” to the nation’s all-volunteer military; and General Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, who called the current pace of operations “unsustainable.”

The final example is Basra, and prior and recent operations there to bring peace and stability.  For all the attention given to Basra in recent days, we’ll note that most analysts are Johnny come lately compared to The Captain’s Journal.  TCJ has been covering Basra beginning mid-2007 with Calamity in Basra and British Rules of Engagement and The Rise of the JAM, recently with Continued Chaos in Basra and ending with As the Smoke Clears Over Basra.  The spin of victory is unrelenting.  One analyst is commenting that the Iraqi Army performance in Basra was good enough that it might be a model that points to a U.S. exit strategy.

Discussion and Analysis

An administration talking point during Operation Iraqi Freedom has been the battle with al Qaeda, and properly so.  But the term “al Qaeda” became a surrogate for a much larger campaign involving Ansar al Sunna, hard line Ba’athists, the Fedayeen, and indigenous fighters among other rogue elements.  The focus on al Qaeda neglected the strategy necessary to effect progress.  That is, insurgents who fight primarily (or at least partially) for religious reasons must be dealt with in a different way than indigenous insurgents.  For this reason The Captain’s Journal has been supportive of the concerned citizens program (now called sons of Iraq) for indigenous Sunnis, and exclusively kinetic operations against al Qaeda.  But balance is necessary, and we have also discussed Iraq as a watershed moment for al Qaeda, and the significant loss that al Qaeda has suffered as a result of sending so many of its fighters to die in Iraq.  In fact, as we had pointed out in Resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda, by early to mid-2007, there was a paradigm shift concerning the recruitment of jihadists across the globe.  Iraq was and is becoming increasingly seen as a losing proposition for al Qaeda and the deployments of fighters is now primarily to Pakistan and Afghanistan rather than Iraq.

Over the course of this debate over al Qaeda, “conservatives” and “liberals” have become strange bedfellows.  Commentators on the right have argued for seeing the robust presence of al Qaeda in Iraq.  Commentators on the left find themselves in the hard position of having to relinquish their narrative that the U.S. is embroiled exclusively in a civil war in order to refute the conservative narrative.  We must leave Iraq immediately, says the left, because it is our mere presence there which is drawing jihadists from across the globe.  We must stay, says the right, because jihadists from across the globe are in Iraq and will cause a destabilizing presence if we leave.  Both narratives are shortsighted.  The exclusive focus by the right on al Qaeda missed the counterinsurgency strategy pressed by General Odierno to bring the indigenous fighters into the Iraqi fold.  The narrative on the left misses the role that a stable Iraq will play in the region over the next century, and assumes that al Qaeda has no regional or worldwide ambitions, contrary to its stated intent.

The current state of the U.S. military also brings the differences (and similarities) between the right and left into sharp focus.  The left has known for quite some time that the present pace of operations is unsustainable with the current military.  This has become a powerful talking point for withdrawal from at least one theater of operations, and this usually has been Iraq with most commentators.  In order to counter this point, some conservative commentators (including blogs and running up through retired generals) actually argue that the armed forces are – contrary to the specific, repeated, documented and insistent pronouncements by active duty generals – just fine.

But there is a problem with this narrative.  Tooling America for the long war is not something that either political party is ready to consider because of two reasons.  First, for the left, tooling for the long war would require acquiescence to the notion that there is such a thing.  Second, for the right, it would require the political courage to put before the American people that the time had come to go on a war footing.  Max Boot gives us a short picture of just how far we currently are from this footing.  “The overall size of our economy is $13.1 trillion. So the Iraq War is costing us less than 1% of GDP (0.91% to be exact). Even if you add in the entire defense budget that still only gets us to roughly 4% of GDP—roughly half of what we spent on average during the Cold War, to say nothing of previous “hot” wars such as World War II (34.5% of GDP), Korea (11.7%), and Vietnam (8.9%).”

The final example is interesting insofar as it unmasks the pretensions of the conservative narrative that the armed forces are having no problems with the current pace of operations.  This example is Basra.  If the U.S. Army and Marines can sustain the current pace of operations indefinitely without morale and materiel problems, then there is no need to see Basra as the exit strategy.

We must toe a balanced and careful line in these matters.  The campaign for Iraq is complex and requires patience, and measured words and doctrine, including full-orbed implementation of counterinsurgency involving both the hard and soft power of the government.  When a conservative takes the situation in Basra – where women have been beheaded by the hundreds, members of the the Iraqi Army deserted to the Mahdi militia, units in the Iraqi police were told not to shoot at the Mahdi militia even if shot at by them, and the Iranians had the power to broker the ceasefire – and turns this data on its head to conclude that this is some sort of victory for the Iraqi Army, then the conservative knows that he is on the wrong side of the data.  Pointing out failure is not the same thing as demanding retreat.  Max Boot, hardly having a history of advocacy for retreat, has one of the best analyses of Basra, and yet sees multiple failures on the part of the Iraqi army.

When a conservative finds himself ignoring the very real strain on the U.S. Army and Marines, he should know that he is on the wrong side of the data.  Usually supportive of the armed forces, when conservatives side with political talking points against the troops, the conservative soul has been lost.  The Captain’s Journal has good and well-sourced reason to believe that the recent resignation of CENTCOM commander Admiral William J. Fallon had little to do with any specific campaign, present or future, but rather, was focused more on whether the country itself is prepared to go on a war footing in order to tool the armed forces of the United States with the men and materiel it needs to conduct the long war.

The people of the United States will ultimately decide if and how to conduct the long war.  Issuing forth spin and fact-denial in the name of advocacy of that war (or for those on the left, advocacy against that war) creates an evolving narrative that changes as rapidly as the latest political soundbite, and places conservatives in truly dark company, unwittingly arguing for the diminution of the military.  Advocacy for winning the long war requires truth-telling.  It is always the best policy.  As part of this truth-telling, the need to increase the size and budget of the armed forces goes without question.  Going on a war footing to conduct the global war in which we now find ourselves should have been a point of contention in the new media for years.  Unfortunately, much of the new media is too wrapped up in talking points to engage the most significant issue of the century.

Our friend Matt at Blackfive has posted some great video from SOF in Sadr City.  It’s well worth the time to view it.  Anyone who has spent even a few minutes at The Captain’s Journal knows full well what we think of Sadr and the political reluctance on the part of both the Iraqi and U.S. administrations to take him on and cut his forces’ ties with Iran.  Force must be projected into his camp, and this is a good start.

In the spirit of providing good video for the weekend, see first clearing operations by the Marines late in 2004 from Fallujah.  This video shows full well the stress and decision-making that goes on in room clearing while insurgents are shouting Allah akbar.  Warning: graphic language and content.

Next, from more recently in Fallujah (2007), see the Marines take on insurgents in a nighttime fight.  Much of the U.S. fire is coming from the rooftop of the house.Matt posted some great video, but the SOF aren’t the first ones to engage in heavy kinetic operations.  Nonetheless, we wish the SOF well in Sadr city.

The Multinational Force is reporting that Marine Major William G. Hall, 38 of Seattle, died of wounds suffered in combat in Anbar.  He was assigned to 3rd Low Altitude Air Defense Battalion, Marine Air Control Group 38, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, California.  Actually, the Multinational Force appears to have his rank wrong.

Marine Lt. Col. William G. Hall, a Garfield High School and Washington State University graduate, was killed Saturday in Iraq, according to his family.

Hall, 38, who grew up in Skyway south of Seattle, is one of the highest-ranking U.S. military officers killed in the war.

Hall’s family said the husband and father of four died while riding in Fallujah in a vehicle that struck a roadside bomb. He was on his third deployment there, having arrived in February, and had been promoted to his new rank a month ago.

Hall’s wife and mother first learned in a phone call from the Marine Corps that he was in surgery after being injured. Later, two supportive Marine casualty-notification officers arrived at their door and they knew.

My heart goes out to the Hall family.  This visit by casualty-notification officers is one I awaited late at night for many sleepless nights, and thankfully didn’t get.  My thoughts frequently run to Fallujah – a place I have never been.

While Lt. Col. Hall cannot be brought back, the Marines can do something to prevent this from happening again.  Only a single IED exploded in Fallujah during the deployment of the 2/6 Marines, early in the summer of 2007.  After that … no more.

It’s time for the Marines in Anbar to make a statement in Fallujah and reinforce the idea that such things will not be tolerated.  Ever.

Bad dreams are scary things.  The sweats, the shakes, the bad memories, or whatever.  I don’t know.  I have never actually had a nightmare before so I wouldn’t know (except maybe the one about failing to turn in my last senior exam and failing to graduate college, thus having to start over again – it was indeed a bad, bad night for The Captain’s Journal, very little sleep).  But Bill Lind gives us one to consider.  It begins in Iran, with the pitiful U.S. Army and Marines running for cover and trying to escape the horrible wrath of mechanized divisions of the powerful Iranian guard.

Now, to be clear, we have not advocated all out ground war with Iran, but rather, selected air strikes against insurgent training grounds, enhanced border security, more aggressive tactics against Badr (SIIC) and Sadr (actually, we have advocated the assassination of Sadr) and his so-called Mahdi Army, and the fomenting of a full blown insurgency in Iran.  But Bill Lind sees a nightmare if we launch air strikes into Iran.  Courtesy of a Small Wars Journal discussion thread, here is is.  Gird your loins or run for mommy, for it is a bad situation indeed.

The purpose of this column is not to warn of an imminent assault on Iran, though personally I think it is coming, and soon. Rather, it is to warn of a possible consequence of such an attack. Let me state it here, again, as plainly as I can: an American attack on Iran could cost us the whole army we now have in Iraq.

Here’s roughly how it might play out. In response to American air and missile strikes on military targets inside Iran, Iran moves to cut the supply lines coming up from the south through the Persian Gulf (can anyone in the Pentagon guess why it’s called that?) and Kuwait on which most U.S. Army units in Iraq depend (the Marines get most of their stuff through Jordan). It does so by hitting shipping in the Gulf, mining key choke points, and destroying the port facilities we depend on, mostly through sabotage. It also hits oil production and export facilities in the Gulf region, as a decoy: we focus most of our response on protecting the oil, not guarding our army’s supply lines.

Simultaneously, Iran activates the Shiite militias to cut the roads that lead from Kuwait to Baghdad. Both the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades — the latter now supposedly our allies — enter the war against us with their full strength. Ayatollah Sistani, an Iranian, calls on all Iraqi Shiites to fight the Americans wherever they find them. Instead of fighting the 20% of Iraqis population that is Sunni, we find ourselves battling the 60% that is Shiite. Worse, the Shiites logistics lie directly across those logistics lines coming up from Kuwait.

U.S. Army forces in Iraq begin to run out of supplies, especially POL [petroleum, oil, and lubricants], of which they consume a vast amount. Once they are largely immobilized by lack of fuel, and the region gets some bad weather that keeps our aircraft grounded or at least blind, Iran sends two to four regular army armor and mech divisions across the border. Their objective is to pocket American forces in and around Baghdad.

The U.S. military in Iraq is all spread out in penny packets fighting insurgents. We have no field army there anymore. We cannot reconcentrate because we’re out of gas and Shiite guerrillas control the roads. What units don’t get overrun by Iranian armor or Shiite militia end up in the Baghdad Kessel. General Petraeus calls President Bush and repeats the famous words of Marshal MacMahon at Sedan: “Nous sorrune dans une pot de chambre, and nous y serron emerdee.” Bush thinks he’s overheard Petraeus ordering dinner — as, for Bush, he has.

U.S. Marines in Iraq, who are mostly in Anbar province, are the only force we have left. Their lines of supply and retreat through Jordan are intact. The local Sunnis want to join them in fighting the hated Persians. What do they do at that point? Good question.

As I have warned before, every American ground unit in Iraq needs its own plan to get itself out of the country using only its own resources and whatever it can scrounge locally. Retreat to the north, through Kurdistan into Turkey, will be the only alternative open to most U.S. Army units, other than ending up in an Iranian POW camp.

Even if the probability of the above scenario is low, we still need to take it with the utmost seriousness because the consequences would be so vast. If the United States lost the army it has in Iraq, we would never recover from the defeat. It would be another Adrianople, another Manzikert, another Rocroi. Given the many other ways we now resemble Imperial Spain, the last analogy may be the most telling.

Waking from the cold sweats, we can now evaluate this nightmare.  We re-wrote part of this scenario over the discussion thread something like the following:

“Iran sends two to four mech divisions across the border, and to their surprise are awaited by so many U.S. aircraft monitoring, bombing and firing cannon at their slow, lumbering vehicles that the roads become another “highway of death,” with Iranian dead and vehicles littering roads for miles, great columns of smoke filling the skies, Iranian students protesting in the capital city, and the government in virtual collapse …”

The air power (AF, Navy, and Marines) desperately wants to be unleashed.  They ache for it.  They pant for it.  So, give them the Iranian and Syrian borders.  Tell them that unmitigated war makes trade and population migration unreasonable, and so anything that comes across the border is fair game to be utterly destroyed.  The AF will unleash their fighters, and their A-10Cs with its faster kill chain (please send us the video).  The Navy air craft carriers will be busy.  U.S. air power will have a good day, which is about how long it will take to destroy four mechanized divisions and send them to eternity.  Literally, all hell would be unleashed upon Iranian forces were they to be sent across the border.

Next, to suppose that the Army could not regroup from counterinsurgency into a conventional fighting force quickly enough is preposterous.  From combat outposts they would come from all around, excited with anticipation, and the only question is who could get to the forces of Badr and Sadr the fastest – the Army or Marines in Anbar.  The Marines would make a good show of it, making proud to saddle on backpacks, body armor, hydration system, ammunition, weapon and MREs from all over Anbar and using HMMWVs and foot power to get to the fight before the Army did.  Patton, the architect of the relief of Bastone, would be proud.

The Marines are bored, bored, bored in Anbar.  Any chance to get back into the fray would be met with approval from the rank and file.  Lind’s nightmare is scary indeed, but hopefully he is awake now and things look better than they did before.  The notion of Marines running for the Jordanian border seems far removed from reality now.  It’s better to be awake and in reality than not.  The Marines don’t run, Bill.