“Grunts” are the front-line fighting Marines and soldiers. My friend R.J. DelVecchio is moved by the following article by a leading commentator on, and supporter of, the tasks faced by Grunts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their comments are not intended as, nor should they be read as, despondent about either our mission or prospects. They, however, should be read as a necessary corrective to the thinking of those who feel that wars can be fought in comforts or oblivious to their primary necessities, especially that of crippling and killing the enemy. This is a long post, and for those who care to read it may help clarify our dilemmas in Afghanistan.
Here’s DelVecchio’s email:
Here is the question- if we are going to make our guys always carry 70+ (often up to 100) lbs of stuff all the time (as if there is no chance of chopper resupply of anything), and they have to use a Rule of Engagement sheet that runs over a page single-space last time I heard, and they have to worry about what some lawyer back at battalion will do to them if he even thinks they may have violated the ROE, and best of all, now the bad guys can fire at will from villages or buildings where there just may be civilians and we cannot fire back, and we can't really just use our masters of the night aircraft to kill anyone they see coming across the border into Afghanistan so that the people in the Pakistan bases of the Taliban finally figure out that to even start that journey is to die.... then have we put ourselves again in a situation where as long as the
other guys are determined enough to stretch this out long enough, eventually enough people at home and in Congress will decide they don't want to play this game anymore and we bring our guys home and everything they have fought, suffered, and died for goes to hell anyhow?
I always tell the high school classes I lecture at that the lessons of Viet Nam are three simple rules-
1- do not send Americans to fight somewhere unless you have a clear and
reasonably simple goal of what it is you want to get done
2- do not send Americans to go into that fight unless you have a pretty
good idea of what it will take to win not just the battles, but the whole war
3- do not sent Americans to go and fight and die in that war unless you are fully prepared to do whatever it really takes to win it
If that means using napalm sometimes, laying down minefields sometimes, using herbicides to kill foliage or crops sometimes, (none of which are now allowed to us) and accepting the sad fact that when the enemy deliberately hides among and uses the local population as a major tactic, collateral damage is utterly unavoidable if you are to really fight them, then those are the things you should be doing.
The most moral thing you do in any war is fight hard, as hard as you can, to smash the enemy and get it over with. A short nasty and intense war with mistakes and some tragic collateral damage is infinitely better than the long drawn out "let's be nice and careful and not upset anyone in the international community" attempt at war that ends in failure anyhow. That seems to be a lesson that has been utterly lost in America today.
That is what I think.... what about you?
S/F
Del
Here’s the column by Bing West from Small Wars Journal website (a link to his bio is at the end):
Tactics or Strategy?
I came back from my latest month in the field in Afghanistan disquieted about our basic military mission. Is the military mission to engage, push back and dismantle the Taliban networks, with population protection being a tactic to gain tips and local militia, or is the military mission to build a nation by US soldiers protecting the widespread population, with engagements against the Taliban as a byproduct?
It appears our strategy is nation-building, with fighting and dismantling of the Taliban a secondary consideration. Thus, the number of enemy killed will not be counted, let alone used as a metric. This non-kinetic theory of counterinsurgency has persuaded the liberal community in America to support or at least not to vociferously oppose the war. But we have to maintain a balance between messages that gain domestic support and messages that direct battlefield operations.
We must understand what our riflemen do in Afghanistan every day. The answer is they conduct combat patrols. That underlies all their other activities. They go out with rifles to engage and kill the enemy. That is how they protect the population. For our generals to stress that the war is 80% non-kinetic discounts the basic activity of our soldiers. Although crime isn’t eradicated by locking up criminals, we expect our police to make arrests to keep the streets safe. Similarly, our riflemen are trained to engage the enemy. That’s how they protect the population. If we’re not out in the countryside night and day – and we’re not – then the Taliban can move around as they please and intimidate or persuade the population.
I’m not arguing that we Americans can ever dominate the Taliban gangs. There’s a level of understanding and accommodation among Afghans in the countryside that culturally surpasses our understanding. During the May poppy harvest, the shooting stops on both sides and men from far and wide head to the fields to participate in the harvest. That’s an Afghan thing. Only the Afghans can figure out what sort of society and leaders they want.
That said, we should strive to do a better job of what we are doing for as long as we are there. I condensed several hours of firefights I filmed during various patrols into the 30-second clip I posted here on 10 August (Not a Tactical Hurdle). The purpose is to illustrate a tactical problem that is strategic in its dimensions. Simply put, our ground forces are not inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. However, the annual bill for the US military in Afghanistan exceeds $70 billion, with another four to six billion for development. We’ve already spent $38 billion on Afghan reconstruction. Congress may eventually balk at spending such sums year after year. The problem is we’re liable to be gradually pulled out while the Taliban is intact. Nation-building alone is not sufficient; the Taliban must be disrupted.
Our soldiers only get a small number of chances to engage the enemy. Our battalions average one arrest every two months, and one platoon-sized patrol per day per company that infrequently makes solid contact. On average, a US rifleman will glimpse a Taliban once a month. The Taliban initiate the fights because they know they can escape. Our patrols have firepower but lack mobility. Our soldiers are carrying 70 pounds; a Taliban is carrying ten pounds. The Taliban have the distinct edge in mobility. Because the Taliban are well-concealed and scoot away, our superior firepower does not yield precision aim points to do severe damage.
More senior-level attention must be paid to inflicting severe enemy losses in firefights and to arresting the Taliban, so that their morale and networks are broken. A recent directive forbids applying indirect fires against compounds where civilians might be hiding. That directive upholds human decency and may reduce enemy propaganda. But indirect fires – helicopter gunships and jets – used to be called “precision fires” and gave the US its enormous advantage in combat. Now that such fires are restricted, what provides our advantage when the enemy sensibly fights from compounds? Don’t expect Afghan soldiers to do it for us. We have equipped and trained the Afghans in our image. They are as heavy and slow-moving on the ground as we are, and rely upon our advisors to call in the firepower.
This is my third war. It has the highest level of military scholars. Those scholars who emphasized the concepts of non-kinetic counterinsurgency need also to design concepts that bring more lethality to the ground battlefield. We’re pumping billions into UAVs. Surely we can find technologies and techniques for the grunt.
Bing West’s bio
This may, also, be of interest: Why We Need More Troops in Afghanistan
The question still remains, whether President Obama will pursue half-measures or go full in to accomplish something more possibly lasting.
