In 2012, so-called green-on-blue attacks have claimed more than 40 coalition forces’ lives. The media has ascribed the murder of coalition forces by Afghan troops to Taliban infiltration. Not so much says Alexander Vershbow, deputy secretary-general of NATO [above]. “The majority still are viewed as having been the result of personal grievances or clashes between Afghan personnel and coalition personnel,” Vershbow told the marinecorpstimes.com, “and only a small percentage may have been engineered by the Taliban.” Viewed or actual? Fog of war and all that. Meanwhile, NATO has implemented background checks for local hires and cultural sensitivity training for troops. CNN reports that five more troops have died from apparent green-on-blue attacks this week.
How about we s–t can the cultural sensitivity training, pull US and NATO forces out, and give the USS Ohio a target to nuke.
Insensitive? Ya. But at least then we’d be fighting an honest war, instead of this liberal social experiment of using the military to play psychologists in a land which hasn’t had a stable government in decades.
Where’d you get decades? Last I checked that entire corner of the planet has been, more or less, ruled by one warlord or another rising to power then being defeated in a never ending battle over one holy spot or another for the last ~6,000 years. But I agree. Pull out and let em enjoy each others company.
Just a minor point: USS Ohio no longer carries nuclear ballistic missiles as of 2003. From 2003-2007, it underwent conversion as the first of four Ohio class subs to have all their launch tubes converted from Trident to Tomahawk cruise missiles. It is now classed as “SSGN” instead of SSBN.
Tomahawks are a beautiful thing.
How can you modernize a culture who only allows a few books to be read and those books demand that the culture stay in the 8th century, condones sex with corpses, slavery and torture?
The Ohio does not have enough nukes to fix that problem ,but we do have additional ships
What’s the point in staying now that Osama’s dead?
What was the point in going when he was alive?
None, actually. Invading Afghanistan because Osama stayed there would be like arresting a hotel manager because a serial killer spent a night there.
Not quite. In this case, the hotel manager (Taliban government) sheltered and protected the serial killer (bin Laden). They were invaded and pushed out only after they refused repeated requests to turn him over.
The one thing I hold against Bush is that, after a good start in Afghanistan, he put it on the back burner to go into Iraq. That gave the Taliban a window of opportunity which they have made good use of.
@ Kendahl.
Being on the back burner was actually better for us then the current situation, except for lack of numbers. It forced CSC-A and CSTC-A to rely on the minimal manpower SF model of training and advising instead of this Big Army idiocy of partnering entire units while remanming then from Combat Brigades to Advise and Assist Birgades. We were 2 man teams assigned to Afghan Army units and we had control over the money, the medical assets, the Air and arty support, and the Logistic support. The ANA respected us and we lived with and respected them. We sat one on one with them and built mutual respect and empathy. The guys now (at the direction of the command that are isolated from reality) are housed in self-guarded prison style camps and only interact with locals under strict controls and direction. No way to build a relationship with people like that……..and these attacks are the fallout.
time to go. it’s a tribal mentality and it’s futile to try and change that.
It’s only hard to change when you demand a top-down run military like Big Army does. When we let the ODA teams do their job without BS outside interference, then we win over villages one at a time and we retain that loyalty for generations. The key is exactly what you said but not what I believe was your intent……..we don’t try to change it, we respect it and honor it and gain trust and loyalty………then things change naturally.
my intent was to quit wasting american resources, both money and lives on a country where the results may never come up to the price we pay.
If the command is never going to do what is needed to be successful, and instead pull out on a POLITICAL schedule while just redefining the word success to whatever they achieved, then I agree with you.
But, it would still be totally worth it if we reset our strategy in Afghanistan and went back to the old school ODA methods of One Village at a Time. Small teams, locally based, longer deployment times, and close personal relations with the local villagers. We would have a staunch ally in an unstable area. And I can tell you those people HATE the Pakistanis AND the Iranians…………..not bad friends to have.
agreed, but as what happened in my day you’re never going to get that type of thinking and support from the “big picture” guys. so instead of prolonging the pain, get out of dodge.
US is doing a great job cutting off the head of the serpent, keeping the ranks in disarray. That should keep terrorism from visiting our shores again. Doing all this nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially in the image of ours, is futile. It scares me how we are providing them with money, equipment and training. How long will it take before Iraq collapses and another dictator rises to power now that the US has left? The occupation just provides targets and fosters resentment. Change has to come from within. Maybe from infiltration. Keep up the intelligence, espionage and drone strikes, but those people want a theocracy – hypocritical and corrupt as it is. Never mind how well it’s worked out in Iran.
Having actually been an embedded advisor to the Afghan National Army, I can catagorically say that our own commands idiotic policies are directly responsible for these attacks. Don’t get me wrong, there are always going to be isolated personality issues that lead to these things once in a while, but the current state of affairs is not isolated, nor rare. The advisory mission is a SPECIAL FORCES mission, not a Big Army mission, and Big Army trying to run it with standardized SOPs and units is causing this resentment. Anyone who knows anything about Islam, or tribal mentalities, or counter-insurgency knows that it is a BOTTOM UP strategy that works………..but we are a TOP DOWN military and the top can’t let go. Hate to say it, but we in the OEF world were far better off when we were the “Forgotten War” and the command ignored us.
The Pentagon is not interested in your opinion. Alexander Vershbow, deputy secretary-general of NATO, a political appointee with no military experience at all trumps your in the weeds BOG experience.
Go and ponder all of the wasted manpower and money when in the end
political BS will negate any good ever done in SWA.
Sad but true.
I call BS.
On?
Everything in general, apparently.
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