The Announcement

I'm currently in Kuwait, trying to find my way to Bagram. I'm going back to Afghanistan for a year. Hopefully I can help make a difference in my small way.

Also, this blog is moving to http://afghanquest.com

If you have me on your links; first of all, thanks. Secondly, please update your links. I hope that those who have been reading continue to enjoy.

~Blue
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Contributions

I've said this before, and in the Obama Administration's new AfPak Strategy it was mentioned but got little attention. Now it is being echoed more and more; let's encourage our allies who have military caveats make other, perhaps more useful contributions.

PJ Tobia, an independent journalist in Kabul, has this to say about the Germans and their conundrum at home. The Germans want to be good allies, but they learned some serious lessons from the 1930's and '40's. Germany has a very different national spirit these days. Anyone I know who has worked with German troops in Germany says that the German troops are very impressive. They produce one of the best main battle tanks in the world, the Leopard II. They are smart, organized, well-trained soldiers.

They are horribly hamstrung in Afghanistan.

In January of 2008, at the German FOB in Konduz, SFC O was in the German TOC while they watched a group of insurgents set up rockets to fire at the FOB. The Germans could see them clearly on their sensors. The Germans possessed 120mm mortars which they could have easily used to put a stop to the insurgent's activities. Instead, the Germans were calling in to their higher headquarters for permission to place magazines in their small arms. Not to load the weapons... merely to place magazines in them.

O nearly went ballistic. He asked them why they didn't just mortar the rocketeers and get it over with. The Germans demurred. They were not permitted by their national caveats to engage, even when they saw the threat clearly and they were about to get rocketed. The Germans endured a brief rocketing (which never seem very brief when you are on the receiving end.)

The Germans have since changed some of their caveats to permit some more active roles. They are not, however, as able to take action as Americans, Brits, Canadians, or Dutch troops. What SFC O witnessed was merely an example, a single snapshot, of the type of incidents that occur when heavily caveated troops are put into situations that they cannot properly respond to.

The Germans are masterful organizers. The Germans, only sixty years ago, were rebuilding a country from the ground up. Afghanistan needs people who can mentor would-be administrators who are trying to work in a system that has no institutional memory of efficient governmental behaviors. As Tobia points out, it would not be perfectly safe, but it would be a very necessary contribution. The Japanese took a similar path, focusing their efforts on disarming local militias. The Japanese made massive contributions with this work... and it wasn't combat-related. The Germans, whose population does not support military involvement outside of Germany, could make similar contributions with governance.

Germany's initial role was in the development of the Afghan National Police. The Germans provided training, but could not perform the operational mentoring that is needed to really make lasting progress. German civilian experts could make huge, lasting contributions in non-military mentoring to help Afghan government officials to provide ethical, efficient government to more Afghans.

Calls for change like this are very slow-moving. We don't have time to screw around and cause a great NATO ally like Germany to become disillusioned when they could make such contributions that are so desperately needed. Let's work to get some of our allies more involved in ways that make more of an impact rather than mostly symbolic military contributions which can be less than effective.
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Sonic Must Die: Death To The Hedgehog!

GEN McChrystal has taken command in Afghanistan, and one of the first things he began to do is look at the way that troops are currently disposed and the planned dispositions of incoming "surge" troops around the country. Under the former commander, existing FOBs were being expanded to make room for the influx of new troops. This often had unintended but not completely unforeseen consequences. This was a continuation of the Big Box FOB behavior which has proven unsuccessful in the past. When you look at it, it looked almost like the French "Hedgehog" strategy which led to Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. While the Taliban are incapable of the type of offensive tactics used to reduce the French hedgehog at Dien Bien Phu to the point of surrender, the hedgehog strategy was another failed counterinsurgency behavior. It would prove no less so in Afghanistan.

As the truism states, "The proof is in the pudding."

Amid a nearly slanderous outcry from opponents of his appointment, some of which makes him sound like a former concentration camp commandant, GEN McChrystal headed back downrange and assumed his new command. He stated that his objective was population-centric, or pop-centric counterinsurgency.

McChrystal cited additional NATO troops who will deploy this year to key regions of Afghanistan, providing the manpower required to conduct “population-centric counterinsurgency operations.” These forces will partner closely with the increasingly capable Afghan security forces. (via Defenselink)

One of the first things he began to talk about appears to be a move away from the hedgehogs to a more distributed and comprehensive, yet focused, approach to the counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan. This from the Washington Post:

"We are going to look at those parts of the country that are most important -- and those typically, in an insurgency, are the population centers," McChrystal said in an interview shortly after pinning on his fourth star.

Many people will assume that McChrystal seems intent on focusing on the cities, but that's not evident. As GEN Petraeus noted in his recent remarks at CNAS,

"Two-thirds of all the attacks in Afghanistan are concentrated in about 10 percent of the country's districts, areas where more than 20,000 new U.S. soldiers and Marines are flowing in to pursue insurgents and provide greater security for Afghans."

It has been pointed out before that in order to provide the accepted optimal level of counterinsurgents to population, hundreds of thousands more troops would be needed in Afghanistan. What this fails to consider is that large portions of the country are not under significant pressure from the Taliban. This doesn't mean that there should be no efforts in those areas to improve governance and work with the ANP, but the same ratio of troops/population would not necessarily be needed in those areas. Improvements in governance, the professionalism of the ANP and economic development and construction would go far in such areas to separate the Taliban, or criminal elements who borrow the name of the Taliban for credibility or fear's sake, from the population. GEN McChrystal's commitment to nationwide mentoring and development of the ANP remains to be seen.

However, by separating the insurgents from the population in the most violence-prone areas, progress will begin to be seen. With McChrystal reevaluating the planned dispositions of troops, it appears that troops will be expected to remain closer to the populace. GEN Petraeus, quoted in Australia.to News said,

"A comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy is what is required to keep Afghanistan from becoming once again a sanctuary for transnational extremism, as it was prior to 9/11."

Petraeus said the principles underlying the counterinsurgency in Iraq – having troops protect and live among the civilian population, for instance -- can apply to Afghanistan.

GEN McChrystal also notes the effects of an effort that is too diluted.

"We've got to ruthlessly prioritize, because we don't have enough forces to do everything, everywhere," McChrystal said. He added that he would be especially reluctant to commit his forces to rugged areas where it would be difficult to extend the reach of the Afghan government or spur economic development. "If you are not prepared to come in with a reasonable level of governance and a reasonable level of development, then just going in to hold [the ground] doesn't have a strong rationale."(via Washington Post)

Clear, hold, and build. This is a strategy that both GEN Petraeus and GEN McChrystal have been talking about. The insurgents will respond by going elsewhere, of course. It's what insurgents do. In the meantime, establishing the local security apparatus and providing governmental and developmental improvements will help to prevent re-infiltration as the military effort eventually responds to the migration of the insurgency. However, the migratory opportunities for the insurgents are not unlimited. Migrating into a Hazara-dominated area, for instance, would be suicidal for Taliban unless done in significant strength. The Taliban insurgency would not do well attempting to migrate into the Panjshir Valley, either. The disposition of troops will eventually need to change, but in the meantime, having a General with the juice to say how things are to be done speaking of pushing out of the Big Box Hedgehogs is very significant.

GEN McChrystal also notes that some areas may not be worth messing around with right now. The Korengal, for instance, is an area that has produced more American casualties than any other similarly-sized area in Afghanistan. GEN McChrystal is reevaluating the current operations in the Korengal. It has been stated before on this blog that what is being done in the Korengal is more a counter-guerrilla campaign than a counterinsurgency. The Korengal does not appear to be amenable to counterinsurgent influence. If there is no hope of establishing Afghan governmental control over that valley, then what value is there to tying up resources and losing lives in a valiant but currently futile effort. Is the purpose merely containment?

"The question in the Korengal is: How many of those fighters, if left alone, would ever come out of there to fight?" McChrystal said. "I can't answer it. But I do sense that you create a lot of opposition through operations" by the military. "So you have got to decide where you are going to operate."(Washington Post)

GEN McChrystal appears to be willing to challenge assumptions and question accepted patterns of behavior. Moving out of the hedgehogs and out into the villages and valleys to be close to the population would produce significantly different results than have been seen to this point. Logistics are going to become complicated, and Green Beans Coffee is going to lose some business... but that's the price of counterinsurgency. Perhaps Pizza Hut will form a partnership with Jingle Air to deliver pizzas to the smaller outposts by helicopter.
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Why Do We Need Metrics?

The Center for A New American Security (CNAS) released a new document at the end of last week, and hopefully it will spark a discussion about measuring success or failure in Afghanistan. Even more hopefully, it will spark action following the discussion.

The discussion will hopefully refine the recommendations of some of the premier counterinsurgency theorists in the world today into actionable metrics for COIN, a subject that has been a sticking point in our execution of COIN, and potentially a shortcoming of FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency. Military officers, like business leaders, are rated on their success or failure in any environment based upon measurements. The question has been, "What can we measure that will tell us if we are doing the right things?"

In business, successful behaviors are relatively easy to measure. How much money did the business unit make? How much of that money was spent on making/delivering the product or service? How much money was left for profit afterwards? There are a lot of measurable factors that go into those main factors, but in the end there are lots of pertinent things to measure success or failure of any business unit, making managers easy to reward or disincent. In counterinsurgency the military officer is confronted by a seemingly nebulous environment, and he/she will often fall back on traditional military measurables, which have been demonstrated not to correlate to success in counterinsurgency. Worse, in their search for quantifiable meaning, officers will be forced to come up with equally or more meaningless measurables that can trick them into continuing unsuccessful behaviors.

The funny thing is that, while they are untrained doctrinally, the average Joe on the ground often sees the futility of the measurables that the officers above him are depending on. The guy on the ground may not understand what the hell "hearts and minds" is supposed to be all about, but he recognizes wasted action when he sees it. He may not have a better answer... sometimes he does... but he does know when his time is being wasted on unproductive behaviors or that potentially positive behaviors are being quashed in favor of an unproductive metric. All we have to do is look at the words of junior leaders who are in the suck or who have returned from it. These words help to diagnose our unproductive behaviors and our failure to train our junior leaders in the doctrine that they are expected to execute. They also diagnose our failure to choose objective measurables that mean anything.

Leaders, whether military or civilian, will strive to affect the measurable factors that they are measured against. Military officers begin their rating process by completing an "OER Support Form," or Officer Evaluation Report Support Form, in which they tell their boss what they are going to achieve during the rated period. The results of the OER affect their promotions... they mean money and career progression. Basically, they tell their boss what they will do and how they will measure their success or failure. They will choose metrics that are, first of all, measurable... usually easily measurable... and secondly, achievable. No one will set themselves up for failure. While we all agree that we are engaged in a fight against insurgents, we do not all agree on how to measure success or failure in such an environment.

We haven't all bought off on the appropriateness of the doctrine to actually fight against the insurgents, hence the COINdinista vs COINtra struggle.

This blog has pointed numerous times to the necessity to hold commanders accountable for their effects on success or failure during the time they spend in theater. In all previous conflicts, officers who were unable or unwilling to achieve the necessary results on the battlefield were relieved and replaced. Careers were stymied and ended. Until very recently, with the relief of GEN McKiernan, no such message was being sent in the current conflict. Very few officers have been relieved, and most maneuver unit commanders have declared excellent performance regardless of the security situation in their particular areas of responsibility. Since they set the measurables, which their higher commander have agreed to, they can point to these measurables and declare that they had positive effects on those metrics. Based on these, the declarations of success are warranted... but do they mean anything? Only one commander has been held accountable for the loss of "ground" in Afghanistan; and I posit that he was relieved in such a manner as much as a statement as for any lack of success that was worse than his predecessors... as well as to make room for a commander that GEN Petraeus believes will be more successful.

Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal gave a hint during his confirmation hearings that the measurables are going to change. He said that we will not measure success by body counts, which we have been sliding towards, but by the percentage of the population shielded from violence. This is difficult to measure in its own right, and there are many things that will go into it. While, in a population-centric counterinsurgency, securing the population is job one, how do you measure something that hasn't happened? How do you measure the activities... and thereby incent their application... that contribute to providing security? Since COIN is really a political struggle where perceptions are important, how do you measure those?

This has been a key piece missing from the puzzle. It has resulted in rewarding failure. It has resulted in the continuation of failed behaviors such as staying rooted on what Tim Lynch has labeled "Big Box FOBs." This is a behavior which will never, as LTG McChrystal states is important, secure the population and prevent their being victimized and intimidated. You have to be there. Going home to the Big Box at the end of the day, only showing up to the village every once in awhile and demanding that they tell you where the Taliban are just doesn't prevent intimidation.

Commanders will do what they are incented to do. When they set the metrics, based on what they feel that they can do, and based on concepts that have nothing to do with preventing intimidation of the population, they will. They will choose metrics like force protection or tons of Humanitarian Assistance distributed, or missions run vs number of casualties or, as has been a trend lately, on enemy body counts. The population will still be subject to the predations of the Taliban or Taliban-like or affiliated groups; and we still lose ground. The point is that commanders need to be given metrics that work to measure positive counterinsurgent indicators. They will measure something. We need to ensure that the metrics that they use mean something to the counterinsurgency.

That's why metrics... good, meaningful metrics... are so important.
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Mambo # 3

Mambo #3: When you're a lousy analyst, out of your league and talking smack about things that you genuinely are clueless about, and you are called on it, backpedal. Though you have accused others of raising strawmen, admit to raising a strawman on a limited basis, but call it something else, like a "false choice." Claim you did it not because you are a lost ball in tall grass, but for effect. Subtly imply it's because your opponents are really the idiots, and so you had to go for theatrics, not having the ability to use sock puppets on teh internets.

He's getting his intellectual ass handed to him over at Abu Muqawama in the comments, but he's the smart guy.

Like a child with ADHD who's eaten sugary food late in the evening, Cohen just can't shut up. Even though he is ridiculously soft headed on the topic, he still claims to base things on "my analysis." Cohen's analysis of AfPak is about as strong as Nixon's memory, Clinton's monogamy, or Hitler's fondness for Gypsies. His reasoning amounts to proclaiming that it's about to rain because he's seen a duck, and the duck's water repellent qualities are there for a reason. That reason must be an imminent rain storm. He also describes Charlie "Let's forget the lessons of Iraq" Dunlap as "a wise man."

Basically, he thinks that anyone who opposes the application of COIN principles is a wise man. Again, his fear is that it will work, and will then become a cornerstone of national policy abroad. So, in the meantime, he tries to talk everyone out of using it, forecasting defeat. He claims that it is not in our strategic interests to stabilize the government of Afghanistan and that of Pakistan. He asserts that we should, in the next 12-24 months, kill as many Taliban and al Qaeda as we can and then pull out, sending instead a few civilians... not many, just what we can find and afford... to build schools and teach in them, plant daisies, drink chai and some other stuff like making paper dollies.

He then goes on to say that he's all on board with Obama's new plan by way of saying that Obama's on board with his plan...

And it seems that at least one important man agrees with me - Barack Obama. In March when he laid out the US mission for Afghanistan he articulated three clear objectives - the first two are below:

"I have already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that had been requested by General McKiernan for many months. These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east, and give us a greater capacity to partner with Afghan Security Forces and to go after insurgents along the border. This push will also help provide security in advance of the important presidential election in August.

At the same time, we will shift the emphasis of our mission to training and increasing the size of Afghan Security Forces, so that they can eventually take the lead in securing their country. That is how we will prepare Afghans to take responsibility for their security, and how we will ultimately be able to bring our troops home . . We will accelerate our efforts to build an Afghan Army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000 so that we can meet these goals by 2011 - and increases in Afghan forces may very well be needed as our plans to turn over security responsibility to the Afghans go forward."

Here the President is laying out a very specific strategy for degrading the Taliban's capabilities and offers a very specific benchmark for training the Afghan security forces (two points that I have made repeatedly in my posts here).

All except for point number three, about the "civilian surge."

Now for the third part of the President's plan, which is a bit fuzzier and open to some interpretation:

"This push must be joined by a dramatic increase in our civilian effort. . . . To advance security, opportunity, and justice - not just in Kabul , but from the bottom up in the provinces - we need agricultural specialists and educators; engineers and lawyers. . . That is why I am ordering a substantial increase in our civilians on the ground. . .

We will work with local leaders, the Afghan government, and international partners to have a reconciliation process in every province. As their ranks dwindle, an enemy that has nothing to offer the Afghan people but terror and repression must be further isolated. And we will continue to support the basic human rights of all Afghans - including women and girls."

Now, here's the thing. I'm skeptical about this third part of the President's plan. First of all, we lack the civilian capacity to implement it (an assertion borne out by the fact that much of the civilian surge in Afghanistan is being carried out by the military). Second, I for one am unconvinced that it falls within America's national interests. Third, I think "a reconciliation process in every province" is unrealistic. But it bears noting that the President is a lot less specific about this part of the plan than he is first two parts. And, if the President's first two goals are met (degrading the Taliban and improving the Afghan security services), I would imagine there would be some incentive to jettison the more amorphous third part and get the hell out of Dodge.

D'oh!

Yep, we do lack the civilian capacity. I know that the administration is attempting to build that capacity. As a matter of fact, they are looking to attract National Guardsmen to tap their civilian skills as part of this "surge." Don't know how that's going to work out. Also don't know how many daisy eaters are going to volunteer to join up and put their butts where their little daisy munchers are. It's always a lot harder to do things than to say them, though. I got into a bit of a tiff with a peacenik recently who advocated pulling out all of the troops and replacing them with teachers. I told her that she should go. "Oh, no," she said quickly, "we just organize and advise government on our issues. We don't actually go overseas."

Uh... yeah. Okay. Patriots all. Hey, you don't have to carry a weapon to be a patriot... got that... but the moniker wears thin pretty quick, doesn't it? Real patriots do something. There's an old saying, "Don't confuse meetings with actually performing work." I think that it could be extended to, "Don't confuse 'organizing' with actually accomplishing anything." Come on, lady... put your butt in The Stan and show us how it's done!

Or, you can just shut up. That part's safer. It's tons more comfortable, too. You still get cable TV, soy lattes and organic whatever-you-want down at the hippymart. She will do neither. She will continue to make noise and "organize," and Cohen will continue to "analyze," and they are both just gongs in the wilderness, signifying nothing.

As Cohen goes on to explain how the most powerful man in the world has cleverly laid out a strategy that means, "Joe Biden is the smartestest man in the whole wide world," he admits confusion. Cohen senses the disconnect. He thought that the first two parts meant, "Judge, I wanna kill, kill, kill..."

He thought we were on our way to the Group W bench. He figured that Part Three stuff was just window dressing that we were never going to fulfill, anyway... and that the President could be talked out of when he saw how hard it was.

Suddenly he senses that somethings gone horribly awry... but he can't admit to himself the awful truth.

Now whether you agree or don't agree, something here doesn't smell right. Either President Obama is misleading the American people about his true strategy in Afghanistan or Lt General McCrystal is preparing to carry out an approach there that is decisively more population-focused and less military-centric than what the President described in March.

DingDingDingDingDing!

(This is the moment in the old cartoons when Elmer Fudd realizes that Bugs Bunny actually handed him a bomb. It's the old "Warner Bros Moment of Clarity.")

So, Mr. Cohen, you're confused. Your suddenly worried that the President has no idea what his pick for Commander in Afghanistan is really up to. You raise the insidious thought that perhaps the President himself actually misled the American people. Could it be that you were misled? Could it be that you misled yourself? Perhaps that's because, oh, I don't know... perhaps it's because the President said we're going to do COIN and you thought you heard what YOU wanted to hear!

Could it be that you can barely even spell COIN, and you don't know a COIN strategy when it's laid out in broad terms for you????

In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, "What a maroon!"
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Contrast To Brass

Read the post below first and then...

Contrast Cohen's chickenshit with Tim Lynch's brains and brass cajones. One man gets it, does it. One man does neither. The contrast is nearly perfect.

'Nuff said.
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There Is A Word In English For Being Compelled By Fear

Michael Cohen is at it again, trying to tear away at the War in Afghanistan, selecting seemingly random information and using it out of context to support his fear-driven position. He is afraid that if we succeed in COIN in Afghanistan, it will become a cornerstone of American foreign policy. We have a word for actions that are driven primarily by fear: cowardice. Michael Cohen's writings concerning Afghanistan and counterinsurgency are the most cowardly things you are likely to find in print this week.

First of all, we don't all agree that we're engaged in a counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. Indeed, I'm pretty sure President Obama would not agree that we are engaged in a full-fledged counter-insurgency campaign. (Perhaps COIN-lite or Skim COIN).

Huh? We are fighting against insurgents in Afghanistan. That means that we are countering insurgents. That means counterinsurgency. What the hell does he think that we're fighting? Whether or not we are doing it well is open to discussion... and I frequently do... but contending that it is not counterinsurgency is absolutely ridiculous. It's the type of outlandish stuff that a coward would utter to back up his reason for running away from whatever threat he may find.

The fact is that the new strategy for Afghanistan announced less than two months ago lays out more of a counterinsurgency than we've actually performed in the past seven years. I didn't see Cohen arguing that Afghanistan wasn't a counterinsurgency two years ago. Cohen's analysis starts out with this ridiculous assertion and goes generally downhill from there. It is the rhetoric of desperation and fear. When called on this fact over at Abu Muqawama, Cohen states his fear of success clearly:

"look COIN works - let's do it elsewhere"

This is his greatest fear, and what drives his analysis. It's the most clearly you will ever really get him to state his fear. This is what beats in the heart of the coward. He's afraid, and it drives his thoughts and his actions.

Cohen later follows up Chris Mewitt's question of what objection he's using to reason against COIN with this:

To answer your question Chris, both. It doesn't work and it's bad policy. But if you don't show that it doesn't work - it will become policy.

Notwithstanding the fact that as a military analyst he is completely unskilled, but he attempts it to avoid his phobia... that COIN will become a cornerstone of American foreign policy, by misusing worn-out talking points about Iraq; discounting the effects of the surge as having any influence on the outcome there. Half-informed twisting of that history may sound like informed analysis to those who wish to believe such fallacies, but each has his or her own reason for wishing to believe. Generally, the motives for wanting to believe such a version is self-serving. Self-serving analysis is just as flawed as fear-based (or cowardly) analysis; just as intellectually dishonest.

Cohen then answers Abu M's post with an even more ridiculous and poorly constructed argument, claiming that Exum countered his post poorly; which is just silly. Cohen spews a load of hurt feelings all over his site. It's really not hard to insult the man. Cohen is not only compelled by his phobia into blundering into an area where he is truly ill-equipped, but he is very thin-skinned.

What Cohen fails to realize is that his proponency of failure is in direct opposition to the national security of the United States. Note the International Crisis Groups's evaluation of the results of failure or premature withdrawal from Afghanistan in their April report. It is simple, it is concise, and it is, to my understanding, accurate.

Withdrawing international troops with the threat that any regrouping of jihadis or al-Qaeda can be countered by air power and special forces would simply return the country to the control of jihadis. Air power has not proven successful against insurgents or terrorist bases. Neglect would allow the region to descend into further chaos, as it did in the 1990s.

Cohen advocates doing what even the Brussels-based peace advocacy says should not be done, and advocates against what even they say should be done. History will prove Mr. Cohen to be a very flawed thinker. Those who are driven by fear usually are. Now, Mr. Cohen will object to this characterization of his position, but I'm standing by it and I believe that it will be borne out by the events of the future.

Mr. Cohen also describes himself as a warrior, and yet nothing in his bios that I can find online mention military service in any way. Just giving yourself the title of warrior just because you feel like it is like proclaiming yourself a Ranger and tossing a tab on your shoulder without ever having gone to Ranger School. Whatever, Michael. I'll humor you the same way that I humor a child with a nerf gun who pretends he is a warrior. "Sure, Mikey. You're a warrior, and a tough one, too. Here's a cookie. Go have fun!"

But we really know that people who are motivated by fear are not warriors. Warriors experience fear, but they think and act in spite of it, not because of it. No, Cohen is not a warrior. Calling himself one is absurd. It would be insulting to real warriors if it wasn't so ludicrous.

What continuously slays me about Cohen is that he totally misses which side his bread is buttered on. The civilian capacity-building capabilities that are necessary for success in the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan are exactly the types of capabilities that Mr. Cohen advocates as some primary tools of foreign policy. Afghanistan gives us the strong motivation and the proof to develop such capabilities. Mr. Cohen's disconnect from reality is that developing such capabilities and employing them before insurgencies develop, or early in them, could help prevent such conflicts and/or involvements in the future. Afghanistan gives us the interest and motivation to actually develop such capabilities as part of the counterinsurgency, giving us skilled civilian government employees with experience in such matters. This expertise, developed in war, could help prevent war elsewhere. By arguing against COIN, Cohen weakens his own advocacy. His unreasoning fear, peeking out from behind really poor analysis, is really shooting himself in the foot.

Trying to refute what has obviously become more of a counterinsurgency than it has been in the past seven years as being not a counterinsurgency or "COIN-lite or Skim COIN" blah blah blah is just ridiculous. More really poor analysis. By setting up such obvious straw men, nobody who knows anything follows him any further. Cohen's advocacy for the civilian capacity-building, which would be really good foreign policy that helps to avoid military involvement in COIN in the future, suffers as a result.

Cohen is his own worst enemy. He's not doing the rest of us any favors, either.
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"At War": Stunning.

I've been waiting for months to review Scott Kesterson and David Leeson's film, "At War." I finally received a copy for review purposes and took awhile this afternoon to sit down and screen it all by myself.

I'm glad that I was alone.

I have permission to share it with family, which I will do, at least with my immediate family and my older children. I am still glad that the first time I saw it, I saw it alone. I've read that when it was screened at the Milblogging Conference, many Afghan vets were deeply affected by the film. I was immediately engaged by "At War," but about a third of the way through it, I was wondering what was different about me that it wasn't affecting me so deeply.

At the end of it, I sat there stunned; a tear rolling slowly down my left cheek, glad to be alone. It's that good, that powerful.

It wasn't a single moment that took me there. It was the entirety of it. There was so much of my experience in it. Scott Kesterson and his collaborators have captured the unique experience of what was like to be there, especially as an ETT or PMT. The only thing missing was the gritty taste of the Afghan dust and the distinct smell of cooking fires in the villages.

Kesterson's ground-level visuals are more than just documentary. He captures the impressions. He captures those moments that I think that all of us who have served as advisors have had. He captures the simple truths about working with Afghans. He captures the frustration and even the humor of dealing with the Afghan personality as advisors work to convert the raw warrior into a soldier. He captures the drawbacks and the small joys; finding your influence making little differences in the way that these men, whose fierceness cannot be denied but whose disorganization is just as marked, do their jobs.

"At War" also captures the sense of caring that develops between an advisor and his charges. You can see the duality of the cat herder and the brother-at-arms who speaks only a few words of his brother's language yet gets the intent of so many communications. As one advisor goes "grocery shopping" for hamburger on the hoof for his men, you see the paternal aspect of the mentor.

The soundtrack is unique and, I thought, very well done. This is not a soundtrack done twenty years later, seeking to evoke a sense of period via aural memories; it is a distinct soundtrack made for this movie. At times folksy, at times the edgy metallic background that draws one more deeply into the tension of the moments when death can suddenly materialize like an entity in your midst, this soundtrack adds shading to the color. It is not an attempt to shoehorn popular culture into what is not a popular experience. It is seasoning, adding to a flavor so few have tasted. It gives this film a flavor as distinctly different from the standard American experience as kabuli pilau is different from McDonalds.

Kesterson captures the Canadians doing a fantastic job as well. He captures Canadians advising and as maneuver forces, showing that the Afghan experience is the Afghan experience, not just an American Afghan experience. The Canadians do themselves proud, and Scott Kesterson's videography captures it.

Kesterson's triumph transcends the excellent capture of the moments that bring the Afghan experience home. It's also what this film is missing. While the editing carries the veteran viewer like the current of the deployment, you cannot edit some things in or out. Kesterson is a participant, and he's accepted. He's just like another rifleman, grenadier, or gunner... except his weapon system is a camera. There is no friction between the journalist and those he is with. You can just tell that he is accepted as a professional in a soldierly sense. It's hard to explain how you can accept someone as a professional and still feel burdened by them when you have to carry them along with you operationally. There is no sense that Kesterson is viewed in this light by those with whom he embeds. He's another combat system operator. This comes out not only in the way that he operates around teams of men under fire, but also in the way that they speak as if they are not talking to a camera. They aren't. They are speaking to Scott Kesterson, a guy they know and accept, who just happens to have a camera on.

It's hard to explain how rare, and therefore how brilliant, that is.

"At War" is a film that I can point to and say, "That's it. That's what it was like. That's a sample of my experience in Afghanistan." There is a total lack of judgment in "At War." It's not a morality play or a political message; it's an experience captured.

Afghan veterans, beware; this film may kick your ass. For those who want to get a sense of what it's like, "At War" is the best you can do without deploying.
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And Now This Day Is Yours

I know that a lot of folks use Memorial Day as a day to honor all service members, but that's not really what it is. It was started as a day to honor the dead; those who gave their all for this great republic. I've often spent this day as a living symbol of those who have gone before me. Parades, memorials, ceremonies; I've accepted the thanks of grateful people... but it wasn't for me. It wasn't my day.

I've gazed upon the graves of soldiers lost in the Civil War and wondered about them. I've seen the photos from the Civil War, WW-I, WW-II, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Beirut, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Iraq; photos of the anonymous dead who symbolize all of the dead of each of those conflicts. So hard to personalize beyond the abstract... they were, "the other guy." They weren't like me. I was the survivor, the one it wouldn't happen to. Memorial Day was their day.

I have two brothers who are significantly older than myself. One, since passed, spent a career in the Army and a tour in Vietnam that forever changed him and may have ultimately led to his loss at a young age. My other brother was in ROTC for a spell in college. He eventually went on to a doctorate, but one of his closest friends was also in ROTC, accepting his commission when I was fairly young; perhaps seven or so. His name was Bob Rice.

Before he went to Vietnam, we went to what was, at the time, Cincinnati's amusement park, Coney Island. Since replaced by Kings Island, I remember it to be pretty cool. I thought Bob and my brother were the coolest things going. I was in awe of Bob, the strong young man who carried me around on his shoulders that day and accompanied me on the roller coasters I was tall enough to ride.

I never saw him again after that day. 1LT Robert Thomas Rice, Jr., 23, of Springfield, Ohio, was killed near Pleiku, RVN, on August 8, 1970. He was in B Co, 2nd Bn, 8th Infantry of the 4th Infantry Division. He was awarded a Silver Star. For me, he and my brother were the face of the Vietnam War.

Memorial Day is his day.

Many years later, I met a man who seemed to be liked by all who met him. He was fairly soft-spoken and calm. He carried an air of self assurance and common sense, and, like me, he loved to play golf and was just as much an amateur. We became fast friends. He was prior service Marine Corps and Army, and pined for an opportunity to do his part in this war. He had been turned away by recruiters who didn't want to make the effort to go through the medical review process his back injury would have required. They preferred the low-hanging fruit. Jon Stiles would not be deterred.

He fought his way through bureaucracies across state lines, and eventually got back in, joining the Colorado Army National Guard. When their scheduled deployment was delayed, he found an open position with a unit from Louisiana and actually transferred across state lines to make sure that he wasn't left behind.

Last November, Jon saw a suspicious vehicle approaching his Route Clearing Team of Engineers in Jalalabad. Sensing danger to his team, Jon went through his escalation of force measures and wound up engaging the vehicle with his M-240B machine gun. The vehicle-borne explosive device detonated and Jon caught a facefull of the blast and fragmentation. He was knocked unconscious immediately, and SGT Jon Stiles, 38, of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, died in the helicopter on the way to the hospital of head and neck wounds. Numerous Afghan civilians were killed, but Jon was the only American casualty. He couldn't prevent the civilian carnage, but he forced the bomber to detonate prematurely, saving his buddies from the blast. He was awarded a Bronze Star for valor for an action the previous month in which he pulled soldiers from a burning vehicle after a similar attack. He had declined medical leave for his wounds from that day which would have had him at home on the day he met his fate.

Jon joins the ranks of such men as Bob Rice in the ranks of our hallowed dead. This is his first Memorial Day, a day that he earned with his sacrifice on that dusty road in Afghanistan. I can barely remember Bob Rice's face these many years later, but I can still see Jon's, and I can still hear his voice and his laughter.

I will spend part of this Memorial Day in uniform, standing in for Bob and Jon at a ceremony at a school, symbolizing those who are the very fabric of the red stripes in the flag. It's not my day, though. It belongs to so many men just like Bob Rice.

And now, Jon, this day is yours.


**UPDATE**

CJ put up this post, a tribute to 1LT Schulte, killed recently in Afghanistan.
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Implementation

The "surge" of troops into Afghanistan is something that most of us who have been there have been recommending for years... as long as the added troops do helpful things. It does matter what they do, not just that they are there. It's important that we change not just the numbers that are in-country, but also the way in which they are used.

Most of us who have been there have pointed out the FOB mentality that reigns in Afghanistan, that ISAF forces withdraw into large FOBs at night and cede control of the countryside to the ACM, primarily operating under the name of the Taliban.

An article recently published details the problems that came up with the attempt to expand FOB Wolverine in Zabul Province. CPT Paul Tanghe, an ETT advising the ANA operating in the area, warned of the backlash that the locals would have against interfering with their water supplies, which run through an underground channel called a "karez." No one listened to him, and by the time they figured out that there was a problem, they had already really ticked off the locals and unknowingly fed the living hell out of the Taliban IO. Good job, gentlemen.

Next time, listen to the advisor. He might just know something about what he is doing there. He also has closer contact with Afghans than most Americans (NO, a shura once in awhile doesn't count as having a lot of contact with Afghans.) Instead, as many of my advisor brothers can attest, we are (much) more often regarded with suspicion, as if we'd been photographed leaving a Communist Party meeting or something. More than once, I heard the words, "gone native." I'll tell you what; if more senior leaders would go a little native, we'd have a much better grip on what the hell we are doing there and what we need to do to succeed.

My second question about that article is; Why in the hell are we shoving all of these new capabilities into the same boxes? If it's going to be more commuting to work and a Green Beans Coffee shop, I'd recommend putting a few more FOBs, COPs, Firebases, or whatever you want to call them around the countryside. Hey, I've seen it done, and it makes a difference. They don't have to be really big. The first time I saw FOB Kutschbach, it was a rocky open area at the foot of a ridgeline that overlooked Tag Ab. It started out as a VPB and was grown into a full-fledged FOB from there. A lot of people put serious work into making it into that.

I wonder if the "Mosh Pit" is still there.

In any case, building accommodations to cram all these new troops into FOB Wolverine is just repeating the mistakes of what Tim Lynch calls the "Big Box FOB." By the way; if anyone wanted to see "change we can believe in" regarding the way we do business in Afghanistan, they'd be beating this guy's door down to hire him to manage something for us in Afghanistan. Careerists would hate him, those who like to see progress would love him, and Afghans would likely feel like they were being listened to. But what do I know?

Don't tell him I said that. I don't think government work is on his agenda. Oddly enough that's why I think that someone with half a brain would badger him to death to get him on board to change the way that we do business.

He's safe. That'll never happen.

Finally, we've got the issue of staffing the mentoring effort to do JOB #1; bring the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) like the ANA and ANP up to speed. We're now throwing Lieutenants and buck Sergeants at Kandak (Battalion)-level mentoring jobs, and a brigade of the 82nd augmented with a very few field grade (Major and above) officers attached to take over mentoring for a significant portion of the ANA. Time will tell, but the level of training that the 4th Brigade, 82nd Airborne is receiving to prepare them for mentoring doesn't appear to be a lot.

LTC(R) John Nagl once proposed an Advisor Corps. He concept received little serious consideration and is still thrown at him by his detractors. I'm not sure that such an organization is sustainable, but I can testify that mentoring ANSF requires certain attributes. Truly professional mentors are hard to come by. For an Army that doesn't even bother to train its NCO's in COIN, I think it's a pretty ballsy move to just toss a few paratroops at the problem and hope for the best. I think that we're going to get what we pay for out of it. Dr. Nagl recognized the importance of professional mentors to security force development in foreign countries. His proposal was a way to retain that critical skill as a set. He realized that what we were doing was hit-or-miss. It just got worse.

Hey, if you can't just toss a BCT at it, how are you supposed to solve the problem?

That's not to say that a tremendous amount of good can't be done, but we'll see.

Two recommendations:

1) Don't just expand the "Big Box FOBs" and stick all of these new assets into them. Spread it out and take control of area that have lacked control in the past. You have to BE THERE. You can't mail this shit in. Start pushing out; FOB Kutschbach can be replicated... over and over again.

2) Figure out how to train these BCT-A's to actually do the "A" part. Just sending in Americans isn't going to cut it, no matter how highly we think of our young soldiers. We have left them out of the revolution to this point by not training them in COIN. Now we're going to expect them to advise ANA and ANP in how to perform COIN? Not what I'd call a recipe for resounding success. You need a plan to train the junior leaders in COIN and in advising. Winging it is not a solution.
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What Do We Know?

There is a tremendous conversation going on now that the firing of GEN McKiernan fits right into. There are many voices, with standard bearers on each side. It is a conversation that contributes directly to whether or not we actually succeed in the current conflict. Many of the posts on this blog have been outliers to this central conversation.

Central players in the conversation like David Kilcullen, John Nagl, COL Gian Gentile and Andrew Bacevich have been going 'round and 'round for quite some time now. I have sparred a bit with Gentile, and more recently with Michael Cohen, a relative late-comer to the conversation.

I've heard the arguments. I even hear the others, who are not "spokesmen" for one side or the other. For quite some time now, I've said that a lot of this is diversionary. Recently, a comment string had me about to tear my hair out as the conversation turned to such things as whether or not COIN was done in Somalia, which is pretty inane, really. (It came from my assertion, in refuting Cohen, that there had been no nascent nation-building in Somalia.) Some men who consider that they have a grasp of counterinsurgency, at least strong enough to intimate that my understanding is not quite up to their standards, wrote authoritatively about Afghanistan, though they had not been there. In putting forward my opinion, I was running into quibbling over such things as terrain denial and purely kinetic operations being possibly the direction that we need to head in Afghanistan. I've also run into some kind of derision about population-centric COIN, which is interesting in that it doesn't seem to make any sense.

Strangely, if you call it something else, they will often agree that the action would be a good idea. They suggest things that are part of pop-centric COIN as if they weren't, and that's fine with them, too. There's some kind of knee-jerk negativity, but it seems to be emotional, which I find strange.

There's something that I would like to point out; there is very consistent feedback coming out of the veterans of Afghanistan. There are a number of us now, and there are a number of us who write, and we all say very similar things. Whether or not we are fans of Galula or of FM 3-24 or whatever. We differ on small points, but our feedback is remarkably similar.

Discussion can be a lot of fun. It can be stimulating. It can be maddening, especially when those of us who have been there, particularly those of us who have been there as advisors, keep saying the same thing over and over and those who have their opinions about COIN or the war or both just brush past it dismissively. I can point to a number of bloggers who say similar things, who have provided similar feedback, and this has not changed in several rotations.

I can still say that I'm encouraged. Prof. Bacevich may not like it, as his viewpoint is clearly marginalized in the new administration, but I'm encouraged. We may not be doing a great job here in the States preparing our NCO's for leadership in COIN environments, and that's more than a shame; it's dangerous. I'm still encouraged. I was encouraged when the strategic plan for "AfPak" was released, and I'm even more encouraged now. Sec. Gates, ADM Mullen and GEN Petraeus have shown that they are career-ending serious about what we are doing. That's the kind of message that has been a long time coming.

The message that the advisor veterans of Afghanistan have been bringing back for years may not be clicking with all of those who enjoy the various discussions; but it seems to have caught on with those who are calling the shots now. Don't get me wrong; I have no illusions that this is being read by those leaders. GEN Petraeus was the driving force behind the manual which lays out the doctrine.

The point is not lost on me, though, that advisor veterans say very similar things and we have pointed out a number of things consistently... and when the leaders who proposed the doctrine for counterinsurgency get their time in the barrel, they appear to be moving in a direction that addresses those concerns.

Many argue, as COL Gentile does, that other factors were more responsible for the improvements in conditions in Iraq than was GEN Petraeus and "the surge." They claim that Iraqi just happened to get tired of the violence right at that point. They argue that the "Sunni Awakening" occurred independently of American actions or any change in behavior on the part of our leadership. They speak convincingly, and they have an audience. It is their argument against a narrative which would tend to disprove their assertions. Basically, they argue fortuitous circumstances that magically made it appear as if the surge in Iraq worked. While to me their narrative seems a bit self-serving, here comes Act Two.

If this team is able to begin to reverse our recent fortunes in Afghanistan, it will still be argued that other factors beyond our control were responsible. It's going to ring a little more false, though.

In my opinion, the self-serving narratives of the COINtras, though persuasive, are diversionary. Counterinsurgency is the most complex environment that can be imagined for a military leader. With so many factors, there will always be plausible alternate explanations. Here's what I know; if you do the right things, a lot of different moving parts will begin moving in the directions that you need for them to. This is not a science, it's an art with a lot of science involved. COL Gentile says that COIN requires a lot of leaps of faith. I can see where he would get that. I would say that it's just my observation, but it's more than just me, who has seen both good and bad done and seen the results.

Following a series of moves over the past few months, particularly the past seven weeks, I have found room for optimism. Not all of my fellow advisor veterans share my optimism. They have come to distrust the system, or the administration, to too great a degree and have gone into "show me" mode. Again, understandable. I have a lot more faith in this team from the Secretary down, and they have shown that they have teeth that they are willing to use.

In an email exchange today with a few veterans, we all acknowledged having seen horrible leaders who were just breezing through disastrous combat tours and still getting promoted. I don't think that this team is going to completely eradicate that type of behavior; but I do think that they've sent a strong signal.

I'm more encouraged than I was after reading the strategy review.

Now, a real telling point will be what the civilian governmental agencies such as State and USAID do to handle their responsibilities in the new strategy. All of the military changes in the world are not going to amount to much if Afghanistan's government is left with such corruption, and if there is no economic development the outcome will remain very much in doubt.
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A New Accountability? *UPDATED*

SECDEF Gates spoke this afternoon on the replacement of GEN David McKiernan as the commander of US forces in Afghanistan. McKiernan was on the job for less than a year, having been appointed the task under the Bush administration. LTG Stanley McChrystal will replace him. McChrystal was a Special Forces officer, and former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command.

The whole thing was quite civilized; GEN McKiernan's service was duly praised... perhaps eulogized. It is the first major sacking of a commander in this war. Could it be that senior officers will be held accountable for the success or failure of their mission, or is this just a political move to replace a Bush assignee?

Based on Gates' announcement, it appears that it is a signal that field commanders will be held accountable for the lack of progress in their areas. Gates spoke of LTG McCrystal's experience as a counterinsurgent. He announced the appointment of a Deputy Commander in Afghanistan, LTG David M. Rodriguez, who he also touted as an experienced and strong counterinsurgent. LTG Rodriguez was the commander of the 82nd Airborne when I was in Afghanistan. I saw him once as he conducted a FOB visit. Being a good little advisor, I wore my uniform properly and stayed the hell out of the way, taking care of my business whilst he went about his.

I do not know GEN McKiernan. I have no reason to have anything other than respect for him and his service. I wouldn't be disrespectful to him. It appears that he is being used to symbolize to the Officer Corps that counterinsurgency failures will come home to roost. This is a message that needs to be taken to heart.

I think it's more about the message than the man.

It's unfortunate that one man has to take the blame, but that's the nature of command. A commander is responsible for everything that happens or fails to happen. I saw one joyful commenter on a popular counterinsurgency website today, figuratively jumping for glee that GEN McKiernan was being sacked for this "cavalier attitude towards civilian casualties." This is clearly not the case, but the man will have to live with that kind of speculation from here on out.

That being said, it's time that leadership downrange hear the bell clearly; no more losing ground and coming back holding your place on the promotion list. Many have commented that a tower guard at Camp Phoenix could lose rank at the drop of a hat, but there was no accountability for the myriad of broken systems that were run by officers. A team could spend weeks downrange without the proper equipment while staff officers bickered over who got one of the 42 new humvees... but no officer's career was ever in danger while a team of advisors was rendered nearly disabled for lack of the equipment that the denizens of Phoenix cast lots for. A brigade or battalion commander can leave an area notably less secure than when he got there and go back with a shiny new medal, a great evaluation and a choice assignment.

I recently asked in the comments on Abu Muqawama if there had been a single maneuver force commander who had suffered any negative impact on his career due to the degradation of security in Afghanistan or Iraq. There had not been. Battalion and brigade commanders came back from the theaters of combat having visibly lost ground, or having failed to make progress, with medals and nice new assignments including promotions. Apparently, that has now changed.

This should not be construed as a criticism of GEN McKiernan; I think it's more about the message than the man. I feel for the man, but I applaud the message.

*UPDATE*

On his blog, Andrew Exum agrees with the commenter below. In an NPR interview on 5/12/09, Exum sounds more like the above. In the end, a significant portion of the event is about the message that there is a new strategy and it will be ruthlessly enforced.
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Dogs And Cats Sleeping Together

From the time following the election, there was an increasing pace of articles, papers and interviews geared towards "informing the President's decision" about the way forward in Afghanistan. Since the plan was announced just over a month ago, there has been a swelling cry amongst those who did not find their opinions well-represented in the new plan. These people knew, with the appointments of a number of those who champion opposite views to influential positions in the Pentagon and elsewhere, that their chosen paths were probably not going to carry a lot of weight. The reaction has been to raise a hue and cry in an attempt to catch hold of any lack of commitment or loss of enthusiasm due to difficulty.

This has resulted in some strange actions, such as calling Andrew Bacevich during Senate hearings dedicated to hearing from Afghanistan veterans. It has also made for some strange bedfellows. The website AntiWar.com recently published an interview with COL Gian Gentile, which many would find odd, in that a serving officer and department head at West Point would grant such an interview. The author of the article does rather stridently go after Gentile's ideological opponents, presenting his opposition argument in a purposely dim light. This prompted one commenter on Abu Muqawama to point out that the author, Kelley B. Vlahos, is a correspondent for Fox News and a writer for conservative publications, labeling her among the "Paleo-Conservatives."

Regardless of the political affiliation of the author, it is very odd that a military officer who has become a lightning rod for the traditionalists in the military establishment would find, or accept, such a warm embrace from AntiWar.com. In fairness, COL Gentile explains that he did clear the interview with the West Point PAO. I would expect nothing less, really, nor would I expect a different answer from that PAO. That does not make the interview less odd in its character.

Those who are on the side of the argument that hasn't found favor in the administration are arguing strenuously that the administration is continuing to pursue "failed policies of the Bush administration," which has become the ultimate political slam, the equivalent of labeling someone a racist to those who use it. Of course, those who advocate the adoption of the "new" strategy for what has come to known as "AfPak" are painted with that same brush here. COL Gentile comes out looking like the great patriot, while those who differ with him are painted as, well, not as patriotic. In fact, Gentile is painted as being the one who is sincere for simply being willing to embrace AntiWar.com, while his opponents receive a slightly different treatment.

Gentile laughed when he thought of the ribbing he might get among the COIN-set, being interviewed by a site with the name "Antiwar." Ultimately, he doesn’t care. He is driven by a sincerity his detractors cannot touch, and a personal mission not to let current war doctrine go unchallenged. He might just have a ghost of a chance.

A sincerity his detractors cannot touch. Nice. Sincerity, for a military officer, is now defined by their willingness to interview for AntiWar.com. We've come a long way, baby. Note the overwhelming sincerity below that cannot be touched by the likes of Nagl:

Deny it they may, says Gentile, but today’s policymakers are promoting a similar Surge strategy for Afghanistan (See congressional testimonies by Flournoy and Chief Af-Pak envoy Holbrooke this week: clear, hold and build, with more boots on the ground, more civilian experts, more COIN). As an active duty officer, Gentile won’t question current plans outright, but he left me with this:

"As soldiers, our role is to do whatever we are told to do by our civilian masters. However, my experience is, that the idea of using military force to change entire societies — to use John Nagl’s words — at the barrel of a gun, is highly problematic and it is not as clean and as clear and as sensible as I think our own COIN doctrine makes it seem to be," he said. "I saw what it is like changing the entire society at the barrel of a gun in Baghdad in 2006, it wasn’t as simple."

The wording of this quote is unfortunate. Nagl has made the statement about changing societies. I cannot find any reference to this change being, "at the barrel of a gun." There are several instances of Gentile saying this, however. It's actually a phrase that he resorts to repeatedly. It's part of his schtick. Now, I may be wrong, and I'd have no problem with having it pointed out, but while I have found those two elements linked together frequently in Gentile's writing and again in quotes from him, but I have not found an instance of it said by Nagl.

It may also be cleverly worded, especially in the quote above, to appear that Nagl has said that the Army, "can change entire societies at the barrel of a gun." Now that's sincerity that cannot be matched. Clever = sincere.

Overall, this is an exercise in First Amendment rights, and I support it as such. No problem there. Other than that it is quite the display of odd bedfellows. It was also a great way to challenge the patriotism of his ideological opponents, and specifically Nagl, without having to say so himself. Nicely played. I can't say that it added to COL Gentile's stock in my book, but it was well played.
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Never Again

The post regarding Mr. Cohen's articles on Democracy Arsenal on COIN and specifically John Nagl and Brian Burton's article in the April issue of Washington Quarterly was cited on Abu Muqawama and began a lively discussion thread over there. This is good, since the COINtras are raising a point that needs to be discussed, dealt with, and moved past. It is the politics of fear.

More after the jump

Here is the lone comment that was left on this blog (there are nearly 140 over at AM) regarding the post, made by Mr. Anonymous:

You completely miss Michael Cohen's point. Utterly.

As simply as possible: There is an upper bound on the efficiency of COIN. No matter how good you get at it, as a policy option, it's always bloody, expensive, and comparatively undesirable.

The problem with the COIN industry is that getting better at COIN is on some level a futile endeavor. You can get better enough to perform better tactically, or operationally, at the current goals of your campaign. But you can never get enough better to make being in COIN strategically positive.

Through the power of agent theory and path dependence, by making us better at COIN, you are making us more likely to use it, thus making us actually worse off, because two competent COIN engagements are still worse for us as a country than one incompetent COIN engagement.

It would be one thing if you actually engaged this argument, but you instead quite failed to comprehend, articulate, or rebut it.

I do get Mr. Cohen's point, actually. Mr. Cohen is afraid that if we grasp the doctrine of counterinsurgency well enough to be successful in Afghanistan, we will be, as a nation, forever seeking new venues in which to display our counterinsurgent prowess; that the civilian masters of the military will find a new and irresistible toy with which to play endlessly.

The operative word is afraid. It's the operative word in all of the COINtra dialogues. They are afraid that by retaining the lessons learned in Iraq and the lessons being learned in Afghanistan, they will lose control of something. Some fear that the United States will lose its conventional edge. Some fear that they will lose massive budgets for very expensive new aircraft. Some fear that the stigma of Vietnam will be lost, and that the deterrent to engaging in counterinsurgency or nation-building will melt away, allowing America to be drawn endlessly into long and messy engagements in strategic backwaters.

The commenter writes about a COIN industry. Aside from a few publishers (have you seen the price of Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice lately?) I fail to see an industry. I do see a massive conventional weapons industry. I do see that the funding for the F-22 has been cut. I do see an industry to support the military that guards us from the bogeyman who can nuke us to death or supposedly invade our country and subjugate it. I don't see a COIN industry. COIN actually pushes back against the greater defense industry in many ways. It does not play to technological strengths, heavy equipment, or present a technical challenge in overcoming enemy systems. It does not respond to advanced radars that can pick out a gnat at a hundred miles at 50,000 feet. It does not spur the development of more capable fighters or of advanced armored vehicles networked seamlessly together. It doesn't respond to generals who can see each detail through a Predator feed and a networked map.

It responds to a man on the ground, dirty and tired and frustrated, trying to get a bunch of backwards people to feel safe enough to tell him that their neighbor likes to play with explosives at night and threaten to cut their heads off if they tell anyone.

COIN strategically positive. Now there's an idea. COIN is not strategically positive. It never was. It may support a strategic goal, but it is never strategically positive. COIN is the end result of failed strategy or the failure to strategize. It is the end result, as are all wars, of failure to resolve problems non-violently.

Failure in an endeavor is not strategically positive, either. In fact, it is strategically disastrous. Maj.Gen. Charles Dunlap states that the loss in Vietnam didn't cost the United States the Cold War, and it didn't cause the nation to become a failed state, and therefore loss in Afghanistan is acceptable, perhaps desirable. Yes, it would be desirable to him. It would once again cause a version of the Powell/Weinberger Doctrine to be adopted, perhaps by law. The lesson learned from Vietnam; "Never again."

Never again would an advanced fighter be put on hold while the military pursued an objective in which they held air superiority by default. Never again would all of his training and planning for a conventional knockdown of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Air Force be rendered useless. Never again would he face internal dissent from a guerrilla group of junior officers who point out that a two-engined version of the Spooky gunship could be bought by the squadron full, to include crews, for the price of a single F-22.

I don't know where Maj.Gen. Dunlap was in the years following the humiliation of Vietnam. Of course, Vietnam had positive effects on the Air Force in many ways. The Red Flag school was begun, the F-15 and F-16 learned from the challenges faced by the F-4, and the United States fielded the best fighter in the world as the world watched America's panicked flight from Saigon.

The disaster in Vietnam did irreparably harm the United States. We were lucky that the Soviets did not view our weakened Army as the easy prey it would have been in the mid-'70's. The services struggled with drug addiction and the Vietnam veterans suffered from the double edged sword of fighting the wrong doctrine in an insurgency, which to me complicates PTSD, and the stigma of failure which cannot but increase their suffering. These men and women who fought as well as any in the history of the United States were failed by their leadership and training.

Laos and Cambodia fell. Millions perished. To this day, none of these countries match their liberal neighbors economically. Malaysia, which survived an insurgency only a few years before Vietnam collapsed, produces computers. Vietnam produces cheap clothing and hats.

The loss of American prestige, the aura of invincibility shattered, led to numerous confrontations abroad. The USS Pueblo, the Embassy in Tehran, and a myriad of other incidents demonstrated our loss of standing. It changed the way that America views itself and its government forever. It emboldened asymmetric threats around the world as they saw the limits of American resolve and learned that if they had more patience, we would tire and concede any fight.

It made our media and our Armed Forces mortal enemies, which they remain to this day. The relationship between the American people and their Armed Forces did not heal until the Gulf War. I know. I wore a uniform during the 80's, often in public on American streets.

One incompetent engagement is better for those who live in fear of the future. It is not better to me, who has lost friends and allies and has sacrificed months and months of my life and family time for it. It is not better for the legions of Vietnam veterans who live daily in the aftermath of futile sacrifice. No. It is not, and it never will be. Question the motives for engagement, do reasonable work to prevent such occurrences in the future; but do not make our sacrifices mean nothing so that your fear can rule you.

The military response, following the insidious behavior of those who had resorted to lying, cheating and cover-ups to justify failures and poor behaviors, learned a lesson; "Never again." To them, "never again" meant never again engaging in asymmetric warfare. Documents were written, studies done, to demonstrate the failures and point the fingers at everyone and everything except themselves. First the Weinberger Doctrine and later the Powell Doctrine aimed at avoiding all such engagements, keeping our military restricted to "short, sharp" engagements, which to military officers was both exculpatory and very desirable. It simplified their jobs, and, confident that they would never again be called upon to perform in an asymmetric environment, allowed them to focus strictly on AirLand Doctrine and the weapons required to prosecute it.

Meanwhile, the government failed to learn how to engage the true might of our nation, its economic might and the freedom of its people, to engage in the diplomatic and developmental activity that would prevent the failure to thrive that pushes individuals towards extremism. We set up our own enemies of the future.

As the Armed Forces recovered from the TBI of Vietnam and built into a force that the Soviets dare not challenge across the Fulda Gap, American Soldiers and Marines muddled through a series of asymmetric disasters for which they were untrained and unprepared. Having thrown out what we had learned from Vietnam, eager to distance ourselves from the memory of having our collective asses handed to us by a nation of rice farmers, hundreds of Marines were killed by what we later came to call a VBIED in Beirut. The ignominious withdrawal from Somalia and the vision of naked American dead being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by dancing Somalians did not wake up the leadership but instead inspired the Powell Doctrine.

Yet the political masters of our Armed Forces ventured forth again, into fields where our mighty M-1 Abrams meant nothing more than a really nice roadblock.

I see the fear in every argument made by the COINtras. Fear for their particular rice bowls, fear of losing a glorious image, fear of success driving future endeavors. I am a Soldier. This does not mean that I do not feel fear; far from it. It does mean that I am not bound to a course of action or inaction because of it. Cohen's fear is that by adopting the doctrine that is necessary for success in the current war, and by being realistic enough to look at our past and maintaining the knowledge, skills and abilities to succeed again, we will ensure the advent of future instances of involvement in foreign insurgencies. We, however, realize that civilians will, for whatever reason, throw me and my brothers in arms into a similar situation, regardless of their fluffy expressions of goodwill and world brotherhood.

When they do, after we have taken their well-intentioned advice and planning for a raging conventional holocaust and the righteous, clear-cut conventional victory Americans crave, we will once again make mistakes that cost young men their lives.

The right lesson that we should have derived from earlier failures in such situations was indeed, "Never again." Never again will we send young men out to "chase ghosts" untrained in the doctrine and tactics that will keep more of them alive, end your adventures more quickly, and avoid failures that invite such events as the Tehran Embassy due to our loss of prestige. Never again will we have officers who attempt to fail at their tasks with cries of, "We don't do windows." Never again will we, through willful negligence and wishful thinking, endanger the lives of our Soldiers and the accomplishment of whatever mission our nation calls upon us to perform.

I see the COINtras fear, and I see Cohen's. It's okay to be scared. It's not okay to let it rule your life or your decisions, and it's not okay to allow it to rule the advice you give to others. It is particularly not okay for it to rule the minds of military officers, and especially not for reasons of individual or service-related selfishness, parochialism, or their boyhood visions of glory.

I get Cohen's point all too well. His point was arrived at before his readings and his writings and that, to me, is intellectually dishonest. That's why I wrote about it.

If anyone wants to avoid such future entanglements, then learn your own, "Never again." Learn that by establishing an excellent Phase 0 capability, you position yourself better to never have to consider Phase IV COIN in a kinetic environment. Influence your government to deal with the development of radicalized elements by addressing them at their birthplace, before they plan attacks on our home soil for whatever crazy reason that their minds grow into. Start addressing the next Taliban or al Qaeda now before they kill Americans.

COIN is awful business. It boggles the best minds. It can never be done perfectly, only adequately, but it can be done. I hope that Afghanistan is the last time this nation ever engages in foreign COIN or FID, but I don't for one second believe that it will be, especially in a world where the only way to really interfere with American interests or strategies is asymmetric. I am here to tell Michael Cohen, Maj.Gen. Dunlap, or anyone else that never again will I listen to someone who tells me to be willfully negligent in my duties to my Soldiers and my nation, and to help them prove their points by purposely failing in Afghanistan; or that it would be alright to do so. Never again will I heed leadership that tries to guide me away from having the knowledge, skills and abilities to perform in whatever role my nation tells me I need to function in. That is my never again.


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Listening? That's A Start.

Lt.Col. Glen Butler is on to something here. Listening would be good. Empowering would be better. The only problem is that it would involve training them. It's amazing how many are doing good things without being trained.

Imagine what training them would do for us.

Depending on where they go, the Captains are likely getting some COIN education. The Corporals? Not so much. COIN is not trained in NCOES. In fact, many tactical tasks are trained to Cold War standards. Emplacing an M-8 chemical alarm was not done on one single OP I ever saw in Afghanistan. Nor were anti-tank mines. Both are still part of the ARTEP standards for tactical tasks trained/evaluated at the first line leader level.

What happened to, "Train the way you fight, fight the way you train?" For us, it's "Train the way you train, forget it. Fight the way you fight."

No, instead we train for a war that will not be fought again until well after these Corporals are out of the military entirely. But by golly, we're ready for those pesky Reds!
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I've been to Gondalabuk

Just found this. I'll dig up the pictures of a place few Americans have been. These went further. A little over a year ago, the Police Chief of Doab was known to have Taliban affiliation, was fired for staging a Taliban attack on his own district center, and somehow found his way back into power. Wonder if he's the same one now. Oily guy...

I'll try to dig up the pictures of Gondalabuk.
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Outclassed by Gentile

No, not John Nagl. Not in this lifetime. No, we're talking about Democracy Arsenal's Michael Cohen who, for a fellow at a think tank and a former speechwriter for the United States Representative to the United Nations is pretty thick on a subject into which he has been putting a lot of study. He's been taking on the COINdinistas and being a bit condescending about it at that, which is ironic. In a May 1st post on Nagl and Burton's article in the April edition of The Washington Quarterly, Cohen writes some pretty silly stuff.

More after the jump.

The COIN-danistas deterministic notion of future military conflict is particularly hard to reconcile with Nagl's later point that "U.S. conventional military capabilities still qualitatively outstrip those of potential adversaries to a significant degree. Such capabilities are too costly and infrastructure-intensive for most countries to develop, purchase, or field. Instead of playing the U.S. game, current and potential enemies have turned to asymmetric approaches designed to neutralize our strengths and exploit our relative weaknesses."

Well wait a minute here - if no country can qualitatively match the United States and if our enemies only approach for confronting the United States is through asymmetric approaches then wouldn't this suggest that the United States has a rather fulsome capability to decide when, where and how to fight wars?

Ummm... no. It gives us a fulsome capability to decide when, where and how to react to being attacked by non-state actors. It gives our nation a fulsome inability to have someone against whom to declare war because we don't have an institutional memory of declaring hostilities against a non-state. It gives current and potential enemies a fulsome and demonstrated ability to confuse us, play against our demonstrated weaknesses and strike against not only our homeland but those of other nations with whom we share good relations.

Simply, it puts us in the position not of actor but of reactor. Our conventional primacy in the world precludes any nation-state from having a direct conventional assault on our interests or allies. As Nagl points out, likely scenarios for traditional state-state war are pretty scarce. This forces those who would see the United States taken down a peg to resort to the unconventional, asymmetric insurgent type behaviors that we have a demonstrated difficulty in dealing with.

It does allow us to determine how, when and where to react. Cohen points out that in the days following 9/11 we had choices in how to pursue al Qaeda. This is true. While he points out an obvious truth, even divining the method of our reaction, there is an essential failure in his logic; that our conventional primacy completely failed us; we had been attacked. We had been attacked not on the fields of Europe, not by a nuclear strike by a conventional power, but on our own soil by a non-state actor. We did not choose the fight. We did choose, in the aftermath, to fight. In the end, citing a favorite childhood movie, Cohen advocates choosing not to fight.

Take it on the chin, America, and just say no.

This is simplistic at best. Simplistic answers in a complicated world are absolutely worthless.

In another post, made the same day, Cohen tries to tackle Nagl again, this time on the subject of failed states.

Note to Cohen: Dude, you are so totally out of your league. You thoroughly miss the point, and for someone with your credentials, this is absolutely frightening. Truly sad.

Nagl is not an advocate of COIN for the sake of COIN. Nagl is an advocate of being able to prevail in the conflicts at hand, and for never again being such utter failures at having the ability to achieve what this nation's civilian leadership decides is in the nation's interests. We are not out of the woods yet; not by a far sight. The Army has a long way to go, and will likely never really commit culturally to accepting the abilities to overcome an insurgency. There are points of light, though, and they are increasing in both number and influence.

Nagl is an advocate of being capable of facing the threats that face us in the modern world, where the new phenomenon of globalization has given non-state actors the ability to strike within the shores of the United States on a scale that has never been done by any state actor since the War of 1812.

This is highly misleading. The experience of the US military in Somalia was a disaster and conveniently ignored is the fact that this intervention -- where we sent ground troops and tried nascent nation-building -- was stunningly unsuccessful. As for the Balkans, the United States did not intervene with ground troops (peacekeepers) in Bosnia or Kosovo until only after a peace agreement/cease fire had been reached in both locales - and it was not our military that did nation building in either country, it was the United Nations and other civilian agencies. And while Nagl is right that the demands to intervene militarily in places like Darfur and Rwanda have grown, doesn't it tell us something that such demands have gone unmet? It is hardly accidental that the United States did not send ground troops into kinetic environments as nation builders in each of these situations.

Failed and weak states represent areas of potential threat to the US, but Nagl's response - counter-insurgency and nation-building -- is not only political realistic it makes little sense from either a strategic or tactical perspective. Above all, it is a disproportionate response to what are, for the most part, not vital threats to the United States.

What horrible analysis. Somalia was nothing like Afghanistan or Iraq, nor were the goals. There was no "nascent nation-building" in Somalia. It was a humanitarian intervention and, while terribly ill-conceived, had nothing to do with any real or perceived threat to our national security. The Balkans was, again, a response to a humanitarian disaster. In both cases, it was a military response to a humanitarian crisis. They are great examples of why Nagl is right, but horrible examples of why he may be wrong.

Nagl does not advocate counterinsurgency as a driver of national policy. What he does is point out that because of our conventional primacy, we are unlikely to face a conventional threat. He also points out that most military activity in the past 60 years, that which our nation has asked us to do, has been unconventional, asymmetric and often insurgency-related. He points out that the real threats to our country are now and are more likely (than conventional) to be asymmetric. He also points out that the civilian capacity to avoid using military force to assist in stabilization is woefully lacking.

Why people like Cohen find John Nagl to be threatening and feel a need to argue with him or discredit his ideas is beyond me. There have been military thinkers over the years who have examined the failures of Vietnam. Most got it wrong. Much of the military analysis has been flawed in the favor of blaming the civilian government for the failures of the Army to figure it out. They have ascribed abilities to supposed counterinsurgency in Vietnam that wasn't there. Even in the wake of asymmetric failures such as Somalia retrospective analysis failed to do more than reflect a desire to force the Powell Doctrine (a military solution to counterinsurgency that amounted to the Cohen Doctrine of "just say no" on the civilian leadership) to the level of law. Nagl never would have written his book Learning to eat soup with a knife had such efforts been successful.

Oh snap; Cohen calls for the Powell Doctrine, too.

COINdinistas, who Cohen treats with derision, are not advocates of looking for more opportunities to do COIN. John Nagl doesn't advocate COIN as national strategy. Nagl advocates COIN as the proper doctrine for achieving the goals of our civilian leadership in cases where failed states harbor asymmetric threats to our national security. Use a hammer to drive a nail, use a shovel to dig a hole. As our experience in Iraq has shown, when you put down the shovel and pick up the hammer, suddenly it's easier to drive the nail.

COL Gian Gentile makes much more cogent arguments, fundamentally flawed but intellectually honest, than Cohen. Cohen's arguments are driven by a conclusion already arrived at. Cohen has been studying COIN not to see what it offers but to see how to discredit it. He has done a terrible job.

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Gates On Fareed Zakaria's Global Public Square

SECDEF Gates is on GPS on CNN right now. I'll try to find a link to video later. Really good explanation of the strategy.

UPDATE "If there ever was an example that military force alone cannot succeed in Afghanistan, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan was it."

"If the Afghan people begin to see us as the occupiers, then we will lose."

Gates says he would be skeptical of any further raising of force structure in Afghanistan. He says that the partnership with the ANSF is the key to success for security in Afghanistan.

Plenty of other stuff on Afghanistan and the SECDEF's views on it. I'm nodding my head. My only question is if he can find enough leaders who can actually implement it. The Army is apparently full of COL(R) Macgregor mavens, still hoping that the halcyon days of the Weinberger/Powell doctrines where the military thought for some reason that it could determine its own role in national policy.

Update 2... the video. Part 1. Part 2.
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A.L.L. Launch

Recently I got an email from a fellow milblogger who experienced a change of mission from Iraq to Afghanistan. Iraq didn't bother him... he's been there before... but he doesn't know anything about Afghanistan. I thought about it and realized that what I was missing when I went into country was significant. Our young friend asked for a post on what he needed to know, but I realized that the knowledge that needed to be transferred could not be dealt with in one post. I also realized that there were others who had knowledge that needed to be provided. From this point, Bouhammer tells it better than I do, so I'm copying his post on it.

It started as a lengthy phone call between Old Blue and myself. Thanks to a private online chat group that a whole bunch of us milbloggers talk on, it grew to include Vampire 6 and WOTN. Four veterans of Afghanistan, Four milbloggers, Four guys who care about passing on the Afghanistan Lessons Learned (A.L.L.) to others that are deploying. 2009 is going to be challenging enough for this country in regards to Afghanistan and even more challenging for those that are heading over to risk their lives and spend a year away from home.

The last thing they need to do is worry about a lengthy ramp-up period to learn the unique challenges that the war in Afghanistan has to offer. They need to hit the ground running, which means having all the lessons learned already in their head.

This is where we come in. We call it A.L.L. and it is for all going to Afghanistan. We foresee this blog becoming the one-stop shop of knowledge needed in order to step into the country knowing all there is to know without having physically been there.

You can find it at http://afghanlessons.blogspot.com/

Go there to check it out, and if you know anyone heading to the “Popular, Forgotten War” tell them to check it out too.

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A.L.L. (Afghan Lessons Learned) Soldiers Should Know This When Deploying To Afghanistan: Chapter 1; Gear

In partnership with Bouhammer, we are starting a new series of posts designed to help inform the thousands of troops headed to Afghanistan in 2009, some of whom expected to deploy to Iraq. Those who thought they were headed to Iraq now find themselves behind the power curve in coming up to speed on the peculiarities of Afghanistan. By request from SGT Danger, here is the first chapter in our attempt to help them to be more successful in A'stan.


List of Gear for Afghanistan-Updated

Posted By Bouhammer on April 27, 2009

Old Blue and I are combining our knowledge and experience to jointly publish blog posts under a shared Category called A.L.L.

A.L.L. stands for Afghanistan Lessons Learned, and is intended to document our knowledge and experience in a fresh perspective for any and all service-members who may be part of the upcoming surge into Afghanistan this year. He and I and maybe others (who could one day also join this endeavor in the future) have walked the walk and walked the ground. We have learned the lessons the hard way, so there is no reason for others do to do the same. The wheel has been invented and there is no patent on it.

This is the first “chapter” in this new joint blogging adventure. This list was originally published on this blog back on Jan. 26th, 2007. This is a list of good equipment to have.

The following list is from my experiences and from friends in Iraq that pertain to here Afghanistan also. Some of these won’t be needed until you get in country, so you may want to set them off to side for mama to pack up for you and send to you once you get settled. This listing has been the single most popular blog posting ever, here on Bouhammer’s Blog.

1. Any extra ClassVIII you can bring with you is good to have.
2. Wolfhook single point slings
3. Desert Tan Spray paint
4. Space blanket(s)
5. 100 mph tape, 550 cord, TP, other expendables you think would come in handy
6. Drop Leg Holster (blackhawk or SERPA) and Uncle Mike’s Paddle-Holster for wearing around every day (drop leg will wear a hole in ACUs over time). I also have one for my IBA so I can have my 9mm handy when in the gun hatch going through towns.
7. Weapons lube that DOESN’T ATTRACT SAND. (MILTECH or Remington Dry Lube only)
8. Two copies of addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, etc.
9. 2 pairs of GOOD boot insoles
10. A Good Tactical Flashlight (SureFire, even though you will get issued one with M4)
11. Red/White light L.E.D. headlamp
12. Spare pair of running shoes
13. MP3 PLAYER W/ x-tra pair of spare headphones
14. Enough batteries to last you 30 days
15. Chapstick
16. Lotion
17. 30 SPF or higher Sunblock
18. Bar soap- for some reason its in short supply….almost always
19. Small compact rolls of TP. A lot of places make travel size, half the time you get to a port-a-potty the jackA$s before you ganked the TP
20. Baby wipes- 30 days worth. Expect that the power and water will either go out, or the water will be contaminated at least once a month.
21. Gold Bond Foot and Body Powder
22. Small clip on LED light-clip it to your IBA….it will come in handy….quite often.
23. Drink mix for 16/20 oz bottles of water
24. Weightlifting supplies
25. Small photo album with pics from home.
26. Hand sanitizer (small bottles to put in ankle pockets)
27. More books/magazines than you think you will need.
28. DVDs, for you and to loan out for swapping purposes
29. Tactical gloves- military gloves are sort of clumsy ( I love the $9.95 whitewater brand gloves from the clothing sales). Also standard flight nomex are good.
30. Lens anti fog agent. Shaving cream works in a pinch, but you have to apply it every other day or so.
31. Good pair of shower shoes/sandals. I recommend the black adidas….lasted me all year.
32. Small pillow (air inflatable)
33. Cheap digital camera (at least 2.1 mp)
34. Boot knife
35. Gerber multi tool
36. Fabreeze-sometimes the laundry is few and far between.
37. Armor Fresh
38. Extra boot laces
39. Stainless steel coffee cup with screw on lid.
40. Soccer shorts/normal t shirt to sleep in, hang out in your room in
41. Sweatshirts for winter times hanging around
42. A couple of poncho liners for privacy, nasty mattress cover, etc.
43. A set of twin sheets with pillow case
44. Good regular-size pillow
45. One or two good civilian bath towels
46. Buy a good set (>$200) of winter desert boots. All they will give you is a regular summer set and a set of goretex lined for waterproof needs. Desert is a cold place at these altitudes in the winter time.
47. Bring a laptop!!! Also may want a PSP or some other handheld gaming device.
48. Get an external USB hard-drive (>120gb). You will need this to back up data to, and to store movies and MP3s that you will fall in on from previous teams.
49. Get a Skype account and download the software from skype.com. This is how I talk to home 95% of the time. If you call computer to computer it is totally free. You can also skype out from your computer to a regular phone for $0.021 a minute. There is nothing cheaper than that.
50. Decent headset with mic for computer (skype).
51. Webcam for video calls back home.
52. Bring a min. of 18ea. M4 mags per person. 9 that are loaded and 9 that rest. Plan to do M4 mag changeover once per month.
53. Bring 8ea 9mm mags, for same reason above. Change these over every two weeks.
54. Order a LULA mag loader/unloader. It will be the best $12 piece of plastic you every bought. I have 12 mags loaded at all times and when I do change over it will do it in a fraction of the time and save your hands, and save the ammo.
55. Try to get your state or purchase yourself one 12v DC to 110 AC inverter per man for your trucks. There are crucial on mission to charge personal items, cell phone, ICOMs, and especially ANA radios (they only have re-chargeable batteries).
56. Dump the IBA tac vest you get issued. Get a Tactical Tailor MAV chest rig (does not matter if you get 1 or 2 piece one as you want to keep the front open for laying in the prone. You don’t want mags pushing into your chest making it hard to breathe) . I wish I would have bought mine at the start. It makes a HUGE difference on the back and shoulders when carrying a loaded rig.
57. Get comfortable pair of desert boots. I wear only the Converse 8” assault boots (non-zipper ones). Oakley, Bates and several others are similar in style and comfort.
58. Bring some good snivel gear for the winter time. Extra poly-pro winter hat, gloves, neck gators, etc.
59. Lock de-icer for the winter time
60. Disposable hand and feet warmers
61. Canned-air, lots of it for electronics weapons, etc.
62. Lens wipes for optics
63. Screen wipes for computers

There are probably many other things that could go on this list, but a lot of that is personal preference. The purpose of this list is to provide some insight into things that could make anyone’s tour easier.


*Reprinted by permission of and in partnership with Bouhammer.
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