Are We?

I usually try and keep out of the tactical minutia of our present Glorious Little Wars. But this just caught my eye whilst I was tooling around the blogosphere.It's from a post entitled "We're Still At War" over at Mother Jones. It's a snapshot taken of a PRT somewhere in Afghanistan.

But I've gotta say; nothing in this photo makes me think of "war". It looks, if anything, like a couple of GIs goofing around on some low-importance field problem. All we're missing is the blank adapters.

I mean, I know that this is a low-threat environment. But what is that poor bastard on the logs going to do if someone decides to bust a cap on his ass?

And his buddy behind him - what's he doing? He sure as hell isn't overwatching the far bank, based on where he's looking and where his rifle is pointing. Where's he going to go if things suddenly get hairy?

I mean, what this looks like to me is two guys sauntering through what we used to call a "linear danger area". Hopefully there's already someone on the far bank pulling far security as well as someone out of the picture on the near side with a 240B providing overwatch for the entire mess.

I hate to nitpick this stuff. But, honestly - isn't the whole point of COIN/counterinsurgency that there IS no "rear area"? That anytime you go outside the wire, you're moving like you anticipate contact? Didn't we learn this the hard way in the RVN, that "Charlie is waiting for you to relax"?

I know this is trivial stuff, but, really...aren't we supposed to have been fighting muj in central Asia for ten years now, rather than the one-year-twelve-times way we did the last one? Why don't I get a better feeling from these snapshots?

Wanat Revised

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The WaPo reports today on the Army's revision of the battle of Wanat (Army edits its history of the deadly battle of Wanat). Top officers were absolved of responsibility, foisting the failure off onto the Platoon level.

Gen. Campbell "concluded that the deaths were not the direct result of the officer's mistakes," but if not that, what did cause the deaths? Mistakes = death in combat.

The Army doctrinal formula is, "officers are responsible for everything that is done of fails to be done."

"The Army's final history of the Wanat battle largely echoes Campbell's conclusions, citing the role of 'uncertainty [as] a factor inseparable from any military operation.'

"In its conclusions, the study maintains that U.S. commanders had a weak grasp of the area's complicated politics, causing them to underestimate the hostility to a U.S. presence in Wanat."

Understanding the political situation is not relevant; an Army plans for worst-case scenarios, and soldiers are not politicians. Uncertainty is not the same as poor mission planning. Uncertainties should be addressed in the assumptions section before the Operations Order is finalized.

Poor planning caused these deaths and the failure rests at Battalion and Brigade which were derelict in this action, not at Company or Platoon level. The Commanders may have misunderstood the hostility of the locals, implying Battalion and Brigade leaders were doing best-case estimates rather than worst-case, the more appropriate combat stance.

Did the Chain of Command lack Predator feeds and satellite photos of the position for use by higher headquarters? If the assets needed to fulfill this mission were not allocated, this cannot be the result of a Platoon leader's failure. Asset allocation is a Battalion Commander function.

The responsibility for placement of the Observation Post (OP) should not be placed upon a Lieutenant. This is why the Army has Company Commanders and higher. The fight is fixed in time and space and the facts are constant. What changes are institutional efforts to justify derelict Battalion, Brigade and Company command actions.

Wanat is important because it is a microcosm of the corrupt macrocosm, which is a corrupt phony war.

Some thoughts on tactical issues, too...

Interesting little article (actually, it's not so much an article but a steno job by Tom Ricks) about an AAR delivered by a warrant in A-stan.What I find a little depressing is the degree to which this is no-shit-Sherlock infantry 101. Stay off the roads and trails? Goddam, troop, my platoon daddy taught me that lesson he and his homies had learned the hard way (in the A Shau in 1967) waaaayyy back in 1982. Where the hell else do you think your enemy is going to put the mines, hero? Y'all been to war for, what, six or seven years now, and you're still forgetting this?

Having to remind the gyrenes about walking both point and slack point? About security halts? About rally points? Crossing linear danger areas?

One selling point of having a volunteer Army (and the USMC has been volunteer since 1945) was to prevent the "not-in-Vietnam-twelve-years-but-one-year-twelve-times" syndrome. If this warrant is ragging the troops for CRS disease, it sounds like this was either one fucked up platoon or we're having a problem learning and applying the simple old infantry tactics and techniques. All this stuff was hammered home in the Sixties in Vietnam. My generation learned it from the guys who came back to be our platoon sergeants and first sergeants and passed it on to our troops in the Eighties and Nineties when WE were platoon sergeants and first sergeants.It's a little irritating to think that we're reinventing the patrolling wheel having supposedly been at war for all this time. I think we agree that the U.S. has some serious issues with strategic thinking. This little article suggests that we might have some tactical problems, too.