RC/CA

Jul 7th, 2009 @ 5:14 pm

It’s not often you see an honest-to-goodness, non-Hollywood firefight. Here’s one.

[via Afghan Desk]

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Jul 6th, 2009 @ 6:16 pm

backseatbanter:

an image of Iraq by Christoph Bangert

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@ 6:15 pm

sierradawn:

Photo Journal : Pictures of the Day

Susan Springle, left, and her son, U.S. Marine Cpl. Charles K. Springle Jr., and other family members sat during interment services for her husband, Commander Charles K. Springle, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Tuesday. According to the Defense Department, Mr. Springle, 52, of Wilmington, N.C., was killed in a shooting at a combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty, Iraq, on May 11.

Reblogged from media vita in morte sumus.

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@ 6:12 pm

“It’s not religion that keeps women back. It’s poverty; it’s war-torn chaos like that in Sudan and Somalia; it’s high illiteracy like that in Pakistan; it’s tribal customs like that in Afghanistan; it’s authoritarian regimes like Iran’s and Egypt’s; and it’s misogynistic culture like that in Saudi Arabia. Most often, in developing countries like Muslim countries, it’s a combination of these.”

Sumbul Ali-Karamali: Stoning Soraya, Murdering Neda, and the Hope of Muslim Women (via igather)

Reblogged from You don't know me ay?.

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@ 6:12 pm

Celebrity vs. Soldier Deaths

dailycow:

It’s unfortunate that we mourn a celebrity with such an outpouring of affection that you would think they gave their lives for us.Too bad we didn’t memoralize each and every one of the soldiers who died in our tragic misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same manner. Perhaps then the murder of war could be exposed for what it is and another solution could be found to prevent it. Death is a tragedy no matter who it happens to. It’s just a shame that we go so overboard when it comes to a celebrity who may have done some great things but the magnitude of coverage is never deserved. We are all on the same boat and it’s time we stopped giving so much attention to the “attention seekers.”

Reblogged from Daily Cow.

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As my tour in Afghanistan wraps up, I’m reflecting on what I’ve learned. Looking through my notes, I am reminded that many of those lessons had already been encapsulated by CPT Thompson. Here’s a taste of the frustration of a company-grade that wants his work to be meaningful:

The US military has become more attached to procedures than it is to outcomes. This mindset has the effect of causing us to lose a war and no one cares as long as we are following the procedures. The first step to winning is to stop losing habits. We continue to “check the blocks”, so we must be successful because that is how we have now defined success. Success is a completed process, not an outcome to the military. The rotations come and go through Afghanistan, people collect a good OER and an award, but we continue to lose. However, no one is ever held accountable for the failures and everyone just continues to cycle through and get a “go” for their career. Consider a few issues:

- We have well educated officers leading capable soldiers. Our enemy is generally led by illiterate or partially literate commanders with part-time minimally trained soldiers — yet the enemy is winning
- We bring billions of dollars into a country to try and win a war. Our enemy doesn’t spend 1/1000th of the money we do, but they are holding their own — and winning
- The strategy for many is not to win or defeat the enemy. It is to rotate through and go home with a good award and OER or NCOER
- We cannot get scopes for weapons in-country, but we had so much new office furniture and flat-screen television sets on the FOBs people were throwing away things that still worked

How can we possibly be losing in a war we should be easily winning? Because we are tied to a myriad of multiple processes that are not outcome based. Additionally, these processes are completely uncoordinated. For the military, the process is definitely more important than the results. The processes must be followed even if they result in the unnecessary loss of life, equipment or even a war. This mentality must change drastically for us to achieve victory.

What the leadership, across the board from lieutenant to general, needs to realize for us to win is that everything needs to be oriented toward what works on the ground. Every person at every level is putting in place a policy. There are policies for going to sick call, leaving the wire, taking prisoners, writing memos, reporting to higher, etc. Most of these policies were put into place in order to make it easier for someone in a bureaucracy to do their job. This does not make it easier for the person on the ground to do their job or to win the war. It makes it harder. Every policy or rule throughout the military is one of two things: an enabler or distracter. There is nothing else. What happens is a soldier is required to take an action or not allowed to take an action according to a policy. That policy either helps him accomplish his mission and win the war or it distracts him from his mission and makes it tougher to win.

There are multiple policies in place that prevent us from winning and there are more being added every day. We were doing better in 2002-2005 when soldiers were unobtrusively running around Afghanistan in ordinary pickup trucks and no body armor. Now we have large HMMVs that limit us to certain roads and are required to wear large amounts of body armor which prevent us from moving. We have lost our flexibility, maneuverability and versatility because someone who is not even fighting (and probably never has) wrote a policy about what the soldier needs to do on the ground at all times.

These policies put into place and stacked on top of each other, have eroded our combat effectiveness. In some areas it has made our soldiers useless and combat ineffective. From stateside training to operations in theatre, there are multiple policies put in place that PREVENT us from winning. The argument can easily be made that we are a tougher obstacle than the enemy. Policies are usually put in place based on the assumption that if the last guy did X, then the next guy needs to do X + Y. The problem is that X was good enough and should have been left alone. The addition of Y canceled any value X originally had.

There is one key element to remember in all of this — there is a limited amount of time and effort for anything. If we need to win, we need to be flexible enough to do what it takes to achieve victory and not let people who are completely enamored with policies and procedures get in the way. They look at victory as a nice, clean bureaucratic system. Victory should be seen as dead enemy, reliable governance and a peaceful place for people to live.

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@ 10:13 pm

[via Photography Served]

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@ 10:13 pm

"So this is all doomed?" Not exactly. The fact is that only the Iraqis themselves can "win" the counterinsurgency campaign. We've taught them the techniques, but now they have to decide to do it.

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Jul 4th, 2009 @ 5:18 pm

The most popular websites in the United States prattle endlessly on about Jon and Kate and netbooks and Trig Palin. The evening news covers Michael Jackson’s death and whether your mattress can kill you (find out how, later in tonight’s broadcast). If some momentous happening in Iraq or Afghanistan gets a bit of airtime, the Average American will pay attention for just long enough to apply confirmation bias and then it’s back to TMZ or MTV or NASCAR.

I’ll be coming home in a few weeks, and I will be the Average American again. The energy I’ve put into over a decade of military service will be redirected towards a job search and recreational travel. All the passion with which I’ve studied our extranational enterprises will mellow into listening to music and watching movies. My attention will shift from the 5000+ dead American soldiers to “when does the new Madden come out?”

This blog has essentially been a diary of my attempts at a better understanding of a very significant piece of America’s future history. I’ve been wrestling with guilt over what I know will be my eventual decline in interest in our contemporary wars as more immediately captivating stuff moves Afghanistan and Iraq out of my field of view. What to do?

[comic by BORS]

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