Posted on 06/29/2014 7:19:14 AM PDT by yldstrk
In a remote village in the dangerous northeastern Kunar province of Afghanistan, Army Green Beret Maj. Jim Gant was doing something few others had — he was making progress against the enemy.
To do so, he and his men went native — trading their body armor for traditional Afghan garb, growing long beards, speaking the local Pashto tongue, and forging close alliances with tribesmen, who would come to revere Gant as “Commander Jim.”
But when he went to bed at night, Gant had one thing his men did not — company.
Ann Scott Tyson, a Washington Post war correspondent, quit her job to live secretly with him on the front lines — where he taught her how to shoot an assault rifle for protection. They drank alcohol and made their own rules.
When his commanders got wind of the domestic bliss he carved out for himself in the heart of a war zone, Gant was quietly relieved of his command and pushed to retire in disgrace.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Heh, He said ‘Shw was an imBEDded reporter. Aint that the truth, and in more ways than one!
I doubt that the typical O-4 would be in long enough to get a standard (as opposed to disability) pension.I don’t know if that was his goal but if it was he probably missed out.
sounds to me like he pulled a Bergdahl
The two first spoke over the phone in 2007 and eventually met in Washington, DC, in 2010, when the two — both separated from their spouses and each with four kids — quickly fell in love.
He does admit to taking pain meds and drinking, however, he probably saw more success than any other warrior in Afghanistan. Pain meds BTW are very easy to get hooked on.
Written by whom? ... :-) ...
And, the name of the book is ..........??????
There are very few soldiers that deep into the action who do not pop pills. The military gives a 180 day supply at a time.
Yep ... “gone native” or crazy ... one or the other ...
Check on who wrote it, too ... :-) ...
no sh8
you mean our guys are no better than the Chechnya terrorist heroin addicts?
My squadron commander and his senior staff had alcohol at parties in their quarters during a military exercise in which the commander himself invoked “General Order #1.”
Later, one of his staff brought me two junior NCOs and told me to read them their rights and take their statement. They got caught with a six pack.
I walked up to the Commander and said “I don't do hypocrisy.” I was never overtly “punished” but it hurt my career. At least I could respect myself.
American Spartan written by Ann Scott Tyson. Biographies are always somewhat biased but I think less biased than news articles written by someone creating sensationalism to sell articles. I would rather support someone in the field than a desk jockey and I do not support drone operators getting combat medals. Obama made the war difficult and more dangerous with his no fight engagement rules. Jim Gant has a solution that worked too well and made obama’s warriors look bad.
WTF is a Special Forces officer doing dating a Washington Post reporterette? They’re almost as big an enemy as Al Qaeda.
People lose their way sometimes. That’s why these long wars are bulls**t. Fight to win or stay out.
There are very few soldiers that deep into the action who do not pop pills. The military gives a 180 day supply at a time.
They tried to give me Ambien when I deployed. No thanks!
When I moved out of base housing I went through the medicine cabinet and dumped what must have been over a thousand pills (demeral, percocet, oxycontin, etc).
I’ve got to be in agony before I take any of that crap. I took Oxy once. After taking it I couldn’t sleep and my face itched.
You need to examine the purpose of US Army Special Forces (Green Berets)
It isn’t to just fight as a uniformed military unit.
If you honestly look into what their agenda dictates, you will understand better why and how Gant lived this way...and was very successful at his job.
I will .. but first I would need to know the name of the book.
I don’t think so.
‘Before long, Gant and the 17 men in his command didn’t even need to request assistance when things got hairy.
When there was word that a suicide bomber was headed to Mangwel, it was the local mosque that sounded the alarm over its loudspeaker.
“We did not ask them to do this,” Gant says. “That’s a pretty remarkable thing to happen in an Afghan village. I didn’t have one checkpoint in Mangwel, I had 4,000.”’
This guy met one smart tribal leader and did a Dances with Wolves. You can’t win wars that way because each tribe is different. It would be a good way to pull a social psychology “motivate the sheople” type of infiltration. Like the communists are doing to America.
And he had the blessings of the general who created COIN and established the wonderful rules of engagement (just google that) that have gotten so many of our boys killed, Petraeus...”He didn’t get the chance to fully realize this initiative until 2010, when Petraeus, now in command of the US forces in Afghanistan, ensured that Gant would go back to test out his “native” theory, charging him with supervision of “village stability operations.””
He was not on the side of the Taliban, he was a social worker who knew how to fight. Would have gotten paid more as a social worker.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.