Mods, Michael Yon is the preeminent war correspondent of this era, the Ernie Pyle of our time. Please do not move this to Bloggers.
Yon is one of three places I contribute to online, and FR is one of the other two.
After finding out that the inscription on 0bama’s ring reads ‘There is no God but Allah’, I can understand why we’ve been doomed to fail in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, etc, by HUSSEIN 0bama.
Ping.
My brother-in-law did two tours. His comment was that regardless of how well we prosecuted the war (and he is not a fan of the way it has been handled) nothing, absolutely nothing is going to change on the ground. They are living in medieval times, with a medieval mindset and a pre-medieval religion and most do not want change.
bfl
Not so stunning as pitiful.
The very idea that women could be integrated into Afhan forces is stupid beyond the pale. Educated fools who would propose to impose our social constructions on a relic civilization, if it can be called a civilization, is just plain stupid. Not ignorant, STUPID.
I weep for our troops.
(( ping ))
I got very mixed signals regarding Tunnell before, during, and after his deployment. There were definitely issues within his brigade, but I don’t know to whom they ought rightly to be attributed.
I have sent the letter to several who ought to know the real scoop. I’ll wait to see what they have to say before commenting further.
BTW, I believe that Yon has gone around the bend and is spending all of his time in his hotel room in Bangkok chasing old demons.
COL Tunnell’s letter seems right on the mark and is especially informative about Helmand Province, the site of most of the losses for the OK ARNG 45th IN Bde in their recent deployment. The colonel’s summary of the failings of allies, as well as the COIN strategy, blows away the BS that passes for reporting these days.
As a former Field Artillery officer, I was also gratified to see him note the performance of FA personnel when placed in jobs other than putting steel on a target to take out the enemy. This has been a significant concern of mine where people are misused and mal-assigned away from their training or expertise, FA or not.
A book from Slate.com was excerpted this summer and it had some info on COL Tunnell. The book, apparently written by an Indian (dot, not feathers), is not kind to the brigade commander on his tactics. It does make for a good read because it fills in some areas only brushed in the colonel’s PDF letter. The link to the excerpt article is below:
Oh my. I read the whole letter. I can understand how the Colonel’s brutally-frank letter could be career-ending, particularly when he was politically-incorrect enough to point out the widespread homosexuality and pedophilia of the Afghan forces.
The Army doesn’t want smart Officers, they want obedient Officers. If General Petraeus was so good, why are we still in Afghanistan? Why is Iraq falling apart again? Petraeus was real good at getting promoted and lining himself up for a good job once he got out of the Army. As the head of the CIA, shouldn’t they have heard something prior to the attack in Libya? 11 years in Afghanistan......2000 dead American Soldiers.....untold pain and misery for Soldiers, and families, as they have to keep deploying to wars that never end. Why are we paying these admirals and generals to lose? Why do we give these losers a retirement? For successfully losing? Goddamn, this fighting and killing and dieing is a hard business. Stay the fuck out of it if you can’t win in combat. I could care less about how fast you can run two miles or how great a PowerPoint presentation you can give. Can you build units that will fight, win and survive on the battlefield? That’s the only measure. The rest is bullshit. I knew we were in trouble when I saw the memorandum saying it was unfair to evaluate Officers based on their performance in combat. What the hell should their evaluations be based on? Oh, yeah, do they look fat in their photo? We have to hold these admirals and generals accountable. If we keep rewarding failure, we’re just going to get more failures. What if it was your kid dead? Do you think there’s no grief in a dead Soldier’s family? Goddamn, let’s start requiring civilians to go on casualty notifications. We’ll use the voter rolls just like jury duty with no exceptions or excuses. Then, maybe people would start to care when they see the widows and the crying kids. And yes, I swore. 2,000 dead Soldiers told me it was OK.
We are going to make new brown little Americans out of people who don’t even use BATHROOMS...? Oh, please...
Thank you for posting this. It needs to be seen by all. I knew much was not kosher there or in the Army but not to this extent. Knowing some current active duty Army folks, I’ve been told some things but not to this extent. Truly shocking and eerily reminiscent of RVN in some ways.
We simply never learn, or at least have not used the Principles of Mass since the end of WWII.
Some day one of the Neo-Cons will call for war and hopefully our Army says, "Not on your watch!"
He’s pretty hard on the allies, isn’t he? If we don’t have reliable allies and we can’t trust the local forces then what are we doing there?
Thanks for the read it & weep.
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