How can anyone give a detailed analysis of what happened at Shahikot? The action is barely even over. Hagenback, who is probably the one who is the most in the know given that he has access to the drone videos and the situation reports, has said that we killed on the order of 500+ Al Qaeda and Taliban at a loss of 8 Americans. And with regard to the 8 deaths, I believe 7 of those occurred on the first night of the operation when one helicopter that was attempting to put reconnaissance teams in on the high ground was ambushed and lost Neil Roberts and the troops in another helicopter were then hit when they went back in to get his body. The point being that our problem was almost certainly not a training problem, given that it was highly trained special operators who were killed, but instead a loose lips problem with our Afghan 'allies'.
How can anyone give a detailed analysis of what happened at Shahikot? ... The point being that our problem was almost certainly not a training problem...
Here's a few choice comments from an
article by Hackworth:
"our fine troops, trained in the flatlands of New York and Kentucky, weren't conditioned for mountain warfare at elevations of 9,000 feet"
"Our Joes were sent into battle loaded down like pack mules, insufficiently prepared for the freezing conditions and far from physically up for the game."
"The guerrillas also outranged our grunts"
"our soldiers [were] bunched up like beetles at a bugfest"
"when our brave Apache gunship pilots came to the rescue, they lost all their ships to enemy fire."
"It didn't help that our intelligence was bad regarding the size of the enemy force and its willingness to fight."
"the success of an operation [was] dependent on a non-U.S. unit -- [we] trusted our so-called Afghan allies, who left us in the lurch."
"The generals had envisioned sealing the enemy inside a noose and then pounding him with bombs, a tactic that seldom worked in Vietnam"
"The generals didn't get much right until they shrewdly declared victory and hauled butt away"
Now personally I think that Hackworth is given to hyperbole and sound-bite-itis, but it would seem he has a few valid concerns. And I don't think raising issues about the effectiveness of those on the front line is a sign of latent liberalism. We want to win, decisively, quickly, and efficiently.