paracowboy said:
I have always made it a point to know "why". I have always made it a point to tell my troops "why". They are not robots or idiots. You get better results from informed troops.
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Paracowboy... Abosolutely true, and as a serving officer (and former NC
O) I wouldn't want it any other way. Why Afghanistan at this particular point in time? Well, there are many theories regarding our original post-9/11 commitment, our subsequent national political desire to avoid the Iraq situation, etc, etc. At the end of the day, right or wrong we have elected to commit our available combat power to the Afghan theatre. So, in for a penny, in for a pound. Let's make it frigging count for something.
I have no heart-ache with what we are currently doing. Will "3-D" work? Watch and shoot. Is it any less a potentially valid prospect than a purely military approach? In my humble view (having orchestrated the 6 km K'har "bubble" of "carrot and stick" back in 2002), it is as good an approach as any. We Canucks are pretty darned good at winning hearts and minds with positive incentives foremost - albeit with the "stick" lurking in the background. The local Afghans living around K'har Airfield seemed to cotton on to that approach back in 2002. Call me a fool, but I would tend to think that the same approach could/would work again.
At the same time as we were winning over the local villages, there were "bad people" operating in limited terrorist cells who were launching rockets against KAF, planting fresh mines on our patrol tracks, laying IEDs and bridge demolitions on the main route into K'har city, etc. So what? Find them out, actively target them, kill them, and problem solved. It ain't frigging rocket-science. Those scum-bags need to die, and for every local that you bring on-side with a new well, school, etc - the chances of catching the undesirebles increases exponentially. The locals know when an "outsider" comes to town. And if you have earned their loyalty (the Afghan culture is huge on "quid pro quo"), you will know that there are "bad guys" floating around. It is admittedly one thing to know that they are there and active, and quite another thing to catch them in the act and kill them. But having won over the local populace? Killing "bad guys" is not impossible. Indeed, my experience was that the vast majority of villages were quite happy to have us close with and destroy - assuming that they got a new water well and/or a school out of the deal....
Sorry to digress from the orignal point. As an "officer" do I want informed soldiers? You bet your ass I do. Because those soldiers are the ones doing the face-to-face business. And if they don't know what is going on and cannot directly contribute to the political/military effort? Well, then those very same soldiers are an uninformed liability. It behooves me as a leader to educate my subordinates and tell them in no uncertain terms what their role is, what they need to spread amongst the civilian populace in terms of info-ops messages, etc, etc. That is just plain common sense. The soldiers on the ground are our "coal-face". If we pooch that direct interface through a lack of institutional communication, then we have abysmally failed. I really hope that we are not currently making a series of newfound mistakes, because when it comes to the Afghan theatre such idiocy is not a viable option. We already know better. We learned those very same lessons 3 years ago, and if we make stupid mistakes this time around we will have nobody to blame but ourselves for not having learned from previous experience.
I'm not the least bit convinced that our new-found and purpose-trained "HUMINT Operators" and "CIMIC Dets" are the end all and be all. The cynic in me suggests that they will be largely counter-productive in the Afghan sense, as that society views only combat-capable soldiers as worthy of interaction and anyone else as a waste of rations. But hey - what do I know? Perhaps our purpose-trained CIMIC and HUMINT types will gain the trust of the locals. Best of luck to them. Let's hope that they don't simply end up as fodder for hostage negotiations....
As for the rest of the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) headed over to Kandahar? Best of luck. One would assume that the immediate leadership wouldl have the requisite training and respect to speak to their subordinate soldiers on a truthful basis. That said, they ought to be able to discuss with their soldiers the very real risks and rewards of their daily duties. If they can, then all is well. If they seemingly can't, then by all means the troops ought to righfully demand that they do so. Our soldiers are owed no less, full-stop.
As usual, just my thoughts/observations. FWIW.