They really couldn’t ten years ago, even though we fooled ourselves into thinking that they could. They certainly can’t now. That schema is light years from being relevant or usable.

It shows a sophomoric understanding of things. But this is the Obama administration, so …

The APOBs essentially consist of grenades on a length of det cord and generally don’t expose/destroy all of the ieds. It can be helpful but in no way does it completely proof the lane. Line charges, the much bigger brother with 1750 pounds of C4, were in abundance during outlaw wrath. I don’t remember the exact number but it was four days in line charges and bulldozing houses with infantry units on the flanks. It was a giant v sweep and worked beautifully. We definitely let the locals know we meant business and afterwards the civil affairs teams paid the locals a cash settlement for their mud huts. Big surprise, a couple of weeks later the Tban had an abundance of weapons.

Outlaw wrath was a success and the AO was opened up for much faster movement. Clearing up to Kajaki though was not taken as seriously. We would go out for the day, find some, get hit by some, and took plenty of fire. Sometimes we would get lucky and a Marine recon unit operating in the area was nearby and could get the baddies. Mostly though it was just an exchange of gunfire and looking for trigger men. We could go out for 8 hours and find IEDs backlayed on the way back.

This was the winter of ’10 to the summer of ’11 and we made no real progress besides outlaw wrath. We never made it to Kajaki. Recon set up some OPs further north but there was never freedom of movement through there. Most in the platoon sustained concussions and TBIs while our Corpsmen was shot. Recon had KIAs and their own set of issues I’m sure. The Marines I was with are back there now and they are a few miles north of where we made it. One year and we’ve gained a few miles.

Route clearance has it’s place but it seems to be misused. I hated outlaw wrath and escort missions because of the regimentation and the loss of freedom that comes from working alone but these are exactly what route clearance should be used for. Deliberate clearing missions that have overwatch once we’ve left so they can’t back lay us and escorting units through uncleared areas. We have thousands of Marines on Camp Leatherneck going through Corporal’s course and other useless crap when they could sit on an OP and watch some road. Don’t even go out on patrols, just sit there with a radio and watch this road. Seems simple enough but apparently now deployments are meant for extra pay and getting away from the wife for awhile. I loved my time in Afgahnistan but it was wasted, we’re not serious about progress there.

We don’t do the things necessary to beat the enemy, but seemingly go through the motions like this route clearance that every person on that brave team has to know is completely wasted effort when the T-ban re-seed the roads hours after its clearance.

We are going to find ourselves in a crap load of hurt no matter who gets elected in November and it will be a steep price tag.

Yes, clarity is a wonderful thing, and it strongly suggests that for all of the moralistic preening we do, notions of leaving the women of Afghanistan behind to their backward abuse by insecure men are mistaken.

Perhaps we will do exactly that when we leave. That’s not the point. The point is the question “what is in the national security interests of the U.S.?” Even if we leave a country, or nation-state, or quasi-state, in worse shape than we found it, we have done a disservice to the U.S. if we have done anything at all out of a moralistic sense of duty to citizens of another country, and we have done a service to U.S. citizens if we in fact have made our own country more secure, whether they see it or not, and regardless of how we have left the other country.

And with you, I continue to say that we have a national interest in Afghanistan. But we won’t fight the campaign that way, and continue to pursue population-centric COIN and state-building on the backs of weary warriors.

Bring them all home. Fight wars to win. Leave the state-building to them.