The U.S. Built An Army In Its Own Image: It Collapsed

BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 2 months ago

Small Wars Journal, The Afghans That Fought.

The Commandos were built by the U.S. Army Special Forces, commonly known as the Green Berets, and designed as an elite light infantry force similar to U.S. Army Rangers.  While selection of Commando candidates did not differ significantly from that of the average Afghan National Army soldier, each had an additional twelve weeks of training and were regularly partnered with small elements of Special Forces advisors.  In practice the Commandos were frequently used as shock troops, shuttled from key battle to key battle, rather than used as special operations forces.  While they were partnered with American elements, especially Special Forces teams, the Commandos usually fought and performed capably.  The presence of critical U.S. enablers, such as air support, medical evacuation, and intelligence that went along with being partnered with Americans often stiffened the resolve of the Commandos to the point that they were generally a dependable partner.

They could fight at night, conduct limited internal sustainment, and hold their own against the Taliban.  Through airframes and ground vehicles within the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command, the Commandos could provide emergency resupply for their forces that enabled them to operate in combat for up to 72 hours.  Some even could call in their own air support and conduct intelligence driven operations.  Commandos suffered far more casualties than American forces, and their headquarters element even set up a wounded warrior program to allow injured fighters to be able to continue to serve in non-combat roles within the organization.  A set of Special Forces officers and sergeants even attempted make the force capable of operating with minimal internal logistic support that was prepositioned at each of the Commando bases, such as “chuck wagon” style mobile feeding and mortars for fire support rather than aircraft.  Unfortunately, senior leaders decided instead that the Commandos should operate inside a functional Afghan military logistics system for any operation that lasted more than 72 hours.  That fatal flaw, building a force in our image logistically, proved to be the Commandos’ Achilles heel.  American Army units are designed to function in a resource intensive logistics system which can provide just in time delivery of critical supply needs.  Yet when faced with Afghanistan’s infrastructure challenges of few roads and vast distances, even our logistics system strained.

As the security situation in Afghanistan deteriorated and province after province fell, many Commando units continued fighting.  Around Kandahar City, Commandos and other security forces battled the Taliban for more than a month.  When the U.S. contracted logistics withdrew and the Afghan supply system collapsed, the Commandos were not able to perform as they were designed: supported by a heavy logistics footprint that could resupply them on demand.  Commando elements began to run out of ammunition, food, and water.  Some surrendered after extended sieges or battles, putting themselves at the mercy of the Taliban.  At least one Commando unit was summarily executed, likely a warning by the Taliban to those who would similarly resist.  Even after the fall of Kabul, several Commando units refused to give in and began the slow march to the Panjshir, where a nascent resistance to the Taliban was building.  Other units moved to Hamid Karzai International airport and helped secure the outer perimeter during the U.S. led evacuation.

Amateurs talk tactics.  Professionals talk logistics.

So the notion that the Afghan army was filled with cowards and ne’er-do-wells is just not accurate.  Oh, to be sure, some of the regulars were that and much less, but there were some well-trained fighters.

They were built in our own image, relying on a heavy logistics footprint, and when we withdrew leaving them no means of fulfilling that footprint, the entire schema collapsed because it was built on a foundation of first world fighting doctrine, not Afghanistan.

And because rather than kill the Taliban, we wanted to play armed social worker and try out fancy COIN doctrine with ROE that disillusioned and disemboweled the American fighting man.  I still have record over this blog of folks in the Helmand Province literally begging the Marines to go after and kill the Taliban rather than stick around and try to “win hearts and minds” and build the society.  So in addition to leaving them with a doctrinal understanding more suited to American warfare, we left them with an enemy that had not been substantially weakened.

Because we had idiots in charge – idiots that killed the sons of America with their malfeasance.

I think this is what Lt. Col. Stu Scheller has been saying all along.  Michael Yon also has thoughts.


Comments

  1. On September 28, 2021 at 11:13 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

    Re: “The U.S. Built An Army In Its Own Image: It Collapsed”

    The Afghanistan intervention was probably doomed from the start to become a debacle and then a disaster, once the decision was taken to engage in nation-building, winning hearts-and-minds and other acts of “armed social work,” rather than break things and kill bad guys, which is the job of the military. Or at least, it used to be their job.

    A punitive raid in force is likely the strategy which would have worked best for our national interests and in delivering the sort of “kinetic message” which needed delivering at the time to our enemies there. We didn’t do that – and the die was cast for failure.

    All of reasons for failure mentioned by the author are valid, but there is something more: The hubris that people are basically the same everywhere and that they aspire to basically the same things and ways of life. The U.S. ruling class, including its foreign-policy arm, hold this ignorant arrogance of belief as an article of faith. They never stopped to consider the fact that the Afghans neither needed nor wanted what we and the other ISAF – NATO members were offering.

    Specifically, the notion that western-style representative democracy can be transplanted root-and-branch into the inhospitable and arid soil of Afghanistan (and for that matter, Iraq) – is the height of foolishness, historical and cultural illiteracy, and unbridled arrogance.

    This is sheer nonsense. The Afghan tribes have lived as they have lived for more than a thousand years, and they’ll probably going on doing it for another thousand. They aren’t like us; they have their own ways of living, their own traditions, their own culture, their own beliefs. We may not agree with them or find them civilized, but that does not change the fact of their existence or that the Afghans believe in them.

    And note that there are few ways of making someone into an implacable enemy more-quickly than telling him his way of life is wrong and that you mean to change it for him!

    So, there may have been a few Afghans who drank the multicultural Kool-Aid and genuinely cooperated with the ISAF & the U.S.-NATO, but most of those who crossed over did so out of expediency and the chance to get some high-end military training and gear from Uncle Sugar, at taxpayer expense. They played us – meaning the cream of the foreign policy establishment and our senior military officers – for everything they were worth. As they say there, “The Americans may have the watches, but we have the time…”

    Given these truths, it isn’t any surprise that the much-vaunted “Afghan National Army” evaporated quickly after we departed. It was never real in the first place.

  2. On September 28, 2021 at 11:35 pm, Jimmy the Saint said:

    “They were built in our own image, relying on a heavy logistics footprint, and when we withdrew leaving them no means of fulfilling that footprint, the entire schema collapsed because it was built on a foundation of first world fighting doctrine, not Afghanistan.”

    Other than the Afghanistan bit, that all sounds vaguely familiar.
    – Marvin the ARVN

  3. On September 29, 2021 at 8:17 am, Fred said:

    @jimmy, this is my chief concern about some patriots that are vets. Their planning seems to assume some long and robust supply chain.

  4. On September 29, 2021 at 10:57 am, Matthew said:

    Have any of you read Martin van Creveld’s Supplying War?

    I’m about halfway through and it’s been enlightening, especially interesting to read as our own operations became catastrophically constrained by logistics.

    It’s no surprise that reliance on our logistical operations set the Afghans up for failure, since we can only maintain them by excessive consumption of fuel and long and complex lines of communication. I wonder what the annual consumption of fuel, both in gallons/pounds and in dollars, of the DOD is.

  5. On September 29, 2021 at 12:46 pm, scott s. said:

    Supplying War is very good. I also recommend his book “Command in War”.

  6. On September 29, 2021 at 9:25 pm, Bill Buppert said:

    You will see, the whole martial house of cards that is the entire American armed forces will fold like a cheap suit in the first 72hrs of any conflict proximate to the homeland of China or Russia. Peer competitors are preparing for kinetic war and the Russians are very good in the EW war[s] to come.

    The longer it takes with the current wokeist paradigm shift in the Pentagram to percolate through the ranks, the more thorough the defeat of the US military.

    Does this mean that America can be invaded [no country has the strategic sealift and airlift to concentrate the necessary number of forces to support a lodgment or beach-/air-head much less a locally contained invasion]? Probably not possible but the defeat will set many political ripples in play in CONUS+ that will tip off a hot civil war among domestic factions.

    The wild card is Canada (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese now) or Mexico hosting foreign forces and building a density sufficient for martial mischief.

    There are many layers of the onion to be peeled when it comes to building in your own image and failing to fully grasp how 4G warfare works.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment


You are currently reading "The U.S. Built An Army In Its Own Image: It Collapsed", entry #28266 on The Captain's Journal.

This article is filed under the category(s) Afghanistan and was published September 28th, 2021 by Herschel Smith.

If you're interested in what else the The Captain's Journal has to say, you might try thumbing through the archives and visiting the main index, or; perhaps you would like to learn more about TCJ.

26th MEU (10)
Abu Muqawama (12)
ACOG (2)
ACOGs (1)
Afghan National Army (36)
Afghan National Police (17)
Afghanistan (704)
Afghanistan SOFA (4)
Agriculture in COIN (3)
AGW (1)
Air Force (40)
Air Power (10)
al Qaeda (83)
Ali al-Sistani (1)
America (22)
Ammunition (285)
Animals (297)
Ansar al Sunna (15)
Anthropology (3)
Antonin Scalia (1)
AR-15s (379)
Arghandab River Valley (1)
Arlington Cemetery (2)
Army (87)
Assassinations (2)
Assault Weapon Ban (29)
Australian Army (7)
Azerbaijan (4)
Backpacking (3)
Badr Organization (8)
Baitullah Mehsud (21)
Basra (17)
BATFE (229)
Battle of Bari Alai (2)
Battle of Wanat (18)
Battle Space Weight (3)
Bin Laden (7)
Blogroll (3)
Blogs (24)
Body Armor (23)
Books (3)
Border War (18)
Brady Campaign (1)
Britain (38)
British Army (35)
Camping (5)
Canada (17)
Castle Doctrine (1)
Caucasus (6)
CENTCOM (7)
Center For a New American Security (8)
Charity (3)
China (16)
Christmas (16)
CIA (30)
Civilian National Security Force (3)
Col. Gian Gentile (9)
Combat Outposts (3)
Combat Video (2)
Concerned Citizens (6)
Constabulary Actions (3)
Coolness Factor (3)
COP Keating (4)
Corruption in COIN (4)
Council on Foreign Relations (1)
Counterinsurgency (218)
DADT (2)
David Rohde (1)
Defense Contractors (2)
Department of Defense (210)
Department of Homeland Security (26)
Disaster Preparedness (5)
Distributed Operations (5)
Dogs (15)
Donald Trump (27)
Drone Campaign (4)
EFV (3)
Egypt (12)
El Salvador (1)
Embassy Security (1)
Enemy Spotters (1)
Expeditionary Warfare (17)
F-22 (2)
F-35 (1)
Fallujah (17)
Far East (3)
Fathers and Sons (2)
Favorite (1)
Fazlullah (3)
FBI (39)
Featured (190)
Federal Firearms Laws (18)
Financing the Taliban (2)
Firearms (1,801)
Football (1)
Force Projection (35)
Force Protection (4)
Force Transformation (1)
Foreign Policy (27)
Fukushima Reactor Accident (6)
Ganjgal (1)
Garmsir (1)
general (15)
General Amos (1)
General James Mattis (1)
General McChrystal (44)
General McKiernan (6)
General Rodriguez (3)
General Suleimani (9)
Georgia (19)
GITMO (2)
Google (1)
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (1)
Gun Control (1,674)
Guns (2,341)
Guns In National Parks (3)
Haditha Roundup (10)
Haiti (2)
HAMAS (7)
Haqqani Network (9)
Hate Mail (8)
Hekmatyar (1)
Heroism (5)
Hezbollah (12)
High Capacity Magazines (16)
High Value Targets (9)
Homecoming (1)
Homeland Security (3)
Horses (2)
Humor (72)
Hunting (41)
ICOS (1)
IEDs (7)
Immigration (114)
India (10)
Infantry (4)
Information Warfare (4)
Infrastructure (4)
Intelligence (23)
Intelligence Bulletin (6)
Iran (171)
Iraq (379)
Iraq SOFA (23)
Islamic Facism (64)
Islamists (98)
Israel (19)
Jaish al Mahdi (21)
Jalalabad (1)
Japan (3)
Jihadists (81)
John Nagl (5)
Joint Intelligence Centers (1)
JRTN (1)
Kabul (1)
Kajaki Dam (1)
Kamdesh (9)
Kandahar (12)
Karachi (7)
Kashmir (2)
Khost Province (1)
Khyber (11)
Knife Blogging (7)
Korea (4)
Korengal Valley (3)
Kunar Province (20)
Kurdistan (3)
Language in COIN (5)
Language in Statecraft (1)
Language Interpreters (2)
Lashkar-e-Taiba (2)
Law Enforcement (6)
Lawfare (14)
Leadership (6)
Lebanon (6)
Leon Panetta (2)
Let Them Fight (2)
Libya (14)
Lines of Effort (3)
Littoral Combat (8)
Logistics (50)
Long Guns (1)
Lt. Col. Allen West (2)
Marine Corps (280)
Marines in Bakwa (1)
Marines in Helmand (67)
Marjah (4)
MEDEVAC (2)
Media (68)
Medical (146)
Memorial Day (6)
Mexican Cartels (42)
Mexico (62)
Michael Yon (6)
Micromanaging the Military (7)
Middle East (1)
Military Blogging (26)
Military Contractors (5)
Military Equipment (25)
Militia (9)
Mitt Romney (3)
Monetary Policy (1)
Moqtada al Sadr (2)
Mosul (4)
Mountains (25)
MRAPs (1)
Mullah Baradar (1)
Mullah Fazlullah (1)
Mullah Omar (3)
Musa Qala (4)
Music (25)
Muslim Brotherhood (6)
Nation Building (2)
National Internet IDs (1)
National Rifle Association (97)
NATO (15)
Navy (30)
Navy Corpsman (1)
NCOs (3)
News (1)
NGOs (3)
Nicholas Schmidle (2)
Now Zad (19)
NSA (3)
NSA James L. Jones (6)
Nuclear (63)
Nuristan (8)
Obama Administration (221)
Offshore Balancing (1)
Operation Alljah (7)
Operation Khanjar (14)
Ossetia (7)
Pakistan (165)
Paktya Province (1)
Palestine (5)
Patriotism (7)
Patrolling (1)
Pech River Valley (11)
Personal (73)
Petraeus (14)
Pictures (1)
Piracy (13)
Pistol (4)
Pizzagate (21)
Police (659)
Police in COIN (3)
Policy (15)
Politics (985)
Poppy (2)
PPEs (1)
Prisons in Counterinsurgency (12)
Project Gunrunner (20)
PRTs (1)
Qatar (1)
Quadrennial Defense Review (2)
Quds Force (13)
Quetta Shura (1)
RAND (3)
Recommended Reading (14)
Refueling Tanker (1)
Religion (495)
Religion and Insurgency (19)
Reuters (1)
Rick Perry (4)
Rifles (1)
Roads (4)
Rolling Stone (1)
Ron Paul (1)
ROTC (1)
Rules of Engagement (75)
Rumsfeld (1)
Russia (37)
Sabbatical (1)
Sangin (1)
Saqlawiyah (1)
Satellite Patrols (2)
Saudi Arabia (4)
Scenes from Iraq (1)
Second Amendment (687)
Second Amendment Quick Hits (2)
Secretary Gates (9)
Sharia Law (3)
Shura Ittehad-ul-Mujahiden (1)
SIIC (2)
Sirajuddin Haqqani (1)
Small Wars (72)
Snipers (9)
Sniveling Lackeys (2)
Soft Power (4)
Somalia (8)
Sons of Afghanistan (1)
Sons of Iraq (2)
Special Forces (28)
Squad Rushes (1)
State Department (23)
Statistics (1)
Sunni Insurgency (10)
Support to Infantry Ratio (1)
Supreme Court (62)
Survival (203)
SWAT Raids (57)
Syria (38)
Tactical Drills (38)
Tactical Gear (15)
Taliban (168)
Taliban Massing of Forces (4)
Tarmiyah (1)
TBI (1)
Technology (21)
Tehrik-i-Taliban (78)
Terrain in Combat (1)
Terrorism (96)
Thanksgiving (13)
The Anbar Narrative (23)
The Art of War (5)
The Fallen (1)
The Long War (20)
The Surge (3)
The Wounded (13)
Thomas Barnett (1)
Transnational Insurgencies (5)
Tribes (5)
TSA (25)
TSA Ineptitude (14)
TTPs (4)
U.S. Border Patrol (6)
U.S. Border Security (19)
U.S. Sovereignty (24)
UAVs (2)
UBL (4)
Ukraine (10)
Uncategorized (99)
Universal Background Check (3)
Unrestricted Warfare (4)
USS Iwo Jima (2)
USS San Antonio (1)
Uzbekistan (1)
V-22 Osprey (4)
Veterans (3)
Vietnam (1)
War & Warfare (419)
War & Warfare (41)
War Movies (4)
War Reporting (21)
Wardak Province (1)
Warriors (6)
Waziristan (1)
Weapons and Tactics (79)
West Point (1)
Winter Operations (1)
Women in Combat (21)
WTF? (1)
Yemen (1)

December 2024
November 2024
October 2024
September 2024
August 2024
July 2024
June 2024
May 2024
April 2024
March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006

about · archives · contact · register

Copyright © 2006-2024 Captain's Journal. All rights reserved.