Articles by Herschel Smith

In Response to SOF and Piracy I linked Andrew Exum’s disagreement with me over the proper response to piracy.  Exum advocated the use of SEALs, and I advocated the use of large quantities of U.S. Marines in a long term presence.  When the Maersk Alabama was retaken by the U.S., it was with SEAL teams.  Andrew did a victory dance, and his commenters lambasted my views at Abu Muqawama.  One commenter made the observation that while I addressed a larger issue than just this situation, this situation was indeed unique in that there were hostages – as if the problem of piracy and ransom payments isn’t comprised by the aggregate of multiple hostage situations.

It is frankly rather puzzling to me how someone can so badly misinterpret my views.  It betrays the prose for either sloppy or dishonest, and Exum isn’t dishonest.  John Nagl of CNAS refused to correspond with me after this post, and Andrew Exum has exchanged only one short e-mail since then.  The whole exchange really was rather bizarre for fully grown men.  My points all along pertained to the use of SEAL teams as a remedy for the problem of piracy.  There simply aren’t SEAL teams, aren’t enough aircraft and aren’t sufficient logistics for the use of SOF to be a remedy to the problem of piracy.  And the SEAL teams are needed elsewhere and for other things.  In the grand scheme of things, it makes little difference whether the Maersk Alabama was rescued or not.

I had further said that I talked with one Marine Scout Sniper (on the 26th MEU, before this incident) who had a boatload of pirates in the sights of his Sasser .50 sniper rifle from a Helicopter, and he refused to take the shot because, well, “Hell, who wants to get tangled up with the lawyers when he gets back to the ship?”  In fact, taking the shots to save the Maersk Alabama required approval of the POTUS.

Folks, pirates aren’t that hard to find.  The Marines of the 26th MEU did it frequently in the Gulf of Aden.  While in the Persian Gulf, they also had an Iranian helicopter virtually land on board the deck of the USS Iwo Jima with Iranian gunners laughing at the Marines, and the U.S. Navy ordering the Marines NOT to engage for fear of creating an “international incident” (how’s that for “rules of engagement”?)  One of my points was that with aircraft, radar, LCACs and other sea-based craft, there is adequate means of locating and interdicting pirates, regardless of the size of the Gulf of Aden.

The problem isn’t finding them.  The problem is what happens then.  Now with that background, let’s cover recent data concerning pirates.

The Somalian pirates seized another big ship the other day. This time it was a large oil tanker. I spoke with a friend who owns ships and lives in Athens about the latest attack. He provided some interesting information. My notes from the conversation:

The seized tanker is owned by a large and successful family owned Greek shipping company. Pirates have hit Greek ships before, but this is the largest ship to be captured. There is $200mm worth of crude on board. The vessel is worth $100mm – 200mm. There was a crew of 25 of which eight were Greeks, most of whom were officers.

The Greek shipping world is PISSED at this one. The combination of the money and the fact that Greek crew members are involved makes this a very big deal.

I got a status on the bigger picture in pirate land:

There are currently 20 ships of all sizes and uses currently being held by Somali pirates. There are approximately 700 prisoners being held. It generally takes two to three months to negotiate and pay a ransom. My guy estimated that in the past year nearly $300mm in ransom has been paid to pirates.

There have been attempts to thwart the pirates but they are (obviously) not working. NATO has warships in the region as does the United States. The problem appears to be the “rules of engagement”. The Western powers have the ability to stop and search suspected pirate ships. But when the pirates see them coming they dump their arms overboard. Therefore they are released as only armed ships and crews can be seized and taken out of commission. The pirates are well aware of these rules.

This article goes on to make an important observation.

The final consideration is what is happening within Somalia. There is a group called al Shaabab. They are Muslim extremists. They too are highly armed. They have been fighting with the Somali pirates. Al- Shaabab wants to take over the job the pirates are doing. They want the money and the power that comes from pirating ships.

My guess would be that the Islamic militants will win, and the pirates will lose (the pirates will become Islamic militants).  I have previously recommended something like the following concerning pirates: tell the lawyers to go home, find the pirates, line them up on the deck of the ship, and shoot each and every one of them.  Dump their bodies into the sea, and videotape the entire event.  Post the video to YouTube as a warning to future pirates.  Thus, an end to piracy.

Of course, this seems brutal and uncivilized to many.  Indeed it is.  But value judgments have a way of being nuanced, difficult things that eventually turn on you and create unintended consequences.  My recommendation is brutal, but consider the alternatives.  Hostages continue to be taken, ransoms are paid, lives are lost in a continual drip and drain of violence in the Gulf of Aden, and – perhaps best of all – yes, the world funds Islamic militancy with the ransoms.

A similar example might be the problem of illegal immigration.  This problem is easy to solve, but the U.S. doesn’t yet want the solution.  The more violent method would be to line the border with troops and fire on sight at anyone crossing the border.  The less violent method would be to imprison any CEOs or company owners who hire (knowingly or not) illegal aliens.  But for a whole host of reasons (mostly related to providing corporate welfare), America isn’t yet ready for any solution to illegal immigration. Maybe one day it will be.

So we have made the judgment to appear civilized to the world – and us.  This kicks the can down the road, but it feels good for the time being unless it’s our relative who has been taken hostage.  We don’t recognize the increased cost of goods because of ransom payments and increased costs of security.  We don’t acknowledge that wealth has a moral component, i.e., God demands that we use of it wisely, something that would militate against funding Islamic militancy.  We are civilized, and that’s all that is important at the present.

But let those numbers wash over you again.  Seven hundred prisoners are being held at the moment.  Some $300 million has been paid in ransoms to Somali pirates.  There aren’t enough SEAL teams and logistics isn’t sufficient to conduct cloak and dagger operations to free them all.  Oh sure, it can be interesting, reading about guys doing HALO jumps with re-breathers on, dropping their parachute just before the water, swimming to destination and engaging the target.  Things like this are what guys play in video games like Call of Duty 4.

But this just isn’t reality in the Gulf of Aden with 700 hostages being held and Islamic militants wanting to muscle in on the action.  And concern for pirates dropping their weapons into the sea just before being captured won’t win the day.  We can win the war on piracy, but currently we are not.  As these things go, it’s fairly straight forward and easy given what we have dealt with in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

To date we have chosen not to deal with the problem.  As I have pointed out before, just as with illegal immigration, we want piracy more than we want the solution.  Piracy (and illegal immigration) exists because we want it to.  Those value judgments are indeed complex things, no?

Prior:

Response to SOF and Piracy

Somalian Piracy

Piracy: The Only Solution

Pirates?  Call the Marines … Er, the Lawyers

UPDATE: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link.

UPDATE #2: Ah … isn’t this fun?  Fark has a discussion thread up with one commenter responding thusly: ” … If I can’t kill someone for laughing at me, I don’t want to kill anyone anymore.”

Poor fellow.  It has nothing to do with that.  It has everything to do with force protection, and the Iranians were laughing at the U.S. because they knew we wouldn’t take it seriously regardless of our military doctrine.

In Response to Afghanistan: We No Longer Give Pens and Stationary Away, DirtyMick responded as follows:

I was on the previous two PRTs in Kunar. They need to jettison the navy element and make it an army effort. Previous two Navy commanders (especially the one with the Nevada National guard in 2009/2010) focused too much on the soft aspect of coin, were in overall charge of the army manuever element at camp wright (like army running a ship), had a hard on for wanting to take non essential navy personnel (ie anybody not engineers) into places like the pech river valley and north of asadabad, and passing out badges and awards like candy on Halloween (so navy guys can be just as stacked as an 0311 marine cpl.). Torwards the end of this summer did my higher chain of command do things like cancel projects in the pech only after many months of us getting shot up in the pech. Why build a school for assholes when they’re shooting RPGs at us? I will never work on a PRT again.

And in response to Abandoning the Pech Valley Part II, Scarbelly79 said:

I was with DirtyMick in Asadabad during 2009-2010; I felt like our time was wasted in large part to satisfy the egos and experimentations of everyone who wanted to show how nuanced they were, and how we were going to make a lasting impact by NOT killing the enemy… An old vet told me once that “when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow”.

It’s bad enough that Army and Marine Corps field grade officers are unwilling to risk their careers by granting air and indirect fire assets to troops in contact… We have Navy surface warfare officers and Air Force admin officers “leading” PRT’s; most of them without applicable experience or training – but trying desperately to pick up their O6 as they blame the Army and Marine Corps for screwing everything up.

The Pashtuns are not suicidal fanatics, they are brigands. We won’t win them to our side by bribing them with roads (when many of them don’t own cars), hospitals (without doctors to staff them), or electricity (when most of them don’t own televisions). We will win them to our side by effectively separating the militant Taliban from the general populace by hunting them down and killing them.

If you look back at the advent of Naval officers on PRTs in Afghanistan, it has pretty sad and naive theoretical framework.

The teams were founded in 2004 and are designed to be mobile goodwill ambassadors for coalition forces, using their transportation, logistics and communications capabilities to access the most remote Afghan villages.

Once there, the specialized personnel can hold medical, dental and veterinary clinics, and help build roads, wells, schools, irrigation systems and other facilities that will improve life for Afghans who have known only war and poverty for generations, Hartung said.

What about the infantry, you ask?  Why, they handle force protection for the team.  That’s right.  Force protection.  But DirtyMick and Scarbelly79 have given us reason to think that things are even worse now.  Naval officers are adorning themselves with medals at the expense of the fighting men, and then blaming the Army and Marines to boot.

Let’s make one thing clear.  We can discuss ineptitude all day, or organizational inadequacies, or lists of reasons that we are failing in Afghanistan.  We can treat that with clinical precision and a degree of detachment as a scientist.  But for a Naval officer on a PRT to complain and blame the fighting men is about as low as it gets.  I’m not sure what medals adorn the Naval officers on the PRTs, but unless they have been involved, engaged and active in kinetic operations and under fire, they don’t deserve and shouldn’t be awarded Combat Action Ribbons.  This would be a travesty.

Finally, here is the prerequisite for a Naval officer to complain about anything – ANYTHING – that is going on in Afghanistan.  Pick up a weapon, go on patrol, take fire, and kill the enemy.  Until you do, no one cares about your complaints, and playing the blame game with men under fire is immoral.  If you are a Naval officer who wants to complain, then lodge it right here, right now.  But show us your combat action ribbon first.  Tell us all about it.  We’re waiting.

In the spirit of good, instructive combat video, these Soldiers fight their way out of an ambush in Afghanistan.  My only comment is that it would be helpful if the authors would post information on date, location and units.

From Sharia is Coming!, I outlined or posed a question concerning the nature of those who advocate Sharia law.  You can read it (or re-read it) for yourself, but more important at the moment is what happened afterward.  Steven Metz made the following statement in response (in the comments section): “Should we worry about the creeping influence of the Boy Scout laws? More people follow that in the United States than sharia.”

Note well.  Steven Metz is a professor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  And note full well.  He is comparing Boy Scout law with Sharia law.  This Boy Scout law – compared to this sharia law.  It’s all just hysterical rantings, this idea that those who advocate sharia law actually want it to be mandatory.  Next, consider Andrew McCarthy at NRO’s Corner.

Read it and weep — and you will want to weep. In Bangladesh a 14-year-old girl named Hena was raped by a 40-year-old man, Mahbub, who is described in a report as her “relative.” [Thanks to John Hinderaker for highlighting this story.] Apparently — the report is not clear on how this happened — the matter was brought to the attention of the sharia authorities in her village of Shariatpur. You’d think this was a good thing … except, in Islam, rape cannot be proved absent four witnesses — i.e., it’s virtually impossible to establish that what happened happened. That’s a dangerous thing for the victim — deadly dangerous in this instance — because if she has had sexual relations outside marriage but cannot prove she has been raped, she is deemed to have committed a grave sin. In Hena’s case, the sharia authorities ordered that she be given 100 lashes. The young girl never made it through 80; she fell unconscious and died from the whipping.

When I catalogue the horrors of sharia, I frequently hear in response that I am oversimplifying it, that I am relying on incorrect interpretations (oddly said to be inaccurate because they construe Islamic doctrine “too literally”), or that I fail to appreciate the richness and nuances of sharia jurisprudence that have made it possible for moderate Muslims to evolve away from the law’s harshness. Some even claim sharia is not a concrete body of law, just a set of  aspirational guidelines — as if Sakineh Ashtiani, the woman sentenced by an Iranian court to death by stoning, will merely be having advice, rather than rocks, thrown at her.

These criticisms miss the point. I don’t purport to have apodictic knowledge of what the “true” Islam holds — or even to know whether there is a single true Islam (as I’ve said a number of times, I doubt that there is). But that’s irrelevant. It should by now be undeniable that there is an interpretation of sharia that affirms all its atrocious elements, and that this interpretation is not a fringe construction. It is mainstream and backed by very influential scholars who know a hell of a lot more about Islam than we in the West do. That makes it extremely unlikely that this interpretation will be marginalized any time soon. There is no agreed-upon hierarchical authority in Islam that can authoritatively pronounce that various beliefs and practices are heretical.

Stop.  This last point is extremely important.  Now consider a point I made directly to Steven Metz at the Small Wars Journal after he said the following:

Claiming that all of Islam wants to “impose” its faith on others is not “being clear,” its being fantastic and ideological. There is a fringe in Islam who claims to want this (just as there is in Christianity). But claiming this is some inherent element of Islam is just nonsense. I don’t know any nicer way to put it.

And my response (a bit dry, but necessary).

Definitions are indispensable. When you say “impose its faith,” let’s delineate between voting your conscience and promulgating your faith by the power of force or violence. Laws are by their very definition legislated morality. A law against theft is society’s way of saying that it is morally wrong to steal and we won’t tolerate it. Our society has as its basis a system of laws that itself has a basis, just as all nation-states do. I assume that you are not arguing against a vote of conscience and representative government, so it makes sense to jump to the next possibility.

Now to the use of force or violence to promulgate a faith. Again, for the sake of argument, let’s define Christianity nominally as something like the following: adherence to the basic Trinitarian creeds (Nicene and Chalcedonian), with the soteriological skeleton filled out by a later creed such as Trent (for Roman Catholics, maybe plus Vatican I and II, or maybe not) or the Westminster Confession of Faith (for Protestants). The point is that one defining characteristic of Christianity is that it has throughout history been creedal and confessional. We aren’t left to wonder what Christianity teaches. It is all put forward for us is clear terms, with the fundamentals similar in all sects or denominations, and agreed to by the councils in church history.

I am trained in religion / theology at the graduate level. I am extremely well read, and fairly well-travelled in these circles. I know of not a single group of people who meet the nominal definition of Christianity we have given above that either believes or claims to believe that they have the authority or right to promulgate the faith through violence or force. It would be directly contrary to the very nature of Christianity. I could line up the Biblical data for a week, but it would save time simply to trust me on this point. If you feel that you have contrary examples, then I would like to correspond off line to ascertain just who these people are and what exactly they might believe. It would be interesting.

Now. With Islam it just isn’t that clear. Islam is not now and has never been creedal and confessional. It is loosely coupled and very diverse. A search of history for such creeds yields no fruit like the history of Christianity (if it did I would gladly spent much time in study). I am not making a value judgment here, simply an observation. The point of this observation is that when answering the question “What does Islam believe?” we have reversion only to (a) original source literature, and (b) its interpretation and application today (plus the history that can be determined to be accurate).

Here is what we know. We know that there is a large group of Muslims worldwide who do not believe that they have the right to hurt of kill you or your family in order to promulgate their faith, and they are quite happy with this hermeneutic. How large this group is is unknown. It might be the vast majority of all Muslims, or it may not be quite that big. We also know that based on the original source literature (quotes which I can line up a long time for you) there are ideas and quotes that are apparently amenable to a hermeneutic which interprets them to give Muslims the right and duty to promulgate their faith by violence and force. As best as I can tell, both hermeneutics live side by side every day in Muslim countries, with some aspects of each rubbing off on the other, and with this also being a source of controversy and tension in these countries.

So what I have said now is that their are competing hermeneutics within Islam, and that creedalism and confessionalism has not been and is not now a defining characteristic of Islam. These things present problems for us, as you can well imagine. To understand what Islam believes, you cannot refer to a confession. There is none. You can read the source literature and you can listen to its professed adherents as they speak.

The professed adherents who are of the Salafist / Wahhabist stripes, based on indisputable evidence, believe the later hermeneutic discussed above (and can point to numerous citations in the original source literature). While I understand that it is unfashionable to be religious in academia, and fashionable to make moral equivalency arguments comparing all religions to each other, it just isn’t correct. There is no sect or denomination of Christianity comparable to the Salafists or Wahhabists. It doesn’t help your argument to make the comparison.

This goes directly to the hearts of what McCarthy is saying.  Now that you have finished the dry part, let’s get to the basics – and I will make value judgments this time.  I believe that many parts of the Qu’ran are inherently contradictory.  Some Muslims deal with this problem by aligning themselves with the more or less non-violent hermeneutic, and simply ignore the logical problems.  In the words of Professor Alvin Plantinga, their “noetic structure” contains deeply rooted, logically problematic propositions, but they don’t know it (or have simply accepted it).  Others in Islam deal with this problem by choosing the violent hermeneutic, and the fundamental problem is that Islam is not now nor has it ever been a creedal religion (nor does it lend itself to such rigorous systematization).

McCarthy’s point is both well taken and important.  Continuing with his thoughts:

The closest thing Muslims have is the faculty at al-Azhar University in Egypt, and it is a big part of the problem. Whether this fundamentalist interpretation is accepted by only 20 or 30 percent of Muslims — or whether, as I believe, the percentage is higher, perhaps much higher — that still makes it the belief system of almost half a billion people worldwide. That’s not a fringe.

Sharia is not a myth or an invention of overwrought Islamophobes. It is very real. And that some Saudi-endowed Georgetown prof will inevitably come up with some elegant explanation of how the village authorities got it wrong will have absolutely zero influence over the way sharia is understood in Shariatpur. Nor will not make this tormented 14-year-old girl any less dead.

Just so.  Fundamentalist Islam, if it represents 20% – 30%, isn’t a “fringe element.”  This represents a whole lot of people, and the problem isn’t made any better by supposed “scholars” at the U.S. Army War College who think that Boy Scout law and Sharia law represent the same threat.  Dr. Metz is just shouting uneducated nonsense, but he has a willing audience among a very important element in our armed forces.  I am in fact as worried about that as I am either Sharia law or Boy Scout law.

In Abandoning the Pech Valley Operator Dan of This Ain’t Hell said:

Surrendering ground and outposts provides a propaganda victory for the Taliban. In conventional military terms, it provides them terrain from which they can rest, refit, and launch attacks. First it was the Korengal, now its the Pech, and next they will be knocking on the door of Abad and then Kunar is truly lost.

Remember, the Muj took control of the Eastern Provinces first and eventually used them to attack Kabul in the early 1990s’ against the Afghan Communists. A few of them (most of the Muj from then actually have aligned with us) have done this before.

And Dirty Mick, who has been there before, said:

I’m curious if 1/327 Battalion commander has a short memory. I was in Kunar when 2/12 infantry left the Korengal last April/May during the spring offensive when 1st and 2nd Battalion 327 took over Kunar. We got slammed all summer. The Taliban took it as a victory and scores of soldiers were killed and wounded during the summer. So what happens if we pull out of the Pech. Well I can gaurentee it will be another victory for the Taliban and every COP south of Asadabad will get attacked more frequently (fortress, joyce, penich, and badel already get attacked often) and it will eventually flow into nangahar province (where Jbad is).

By his rational if the insurgents in Sadr City, Mosul, Baghdad, Tal Afar, Ramadi, and Fallujah didn’t want us there then I guess we should have pulled out and left. By his way of thinking we should have never done the surge in Iraq in 2007. In order to Achieve Victory (yes I said it) we need to be aggressive and kill Taliban wherever they hide and lurk. It amazes me with these senior officers in the Army and Marine Corp it’s like they’re constantly reinventing the wheel or discovering fire for the first time. Disgraceful.

Just to pile disgrace on top of disgrace, reporter Harry Sanna who was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, gives us this perspective based on his recent time there.

“Many parts of the east are still highly unstable. In the Pech Valley, it’s not uncommon for firefights between the U.S. soldiers and insurgent groups to break out five or six times a day. If they go ahead with their planned withdrawal from area, there are obvious ramifications that must be addressed. Namely, are the Afghan forces ready to take over security and, if not, who will step into the power vacuum created?

“I suppose what struck me the most from my time in Kunar was the widespread lack of knowledge as to what outcomes the withdrawal would create. Many Afghan soldiers expressed skepticism in their own army’s ability to hold the ground without international assistance. Many locals, including the scores of contractors hired from nearby villages that work on U.S. bases, did not know what to expect after foreigners left the valley. Anxiety is running fairly high, that much is obvious,” he said.

Well, Harry, here’s the deal.  We won’t have to wait until 2014 to find out what will happen to the Pech Valley when we withdraw.  In a tip of the hat to the doctrines of population-centric counterinsurgency, we intend to leave it well before then and head for the cities, just like the Russians did.

Here is a tip for future reading, study and, well, let’s be frank – wading through the misdirects that both the MSM and military PR sends your way.  When you hear the reflexive, tired, worn out mantra that we are having difficulty defeating the Taliban and those forces aligned with AQ because Pakistan simply won’t go into their safe havens and root them out, this is a nothing but a magic trick, a sleight of hand, a smoke screen, a ruse.  The issue is fake.  It’s a well-designed farce.

Oh, to be sure, the U.S. would indeed like for the Pakistanis to go kill all of the Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban and AQ affiliated groups so that we don’t have to deal with them in Afghanistan.  But we have the ideal chance to address the problem head on in the Pech Valley and other areas near the AfPak border – that Durand line that exists only as a figment of our imaginations.  Essentially, much of the Hindu Kush is available for us to do the same thing we want Pakistan to do, and in fact, if we began actually doing this, Pakistan might be persuaded to allow readier access to Pakistani soil (once they see we are serious about the campaign).

Instead of going after them in their safe havens, we want to focus on the population centers, set up governance, and assume that the criminals and thugs we leave in charge will be a better choice to the people than aligning themselves with the Taliban.  How’s that plan going?

Jim Foley gives us an interesting video journal report from Kandahar.

Jim appears conflicted, but listening to the justification at or around 7:00 minutes and following, the shooting seems justified.  At any rate, spotters are both difficult to detect and deadly for U.S. troops.  I have previously covered aggressive Marine Corps tactics concerning enemy spotters, and the approach taken in this engagement seems no different than that of the Corps in Helmand and Anbar.

On another front, while I understand the reflexive behavior to be sympathetic to the local Afghans, something about this translator bothers me.  The translator with the Marines in Sangin seems more in line with what you would want out of someone performing this service.

Ben Anderson with the Marines and Jim Foley with the Army have given us good video coverage of the engagements, and they are both well worth the study time.

From The Telegraph:

Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.

Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, said: “They want to find out whether Britain has more missiles than we say we have, and having the unique identifiers might help them.”

Professor Malcolm Chalmers said: “This appears to be significant because while the UK has announced how many missiles it possesses, there has been no way for the Russians to verify this. Over time, the unique identifiers will provide them with another data point to gauge the size of the British arsenal.”

Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.

The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called “special relationship”, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website.

Details of the behind-the-scenes talks are contained in more than 1,400 US embassy cables published to date by the Telegraph, including almost 800 sent from the London Embassy, which are published online today.

Although the treaty was not supposed to have any impact on Britain, the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK’s Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US.

Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.

The Telegraph is referring to the New START treaty already ratified by the U.S. Senate, and for which Secretary Gates lobbied.  I had previously argued that the treaty was one-sided and brought the U.S. no discernible advantage in any area of weapons or nuclear technology, or foreign policy.  When Ronald Reagan advocated for the initial START treaty, even Time Magazine noted that it was one-sided in favor of the U.S., a fact which caused Time incorrectly to predict its failure.  Reagan negotiated from a position of strength.

But what we’ve learned now goes past a bad treaty – and it was a bad treaty.  It goes to reputation, to status, to honoring allies and friendships, to standing.  It makes this administration out to be pusillanimous weasels willing to sell out even our closest friends to enemies and criminals for a mere smattering of success on the world stage.

We pressed the reset button in foreign policy with Russia, but Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev viewed this as having made us sniveling lackeys.  Our enemies think we are fools and clowns, while our allies cannot trust us.  So much for success on the world stage.  Mr. Obama, we all knew Ronald Reagan, and you sir are no Ronald Reagan.

Michael Yon authored a prescient article on Sangin entitled Bad Medicine, in which Yon was embedded with the British Army in Sangin.  It’s worth studying this piece again in preparation for an important report from the BBC.  Since the BBC doesn’t give embed code, it’s good that this piece is out on YouTube.  Thanks to Michael Yon for bringing this to our attention.  It’s well worth the twenty nine minutes you will spend watching this report.

The British enlisted men have fought bravely in Sangin and lost many men there.  But more than two years ago the British announced a plan to deescalate the violence against the Taliban.  There is little doubt that this plan dovetailed with the abandonment of the forward operating bases in and around Sangin.  Also in the Helmand Province, the British forces allied themselves with a shyster and con man named Mullah Abdul Salaam in Musa Qala.  He and his forces were supposed to go to arms against local Taliban when the fight for Musa Qala began by British and U.S. forces, and instead they screamed like little girls and ran for cover, making frantic calls for help to Karzai.

In fact, even recently the U.S. Marines and British Advisers have been at odds about how to approach the Helmand Province.  The U.S. Marines are intentionally taking a more aggressive approach in Sangin than the British, and their casualties show it.

Yon sent me a note praising the hard work of the Marines, but lamenting the fact that we’re taking the same soil twice, and paying dearly for it.  Yon is right, but this isn’t the only sacred soil stained by the blood of U.S. Marines that is being taken more than once.

Two years and eight months ago, the 24th MEU Marines went into Garmsir.  At great cost, the Marines killed some 400 Taliban fighters in and around Garmsir.  But the 24th MEU had to leave, and they turned over to the British.  One and a half years ago I was writing about the resistance a new deployment of Marines was finding in Garmsir.

This report is remarkable in that it could have been written exactly one year ago during the tenure of the 24th MEU in the Garmsir District in 2008.  During that operation, the U.S. Marine Corps had taken over from the British who were not able to force the Taliban out of Garmsir, and after a major gun battle took over the Garmsir area from the Taliban.  The primary concern of the residents during this operation was that the Marines would leave, allowing the Taliban to re-enter the district and punish those who had cooperated with the Marines.

The Marines turned operations back over to the British, who were then unable to maintain control of the Garmsir District, and now the U.S. Marines are back again in Helmand generally and Garmsir particularly.  It’s not that the British are unable to fight, but rather that they aren’t supplied well enough, equipped well enough or provided with enough troops (we might add that their officer corps seems mostly to be sidetracked and confused with a version of counterinsurgency doctrine taken from their experience in Northern Ireland).

In fact, the U.S. Marines are finding Taliban resistance even today in Garmsir.  So the hand-offs between forces go a long way back in the Helmand Province, and while there is no lack of bravery on the part of any of the forces who have had responsibility for Helmand, there is a difference in approach and continuity.  This has caused a sad state of affairs, with the spilling of blood and losing of limbs to take the same soil more than once.

This soil is now sacred to us, made so my the blood of the sons of America.  Tim Lynch has written me saying that he has seen first hand the progress the Marines are making in Helmand.  Tim says something that we have said before and with which we can all agree.

I tell you what. The Marines down south are making nice gains against the Taliban. They find them and kill them. These types of gains are not “reversible”. Might I suggest something crazy? Let’s emulate the marines on all levels of the playing field metaphorically of course. If someone shoots at us lets hunt them down and deal with them. Here is some more valuable ground truth, “Afghans respect strength”. We might have to wait two more years to implement this one.

Does this sound like Follow and Kill Every Single Taliban?  Yes, Tim is right, but here is my concern.  Recall the warning from the elder in Sangin near the end of the report above?  What did he say would happen when the Marines leave?  That’s right.  The Taliban would return.

Those who haven’t been killed will return.  If we play whack-a-mole counterinsurgency and merely squeeze them from one location to another, one safe haven to the next, we haven’t accomplished anything.  In Sangin and Garmsir, the Taliban returned.  The resistance we see today proves my point.  There is no debate, and the point cannot even be contended.  It simply must be accepted as axiomatic in this fight.

Thus I have advocated saturation of Marines (more troops) and chasing the enemy.  To fail to do so doesn’t just facilitate failure.  It desecrates what is now sacred soil.

Prior Featured: The Five Hundred Meter War

From NPR:

The “Soldiers of the Sea” have been fighting on land for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan.The Corps’ amphibious troop carrier has just been canceled; its new fighter jet was postponed.

And the Marine Corps itself is finishing up its own review, asking this basic question: What should the Marine Corps look like in the 21st Century?

The Marine Corps has made a name for itself storming beaches: Barbary Coast and Veracruz, Iwo Jima and Inchon.

“For many years now, its core mission has been forcible entry, meaning going ashore in the face of hostile fire to claim enemy beaches and then push inland quickly before defenders regain their balance,” says defense analyst Loren Thompson. He says those days may be over.

That’s because Defense Secretary Robert Gates has done something that pirates in the 19th century and Japanese troops in World War II couldn’t do — he has the Marine Corps reeling.

Gates stopped the Marines from going ahead with their Joint Strike Fighter, a stealthy warplane. And he canceled the Marines’ amphibious troop carrier, known as the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle or EFV.

“The EFV, originally conceived during the Reagan administration, has already consumed more than $3 billion to develop, and will cost another $12 billion to build, all for a fleet with the capacity to put 4,000 troops ashore,” he said.

That’s a lot of money to get a few thousand Marines on the beach. So the Marines will update their decades-old amphibious troop carrier instead.

The cuts and delays to the Marine Corps’ budget are symbolic of a larger debate about the role of the Marine Corps in future warfare. Many potential adversaries have sophisticated long-range missiles that could strike the Marines in their landing craft long before they reach the shores.

So Gates already has said it’s unlikely the Marines will be hitting the beaches like they did at Iwo Jima.

And Thompson says that raises questions about the relevance of the Marines.

“If the Marine Corps is no longer going to do opposed landing on enemy beaches in the face of hostile fire, then its role will be significantly diminished in the future,” he says.

The Marines publicly dismiss talk they’re becoming less relevant, and say that attacking enemy beaches is just one of their jobs. Their senior officer, Gen. James Amos, said recently they’ve been busier than ever.

“Since 9/11, U.S. amphibious forces have responded to crises and contingencies at least 50 times, a response rate more than double during the entire period of the Cold War,” Amos says.

That includes everything, from Marines fighting Taliban fighters 10 years ago, to helping Pakistanis caught up in massive flooding last fall.

The ability for Marines to float offshore and quickly respond offers any president a way to influence events, says retired Marine Gen. Chuck Krulak.

“They can remain over the horizon, they can come on to the horizon and be seen and increase the pressure, or they can come ashore,” he says.

And the Marines’ physical presence, Krulak argues, cannot be replaced by high-tech weapons.

“A B-2 bomber flying at 60,000 feet is not present, it’s nothing more than contrails in the skies,” he says.

The Marines may argue they’re irreplaceable. But Gates has suggested cutting their numbers — not just their weapons. Gates wants to reduce the Corps by some 15,000 to 20,000 in the coming years.

Defense analyst Gordon Adams says that’s a higher proportion than the cuts Gates has called for in the Army.

“My view would be that the Army deserves to be significantly cut rather than the Marine Corps,” Adams says.

Adams worked on Pentagon budgets in the Clinton administration and thinks Gates’ cuts are ill conceived.

“His decisions have by and large been driven largely by technology, costs and efficiency,” Adams says.

But not by strategy, he adds. Adams says the Marines are more agile than the Army and cost less. They can handle a range of missions — everything from delivering humanitarian assistance to training foreign militaries to fighting insurgents.

The Marines have no trouble speaking for themselves. In the coming weeks, they’ll outline to Gates why they’re still relevant.

Regular readers know that I oppose humanitarian missions for the U.S. Marines.  Not that I oppose humanitarian missions.  I oppose humanitarian missions for the Marines.  You don’t design and build the most effective and violent fighting force on earth and send it on humanitarian missions.  That we have done that before in recent history is a sign that the Marines are looking for a mission.

And the lack of opposed landing in the grand strategy doesn’t in the least diminish the relevance of the U.S. Marine Corps.  Let me tell you what does diminish the relevance of the USMC.  Reliance on gadgets, doohickeys and thing-a-ma-bobs.  You know – electronically controlled, electrically powered crap that needs heavy generators which then need to be moved by massive flotillas to site by logistics engineers months in advance of operations in order to supply the necessary power – or, crap that needs high tech solar panels to operate in the field because massive generators can’t be moved there.

Lack of ability to get water from their surroundings diminishes the relevance of the USMC.

Goulding, a retired marine, flew over the mountainous Kahukus Training Range twice in a helicopter during the exercise. “There is water everywhere in the Kahukus,” he pointed out, but the marines had to rely on drinking water supplied from the ship.

From backpacking, hiking and camping, I and each of my four children know how to purify water from our surroundings.  I and each of my four children know how to climb and rappel.  I and each of my four children know how to make decisions on the fly, not waiting on specific commands but relying on broad mission goals to guide our actions.  And only one among my four children is a Marine.

Long times to deploy troops diminishes the relevance of the USMC.  Reliance on the future needs for large scale amphibious assault landings diminishes the relevance of the USMC.  The overly expensive Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle diminishes the relevance of the USMC.

Let me tell you what ensures the relevance of the USMC.  Short notice deployments.  Pressing responsibility and authority down in the chain of command.  Making efficient and effective use of their surroundings.  Distributed operations.  And again, distributed operations, with reliance on chain of command pressed down in the organization.  Training exercises to make sure that the USCM is still capable of forcible entry without long deployments of MEUs assuming that such entry will be called upon against a near peer state.  Forcible entry based on another premise than AAV or EFV or LCACs, namely, air-based forcible entry and fast roping.  Landing behind the beach head, securing land, and then allowing the Navy to transport heavy equipment while the Marines fight.

Being called upon to secure people, free hostages, raid locations, kill enemy on short notice, and all other manner of short term operations, and being called upon to do this in lieu of SOCOM, and outside the SOCOM chain of command, which has now usurped the authority of the branch chains of command.  Less reliance on Force Recon and SOF and SOCOM.  Ensuring rifleman skills superior to those of the other branches.  At one time in our history, the USMC was the branch capable of projecting power – large and small – on foreign shores at a moment’s notice.  Now, SOCOM chain of command and SOF operators have taken this mantle.  Admit it.  It’s the truth.

The USMC can pound their chest and train for large scale forcible entry, go on large nine months MEUs where there is no enemy to engage and where the President doesn’t call on them to conduct operations, and the USMC can become irrelevant.  Or, the USMC can embrace a new vision, a vision other than that of 60-year-old large scale amphibious assault landings with water-borne craft susceptible to land-based rockets.

It’s up to them.  I think the Marines are more versatile and capable than the Army, and I choose the later.  Let’s see what the Marines choose.  They may be readying themselves for 21st century irrelevance.

Prior:

Will the USMC Become a Second Land Army?

The Best Way to Ensure That the Marines Become Irrelevant

The Future of the Marine Corps

G-RAMM, the EFV and the Fundamental Paradox of the Marine Corps Vision

Tony Perry, who has become one of the most significant war reporters in the MSM, gives us this report on the Marines in Sangin.  I must quote a significant amount of it, point you to the source article for the rest, and then I’ll make a few observations.

Marines tell of snipers who fire from “murder holes” cut into mud-walled compounds. Fighters who lie in wait in trenches dug around rough farmhouses clustered together for protection. Farmers who seem to tip the Taliban to the outsiders’ every movement – often with signals that sound like birdcalls.

When the Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, deployed to the Sangin district of Afghanistan’s Helmand province in late September, the British soldiers who preceded them warned the Americans that the Taliban would be waiting nearly everywhere for a chance to kill them.

But the Marines of the Three-Five, ordered to be more aggressive than the British, quickly learned that the Taliban wasn’t simply waiting.

In Sangin, the Taliban was coming after them.

In four years there, the British had lost more than 100 soldiers, about a third of all their country’s losses in the war.

In four months, 24 Marines with the Camp Pendleton-based Three-Five have been killed.

More than 140 others have been wounded, some of them catastrophically, losing limbs and the futures they had imagined for themselves.

The Marines’ families have been left devastated – or dreading the knock on the door.

“We are a broken-hearted but proud family,” Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly said. He spoke not only of the Three-Five: His son 1st Lt. Robert Kelly was killed leading a patrol in Sangin.

The Three-Five had drawn a daunting task: Push into areas where the British had not gone, areas where Taliban dominance was uncontested, areas where the opium poppy crop whose profits help fuel the insurgency is grown, areas where bomb makers lash together explosives to kill and terrorize in Sangin and neighboring Kandahar province.

The result? The battalion with the motto “Get Some” has been in more than 408 firefights and found 434 buried roadside bombs. An additional 122 bombs exploded before they could be discovered, in many instances killing or injuring Afghan civilians who travel the same roads as the Marines.

Some enlisted personnel believe that the Taliban have developed a “Vietnam-like” capability to pick off a platoon commander or a squad or team leader. A lieutenant assigned as a replacement for a downed colleague was shot in the neck on his first patrol.

At the confluence of two rivers in Helmand province in the country’s south, Sangin is a mix of rocky desert and stretches of farmland where corn and pomegranates are grown. There are rolling hills, groves of trees and crisscrossing canals. Farmers work their fields and children play on dusty paths.

“Sangin is one of the prettier places in Helmand, but that’s very deceiving,” said Sgt. Dean Davis, a Marine combat correspondent. “It’s a very dangerous place; it’s a danger you can feel.”

Three men arrived in Sangin last fall knowing they would face the fight of their lives.

1st Lt. John Chase Barghusen, 26, of Madison, Wis., had asked to be transferred to the Three-Five so he could return to Afghanistan.

Cpl. Derek Wyatt, 25, of Akron, Ohio, an infantry squad leader, was excited about the mission but worried about his wife, pregnant with their first child.

Lance Cpl. Juan Dominguez, 26, of Deming, N.M., an infantry “grunt,” had dreamed of going into combat as a Marine since he was barely out of grade school.

What happened to them in Sangin shows the price being paid for a campaign to cripple the Taliban in a key stronghold and help extricate America from a war now in its 10th year.

When Lance Cpl. Juan Dominguez slipped down a small embankment while out on patrol and landed on a buried bomb, the explosion could be heard for miles.

“It had to be a 30- to 40-pounder,” Dominguez said from his bed at the military hospital in Bethesda, Md. “I remember crying out for my mother and then crying out for morphine. I remember them putting my legs on top of me.”

His legs were severed above the knee, and his right arm was mangled and could not be saved. A Navy corpsman, risking sniper fire, rushed to Dominguez and stopped the bleeding. On the trip to the field hospital, Dominguez prayed.

“I figured this was God’s will, so I told him: ‘If you’re going to take me, take me now,’ ” he said.

His memories of Sangin are vivid. “The part we were in, it’s hell,” he said. “It makes your stomach turn. The poor families there, they get conned into helping the Taliban.”

Like many wounded Marines, Dominguez never saw a Taliban fighter. “We don’t know who we’re fighting over there, who’s friendly and who isn’t,” he said. “They’re always watching us. We’re basically fighting blind.”

His mother, Martha Dominguez, was at home the night of Oct. 23 when a Marine came to her door to tell her that her son had been gravely injured. She left her job right away and rushed to his bedside in Bethesda. She’s never been far away since.

When Dominguez’s father, Reynaldo, first visited the hospital, he was overcome by emotion and had to leave. “Mothers are stronger at times like this,” Martha Dominguez said.

Juan Dominguez has since been fitted with prosthetic legs and a “bionic” arm and is undergoing daily therapy at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He and his girlfriend have broken up.

“She wanted someone with legs,” his mother said.

When he’s discharged, Dominguez wants to return to Deming to be near his 8-year-old daughter, who lives with his ex-wife, and open a business painting and restoring cars.

But his immediate goal is to be at Camp Pendleton, in uniform and walking on his prosthetic legs, when the battalion returns in the spring.

By some accounts, no district in Afghanistan is outpacing Sangin in “kinetic activity,” military jargon for combat.

“Sangin is a straight-up slug match. No winning of hearts and minds. No enlightened counterinsurgency projects to win affections,” said Bing West, a Marine veteran who was an assistant secretary of Defense under President Reagan. “Instead, the goal is to kill the Taliban every day on every patrol. Force them to flee the Sangin Valley or die.”

Read the rest at the link.  This is a gripping tale of brave Marines in a fight for their lives.  Perry – whom I will always stop to read – sadly lists the Marines who have perished in this particular fight.

Kinetic activity is preceding reconstruction, as it must, but take note again of this important statement: Dominguez never saw a Taliban fighter. “We don’t know who we’re fighting over there, who’s friendly and who isn’t,” he said. “They’re always watching us. We’re basically fighting blind.”

I know that I have debated others over the notion of a large versus a small footprint in Afghanistan, and I have also agreed to the idea that the support to infantry ratio is far too high, in Afghanistan and everywhere else.  But if we’re losing men to unseen fighters, if we’re not in the homes of the folks, if we’re not setting in place roadblocks, if we’re not taking census, if we don’t know the people we are aiming to secure, and not seeing the enemy we are supposed to kill, then there simply aren’t enough Marines in Sangin.  Period.  Further debates are meaningless and irrelevant.

I’ve said it before, and it bears repeating.  When we waste time and resources throwing billions of dollars at wasteful MEUs for Marines to go to every port city in the Mediterranean and Israel to get falling down drunk, pretending that we are actually going to conduct large scale forcible entry on a near-peer state, while fellow Marines get their legs blown off in the Helmand Province, we have a moral problem.  No, not a morale problem – a moral problem.