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Administration Quits In Afghanistan. Blames Internet Video For Defeat.

By: streiff (Diary)  |  September 18th, 2012 at 02:55 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA


The one talent this Administration has, in spades, is the ability to completely corrupt anyone or anything it comes into contact with. Sadly, the US military is not immune from this talent.

I’ve posted twice (here | here) about chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey, wading into election year politics to aid the Administration.

Today we have another shameful episode.

We all know the difficulties being experienced by our troops in Afghanistan who are attempting to bring the Afghan army and national police up from a typical Third World thuggery to a reliable and effective defense force. This year there have been 32 separate attacks, about one per week thus far, and those attacks have accounted for 15% of all allied casualties in Afghanistan. It is a tough job but one that is indispensable to military and political success in Afghanistan.

Today the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF — and no it does not really mean “I Saw Americans Fight”) headed by USMC General John Allen released this totally untrue statement:

KABUL, Afghanistan (Sept. 18, 2012) — Recent media coverage regarding a change in ISAF’s model of Security Force Assistance (SFA) to the Afghan National Security Forces is not accurate. ISAF remains absolutely committed to partnering with, training, advising and assisting our ANSF counterparts. The ISAF SFA model is focused at the battalion level and above, with exceptions approved by senior commanders. Partnering occurs at all levels, from Platoon to Corps. This has not changed.

In response to elevated threat levels resulting from the “Innocence of Muslims” video, ISAF has taken some prudent, but temporary, measures to reduce our profile and vulnerability to civil disturbances or insider attacks. This means that in some local instances, operational tempo has been reduced, or force protection has been increased. These actions balance the tension of the recent video with force protection, while maintaining the momentum of the campaign.

We’ve done this before in other high tension periods, and it has worked well. Under this guidance, and as conditions change, we will continue to adapt the force posture and force protection. The SFA model is integral to the success of the ANSF, and ISAF will return to normal operations as soon as conditions warrant.

The fact is that ISAF suspended training only two weeks ago for exactly the same reason: attacks by inadequately screened recruits upon their trainers. This was an event that was widely reported at the time. Since 9/11/2012 there have been three attacks on NATO troops, one of which the Taliban claims was related to the film “Innocence of Muslims”. The odds of this being anything more substantial than a “claim” are slim in a neolithic pesthole like Afghanistan.

This release is a transparently disingenuous claim that is contradicted by the facts on the ground and history. The reason for the suspension of training is not some video, it is because the recruiting of Afghans is totally compromised and there is no meaningful counterintelligence structure in place to identify problematic candidates. That ISAF would claim this suspension of training is related to a film is nothing short of dishonest.

COMMENTS

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  • septembergurl

    The willingness of so many professionals to lie for Obama is indeed depressing. But what we have here is even worse, namely the collapse of Obama’s strategy for the US exit from Afghanistan. Premised as it is on transferring security responsibility from ISAF to Afghan military and police forces, success is dependent on training and working together. Without this training, the transition Obama’s strategy has planned is impossible, and so is an orderly withdrawal of US forces.

    Months ago the military people on the ground asked for more time to train the Afghan forces, telling Obama they would not be able to meet the deadline Obama set for the withdrawal of US forces when he approved the escalation in 2009. Obama well understands that if he extends the deadline, the so-called “antiwar movement”, which has been silent while Obama escalated US casualties in Afghanistan, targeted individuals for assassination and caused scores of civilian deaths, would begin ramping up again.

    In an election year? No chance.

    Incidentally, it appears as if last week’s bizarre attempt to shift blame for events in the ME from Obama to Romney has failed. In addition to the tracking polls showing Romney leading Ras and tied (which means leading) in Gallup, here is a bit from the NBC poll out tonite:

    shows approval (RVs) for O on foreign policy falling
    overall, 49 approve 46 disapprove. Down 5 points from 54 in previous poll.

    BUT among independents down 12 from previous(53) now 41approve.

    LSM: But romney said….but Romney’s gaffe….crickets…

  • tngal

    Damn celluloid, plastic discs, microchippies, bandwidth, or whatever videos are made of. These things simply propagate the idea of free speech which leads to the downfall of the collective. It is unsafe for those we strive to keep safe. We need to ban them in New York City now! Then in California just to be on the safe side. If they cause this much trouble in Afghanistan imagine the havoc to be created on our soil.

  • Dave_A

    Suspending training & joint patrols really IS quitting…

    Due to the rules laid down by the Afghan government – and because it really, really saps our effectiveness, US ‘regular’ (as opposed to ‘special’) forces can’t do anything operationally without local-national partners, other than move troops/supplies around & clear the roads of IEDs…

    Given that the good Afghans (and they DO exist) are usually our best hope for finding Taliban & the IEDs they plant… Even without the rules, our effectiveness drops without counterpart forces patrolling with us…

    Now, the infiltration issue is a serious one – not so much in terms of the enemy leadership themselves, but in terms of their underlings & servants (yes, that’s about the right term) which the culture dictates they are entitled to…

    Which is why the infiltrators are generally in these positions – lots of access, and no way to vet them (because it’s such a primitive culture, the idea of a ‘background check’ is a joke)…

    The problem is, if we give up the Taliban not just survive, but WIN.

    And we cannot let a regime that participated in a suprise attack on US civillians WIN.

    After all, the last regime that sucker-punched us got NUKED. Twice. And they only attacked legitimate military targets when they did it…

    We have a reputation to uphold here…

  • Dave_A

    Compared to what we’re capable of, the AFG war is pretty damn low-tech…

    No Abrams or Bradleys, no MLRS – hell, in many cases no 105mm towed guns (well, OK, they were allowed to fire illum missions (arty delivered flares) – but none of the good stuff)….

    Guys with rifles, backed up by 60mm mortars & armored trucks mounting 50cal & 7.62mm machine guns…

    Air support? Helo gunships, tactical fixed wing if you can get it (F-15s, F-16s, F-18s – we got A-10s once and almost got a B-1 another time & got to do post-strike patrol for an AC-130 another time)…

    That said… Our interpreters were trusted local-nationals… Trusted as in ‘they’d been doing this for most of the war’… We had 3 Afghan-American interpreters (contractors) – 2 females (more trouble than they were worth – we had to send one off base after her off-duty activities with male contractors got her marked-for-death by the ANA) and 1 dude (who was worth his weight in gold)…. But they generally didn’t patrol with us…

    Don’t know how they did it in ’71 – but I suspect it’s a ‘more things change, the more they stay the same’ sort of thing….

    HUMINT has never been an American strongpoint…

  • http://patriotpowerplay.blogspot.com/ mirac777

    “And we cannot let a regime that participated in a suprise attack on US civillians WIN.” Sure as heck looks like that is what happened in Syria. FYI: Our reputation is, and has been shot for many years as far as Afghanistan and Iraq are concerned, starting with the pansy-az ROE dictated by the beaurocrats posing as military leaders. Let the 3rd world 7th century freaks have their filthy rockpiles. Beef up our own shores, starting with the criminals invading our Southern border with the help of Obama, Holder and Napolitano.

  • http://patriotpowerplay.blogspot.com/ mirac777

    Excellent points. In looking at your list of what we refuse to use in the wars of today in the M/E, it brings me to one simple conclusion: Certain beaurocrats obviously don’t want to actually have to kill anyone in Afghanistan. Hard to win a war where you go out of your way to avoid killing the enemy. Wars have collateral damage, that’s a fact of life, and our troops are sacrificing their lives so that beaurocrats can say , “see we killed 1 bad guy and never killed a “civilian.” If we aren’t fighting the war to win it, get out! I don’t know how our troops can put up with the “enlightened” ROE over there today. Throw in the fact that our own State dept and the Obama administration are effectively arming our enemies. ( see aid to Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq)
    As far as HUMINT goes, we are fighting a war on their turf, which always puts us at a disadvantage as far as “eyes on the ground” go.

  • celador2

    Afghans have turned on Americans and killed dozens in security trainning long before this video trailer became an issue.

  • http://itsaboutliberty.com/index.php kralizec

    Yes, they have. The retreat/quiting has been in progress ever since Obama took it over. Remember, this was the only fight Duh Wun wanted to fight, Iraq was the great mistake. But ever since he took over the ROEs have gotten worse for victory and our troops, intelligence is all but non-existent and failure is all but assured. We should not allow one more American to die in Ashcanistan, we should pull out and put them on notice that bombardment from above awaits anyone leaving this sandbox or threatening us in any way and leave it at that.

  • usafe

    It’s the video, its the Arab Spring and what else? Just be honest and say O’Vomit has struck a deal with the Imams to surrender to them. now its just time before he can deliver America to the Muslims. No shots fired just Treason. Are We Blind or what? Its the first time America has been sold out by its so called President and we are liken it? Crap to we are gonna kick some butt in the upcoming election folks. Vote R/R

  • justperhaps45

    Failure was assured when nation building became the goal.

    Little people make tiny excuses from within their scope. A poorly made internet skit as a reason for a failure is not even up too, “The mail was late.”

  • dudley

    Bring them home!

  • grue

    It is a bad idea to allow terrorist acts to determine our policy. They should finish up the joint training as planned and get out of Afghanistan on schedule. Responding to these insider attacks by discontinuing the only effective form of training shows weakness. Why continue to use up US lives and dollars to help a country that clearly does not want our help? Time to get out and leave them to their internal religious strife.

  • arthurjake

    They don’t even bother to try to weed them out. Anyone who has ever been around recruitment and training around there can tell you that. The ISAF estimate(and I would probably say it is much lower than the real number) is 1 in 5 new recruits is former Taliban. It is just an excepted fact no one seems to care about or try to fix. Some even consider it sound logic to think that since the are now being payed the crap wages of an Afghan soldier they will all now suddenly love us as being there providers.

  • Viet71

    Dave_A — In 1970 and 71, I went to language school for 47 weeks and the Army intel school for 15 weeks. The language school was superb. The intel course was the basic officer’s C.I. course: quite good on C.I., pretty good on collection. Buddies of mine went through the collection (HUMINT) course. It was rigorous and very, very good. They had gone to language school also (German) and wound up running collection operations in Germany.

    In those days there was ELINT and SIGINT, but nothing like today. Back then, HUMINT was the primary means of tactical and strategic collection. Army and CIA activities overlapped quite a bit in on-the-ground collection activity.

    I read today that it is difficult to penetrate terrorist cells. AQ cells must have superb C.I. capabilities. Trying to penetrate them electronically may be the only realistic shot; but to me, the penetration failure speaks to over-reliance on technology and the under-reliance on good old-fashioned human intelligence gathering practice.

  • gizmo

    Pull the troops, pull the money, pull the help with infrastructure, refineries, etc. We ned to be done with these opium-doped goat herders. Let them fight themselves, Play their games of “Religion of Peace”. We need to leave the Middle East, except for our known allies – Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey – whom we need to lavish our help with. There might be another couple countries, too, but these I know right of the top of my head….

  • Dave_A

    My experience, in-re Taliban, was that at the tactical level the e-wizardry was near useless – they knew we had it, and knew we could hear their (unencrypted, walkie-talkie) radio comms with an old Bearcat police scanner… So they’d talk alot about attacking when they were NOT going to do something, and go silent when they were actually going to engage…

    The ones dumb enough to say anything that would get the e-spooks excited died years ago, the survivors (just like the surviving bomb-makers) know our bag of tricks too well…

    Our biggest successes came from patrolling, talking to people & finding out what’s going on in person…

    The other part is that this is about as foreign a culture as it gets (eg hard to penetrate/infiltrate), and like you said, the US intel community has fallen away from good-old-fashioned spying in the years since Vietnam.

    The way we treat our assets (like that doctor that helped us get Bin Laden, who’s now being left to rot in prison) doesn’t help much either…

  • Dave_A

    Sorry, but turning turtle just makes the eventual penetration hurt more…

    We thought we could ‘beef up our shores’ in the 20s and early 30s too…

  • Dave_A

    I seem to remember the logic being that the culture is so graft-laden and mercenary, that everyone is a ‘former’ something or another…

    Pay ‘em enough, they love you…

    Someone else pays ‘em more, they switch sides…

    I’d immagine it’s been that way since before the first caravan from India to Europe got hijacked going through those damn mountains…