BUB: Afghanistan

This afternoon's Battle Update Briefing focuses on Afghanistan


In case you get the hankering to watch official video from Afghanistan, ISAF has their own channel
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The US military is looking to build a modern-day foreign-area service specialist, and it's not really catching on with the troops. After all, why sideline your career in a new, untested field, when you know the current paths to promotion are already laid out before you if you follow the right dance steps?

The military’s effort to build a seasoned corps of expert officers for the Afghan war, one of the highest priorities of top commanders, is off to a slow start, with too few volunteers and a high-level warning to the armed services to steer better candidates into the program, according to some senior officers and participants.

The point of it is admirable, as it addresses a key problem: continuity in theater.

The groundbreaking program is meant to address concerns that the fight in Afghanistan has been hampered by a lack of continuity and expertise in the region among military personnel. But some officers have been reluctant to sign up for an unconventional career path because they fear it will hurt their advancement — a perception that top military leaders are trying to dispel as they tailor new policies for the complex task of taking on resilient insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Each military branch has established career paths, and the type of focus envisioned by the program would take people off those routes.

The difficulties with the program came to light when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, in an unusual rebuke within the Pentagon’s uppermost circle, chided the chiefs of the four armed services three weeks ago for not always providing the best people.

The program — which is expected to create a 912-member corps of mostly officers and enlisted service members who will work on Afghanistan and Pakistan issues for up to five years — was announced with much fanfare last fall. So far, 172 have signed up, and Admiral Mullen has questioned whether all of them are right for such a critical job.

The initiative was championed by Admiral Mullen and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior commander in Afghanistan. It is intended not only to bolster the war effort, but also to signal a long-term strategic partnership with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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There are challenges in Afghanistan with implementing GEN McChrystal's guidance on how to fight the war, as the soldiers of 5-2 SBCT will attest.

Soldiers in 1-17 say that while the battalion’s junior leaders have embraced these principles, Neumann and Tunnell — whose brigade’s motto is “Strike — Destroy” — have not. “There’s definitely a disconnect between the platoon and company level and the battalion and brigade level,” said a Charlie Company soldier in a leadership position, who requested he remain anonymous.

“McChrystal’s guidance is very clear on its population focus,” said another junior leader.

But 1-17 soldiers thought that focus was missing from their operations. “When we first started operations, we were told we were going to stay enemy-focused,” said Capt. Jon Burton, an assistant fire support officer who is also 1-17’s civil-military and information operations officer co-located with Charlie Company. “That came from brigade.”

“That has absolutely been the message that’s been delivered from higher,” agreed Turnblom, the Charlie Company fire support officer.

In fact, it seems as though the brigade leadership make be outright ignoring the guidance from on high.

”We have done absolutely nothing as a company to improve the quality of life for the average Afghan living in the central Arghandab Valley,” Sanders said. “What we’re doing is not working, and we need to go on a different tack.” Asked what that tack should be, Sanders replied: “Basic counter-insurgency — give them a better option than Islamic extremism.”

That is the prevalent view in Charlie Company.

“The ‘clear, hold, build’ thing that we’re supposed to be doing ... we’re not doing that,” Hughes said. “If any commander in this brigade goes to sleep at night thinking after we’ve walked through that orchard over there that it’s clear, he’s a f------ idiot.”

Hughes added a comment that could have been taken straight from McChrystal’s guidance: “The non-kinetic side of the house is what wins counterinsurgency, not attrition.”

It'll be interesting to see how much retribution the soldiers in this article suffer as a result of allowing themselves to be quoted. I've corresponded with the author a few times, and he's a solid, quality, experienced military journalist who is not chasing headlines by trying to manufacture controversy.
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And all those civilian casualties in Afghanistan? Maybe someone should start protesting AQ blowing their own people to the great beyond.

Few would deny that Muslims too are victims of Islamist terror. But a new study by the Combating Terrorism Center in the US has shown that an overwhelming majority of al-Qaida victims are, in fact, co-religionists.

In the battle against unbelievers, can one also kill Muslims? Even the terror network al-Qaida is troubled by this question.

A leading al-Qaida ideologue for the terror network, Abu Yahya al-Libi, has developed his own theologically-based theory of collateral damage that allows militants to kill Muslims when it is unavoidable.
Even the Iraqi affiliates of Osama bin Laden's terror group, who are known to be particularly bloodthirsty, claim that they too consider this question. For instance, in a message claiming responsibility for an August attack in Baghdad, the group wished those Sunnis injured in the "operation" a speedy recovery and expressed their hope that those killed would be accepted by God as "martyrs."

But even as such apologetic communiqués from al-Qaida show the terror network stylizing itself as a defender of the true faith wrestling with religious concepts, they also make it look as though any dead Muslims are regretful but isolated cases. The facts, though, tell a different story.

Between 2004 and 2008, for example, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for 313 attacks, resulting in the deaths of 3,010 people. And even though these attacks include terrorist incidents in the West -- in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 -- only 12 percent of those killed (371 deaths) were Westerners.

By: Brant