Another Afghan soldier has shot and wounded five US soldiers in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, in the latest sign that the training mission in Afghanistan is an utter failure.
The attack took place at a NATI base in Wardak province, east of Kabul. The NATO officials called these “green-on-blue” attacks, where Afghans in the police or army attack their supposedly allied international forces. More than 20 foreign personnel have been killed in such shootings in Afghanistan this year.
One of the central aspects of the US mission in Afghanistan is to build up a government and corresponding security forces in order to fight off a return to the Taliban after US forces are drawn down after more than eleven years of war. But Afghan forces are either openly hostile to NATO forces, or they’re too incompetent to operation alone.
The bulwark against a return to Taliban rule, we are told by the Obama administration, is continuing to support, arm, and train the Afghan security forces. But as a former US official told Dexter Filkins in a recent New Yorker piece, “several hundred soldiers in the Afghan Army are thought to be agents for the Taliban or for Pakistan.”
He “said that the killers of some of the twenty-two coalition soldiers who died this year while training Afghan forces had been planted in the Army by the Taliban or by Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s main intelligence branch.” Those that aren’t Taliban are weak and ineffectual.
“I cannot count on the Army or the police here,” Abdul Nashir said. “The police and most of the soldiers are cowards. They cannot fight.”
'Rogue' soldiers ??? They belong to the Afghan resistance,defending their country against foreign invaders. They are Patriot soldiers. !!
Thank God we have Mr. Lind back within our fold here at AW.com…. especially his ability to debunk administration lies, propaganda and absurd contentions.. in matters military….The Vietnam parallels come to mind as the wars seem to expand out and out… Remember Laos and Cambodia [ Somalia… Yemen…??? ] and the secret bombing of those places……….. Remember “Vietnamization”…??
“Vietnamization” [It was] A plan to encourage the South Vietnamese to take more responsibility for fighting the war. It was hoped that this policy would eventually enable the United States to withdraw gradually all their soldiers from Vietnam. It sought increase the size of the ARVN, A mobilisation law was passed that called up into the army all men in South Vietnam aged between seventeen and forty-three"]
Trying to run a puppet lead (occupation) army of conscripted natives may look good on paper and is a winner politically, but there are peer dynamics which make such policies unwerkable and even dangerous….
It is a telling decision, that our leaders turn to the same solution they attempted unsuccessfully to rescue their ultimate failure and loss in their Vietnam debacle-cum-rout. Mr. Lind points out the [operational?] liabilities of “Afghanization” but just think what sort of intellectual fecklessness it illustrates… to even contemplate the exact same policy that cost so us so dearly in our last big military disaster.. Is it that America can’t learn from the past..??
As our government enacts ever expanding utilization of the military to any and all aspects of life at home and throughout the entire world…. we need the expertise and especially historical insight of the results such policies have rendered for us here in America and abroad… We need william S Lind!!
SEE: Unfriendly Fire http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/u…
How the Taliban mastered the operational art of modern war
By William S. Lind • June 27, 2012
Here are a few excerps:
"What passes for NATO’s strategy is to train sufficient Afghan forces to hold off the Taliban once we pull out. The Taliban’s response has been to have men in Afghan uniform— many of whom actually are Afghan government soldiers or police—turn their guns on their NATO advisers. That is a fatal blow against our strategy because it makes the training mission impossible. Behold operational art in Fourth Generation war."
"The Taliban know this technique is operational, not just tactical. They can be expected to put all their effort into it. What counter do we have? Just order our troops to pretend it is not happening—to keep trusting their Afghan counterparts. That order, if enforced, will put our soldiers in such an untenable position that morale will collapse."
"The greatest intellectual challenge in Fourth Generation war—war against opponents that are not states—is how to fight it at the operational level. NATO in Afghanistan, like the Soviets three decades ago, has been unable to solve that riddle. But the Taliban appears to have done so."
"So powerful is this taste of Taliban operational art that Washington may fear the example it sets. During a recent visit by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to Afghanistan, no American soldiers were allowed to get near him with loaded weapons. Might the Pentagon be worried that our own troops could learn from the Taliban? Were I an American soldier who had been told to hand over or unload his weapon before approaching Secretary Panetta, I would certainly have read it that way."
Afghanistan is and always was a money pit……….. but more and more it's also a death trap…!!!
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Afghans never invited the U.S.
Maybe it's time we get out of there and leave them alone. Did someone actually thing the Afghans were going to be best buddies with their Occupiers?
Think how this must delight Zawiri. The US is destroying itself — financially, morally, by wiping the collective American ass on the constitution, by coddling torturers and torturing whisleblowers. If this was not such a vile, insatiably violent and sadistic country, its incompetence would be almost touching.
"…in the latest sign that the training mission in Afghanistan is an utter failure." This doesn´t indicate that the training mission is a failure or success – the Afghans are trained and then they decide how to apply that training.
It is indeed a sign that the political decision to invade and occupy Afghanistan is an utter failure.
“The police and most of the soldiers are cowards. They cannot fight.”
Not so, for a natural instinct compels us men to do or die for our family. For a rich nobility dictatorship in Afghanistan strives to enslave the people, the Taliban are perceived to have a better way and to better save their families the men are going that way.
I Remember the day when i heard that NATO attacked Afghanistan, my first thought was.
What a big mistake.
Having had an "up close and personal" sidelines view of the inner workings of MACV Saigon, it was obvious to those sitting at the table that the Pentagon's “Vietnamization” policy was not working and would never work. But, it was a career ender to admit that then…just as it probably is now to admit that the effort to create an armed force from people who do not want us there – regardless of good intentions.
How much longer will the Pentagon continue to play games with our soldiers lives? And they wonder why morale is low and getting lower and the suicide rate rising to never before seen levels. For what? To save face? Really?
the thrill is gone
How much of a failure is it, really? It seems that these guys are hitting what they shoot at. The Iraq resistance added some new, deadly and very effective tactics to the art of resistance warfare. Those tactics have been adopted by other resistance forces. The 22 killed (this year), by what is becoming clear as an Afghan response, and the unreported greater number of seriously wounded, have a far greater effect than their numbers; and the whole world is watching. Yankee go home.
Looks like from now on the US/NATO forces will have to fight Afghan police and military instead of breaking down house doors, attacking funeral/matrimonial ceremonies and killing civilians.
Cheering the death of US soldiers? You people sicken me.
Why?
We are not cheering the death of US soldiers simply for the sake of doing it. Whether they realize it or not, they are not the good guys. The US military is being used by the criminal regime in Washington D.C. to invade, occupy and fight crinimal, illegal wars of aggression for the Zionists in countries they have no business being in, instead of protecting our own borders. And the fact US military personnel blindly follow unlawful and illegal orders from their criminal superiors makes them guilty by default and the enemies of free people. There is no draft–they voluntarily signed up for this criminality, murder and mayhem. And these same troops "defending our freedom" will be the same ones who will turn their weapons on us and haul us off to FEMA camps in the not-too-distant future.