Friday, July 03, 2009
As you are firing up the grill this 4th of July weekend, take a moment to pause and say a prayer for the safety of the men and women in harm's way protecting our way of life in hot spots around the globe. Even as we enjoy a relaxing weekend of food, fun and family, the Marines in Helmand province, Afghanistan are braving 130-degree temps,
mounting their largest ever push to tame the Taliban-infested dustbowl that covers the southern part of the country. On the first day of the operation one Marine was killed, a dozen wounded and there were fourteen heat casualties.
I've been asked how attacking feudal warlords in Afghanistan makes our country safer. Among other things, I answered, while the Taliban might be barbarians, they are being made to understand that attacking our country has consequences. These
child-killing cowards understand nothing but violence, and so that is the language with which our intrepid Marines communicate the wrath of the United States of America. And the Marines are good communicators. Just ask
Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Not politically correct, perhaps, but then Marines have never been known for being diplomatic, at least not in the pasty-faced-bureaucrat kind of way. At any rate, say a prayer for these young men who are at this moment enduring such misery and hardship in an attempt to finish this war. May their endeavors take us one step closer to the day when we will have chased those bent on our destruction back under the rocks from whence they came.
Monday, June 22, 2009
As Alexander the Great sought to conquer the area that is today Afghanistan, he wrote of his frustration at the intractibility of the local tribes he sought to conquer. His armies had made short work of all of Persia (Iran) in nine months, but described Afghanistan as a place, "where every foot of the ground is like a wall of steel, confronting my soldier." He would spend three entire years attempting to bring the region into submission, at a terrible cost of lives, troop morale and materiel, only barely succeeding in the end.
Two milennia later, the Russians had a similar experience. I don't bring this up to be fatalistic, however, about our own chances of bringing the Taliban to heel in Afghanistan. There are major differences with the current conflict and any that have gone before. First is that we aren't trying to conquer the country - only police up a band of sadistic cowards that is loose there. And we're not doing it alone - for all the famous corruption of the Afghan people, most of them support our efforts to rid their country of evil men.
My point is that this campaign will be won with a unique set of tactics that have evolved from our now-vast experience at counterinsurgency warfare. This is one reason Stanley McChrystal is the right man for the job - his extensive experience in the Special Operations community makes him uniquely qualified to deploy special men for special tasks that include direct action, human terrain mapping, civil affairs and counterinsurgency.
To make this work, though, we need more fighters on the ground. When I was in Afghanistan a year ago, only about a third of the total forces deployed there were combat troops. This meant we were trying to secure a vast, geograpically extreme country with about 12,000 warfighters.
We need huge numbers of special forces troops to see this thing through, a fact that is being recognized by top commanders at the pentagon. But there are two problems. First, it takes a long time to properly train a special operator and start to see some return on that investment. Secondly, for every special operations unit deployed, there must be a commensurate number of aviation, logistics and intelligence assets to back them up.
The commander of USSOCOM testified before congress to this end last week.
Navy Adm. Eric T. Olson told a Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee, "Investments in weapons platforms and technologies are sub-optimized if we fail to develop the people upon whom their effective employment depends."
Translation: It is people who will make the difference in this war - and we need more of them.
Let's hope the Commander in Chief is listening.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
A quick post for the "what's this country coming to" file...
First, some background: Last November, two small towns in northern California - Arcata and Eureka passed voter-approved measures that would restrict military recruitment activities within city limits. Specifically, recruiters are prohibited from having any contact with young people under the age of 18 in the course of their recruiting duties.
The measure was initiated by a former Arcata city councilman David Meserve. He gathered the over 1400 signatures that put the measure on the ballot. It apparently wasn't too difficult - In his city, the initiative passed by a vote of 73 percent.
There was a time in this country when three quarters of the population would have happily supported military recruiting. And while that may still be the case in many parts of our vast and diverse nation, much of California seems to be becoming more and more hostile to it.
In early 2008, the city of Berkley "invited" military recruiters to leave their city, and later that year the board of education in San Francisco tried to banish JROTC from their schools because of the military's stand on gays serving openly.
Now this. I called Mr. Meserve to ask him what led him to do such a thing in the first place. As he related a story about seeing a recruiter talking with three girls in a coffee shop and being angered by it, he told me that, while not a veteran himself, Mr. Meserve is a member of "Veterans for Peace," - a group of activist peaceniks best known for getting themselves arrested for disrupting congressional hearings (about 30 minutes in).
I listened as Mr. Meserve went on about the dangers of allowing recruiters access to anyone under 18, the duty of parents to safeguard their children, and the right of the individual states (counties, towns, etc) to legislate as they please.
But a severe contradiction struck me.
It came when Mr. Meserve pointed out that the United States ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which agreed to an optional protocol that obligated it not to "conscript or enlist children" or allow them to engage in armed conflict.
Which is true, except that as I read the protocol, it does not apply here because the U.S. military doesn't conscript anyone, and won't accept enlistments below the age of 18 without parental consent.
Maybe Arcata, Calif., reads it differently. But the contradiction I notice is that, on one hand they are asserting the "state's rights" argument, while on the other claiming that U.S. federal law should be subjugated to a body of policy formed by the United Nations.
Either way, it's not likely the initiative will stand up to legal challenges being brought by the U.S. government, though Mr. Meserve claims they will appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.
In my personal opinion, recruiters have one of the most difficult jobs in the military. My experience in and among the men and women of our Armed Forces has me convinced they are the most noble, honorable Americans I've ever known. They give the best years of their young lives to free the opressed and protect the vulnerable around the world.
Heaven forbid America's youth might be exposed to such selflessness, generosity and personal courage.
If the people of Arcata and Eureka, Calif. want to be free of the horrors of their children being exposed to military recruiters, perhaps they should consider moving approximately 700 miles north - to Canada.
There are no U.S. military recruiters there.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The Internet is all a-
Twitter today about the killing of a security guard by an elderly white-supremacist whacko at the Holocaust Museum yesterday in DC. The
blogosphere and even
mainstream news outlets are somehow contorting this tragedy into a vindication of the
recent report by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security. The report warned that
“The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”
Not surprisingly, this report
deeply offended many veterans. (And after a great public outcry, Napolitano
apologized.) Now, to hear major news outlets claiming yesterday's shooting vindicates the report, because the shooter was a veteran of WWII is doubly offensive. Especially considering that the killer claimed to have "fought for the wrong side" in the war and held many other opinions that are directly contrary to what this country stands for.
Vindication? I don't think so.
Hatred is hatred, whatever it's political color or motivation. Playing political football with deranged killers does no honor to our heroes - men like Holocaust museum security guard
Stephen T. Johns. Nor does it honor the sacrifice and selfless service of our men and women in uniform.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
I was recently in London for CBN and was privileged to have tea with Major General Tim Cross, a recently retired British military officer and outspoken follower of Jesus Christ. We spoke about a wide range of subjects, from the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to General Cross's personal faith journey.
Click play to watch, or read our conversation transcribed below. The General had some very powerful things to say about the importance of winning on the MORAL battlefield as well as the physical one.
CHUCK: Give us a synopsis of your military service record.
TIM CROSS: I was born in UK in 1951 and being a soldier’s all I wanted to do. So I tried to join the army when I was about fourteen and I was told, “Go away and come back when I was a little bit older.”
So I joined the Army Cadets in 1964, went to the Royal Academy in Sandhurst in 1969 – which was a two-year course and was commissioned in 1971. So commissioned service from 1971-2007. Served in Northern Ireland, served with the United Nations in Cypress, served in the first Gulf War, three tours in the Balkans and served in Iraq in 2002-2003.
CHUCK: What was your experience in Iraq?
TC: I went to Iraq for the first time in 1991 after the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, British first Army Division. Iraq 1990-91, with the First British Army division…[W]e took part in the move into Iraq and the liberation of Kuwait.
And then all through those intervening years, of course, Iraq was bubbling along really. The decision not to go on and get rid of Saddam and so forth, I think was the right one at the time for various reasons, but of course we then had to re-live the whole thing back in 2002-2003.
And in 2002 I was the logistic component commander for the British forces that were going to go into Iraq. [I] was asked to go to Washington to join the office of post-war planning that had been established under a presidential directive, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
CHUCK: Now I understand you’ve been somewhat critical of the execution of the war but what’s your feeling about the decision to invade Iraq to begin with.
TC: I have no problem with having to deal with Saddam Hussein, and I think the way the military campaign was conducted was exemplary – very good planning within CENTCOM and within the UK about how we were going to conduct the operations.
My baggage, in a sense is that I… was very keen that we thought through carefully the postwar aspects of what we were going to do once the military campaign was over. And I think it’s now very public knowledge that that was not well handled. It was not well thought through, it was not well executed. And we lived with the consequences of that.
CHUCK: When the awakening began and things started to turn around there do you think that happened in spite of us or because of us?
TC: Well I think there’s an element of in spite of us but I think to be fair, these campaigns are always difficult… Healing takes a long time. And democracy does not emerge quickly. It’s a generational business, it’s as much a way of thought as anything else. So to have expected Iraq to emerge as a thriving democracy in anything else, frankly, than even twenty or thirty years I think is not sensible.
CHUCK: That doesn’t work very well with our sound-byte culture.
TC: It doesn’t. Same applies to Afghanistan. Afghanistan is going to take a long time and Afghanistan is not like Iraq. Iraq has a basically strong economic foundation with a lot of very intelligent, well-educated people – middle-class, working-class and so on.
CHUCK: It’s a modern country.
TC: [And] I think it’s been well said that Afghanistan is Middle-Ages England with mobile phones.
CHUCK: Indeed. So tell me a little bit about your faith journey.
TC: I was raised in a, I suppose, typical middle-class family, very happy childhood. But we were not a church-going family particularly, although I did go to church occasionally and Sunday school and so forth.
When I was married in 1972, my wife and I had a church wedding which was unusual really, we both thought that we wanted to do that.
But the turning point for me was serving in the United Nations in Cypress in 1981 and as part of that tour, Christy - my wife - and I went to Jerusalem. And we went over the Easter weekend, went to Jerusalem over the Easter weekend in 1981, and spent some time in the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem on Easter Sunday, which happened to be my thirtieth birthday. And we were shown around the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem by a retired British Army officer.
And I think men need men to look them in the eye and to challenge them and be quite forceful with them. And this man, whose name was Dobbie, took me around the garden tomb and…at the end of the tour he said, having read through the scriptures, talked about this, he said, “Look, all of this is interesting, quite important in some respects. But actually the key issue is, you go and look in that tomb, it’s empty and that’s the decisive point in history. And if you accept that, you cannot allow your life to stay the same. And if you don’t accept it, you need to understand the consequences of it.”
And, feeling a little foolish, I walked across the garden to look inside this first century tomb which, not surprisingly was empty.
But as I stood at the door of the tomb and looked in I thought, “He’s right. This is important,”
So that year, I gave my life to Christ.
CHUCK: Tell me real quickly how you worked out your faith in the course of your career, you know, brought it to work with you.
TC: The moral component of fighting power is about leadership, it’s about ethics, it’s about culture, it’s about how do you get people to fight and embedded within that is an element of justice and righteousness. [I]f you lose the moral component, you lose everything.
I think we – collectively in the West – have gone through 30 - 40 years really of pretending that this moral component is not important, and that I don’t need to have a biblical foundation in my life. And I challenge that.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Earlier this month, Afghan military forces were attacked while on patrol by Taliban elements who had set up shop in a nearby village. After hours of fighting, the Afghan forces requested backup from the US, who, after identifying the main buildings from which the fire was originating, dropped some precision-guided munitions on those buildings.
In the media circus that followed, claims were made that over 100 civilians - mostly women and children, had been killed. This prompted calls from the Afghan government to further limit U.S. offensive rules of engagement.
After a thorough investigation, however, the
U.S. is disputing the numbers, saying that of nearly 100 killed, only about twenty were civilians.
Why the disparity? It's important to understand how things work in the war zone. When word gets out that Uncle Sam pays reparations for collateral damage, suddenly everyone has some sort of damage. When I was on patrol with the Marines in Helmand province, we would often have locals approach us with crudely written notes, which they claimed had been written by an unnamed U.S. Marine officer, saying things like "This man house bombed Ameriki pay damage him." Obviously, these were crude forgeries, and caused much mirth on the part of the Marines, but it was clear the Afghans know that if they can prove damage by U.S. forces, they can get paid.
And that's part of what's behind the inflated numbers of civilian deaths in Afghanistan - gleefully reported by most Mainstream media outlets as fact. Afghans are really no different than many of our own countrymen, who, upon realizing that Uncle Sam turns to "Uncle Sugar" whenever something bad happens, are quick to run, hat-in-hand to the nearest U.S. government representative to demand "reparations."
Keep that in mind whenever you hear about the U.S. wantonly bombing women and children. I can say from experience - the courageous Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Guardsmen and Marines who put their lives on the line for the Afghan people go out of their way to avoid hurting people who aren't trying to kill them, often at great peril to their own lives.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
in August, 2008, I spent a week with the special forces on the Afghan border with Pakistan. At that time, it was definitely a wild and wooly place - with the sound of gunfire almost certainly to wake you during the night. The brave green berets near Chamkani were doing a great job of mapping the human terrain.
Now, according to reports coming from the border, the violence has increased in areas where the Taliban are used to smuggling their weapons and drugs across the frontier. And since we're still too polite to actually put boots on the ground inside Pakistan, our outposts along the border are being regularly attacked with large numbers of bad guys. And while frequently outnumbered, our forces are holding their own.
I hope to make a return trip to Afghanistan this year, and when I do, I'll make sure to get out to the border area and report on the situation there. In the meantime, say a prayer for the brave men who stand on the wall every night along the Af/Pak border.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Today's shocking story about a U.S. soldier in Iraq
killing five of his comrades is the kind of headline news the media will whip into a merengue. But let me give you some context in which to understand what happened.
Iraq may still qualify as a combat zone, but
camp Liberty does not. It is really a large U.S. base like Fort Bragg or Fort Benning, only in Iraq, actually the largest U.S. base outside our shores. It has movie theaters, shopping centers, fast food restaurants, sports arenas, chapels, sidewalk cafes and lots and lots of gymnasiums. With well over 20,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and government contractors in residence, as well as troops from a passel of coalition countries, this enormous base is really a small city. But the culture of this city is quite different from any in the US. First of all, everyone is armed. This, along with the courtesy inherent in military culture means that it's a very polite place. Crime is very, very low - due partly to the fact that there is no alcohol and housing and food are free. The photo at left is a gospel choir practicing one night on camp Victory the last time I was there.
There are no elderly people. No children. Everyone is, by and large, young, fit and athletic. And therein lies the rub. It's easy to get bored if you aren't careful. And boredom, to paraphrase a proverb, is the devil's playground.
Most of the people on Camp Liberty rarely leave the base. These are, for the most part, support personnell, what we used to call "Fobbits." Other than the occasional mortar round lobbed over the wall by pesky insurgents, life on Camp Liberty is probably safer than it is back at home.
But one thing makes service here much worse than service at a stateside base. It's that Iraq is so far from loved ones, weekend passes and all the other things that make life in the military tolerable. No matter how nice the accomodations, being away from family is very, very hard. So our men and women in uniform develop coping mechanisms - they work, on average, fifteen hours a day, for example. They work out religiously. They go to "Latin night" and "hip-hop night" at the MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) building. They watch hundreds of movies and play hours of X-box, Playstation, etcetera. They stand in line to use the internet so they can call home or chat with friends on facebook.
But sometimes, these distractions aren't enough to assuage the loneliness of separation, the long work hours, and the stress inherent in a harsh environment.
But as the media beats this story like a rented mule, keep in mind that over a million men and women have cycled through overseas deployments since 2001, and this is only the fifth such incident.
I don't know what demons this deranged soldier was dealing with. If I had to guess, I'd say it had something to do with a woman. Whatever it is, it's probably not worth the hand-wringing, calls for action and grandstanding that it will create.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Credit where it's due: Kudos to President Obama for allowing the military to use force to end the ordeal of Captain Richard Phillips in the waters off the Somali coast. It was the right thing to do, period. It will be interesting to see what he does about the other U.S. vessel that was recently hijacked - only the second U.S. vessel to suffer such indignity since 1866.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Good news today from Fox News. Apparently the war is over. Nothing more to see here.