McClatchy’s Jonathan S. Landay definitely earned his paycheck yesterday. And we almost lost one of our very best reporters in an Afghanistan ambush that left four U.S. Marines and several Afghan forces dead. The whole thing went down in a remote mountain village about six miles from the Pakistan border. As battle reporting goes, Landay’s article is riveting. He’s definitely lucky to be alive and unwounded. Apparently, their little platoon had to wait an hour for aircover because of skittishness about creating civilian casualties. I don’t know when the Marines got killed. It could have been in the initial fusillade. But, the delay in dispatching helicopters definitely didn’t help. It sounds like we need to make sure these patrols are equipped with smoke artillery, too, because calling down Willy Pete (White Phosphorus) rounds for cover seems less than ideal.
This was supposed to be a weapons sweep and an effort to bring the village under the control of the national and local government. It’s unclear precisely what went wrong.
A full moon was drenching the mountains in ghostly light as some 60 Afghan soldiers, 20 border police officers, 13 Marine and U.S. Army trainers and I set out for Ganjgal at 3 a.m. from the U.S. base in the Shakani District.
The operation, proposed by the Afghan army and refined by the U.S. trainers, called for the Afghans to search Ganjgal for weapons and hold a meeting with the elders to discuss the establishment of police patrols. The elders had insisted that Afghans perform the sweep. The Americans were there to give advice and call for air and artillery support if required.
Whether or not Americans are part of this effort, establishing control of this area of Afghanistan appears to be next to impossible. Yet, without air cover, the whole force would probably have been wiped out. We really need to set our expectations and goals pretty low. We’re spending a lot of money and losing quite a few soldiers, and I think we need to avoid doing this for unrealistic purposes.
I’ll be very interested to watch the congressional hearings on Afghanistan that are coming up. I want to see something resembling sanity in our strategy.
Juan Cole’s interesting overview from last week- the Karzai sitution is making things much worse
The only sane strategy is to leave, & to leave now.
It’s unclear precisely what went wrong.
What went wrong isn’t unclear nor imprecise in the slightest. A nation has invaded another nation with hostile troops, installed one of their own citizens as that country’s “elected” leader and is attempting to override local customs, traditions and coerce submission from the people.
Why is this such a mystery? If this was a news report from 1986 about Soviet troops getting ambushed there wouldn’t be anything “unclear” about it in the slightest!
Pax
I won’t get obscene, but just what would “sanity” re our invasion of Afghanistan look like to you?
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It’s been clear to me from the many casualties and the circumstances during the past year in Afghanistan, most military assets have been pulled out. Flying AWACs, A-10 Thunderbolt, Apache helicopters, F-16 fighter support have been lacking or had taken too much time to be engaged in battle when the Special Forces had requested assistance. Result is unnecessary loss of valuable life of our men and women performing an impossible mission.
The region south of Khandahar to Pakistani border and north-east to Khost and Jalalabad have been cleared of most Al Qaeda and Taliban troops. The even more rugged area beyond Jalalabad is where the US Special Forces went missing and the Chinook heli was shot down.
Contrary to the ArmyTimes.com report, I understood that in the rescue mission allied forces were involved, without further specifics given in the news item.
Asadabad is located in the northeastern province of Kunar. It is a mountainous region, and Asadabad is about five miles from the Pakistani border.
Ganjgal is 5 mi. due south from Asadabadin mountainous terrain (GlobalSecurity)
PS It is in this remote part of Af-Pak where the Al-Qaeda leadership is hiding. No doubt where the loyalty of the villagers lies. The overwhelming fire power could just as well have been fully trained foreign fighters (Arabs).
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."white phosphorous “less than ideal” ??? more like barbaric
It’s barbaric if it used on people, but it is commonly used as a flare or for concealment. Because it is so barbaric when it is used on people, it’s use on the battlefield for any purpose is less than ideal.
Hi Manny,
Here`s what “barbaric” looks like.
I did this one after the “Whiskey Pete” saturation in the Falouja attack