The Dirt View
Bowe Bergdahl witnessed a careless manslaughter in 2009. The killing of a child.
And then that killing was covered up by the officers in his Army unit: no report to Army Inspector General, no unit prosecution, no detention or reduction in pay grade, no punishment whatsoever for the MRAP driver who crushed the child.
Call them "wogs." Call them "towel heads." Talk of putting boots up their asses. Their lives don't matter. And that after General McChrystal committed U.S. forces to defending these villagers, first priority.
"I am ashamed to even be american. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting."
-- Bowe Bergdahl
Bowe Bergdahl was raised as a devout Christian, a Calvinist, a follower of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Mary, Lord of Lords, Messiah, Wonderful. As a Christian he refused to accept hateful delusions.
His last email to his parents made clear that his U.S. Army unit suffered a failure of leadership. This failure extended to support for an aggressive hatred of the local Afghan people.
It might as well have been Water Street in Manhattan in January, 2008. That's where a Wall Street CEO ran down Florence Cioffi, an office worker trying to hail a cab. He was recorded on video going 60 m.p.h. on that city street and kept going and was DUI and suffered not a whole lot more punishment than a strong talking-to. Nothing unusual.
The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime images the Pentagon tried to censor (2011)
Value for an Afghan life: close to zero. (Same as for Flo.) Unit comments ran to derision toward the victim's parents and the village.
Operation Enduring Freedom
Officially, of course, all was well in Afghanistan. President Obama approved the 2009 "Surge" with Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine at its heart. Protecting villages, as implemented and written up during the Vietnam War by Colonel William R. Corson, USMC, had been rediscovered. Corson's approach was simplified and then codified in 2006 as The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual ("FM 3-24.")
This manual stresses "hearts and minds" civic action programs. Unfortunately, COIN doctrine relies on an extreme confidence, bordering on fantasy, that asserts excellence in military leadership at all levels of engagement. Indeed COIN FM 3-24 worked to beat the band as a new language and a world view for our utterly narcissistic generals.
Further down the line, at the dirt view, things worked out differently.
Leadership failed to lead with humanity, as with Bergdahl's unit, and the indigenous population suffered uncontrolled, randomly deadly conflict. In Vietnam similar failures contributed to killing 2,600,000 people according to the U.S. Army history of that war. Iraq has produced 1,961,000 total extra deaths. "Peace Through Superior Firepower" and"Mission Accomplished" and "The Surge" don't cut it.
"Get 'em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow" eased back to center stage carrying its lower-end racial hatreds. The statement also reflects a default world view common with American males: you can brutalize people into doing what you want. Hatred can drive everything.
Bowe Bergdahl's emails to his parents detail his units' officers' rejection of COIN, FM 3-24, and the elements of Corson's and his Marines' willingness to fight for their villagers. These rejections extended to COIN critical success factors, for example: language skills, tracking/backtracking tactics, dog teams, comm gear for villagers, working with elders. Bergdahl was unique working to learn Dari (Kabuli Persian), Pashto, and Arabic; he was not a fit to the prevailing incompetence.
Bergdahl's unit rejected acquiring skills. What they went with was hatred. And fear.
Go below the orange doodad for what Bowe Bergdahl tells us about his unit and how things were going in Afghanistan when President Obama came to office. It's a snap shot of the war in 2009.
This is useful, today, the better to appreciate the change in 2011/2012 when Hamid Karzai finally received independent resources from President Obama. He built up a multi-tribal multi-level national army. That is the Afghan way. It worked.
The U.S. had failed with Stanley McChrystal's take on COIN. Contrary to the rivers of calumny our American press dumps on Karzai, he was the one who understood how to beat the Taliban. And he did it.
The U.S. fielded 80,000 troops, took 21,000 casualties, and killing tens of thousands of so-called "Taliban." American accomplishments proved transient and/or illusory. No one should be surprised at our failure: look at the map. Afghanistan is the size of Texas and they have going on 30,000,000 people. Based on Corson's work in the 1960s and FM 3-24, calculations show that we would have needed 1,000,000 troops in-country to implement COIN. The project would have taken 5 years.
With 80,000 troops and trashing the Afghans, our Afghanistan war was a fool's mission. Bowe Bergdahl saw the worst of it.
Then finally Hamid Karzai and his team took over less than 5% of the annual budget, negotiated deals with the Loya Jirga tribal leaders, put 450,000 locals in play, and pulled us out of the fire. Taliban is deadly, but no longer a threat to overthrow the government. There's also a working cap on the poppy/heroin trade -- another story for another day.
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