Sgt. William Olas Bee, a U.S. Marine from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, has a close call after Taliban fighters opened fire near Garmser in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, May 18, 2008. Sgt. Bee was not injured.
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
2008’s Battle of Wanat, in which 9 American soldiers were killed, is still being investigated (with Jonathan Bostrom’s father pressing for an independent investigation); and being used as a lesson template in how not to win in Afghanistan.
The calamity and its roots have been described in bitter, painstaking detail in an unreleased Army history, a devastating narrative that has begun to circulate in an initial form even as the military opened a formal review this week of decisions made up and down the chain of command.
The 248-page draft history, obtained by The New York Times, helps explain why the new commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is pressing so hard for a full-fledged commitment to a style of counterinsurgency that rests on winning over the people of Afghanistan even more than killing militants. The military has already incorporated lessons from the battle in the new doctrine for war in Afghanistan.
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The author, the military historian Douglas R. Cubbison, also included a series of criticisms in his review, sponsored by the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., that laid blame on a series of decisions made before the battle.The draft report criticized the “lack of adequate preparation time” before arriving in Afghanistan, which meant there was little training geared specifically for Afghanistan, and not even a detailed operational plan for the year of combat that lay ahead.
Pentagon and military officials say those initial criticisms are being revised to reflect subsequent interviews with other soldiers and officers who were at Wanat or who served in higher-level command positions. After a round of revisions, the study will go through a formal peer-review process and be published.
The battle stands as proof that the United States is facing off against a far more sophisticated adversary in Afghanistan today, one that can fight anonymously with roadside bombs or stealthily with kidnappings — but also can operate like a disciplined armed force using well-rehearsed small-unit tactics to challenge the American military for dominance on the conventional battlefield.
Official judgment on whether errors were made by the unit on the ground or by any leaders up the chain of command will be determined by a new investigation opened this week by Gen. David H. Petraeus of United States Central Command at the urging of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The call for such an independent review came from family members of the fallen, including David P. Brostrom, father of the slain platoon commander and himself a retired Army colonel, as well as from a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia.
The history is replete with wrong turns at every point of the unit’s mission, starting with the day it was reassigned to Afghanistan from training for Iraq.
Further reads:
Captain’s Journal
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
It sickens me that our troops are in harm’s way and Obama is more concerned about where the 2016 Olympics will be held!
I’m surprised there still is no end game plan in Afghanistan. Even the most creative plan calls for the creation of so many Afghanistan police and troops, but the number listed is much more than Afghanistan can afford on its own. Talks with the Taliban have also been requestion by not only European forces, but the Afghanistan natives even though past talks have been a disaster.
There are models of government that could be used. One is the city state model based on ancient Greece. We all learned that ancient Greece was a Democracy. We also learned that ancient Greece could take on more powerful outside forces, at least until it got corrupt. What is less talked about is that they fought among themselves such as the Athenians vs the Spartans. England, China, India and Japan started out the same way (including fighting among themselves) but formed more stable governments later on. The idea would be to abandon the corrupt federal government of Afghanistan, which has little power outside its city anyways, and strengthen the power bases of the various tribes, especially those that aren’t wishy washy with the Taliban. The idea is that even though there would still be fighting in Afghanistan during our life time, the tribes would start to form various alliences to the point that Afghanistan turns into a confederacy and maybe then into a federal system the Afghans actually support.
WaPo’s account.