No Substitute for Boots on the Ground
No Substitute for Boots on the Ground – Vincent J. Heintz, Wall Street Journal opinion.
In 2008 I commanded a team of US Army combat advisers in northern Afghanistan’s remote Chahar Darreh district. We patrolled with about 50 Afghan police troopers, conducting ambushes, reconnaissance, law-enforcement tasks and reconstruction. These missions had one purpose: to build trust between the police and the people and thereby isolate the insurgents moving among them. Some Afghan troopers were thieves and Taliban infiltrators. Most served with honor and courage. A growing chorus of Americans rejects operations of this kind. Opposition has hardened in response to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s call to launch a fully resourced counterinsurgency effort. Naturally, the peaceniks want us to leave Afghanistan altogether. Other opponents of the McChrystal plan urge President Barack Obama to select a safer, cheaper cleaner method of defeating al Qaeda.
Some conservative isolationists, joined by Vice President Joe Biden, argue that we should rely on commando raids and missile strikes to zap terrorist targets from afar, thereby sparing infantrymen like us the risks that go with living among the Afghans. Tellingly, the Biden camp has yet to offer any details about the sources of real-time intelligence needed to execute precision strikes, or the locations of the bases from which they would be launched. In the years prior to 9/11, our leaders gambled with the nation’s safety by employing “surgical” cruise missiles attacks (that blew up only abandoned tents) and organizing specialized counterterrorism forces (that never deployed due to a poverty of intelligence). Nowadays, any talk of returning to this over-the-horizon concept is shockingly naí¯ve…
More at The Wall Street Journal.
Mr Heintz is spot-on. We, the American advisors, must remain with our Afghan counter-parts if we expect them to make & maintain progress. Not only to help them but to demonstrate to the Afghan locals that we are committed to helping and protecting them.
We must live WITH them (not on FOBs), eat with them, sleep next to them, plan, patrol, & fight along side them.
Earlier, I recommended that US advisors remain in-theater for at least 18 months. Some support this, others (many others) do not. But I feel Mr Heintz’s experience highlights the need for us to stay longer with our counter-parts. By doing so, we generate and maintain trust, which increases our ability to get them to buy into our advice and recommendations.