Top commander in Afghanistan aims for hearts and minds - subordinates opt for eye gouging instead

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from Danger Room: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/tweets-are-comi-2/


September 8, 2009

MIANPOSHTEH, AFGHANISTAN – Just about every day, the Marines of Echo company trade bullets with the local Taliban. The troops set out on patrol, until the militants shoot at them. The Marines seize compounds, waiting for the Taliban to try to seize them back.

But Echo didn’t come here to get into gunfights, company commander Capt. Eric Meador insists. These Marines arrived in Mianposhteh two months ago to win the allegiance of this farming community by providing some basic security and economic development to the local people — part of top U.S. commander General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy that emphasizes swaying populations over killing enemies.

The trouble is, Meador and Echo are too busy fighting the guerrillas here to execute McChrystal’s “soft power” approach. In one day in late August, Echo had six different incidents of “troops in contact” — milspeak for servicemen under fire. Three Marines serving with Echo have died in 60 days. Ten more have been wounded. Close calls have become nearly routine: Bullets missing arteries by quarter-inches, unexpectedly bursting on walls behind, slamming into chest plates without effect. All of which pushes chai sessions with local elders down the priority list. “The whole counterinsurgency, focus-on-the-locals thing – we’re not quite to that point yet,” Meador says.

Any fight against insurgents is going to involve some shooting, of course; there are guerrillas who can’t be reconciled, and militants who won’t be pushed out by mere public pressure. But Meador is using a very different tactic. He’s deliberately sending his Marines out to provoke fights with the Taliban, in order to keep the militants off-balance – and give some of the pro-government villages a chance to rebuild. “I call it the eye gouge,” Meador says. “To keep the good areas here relatively calm, you have to go to the enemy and punch him in the chest, punch him in the face.”

The approach would appear to be at odds with McChrystal’s guidance to his troops. “Sporadically moving into an area for a few days or even a few hours solely to search for the enemy and then leave does little good, and may do much harm,” McChrystal recently wrote. “Once we depart, the militants re-emerge and life under insurgent control resumes. These operations are not only ineffectual, they can be counter-productive. In conducting them, we are not building relationships with people, and we are not helping Afghans solve Afghan problems . . .”

read more: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/tweets-are-comi-2/

[gratuitous]

1. Someone comes into your neighborhood bristling with armaments

And they're expecting tea parties and cotillions? What do they think Americans would do about foreign military occupiers coming to town in Wisconsin or Alabama or Utah? What would he think of people who opened their homes to the occupiers?

Send a quarter to Kabul; help the military buy a clue.

[polichick]

2. Yes - imagining what it would be like for the U.S. to be occupied...

...is something every American should be doing.

[Hissyspit]

3. Thanks for stealing my post title just as I was about to post something I was working on for 2 days!

:D

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6491981&mesg_id=6491981

GMTA

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4. ha!

nice post, Hissyspit (k&ring)