If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I picked this blog story from one of my favorite miblogs to read, blackfive.net. Since it is about Afghanistan I think it is worthy to post here. Read for yourself, and make up your own mind.
Task Force Phoenix took over the training of Afghan National Police back in January 2007. My ETT team was sliced and diced from 13 guys to mentor an Afghan Army Battalion down to 4. As Puss would always say, all you can do with less is less. If you have a finite number of people in a unit (TF Phoenix) and you give them the mission of also training up the Police, then you are taking those trainers from somewhere. Guess what? They came from the ANA training ETT teams.
I talked about this at great length from Jan 2007 and on through this blog. It should not have taken 18 months for someone to admit this. The 2/7 Marines are in the southern sector and they are making great strides, because they were part of a surge of Marines and they have focused exclusively on training police. They are also over and above the normal numbers of TF Phoenix personnel.
Go ahead and search through this blog and find all the areas that I have talked about adding more forces, surging in troops and even about me talking with CJCS Mullen last December where I told him they had to get more soldiers there now because the TF Phoenix mission was broke without an additional brigade of soldiers just for the training of Police.
In a perfect world, they would surge over an entire Active Duty MP brigade just to train the police. Makes sense doesn’t it, send over 3000 Military Police to train Police!! I guess DOD is going to announce soon who they are possibly surging over within the next 30 days to beef up the forces in Afghanistan. All we can do is hope and pray they are able to send over an MP Brigade in order to focus on the training of the police. This would let the traditional TF Phoenix soldiers go back to training, mentoring and unfortunately leading the Afghan Army into combat and defeating all remaining enemies of Afghanistan and the coalition.
It was not on the words of bloggers, but instead on the blood of soldiers that America is beginning to wake up and see that Afghanistan is a bad war-zone. The forgotten war is starting to be noticed, also thanks to two Presidential candidates who’s words are covered by every media outlet imaginable. The article below is a good one. Read about how one of the soldiers killed at Wanat predicted a ‘bloodbath’.
This morning while sitting in a little diner in Bethlehem, PA I was reading my hotel provided copy of USA Today and I read what is probably one of the most insightful and dead-on pieces of text about the current situation in Afghanistan. It is written by a gentlemen by the name of Ralph Peters. If you are interested in the situation in Afghanistan (I assume you are because you are reading this blog), care about our foreign policy in the region or would like to get a God’s honest truth of some of the issues we face there as a country, then please click on the link below and read this piece.
I caught myself with a smile on my face as I read this because Mr. Peters has put into words what I and many others have been trying to say for a while. One thing that he said in the article that really caught my eye was this.
“We’re experiencing something never seen before in Afghanistan: The great majority of the people welcome or at least tolerate a foreign presence.
Afghans want peace. They tried Taliban rule, and many didn’t like it. They appreciate the relative security, glimmers of prosperity and promises of development that a Western presence delivers. For all its daunting problems, this is a country with hope.”
Unless you have been been to Afghanistan, it is probably difficult to appreciate the significance and importance of the event mentioend in the link above. This is a huge step forward for the Afghan Army and Afghanistan in general. I am generally enthusiastic to see the Afghans running their own medevac.
Here are the first details of the attack on the outpost and FOB at Wanat in Kunar Province Afghanistan. This story is the result of interviews with survivors of the attack while they are recuperating in Landstuhl, Germany. I had no doubt that there was going to be some great stories of bravery to come out of this terrible attack. This is the first recount I have read of the attack and I am sure there are more to come.
The terrible loss of 173rd Airborne soldiers has been all over the news lately. I encourage you to take 5 minutes and read the following story. Take some time and try to imagine the hell they were going through as they were fighting for their lives.
