I don't like war. It brings pain and misery to everyone on their side and ours. Innocents are caught in the middle. Very little good ever comes of it.
We had some reporters from NPR come to COP WILDERNESS and find out how our fight is going in my area. We had been given the usual "don't say anything stupid" speech. I personally am privileged to sensitive information and I didn't want them taking it out of context or quoting something meant to be off the record. So I didn't speak maybe 10 words to them the whole time they were here. In fact, when they asked me a question I referred them to our commanding officers. We took mortars and other indirect fires the day they were set to leave. Also a day when we were receiving VIPs for a meeting. They got good coverage of this to include pictures. Naturally their focus was on this event and others like it. Not only did they publish the initial article based around our fight, they mentioned specifics about who was wounded and when we normally take fire. In the business, we call this BDA and TTPs. A "Battle Damage Assessment" or BDA is what effect your attack had on the target, so thank you NPR for letting them know how effective they were. "Tactics, Techniques and Procedures" are the patterns you set in operations and patterns the enemy sets. They are important for obvious reasons, again thank you NPR for letting them know that WE know what they are doing. To continue; this report was updated yesterday with more pictures of us climbing mountains and other operations in the area. They also had spoken with our brigade commander and talked about how the fight is going in this area. I don't have any problem with that, he is the one to talk to the media about how our fight is going. However, it seems that the reporters got the idea from talking with him and others that I'm right in the middle of the fight. We have a fight on our hands, that is certain, BUT I do not think it is as overblown and extensive as they are suggesting. That is dangerous. Reporters saying that Haqqani tactics are alienating local elders is dangerous.
Why are reporters posting these things? Don't they understand how dangerous it is to speculate on how the US military is trying to end the fighting? Even more aggravating are the comments below. Readers are suggesting Afghanistan is a war for resources or worse even, that we are here to destroy the native population. WHAT THE FUCK!? I don't love the political decisions our government makes most of the time. In fact, I generally tend to disagree with how our country is run. But seriously, this is AS clear cut of an operation as you can manage. Bad guys attack US, US attacks country harboring bad guys, US kills bad guys, bad guys continue to try and take the country back over, US continues to kill bad guys. You can try to find all the conspiracies in the world to make that into a bad thing but its ridiculous. If you understand how terrorism works and how international politics work, even a little, you can understand the fight in Afghanistan. I studied it for years and of the hotspot situations in the world right now it is one of the least complicated. We weren't searching for some mysterious WMD when we came here. We came for Bin Laden and the Taliban. PERIOD. The Taliban have done a good job of coming back and trying to take the country again. We have continued to fight them. War weariness is setting in and Afghans don't want to fight anymore, but that isn't stopping foreign fighters from coming here to make a name for themselves. The comments on that blog aren't from Afghans or foreign nationals who disapprove of the US Military. Those are OUR citizens who are essentially calling the soldiers murderers and our mission to prevent Afghanistan from becoming an international terrorism safe haven a mission for blood and treasure. Its more than offensive, its depressing. If the citizens are too stupid to know we are protecting them, then why are we? Shouldn't we just let terrorism flourish wherever it can and kill off our citizens? After all, I'm apparently doing the wrong thing here. So why fight? Shouldn't I just let them go over to the US and blow up NPR headquarters, cause I'm just here for natural resources and to oppress the locals. I'm not here to prevent Al-Qaeda or someone like them from attacking Americans or anything. And the worst comments are from people frowning at me essentially saying "Awww he thinks he is helping America but he is just stupid." That shit pisses me off.
I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I when it comes to international politics, terrorism, and military strategy or tactics I definitely have a leg up on most people. I'm not a doctor or a lawyer. I'm a soldier, and more than that I'm a soldier who has intimately studied everything having to do with terrorism, international politics, and warfare. I spend my waking hours thinking like the enemy so that I can find him and kill him. It isn't some TV crew or commentator walking up a mountain to take a look at some corpses to see if there is evidence he was a insurgent leader, that's me. They aren't taking prints of a dead guy who got his head exploded by automatic 30mm fire, that would be me. So for every reporter out there or dumbass civilian commenting on how our soldiers are stupid: stop, take a deep breath, and the shut the fuck up.
We had some reporters from NPR come to COP WILDERNESS and find out how our fight is going in my area. We had been given the usual "don't say anything stupid" speech. I personally am privileged to sensitive information and I didn't want them taking it out of context or quoting something meant to be off the record. So I didn't speak maybe 10 words to them the whole time they were here. In fact, when they asked me a question I referred them to our commanding officers. We took mortars and other indirect fires the day they were set to leave. Also a day when we were receiving VIPs for a meeting. They got good coverage of this to include pictures. Naturally their focus was on this event and others like it. Not only did they publish the initial article based around our fight, they mentioned specifics about who was wounded and when we normally take fire. In the business, we call this BDA and TTPs. A "Battle Damage Assessment" or BDA is what effect your attack had on the target, so thank you NPR for letting them know how effective they were. "Tactics, Techniques and Procedures" are the patterns you set in operations and patterns the enemy sets. They are important for obvious reasons, again thank you NPR for letting them know that WE know what they are doing. To continue; this report was updated yesterday with more pictures of us climbing mountains and other operations in the area. They also had spoken with our brigade commander and talked about how the fight is going in this area. I don't have any problem with that, he is the one to talk to the media about how our fight is going. However, it seems that the reporters got the idea from talking with him and others that I'm right in the middle of the fight. We have a fight on our hands, that is certain, BUT I do not think it is as overblown and extensive as they are suggesting. That is dangerous. Reporters saying that Haqqani tactics are alienating local elders is dangerous.
Why are reporters posting these things? Don't they understand how dangerous it is to speculate on how the US military is trying to end the fighting? Even more aggravating are the comments below. Readers are suggesting Afghanistan is a war for resources or worse even, that we are here to destroy the native population. WHAT THE FUCK!? I don't love the political decisions our government makes most of the time. In fact, I generally tend to disagree with how our country is run. But seriously, this is AS clear cut of an operation as you can manage. Bad guys attack US, US attacks country harboring bad guys, US kills bad guys, bad guys continue to try and take the country back over, US continues to kill bad guys. You can try to find all the conspiracies in the world to make that into a bad thing but its ridiculous. If you understand how terrorism works and how international politics work, even a little, you can understand the fight in Afghanistan. I studied it for years and of the hotspot situations in the world right now it is one of the least complicated. We weren't searching for some mysterious WMD when we came here. We came for Bin Laden and the Taliban. PERIOD. The Taliban have done a good job of coming back and trying to take the country again. We have continued to fight them. War weariness is setting in and Afghans don't want to fight anymore, but that isn't stopping foreign fighters from coming here to make a name for themselves. The comments on that blog aren't from Afghans or foreign nationals who disapprove of the US Military. Those are OUR citizens who are essentially calling the soldiers murderers and our mission to prevent Afghanistan from becoming an international terrorism safe haven a mission for blood and treasure. Its more than offensive, its depressing. If the citizens are too stupid to know we are protecting them, then why are we? Shouldn't we just let terrorism flourish wherever it can and kill off our citizens? After all, I'm apparently doing the wrong thing here. So why fight? Shouldn't I just let them go over to the US and blow up NPR headquarters, cause I'm just here for natural resources and to oppress the locals. I'm not here to prevent Al-Qaeda or someone like them from attacking Americans or anything. And the worst comments are from people frowning at me essentially saying "Awww he thinks he is helping America but he is just stupid." That shit pisses me off.
I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I when it comes to international politics, terrorism, and military strategy or tactics I definitely have a leg up on most people. I'm not a doctor or a lawyer. I'm a soldier, and more than that I'm a soldier who has intimately studied everything having to do with terrorism, international politics, and warfare. I spend my waking hours thinking like the enemy so that I can find him and kill him. It isn't some TV crew or commentator walking up a mountain to take a look at some corpses to see if there is evidence he was a insurgent leader, that's me. They aren't taking prints of a dead guy who got his head exploded by automatic 30mm fire, that would be me. So for every reporter out there or dumbass civilian commenting on how our soldiers are stupid: stop, take a deep breath, and the shut the fuck up.
