Case In Point
While the Boston Globe waxes hysterical about the dangers letting veterans be cops, the New York Times weighs in with some news on what the presumed babykillers have been up to while earning their veterans’ civil service preference. It’s an informative article on the military’s adaption to Taliban tactics and finetuning of the counterinsurgency. Sounds like the Army expects a pretty high degree of sophistication from its enlisted men and field commanders. Sounds like a skill set that could work in Roxbury, the Bronx, South Central, America’s vast Meth Belt, you name it:
WASHINGTON — More than a year has passed since an Afghan police commander turned on coalition forces and helped insurgents carry out a surprise attack that killed nine Americans, wounded more than 30 United States and Afghan troops and nearly resulted in the loss of an allied outpost in one of the deadliest engagements of the war.
Within days of the attack, Army historians and tactical analysts arrived in eastern Afghanistan to review the debacle near Wanat, interviewing soldiers who survived the intense battle, in which outnumbered Americans exchanged gunfire for more than four hours with insurgents, often at distances closer than 50 feet.
Now, that effort to harvest lessons from the firefight of July 13, 2008, has contributed to a new battlefield manual that will be delivered over coming days to Army units joining the fight in Afghanistan with the troop increase ordered by President Obama.
Interesting. So it turns out the military doesn’t just produce violent racist lunkheads with guns, as the Globe suggested. It also produces real-time tactical analysts who try to make sense of what just happened. And soldiers who put the lessons learned into effect.
The handbook, “Small-Unit Operations in Afghanistan” … draws on lessons from Wanat and other missions, some successful and some that resulted in death and injury for American and allied forces. The manual can be read as an effort to push the nuances of the complex counterinsurgency fight now under way in Afghanistan down from the generals and colonels to newly minted privates as well as to the sergeants and junior officers who lead small units into combat.
Wait a minute. Are these the same privates, sergeants and junior officers the Boston Globe’s vet-trashing editorial said are too stupid to be cops?
The manual includes a chapter titled “Cultural Engagements,” offering guidance to small-unit leaders on building relationships with wavering village elders and trust among distrustful village residents — a process that cannot be left to senior officers who may be back at headquarters.
Implicit in the instructions is a warning that troops are at risk if they are aloof from the locals and uncaring of their needs — and of the certain dangers if intelligence sources are used incorrectly.
I dunno. Sounds like privates, specialists and sergeants who have that kind of training and combat experience could make pretty good cops. You know, when those guys are all done in Afghanistan, BPD Commissioner Ed Davis may want to put some of them to work in some of Boston’s hotter neighborhoods. Lots of Taliban wannabes, lots of wavering, distrustful villagers. That’s if David can still hire any veterans after he and the Globe conclude operations on their civil service preference.
Thanks to Small Wars Journal for pointing out the NYT article, and thanks as always to SWJ for its great work summing up some of the best thought and action in the U.S. military today.
Thanks also to the United States military, not only for doing this dirty, difficult, often thankless task, but for doing it so well in the face of ingratitude, cheap shots, and undermining efforts back home.
Topics: Afghanistan, Boston, cops, media, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:49 pm on Thursday, August 13, 2009
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August 14th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
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