Read Online The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Michael T. Flynn, Michael Ledeen - Free Book Online Page A
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The same lack of serious commitment existed all over the battlefield at every major HQ as well as at some of the camps down to at least brigade level. There was too much of an attitude that we’re here to simply participate, get a combat patch, and return home. Instead of merely participating in this war, we needed to instill an attitude that we needed to win.
This had to stop. We had to get the U.S. forces and the international team back on track and fast. At least that is what we thought we needed.
However, like all wars, you can never discount your enemy and one of the welcoming messages from the Taliban was a massive vehicle-borne improvised explosive bomb (VBIED) delivered to the front entrance of ISAF HQ early one morning. This came only a few days after General McChrystal had assumed command. It was the Taliban’s way of saying, Welcome to Afghanistan.
The attack happened in the middle of our early-morning battlefield update. It was so large, so explosive, that it shook the entire compound. The explosion seemed to lift the building we were occupying. Everyone started to run outside when General McChrystal very calmly directed everyone to stop and get back into their seats and focus on what we had to do—fight and win this war. He was right. And at that moment, at least those in the HQ knew that McChrystal was deadly serious and that a laser focus on winning was now going to be the norm. There would be little time to worry about all the nonsense we found upon first arrival to Kabul. Things had to change and change fast—we were losing.
All of this took place in the first couple of weeks.
After these initial days, some discipline returned to the HQ, and Stan and I and other staff conducted a “listening tour” around the entire country. The results were ugly: we knew very little about the population we were here to supposedly protect, and we were alarmingly ignorant about the strength of al Qaeda and the Taliban. This tour was a descent into some of the most notorious places in Afghanistan, but it was indispensable. We met with our commanders and their staffs at their various operational HQs (down to platoon and squad level), but more important, we met with Afghans. We went into remote and rural villages and cities, we met with local tribal leaders and provincial governors. We met with police officers and many in the Afghan military. There were battlefield updates from our forces about how well we were doing (most all of it subsequently demonstrated to have been BS) and numerous but mostly whispered complaints about the extraordinary level of corruption rampant inside the entire ecosystem—including our own people.
As is often the case, the most accurate information came from the lower levels of our fighters. They did not bullshit us. They didn’t have time to waste our time for any nonsense, nor did they have the resources from the policymakers they badly needed. They also didn’t know many of the basic things they needed to know if we were going to prevail; they lacked any real intelligence other than what they discovered on the terrain they were operating on. I felt bad. I had come from the world of special operations where we brought intelligence to the forefront of our operations. We had changed the mentality from fighting a plan to fighting our enemy—we had operationalized intelligence and we did so for our most elite military forces. I was proud of that, but I saw in our conventional forces a complete lack of real intelligence support.
All the baloney you hear about “national to tactical” is crap. Here we were in the first decade of the twenty-first century and despite advances in technology, our conventional military forces fighting at the edge of the battlefield were very limited in their vision and understanding of the battlefield. There was simply no good technology down to the local level enabling them to “see” the enemy the way higher headquarters were able to see them. There was a
This had to stop. We had to get the U.S. forces and the international team back on track and fast. At least that is what we thought we needed.
However, like all wars, you can never discount your enemy and one of the welcoming messages from the Taliban was a massive vehicle-borne improvised explosive bomb (VBIED) delivered to the front entrance of ISAF HQ early one morning. This came only a few days after General McChrystal had assumed command. It was the Taliban’s way of saying, Welcome to Afghanistan.
The attack happened in the middle of our early-morning battlefield update. It was so large, so explosive, that it shook the entire compound. The explosion seemed to lift the building we were occupying. Everyone started to run outside when General McChrystal very calmly directed everyone to stop and get back into their seats and focus on what we had to do—fight and win this war. He was right. And at that moment, at least those in the HQ knew that McChrystal was deadly serious and that a laser focus on winning was now going to be the norm. There would be little time to worry about all the nonsense we found upon first arrival to Kabul. Things had to change and change fast—we were losing.
All of this took place in the first couple of weeks.
After these initial days, some discipline returned to the HQ, and Stan and I and other staff conducted a “listening tour” around the entire country. The results were ugly: we knew very little about the population we were here to supposedly protect, and we were alarmingly ignorant about the strength of al Qaeda and the Taliban. This tour was a descent into some of the most notorious places in Afghanistan, but it was indispensable. We met with our commanders and their staffs at their various operational HQs (down to platoon and squad level), but more important, we met with Afghans. We went into remote and rural villages and cities, we met with local tribal leaders and provincial governors. We met with police officers and many in the Afghan military. There were battlefield updates from our forces about how well we were doing (most all of it subsequently demonstrated to have been BS) and numerous but mostly whispered complaints about the extraordinary level of corruption rampant inside the entire ecosystem—including our own people.
As is often the case, the most accurate information came from the lower levels of our fighters. They did not bullshit us. They didn’t have time to waste our time for any nonsense, nor did they have the resources from the policymakers they badly needed. They also didn’t know many of the basic things they needed to know if we were going to prevail; they lacked any real intelligence other than what they discovered on the terrain they were operating on. I felt bad. I had come from the world of special operations where we brought intelligence to the forefront of our operations. We had changed the mentality from fighting a plan to fighting our enemy—we had operationalized intelligence and we did so for our most elite military forces. I was proud of that, but I saw in our conventional forces a complete lack of real intelligence support.
All the baloney you hear about “national to tactical” is crap. Here we were in the first decade of the twenty-first century and despite advances in technology, our conventional military forces fighting at the edge of the battlefield were very limited in their vision and understanding of the battlefield. There was simply no good technology down to the local level enabling them to “see” the enemy the way higher headquarters were able to see them. There was a
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