God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God. -Jesus (Matt 5:9)
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Hunting and Helping...
General Larry Nicholson described his work in Afghanistan as: 10% Hunting and 90% Helping. Can any of you soldiers affirm or add insight or commentary to that assessment?
That's a fair assessment depending on the unit you are in and the threat level in your area of operations. I certainly spent all of my time in AF trying to train Afghan security forces to not steal from their people and very little time trying to find bad guys. Lots of time drinking tea with the district governor, military and police commanders, driving around trying to not get any of my guys blown up and handing out medical care to villagers. No one on my team actually had a confirmed kill the whole 8 months and only a handful of firefights. But that's completely different from areas in the south of Afghanistan where it is quite normal to get in a firefight every other day the entire time you are in country and you expect to lose at least 1 out of 8-9 guys to enemy fire during the rotation.
I think Bryan is spot on. Though as he indicated it depends on where you are and what unit you are in. I spent my time there with the numbers reversed. Again that had everything to do with my job and it was in a sort of paradoxical way in order to help the area we were in to hunt a majority of the time. I think that the general’s assessment is from echelons above what my reality was, but also probably an assessment of frustration as well. There are incredible projects and milestones being accomplished but they are usually accomplished by NGO's and others, not the military. That is not the military's job per se, to be an armed peace corps.
2 comments:
That's a fair assessment depending on the unit you are in and the threat level in your area of operations. I certainly spent all of my time in AF trying to train Afghan security forces to not steal from their people and very little time trying to find bad guys. Lots of time drinking tea with the district governor, military and police commanders, driving around trying to not get any of my guys blown up and handing out medical care to villagers. No one on my team actually had a confirmed kill the whole 8 months and only a handful of firefights. But that's completely different from areas in the south of Afghanistan where it is quite normal to get in a firefight every other day the entire time you are in country and you expect to lose at least 1 out of 8-9 guys to enemy fire during the rotation.
I think Bryan is spot on. Though as he indicated it depends on where you are and what unit you are in. I spent my time there with the numbers reversed. Again that had everything to do with my job and it was in a sort of paradoxical way in order to help the area we were in to hunt a majority of the time. I think that the general’s assessment is from echelons above what my reality was, but also probably an assessment of frustration as well. There are incredible projects and milestones being accomplished but they are usually accomplished by NGO's and others, not the military. That is not the military's job per se, to be an armed peace corps.
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