The Danger Of Indecision

18 December 2009

When over four months ago Gen. Stanley McChrystal passed his report on Afghanistan to Obama, the decision was delayed, the decision was delayed substantially by an Administration that appeared to be conflicted between doing the right things for the American Military involved in that conflict and the importance of Obama political liability.
Now that the President has finally decided to give his general 75% of what the report asked, it will take up to four months for the first 9,000 Marines to get to the Helmand Province and reinforce the contingent already in the area which is tasked with the disruption of the Poppy trade and the interdiction of Taliban forces transferring from Pakistan into the country.

The Associated Press contributed to an article which appeared on the FoxNews.com web site. The report was coming from journalists currently embedded with the 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion of the 4th Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton, California.
In an interview, the Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Michael Martin described his frustration at the current conditions, namely his lack of forces, that would allow him to push his line companies further toward the Pakistani border which would consequently allow him to interdict the flux of Taliban terrorist on their way to some of the centers of the province.

Because of Force Cap (a fancy way to describe the force rationing the chain of command had to implement regarding the troops to be deployed) the 4th LAR is at about 60% strength, having left at least one line company back in California, leaving just few hundred Marines having to cover an area approximately the size of Connecticut.
According to the remarks made by LT. Col. Martin, he does not have enough forces to extend his patrolling of the areas close to the border, let alone establishing FOB (Forward Operating Bases) in the areas where the Taliban is most active in border crossing.
The battalion has been able to create an FOB at the Khan Nechion castle where Bravo Co. is located, which has been a stubborn Taliban controlled area, hindering the enemy’s activities there. And the offensive that the Marines started at the beginning of December, Operation Cobra’s Anger, took the American forces into another important area at the town of Now Zad.

But these gains are relative and not enough to fatally impact the influx of terrorists into Marjah. Large areas in the south of Helmand still are uncontrolled by the Marines, as Lt. Col. Martin cannot commit forces so thinly dispersed that their safety and security could be compromised.
According to local intelligence, the Taliban fighters have been using the unchecked areas to make their way into Marjah. This town is where the Taliban has had free range and a hub for the narco-trade. Basically a place the Taliban is not going to just give up.

In reading the AP report of 16 December, the name Marjah jumped up at me, as the unusual town was catching my attention for the second time in so many weeks. The first time I heard of the place was a week or so ago when I came across an article from the Chicago Tribune of December 5, 2009.
In the article, the writer Tony Perry mentioned that the new offensive, Cobra’s Anger, was designed to clear Now Zad, but that the city of Marjah had become sort of a Taliban sanctuary in the area and that the enemy was becoming more entrenched there, almost as if intending to make a last stand.
Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, expressed his prediction that such sanctuary was eventually going to be denied to the enemy, meaning that the Marines would have to clear the whole city. It was in that article that I first heard Marjah being compared to Fallujah as regarding the fighting waiting for the Marines.

House-to-house clearing and urban combat appears to be the future for the forces in that area of the Helmand Province. And the prospect of another Fallujah-type Military operation, one that could cost the lives of hundreds of Marines in the same fashion as the taking of the Iraqi city did, is a disturbing one, especially for those Marines who have received their deployment orders since Obama made his decision.

So here are my thoughts. Since the McChrystal report was delivered to Obama over four months ago, it is incalculable the number of terrorist that have made their way into Marjah, but it is safe to assume that the ranks of terrorist now facing our Marines in the city have been swelling considerably. This assumption and the fact that the ISAF forces currently in the area are not enough to interdict the Taliban travel, make for an increase threat for our forces in future operations.
Just as amply described by Bing West in his excellent work called The Strongest Tribe, it looks like political decisions are going to weigh heavily on Military strategy. When this attitude manifested itself during the Vietnam conflict with Johnson and McNamara, it resulted completely disastrous and costly for our forces. And again when the same approach was used by Bush and Rumsfeld to satisfy Paul Bremer in Fallujah in 2004, the political dilly dally allowed the enemy to flood to the city and, even if eventually defeated, resulted very costly to the US Military.

What makes the prospect of taking Marjah even more worrisome is the new approach that McChrystal has adopted regarding civilian casualties and the sometimes extreme restrain our forces have to adopt.
If our Marines and soldiers are to take Marjah, how is the high command going to direct our forces in regard to civilians? Are our forces going to try and take the city fighting a brutal enemy while with one hand tied behind their backs? I want to hope not.

Without any previous knowledge of the tactical picture on the ground in Afghanistan, my impression, shared by millions of Americans, was that the dithering President Obama was doing over his decision regarding the troop surge, was potentially going to be costing American and coalition lives. It did not take a genius to figure out that 68,000 Military members in a country the size of Afghanistan was an insufficient number, just as it did not take a genius to figure out that delaying the reinforcement of the troops already in theater was a dangerous political game that Obama was playing using the lives of American troops.

And Mr. President, one of those Marines with the 4th LAR is my son.

And these are my thoughts!
Frank “Semperpapa”