U.S. military suffers major defeat in Korengal Valley, forced to retreat

U.S. soldiers, Afghans dying so that Pentagon can avoid appearance of defeat

by James Circello

The author is an Iraq war veteran and co-founder of March Forward! who deserted the military, refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan in 2007.

The U.S. military has retreated from a base in the remote Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, after spending over four years trying to hold the ground. The U.S. forces even negotiated the terms of their defeat, paying the resistance fighters and leaving them the base fully intact with buildings, fuel, generators and military equipment, in order to be allowed a peaceful retreat out of the valley.

The corporate media and, for the most part, the Pentagon brass have framed the forced retreat from the “Valley of Death” as a “shift” in strategy. This so-called shift has been eye-opening for the soldiers and marines who have lost friends and shed blood in the mountains of Afghanistan, while forced to defend an outpost which U.S. military commanders have argued is “a remote backwater of limited strategic value.”

Despite its “limited strategic value,” a startling 42 U.S. troops have been killed there, hundreds have been wounded, and a disproportionate number of Afghan civilians have perished. One of the last soldiers to die there took his own life, unable to cope with the daily horrors of a hopeless mission.

U.S. troops used as bait

The soldiers stationed in the Korengal Valley had one mission: to act as sitting targets and wait to be attacked on a daily basis. The Afghans in the Korengal Valley were fighting because foreign invaders have occupied their country for nearly a decade. The U.S. military occupied the Korengal Valley to provoke them into a fight. This is the logic of empire.

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2/642019287?page=NewsArticle&id=13935&news_iv_ctrl=1261

Wait...

What?

and from a deserter no less.

"We are sent to our deaths by individuals who proclaim themselves to be our “leaders”—the U.S. officer corps—but this does not have to be the case. We have every right to refuse these illegal and criminal orders given to us by men and women who do virtually none of the fighting, none of the suffering, none of the dying. These officers build their careers on the blood and tears of the enlisted class. They will continue to send us to our deaths, until we stand up and and fight back."

Takes me back, that does....

The glorious and eternal rule of the "enlisted class" will begin real soon now.

It cannot come soon enough....

Given that the Soviets were driven from Afghanistan in abject defeat I'm sure you can tell us all about the political constraints on their troops there.

That would win the Afghan hearts and minds..

Not to mention there were nearly a million Soviet troops engaged merely in the attack on Berlin.

Ready for a draft to "win" in Afghanistan?

the Soviet military were limited by political constraints in Afghanistan.

They were limited by Soviet political rules of engagement in Afghanistan unlike WWII when the Soviets conducted unrestricted warfare with the possible exception of poison gas.

The Soviets were brutal by any modern standard, and they routinely tortured and executed prisoners that were captured. They played by no rules. Everyone fails to realize that these mountain tribesmen have never given up to anyone. They'd rather die than be slaves to some foreign occupier. You can't control a people like that. The only way you'd win against that is if you rounded up all the males and had them executed, but that's an activity that can bankrupt empires.

Otherwise, you give up the land and go home.

If we just treated Afghanistan the way Rome did Carthage there would be no problems there..

Despite 8+ years of our best, escalating efforts.

target in Afghanistan.

In an earlier war, US air bases in Vietnam could not return enemy fire until the local commander obtain permission from local village leaders. Pilots on missions were instructed to return with their bombs if they were prevented from dropping them on an approved target. Those things would not have occurred in WWII.

we'd kick their asses and WIN!!" And, "Our boys are fighting with one hand tied behind their backs!!"

Afghanistan & Vietnam.

I said "4. Military forces lose wars when they are forced to fight under political constraints."

I stand by that statement and the OP could have said accurately "U.S. political leaders suffer major defeat in Korengal Valley, forced to retreat."

I wish Obama would use his authority to withdraw our troops from Iraq & Afghanistan immediately but if he doesn't, then it's his war but my comrades in arms are dying and innocent civilians are also.

:thumbsup:

My reply to the OP stressed the defeat was not really a "military defeat" but a "political defeat".

That may not mean much to you but it certainly does to the troops on the ground who obeyed CIC Obama's orders to the best of their ability and then withdrew under good order and discipline when political objectives changed.

what might be characterized as over-restrictive rules on firing at targets. That, to me, says that you believe that the troops are being hindered by not being allowed to engage and fire at will.

for debate but if the trooper were your father or son or relative or close friend would affect your evaluation.

For example, how many innocent lives saved are worth your fathers life?

The mistaken, and occasionally deliberate, killing of civilians in Afghanistan is bad enough as it is, and detrimental to our purposes there. I'd rather we not be there at all, but since we are, then I absolutely want our troops to exercise caution and restraint when possible.

age troops to make life or death decisions when they are attacked.

Among combat troops in Afghanistan some/many/most believe rules of engagement have cost many lives among our troops.

IMO it's highly unlikely any invader can win in Afghanistan so it's time for Obama to declare a US foreign policy failure and bring our troops home.

the ROE are overly restrictive.

Certainly "political constraints" are among those reasons. But, since the military is supposed to be subject to civilian control, and since political constraints are required by the Geneva Conventions etc. that's the breaks. Once you get past the rape and pillage model of warfare, "political constraints" is the name of the game.

To the extent you are exonerating the grunts for causing this "failure" I agree, if you are suggesting that the old ways were better, I do not agree.

discuss whether there are moral ways to conduct war another time but as we both know there is no real answer to that question.

they told us about in basic? ; )

It's often interpreted as a sort of cynical jibe at the supposed "glory and honor" of war, but what he was really saying was that political forces are an important variable in wartime, just like terrain, weather, morale, etc., and that you cannot (as previous military analysts did) look at military operations in a political vacuum.

So the sort of armchair quarterbacking that such-and-such a war could have been won had the military been left up to its own devices is somewhat like speculating how the war could have gone if one side had unlimited ammunition or double the manpower that was actually available to them.

You can go a good deal farther back than Clausewitz, too. It's neither a new observation nor a new situation.

But it is reasonable to stipulate that blaming the grunts for losing the war is always wrong, unless they mutinied.. Authority and responsibility go together, always have.

If I'm against the Birther Lt. Colonel deserting and refusing to obey orders (which he also claims are illegal) then why the hell should I revere THIS idiot?

From the article:

"As members of the enlisted class in the U.S. military, it is completely against our interests to continue fighting this criminal and illegal war in Afghanistan—a war waged on the basis of U.S. imperialist aggression and with the sole intent of becoming the dominant power in the region.

The people of Afghanistan want the same things that we do: the ability to live in peace, free from occupation, fear and death. The politicians in Washington, D.C., and the military brass—from the Pentagon to our Company CPs—will stop at nothing, however, in their attempts to conquer the people of Afghanistan. But this will never happen. The Afghan people will never accept colonialism. They will never bow down or break.

We are sent to our deaths by individuals who proclaim themselves to be our “leaders”—the U.S. officer corps—but this does not have to be the case. We have every right to refuse these illegal and criminal orders given to us by men and women who do virtually none of the fighting, none of the suffering, none of the dying. These officers build their careers on the blood and tears of the enlisted class. They will continue to send us to our deaths, until we stand up and and fight back."

knr because I am NOT a chickenhawk.

a massive "wipe out" assault, get him to commit unusually large forces for a set piece battle, and then try to reduce their numbers with firepower.

Khe Sanh would be just the most spectacular large scale instance of the baiting tactic during Vietnam. It was actually a standard operating procedure, whether the attack was invited against dug in firebases as at Khe Sanh, or against moving targets as in the case of rapid troop insertions and patrols. We weren't in a game where we could take and hold ground and advance into the enemy's homeland and capture the capital and political leadership, so the goal was just to kill as many enemy as possible. We're in the same stupid game again. Put some poor unlucky GIs out there where the enemy will be tempted to come after them with massive numbers, then liquidate them with massive artillery and airpower.

Sucks to be a pawn.

I saw some clips from the BBC on the yootoobs in which dug in Americans were dodging Taliban mortars and machine gun fire down in some valley camp while the enemy poured fire in on them from the looming hills - unbelievably close! Who the fuck picked this spot? I was thinking. Then I realized it was just like old times for the Army. Put your guys out there in an indefensible spot, tell them Good Luck and to Remember to serpentine! Let them dodge the mortars, and duck under the hail of bullets while you send the gunship helicopters after the mortars and snipers.

Just like the Tet Offensive was a Major Victory according to Westmoreland.