Honorable man

Sgt Salvatore Guinta is that anomaly, at least in recent years: a living recipient of the Medal of Honor. President Obama will hang the Medal around Sgt Guinta's neck this afternoon in the East Wing of the White House. I would give a lot to know what's going through the minds of each man at that moment! What does the soldier think when he stands face to face with the commander in chief? What does the politician think when he stands face to face with a hero--and not just any hero, but one who nearly gave his life to carry out the presidential strategy?

Sgt Guinta's difficult night is brilliantly related (though at second hand) in Sebastian Junger's War, in my estimation one of the best books ever written about combat.  If you haven't read it, you should. It's The Iliad, except that the heroes are the enlisted men. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Thank God for the First Amendment

The nutters at the Westboro Baptist Church have an odd (I almost said "queer") notion that God is punishing the United States for its toleration of homosexuals in the armed forces. That punishment takes the form of striking down American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Do they have a right to picket at funerals of dead Americans? Absolutely! It's protected speech under the First Amendment.

Should they picket at funerals of dead Americans? Absolutely not! What they're doing is offensive, ugly, hurtful, and unnecessarily provocative, and it shames them much more than the victims of their shabby harassment.

And of course the same is true of the offensive, ugly, hurtful, and unnecessarily provocative drive to build an Islamic mosque and cultural central next door to Ground Zero.  Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Arlington cemetery vote

Harold "Hal" Groves enlisted in the Air Force in 1953, earned a commission and his wings in 1955, and flew as an F-4 pilot during the Vietnam War. He worked for Boeing for fourteen years, finally retiring to Myrtle Beach, Florida. He died in August, leaving behind a wonderful funeral notice online. The last sentence has attracted some attention: "In lieu of flowers, Hal has requested that donations be made to your local animal shelter or to any candidate running against Barack Obama in 2012."

Mr. Groves will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on December 9 at 9 a.m. I wonder if the president will attend? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Grab 'em by the nose and kick 'em in the ass

Whenever I run out of books to read, I turn back to Mr. Sawyer's interesting but very difficult The Tao of Deception. Last night I broke up laughing when I spotted this advice, quoted from the One Hundred Unorthodox Strategies:

"When engaging an enemy, frighten them in the front and overwhelm them in the rear...."

Which put me in mind of General George Patton's speech to the troops in May 1944, just before the D-Day landing in France. His words, which are usually misquoted in the more pungent form above, went like this:

"We're going to hold onto [the enemy] by the nose, and we're going to kick him in the ass."

Do you suppose Patton was reading the Chinese military classics at the time? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

War in the shadows

Fine article in the NYT this morning about clandestine military and CIA operations being carried out by the Obama administration. I think the takeaway is supposed to be twofold: for the left, gasp! that a leftist president would actually defend the United States; and for the right, reassurance that Mr. Obama isn't quite the doofus that he sometimes seems. (Is it entirely a coincidence that this long article about our covert warrior-president follows hard upon his Friday defense of the Ground Zero mosque?)

I found the article both reassuring and comical, as when the authors fret that using soldiers in clandestine ops might deprive the U.S. military of its Geneva Convention rights. Yeah, sure: when was the last time were American soldiers in enemy hands treated according to Geneva? Most of you aren't old enough to remember, so I'll answer the question: April 1945, and even then only if you were fighting against German forces, didn't fall first into the hands of the Gestapo, weren't a Jew, and best of all qualified for a Luftwaffe camp. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Welcome home, 39 years on

That's Warrant Office Don Wann in 1968, posting with a Huey with some damage to its windscreen. Three years later he went missing in action along with Lieutenant Paul Magers when their Cobra helicopter was shot down during a rescue mission in Quang Tri province, South Vietnam. Their remains were found a couple years ago but only now identified and repatriated. Welcome home, guys. It was indeed a long war. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

War (concluded)

I've finished Sebastian Junger's War and I have to say: this is the book we've been waiting for. It's the best account of Afghan combat, the best portrait of the modern American infantryman, and the best book about warfare in many, many years.

At the foot of this blog is a quote from a poet whose name I never did catch, and which I came across by accident during one of my first research projects for my MA "programme" in War in the Modern World at King's College London: "What truth soldiers would speak / None would hear, and none repeat."

Well, the soldiers of Battle Company spoke the truth, and Mr. Junger repeated it. This is a wonderful book. Buy it. Read it. Pass it on. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

War (the book)

I'm a third of the way through, and I'm hugely impressed. Sebastian Junger became an instant best-seller with The Perfect Storm. Now he's done it again with War. Apart from the rather odd dust-cover photographs, it's a masterful and convincing account of men in combat--in this case, at a fire base in "a small but extraordinarily violent slit in the foothills of the Hindu Kush" mountains of Afghanistan.

It's curious but true that the best accounts of the Afghan war have been written by journalists, not soldiers, though there have been plenty of combat memoirs. (Mostly by officers. Perhaps that's the problem? Mr. Junger concentrates on the grunts, not their commanders.) My previous favorite was The Only Thing Worth Dying For. Mr. Junger's may be the better book, because he was present for much of the action he describes; he didn't write it from interviews after the fact, as Mr. Blehm did with his great account of the Special Forces team that went into the 'Stan in November 2001, when the war was green and everything possible. Check it out at Amazon. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

McClellan, MacArthur, McChrystal

You may be sure that it wasn't Casual Friday when President Obama fired General McChrystal today. (The photo, from the Rolling Stone article that ended the general's career as CINC Afghanistan, was taken during their earlier, ten-minute meeting, ages ago in Washington time.)

Abraham Lincoln fired George McClellan for good cause--he wouldn't attack.

Harry Truman fired Douglas MacArthur for good cause--he marched to the Yalu and then wanted to nuke China for attacking the UN forces in Korea.

Barack Obama fired Stanley McChrystal for--for what, exactly? Being incautious when a reporter was around? Oh dear!

I read the Rolling Stone article yesterday (didn't everyone?).  I thought it was a pretty good piece of journalism, except where Michael Hastings noted that the problem with counter-insurgency was that it required "huge numbers" of troops. Mr. Obama's mini-surge involved 30,000 men. I suppose Mr. Hastings (nor Mr. Obama, for that matter) wasn't yet born in June 1944, when we put 30,000 Americans on a single beach in a single day, and 1,465 of them died, from a nation only half the size of today's United States.

The other amazing thing about this kerfluffle is that everyone is shocked--shocked!--at the impolitic language used by Gen. McChrystal and his aides. (It was mostly his aides, you'll notice, if you actually take the time to read the article.) That's how soldiers talk, for crying out loud.

Today, the president of the United States had a chance to show that he was a bigger man than the general he put in charge of his "necessary war." Instead, he proved that he was a whole lot smaller. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Quartered Safe Out Here

George MacDonald Fraser is best know as the author of the Flashman series of anti-historical novels. Flashman went everywhere the British Empire could find him, not as model soldier but as an arrant coward and all-round bounder. My son-in-law put me onto him. But it turns out that Fraser also wrote one of the finest World War II memoirs that have ever crossed my desk: Quartered Safe Out Here. The title is ironical: as a nineteen-year-old private first class, Fraser wasn't quartered safe; he was on the line in 17th Indian Division's reconquest of Burma in 1944-1945. It's a great yarn, told from long distance--it was first published in 2001.

The war story is a good one, but I also like Fraser's neat juxtaposition of today's dainty sensitivities with the realities of all-out war against a brutal enemy: "The damage that fashionable attitudes, reflected (and created) by television, have done to the public spirit, is incalculable. It has been weakened to the point where it is taken for granted that anyone who has suffered loss and hardship must be in need of 'counseling'; that soldiers will suffer from 'post-battle traumatic stress' and need psychiatric help. One wonders how Londoners survived the Blitz without the interference of unqualified, jargon-mumbling 'counsellors', or how an overwhelming number of 1940s servicemen returned successfully to civilian life without benefit of brain-washing. Certainly, a small minority needed help; war can leave terrible mental scars--but the numbers will increase, and the scars enlarge, in proportion to society's insistence on raising spectres which would be better left alone. Tell people they should feel something, and they'll not only feel it, they regarded themselves as entitled and obliged to feel it."

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Not war in the modern world

Oh wow, this is really a great book: The Trojan War: A New History. I gave it to Sally Wife for her birthday, but after presenting it happened to read a few lines. I was hooked. I finished it in three days--well, maybe four. I was so fascinated that I forgot to affix the usual Post-It notes on the places that particularly fascinated me, so I have no quotes to show how well Mr. Strauss relives the days when the Greeks "burnt the topless towers of Ilium." A lot of it is speculation, of course, but it is convincing speculation, based on forensic and even anecdotal evidence. (Though the Greeks hadn't yet hit upon their rather odd alphabet, their enemies to the southeast were literate, so there actually are some records--if indirect--about events on the Dardanelles 3200 years ago.)

It helps of course if you have read Robert Fagles's great translation of The Iliad, or anyhow George Guidall's recording of it.

On stifling innovation

David Brooks, a comparatively sensible opinionator for the New York Times, wrote a rather good column the other day about the U.S. Army’s evolution from smash-and-enter to “Good morning, ma’m, may I help you milk that goat?” Since he works for the Gray Lady, Mr. Brooks of course thinks this is a splendid thing. An Army made up of Good Guys (and Good Girls—I mustn't forget the girls!). Who could be against that?

The catch, though Mr. Brooks doesn’t seems to notice that it’s a catch, comes in the second-last paragraph: “Now some say that the approach codified at Fort Leavenworth has become so dominant that it is actually stifling innovation. This is a complete intellectual sea change.” Actually, it’s not. Stifling innovation is what the U.S. Army does best, and what it has always done. It wouldn’t be so bad if the new dogma were working in Afghanistan, but it doesn’t seem to be. It’s as John Boyd liked to say: “It’s doctrine on day one, and it’s dogma the day after that.” Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Master Sun on long wars

Patrick Moran has published a new translation of one of strategy's great books, which he titles Master Sun's Art of War. It's available as a ten-dollar paperback or a three-dollar PDF download at Lulu.com. I particularly liked this little riff:

When engaging in warfare, make victory the highest priority. If warfare goes on for a long time the troops will lose their edge.

If city walls are besieged, then one's energies will be entangled.

If one exposes one's army to danger for a long period of time, then the resources of the nation will eventually fall short....

Truly, I have heard of cases when armies suffered due to their inelegant haste,but not of armies long enduring through serendipity.

To which Mr. Moran adds a pungent note: "Things eventually go wrong." Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Only Thing Worth Dying For III

I don’t usually get a whole lot of comments on this blog, so I think it’s worth noting what readers have been saying about this wonderful book: The Only Thing Worth Dying For. It tells the story of about the Green Berets who inserted Hamid Karzai into Afghanistan in November 2001. (That’s Mr. Karzai with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, posing with the Special Forces A Team—or Operational Detachment Alpha, as it’s now called.)

Anonymous said: Thanks for spreading the word about this book!

Anonymous said: Amazing book. I'm surprised I hadn't heard more about it. Probably the best book I read about Afghanistan.

forrest said: An absolute MUST-READ for anyone interested in the modern style of warfare laughably called 'low-intensity conflict' and the US role in that warfare. As enthralling as I foudn the story, however, I found myself wishing Amerine himself had written the book and not a professional writer because it was a little too slick and seamless for me.

When I was a Special Forces reservist, I had my own experience in Afghanistan 13 years before ODA574 and it was interesting to me that Capt Amerine found the mujahidin to be pretty much the same as I had, meaning their approach to fighting hasn't changed sicne the late, great British Empire thought it could conquer and administer that amazing land.

As to the question the title of Blehm's book asks, the answer is found in the song "How Many Are The Heroes" which asks "And if freedom's not worth dyin', what the hell are you livin' for?" Captain Amerine, I'd like to shake your hand someday; you, too, found something in Afghanistan worth dying for-- yourself.

And DaveHays said: Best book ever on the war on terror or afganistan. Tells a great story of what it take to be an officer in todays military. I felt like I knew the guys in the ODA well before the middle of the book. This is a must read for anyone interested in the war, current tactics or just reading about the best of our best. I'm reading mine for the 2nd time.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Congratulations ...

... to the people of Iraq, who came out in force yesterday to vote in a new Parliament, despite the bombs that were supposed to spoil the election. "The shrugging response of voters [to the spoiling attacks] could signal a fundamental weakening of the insurgency’s potency," notes the NYT. Well, cheer up: Joe Biden can always claim it as a victory for this administration.

... and congratulations also to the foolishly named Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which for a change gave its best-film Oscar to a film of some significance, The Hurt Locker. It's a worthy salute to the men whose courage brought Iraq to the point where it can choose its future, and never mind who takes the credit. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker is a worthy film, and I hope it wins the Oscar Best Picture award. Unusually, for a leading nominee, it's already out in DVD--I rented it from Netflix, and the link is to Amazon.com. That's a measure of how badly it did in theaters, while The Avatar packed them in. One sighs for the future of America!

Except for the customary and almost reflexive distaste for the place in which they find themselves ("I hate this fucking country!"), the film and its heroes have nothing to say about the long-running combat in Iraq. In this, it oddly reminded me of Japanese films about that country's long war--not only postwar ones like The Burmese Harp, but also films made during the 1931-1941 entanglement in China. The war is simply there, like the landscape. Even when we ignore it, it continues.

Indeed, so convinced was I that events were simply unfolding in front of me that I never noticed that one of the British headhunters encountered midway was played by Ralph Fiennes. The encounter was improbable, but the long-distance battle that ensued was utterly convincing. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

A man who earned his medals

Any follower of this blog knows that I kvetch about the chests-full of medals that American generals wear, 90 percent of them absurd or undeserved. Well, here's a man who also wore a chest full of medals: Colonel Bob Howard. The difference is that he earned them the hard way--at least the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Purple Hearts, and the Combat Infantryman's Badge. He was buried at Arlington on Monday. Blue skies, Colonel! -- Dan Ford

Think COIN but practice FID

The more ingrained an institution, the more impenetrable its jargon. The U.S. Army that I reluctantly served in the 1950s was bad enough, but today's military has a language of its own. Take the headline above: It's inaccessible to most of the world, but it happens to be very good advice. It comes from a Green Beret colonel who argues that the Army's current fascination with counter-insurgency (COIN) is all very well, except that most of what American troops are called upon to do isn't countering insurgency at all. COIN, as we read on the Foreign Policy website, is what a government and military do when they are threatened within their own borders. So the COINsters in Iraq are the Iraqis; in Afghanistan, the Afghans. What the Americans and other outsiders are trying to do in those countries is better defined as Foreign Internal Defense--hence the FID. The colonel argues:

Tactically, the indirect approach requires clear-eyed recognition that U.S. capacity will be applied through -- and not around -- the host nation. This paradigm seems simple, but it runs counter to U.S. military "can-doism" and requires a long-term view and immense operational patience. The indirect approach does not satisfy appetites for quick, measurable results.

Robert Haddick of Foreign Policy adds that this is a hard sell to an administration that has already announced the date when the troop drawdown is to begin. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Only Thing Worth Dying For II

The deeper I go into this book, the more impressed I am. For three years I studied War in the Modern World, reading almost everything my tutors threw at me, but The Only Thing Worth Dying For says so much more, and says it so well! Here we have a Special Forces sergeant sitting in the back of a Toyota truck with his laptop, calling in air strikes upon a Taliban column that not only hugely outnumbers the eleven-man A Team but also the ragtag Afghan force that Hamid Karzai has gathered to help them. Without firing a shot, the Green Berets have destroyed much of a battalion-sized force and sent the rest reeling back to regroup. And all this is so ordinary in November 2001 that Mr Blehm doesn't find it necessary to tell us how Alex recharged his laptop, nor very much about the antenna that enables him to talk to the F-18s, which at 30,000 feet are invisible to the Taliban until they come down to strafe. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Only Thing Worth Dying For

Wow. This is a splendid book. It reads like a novel but seems true to life. (I'll say more about that later, when I've finished the book.) Eric Blehm tells the story of the Special Forces A-Team (now unfortunately known as ODA, for Operational Detachment Alpha) that took Hamid Karzhai into Afghanistan set him on the path to become leader of the Liberation and eventually president. (The only thing worth dying for is not Mr Karzhai, of course, nor even Afghanistan, but the individual soldier's deeply held belief.) I've been a sucker for the Green Berets since traisping with them to Tan Hoa in 1964. Mr Blehm tells us that they have lost nothing of their unorthodox style and stubborn loyalty to one another. Get it (here it is on Amazon). Read it. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford