Starry, Starry Night

--A simple game of chess

Our crusade was such madness 
that only a real idealist could have thought it up
--The Seventh Seal (1957)
___________________

Ranger will draw connections among three fights: Lang Vei (Vietnam, Feb. '68), Mogadishu - Black Hawk Down (Oct. '93) and the Battle of Kamdesh at Command Outpost Keating in Afghanistan (Oct. 2009).

The key devolution over 40+ years is that the U.S. is no longer fighting enemy armies but simple assemblies of enemy fighters variously described as militias, militants, insurgents, etc., and while U.S. forces are arrayed to fight battles, they instead get roughly handled by simple street thugs ... people for whom soldierly behavior does not apply.

So, why do we fight for hills, towns and terrains which are disposable and not of worth to anyone except those squatting on that particular grid square, and then pull up stakes and leave? Have the principles of war lost their relevance? This is the Day of the Jackal; you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Has Clausewitz had his day? If so, what will direct and constrain our present and future conflicts?

From his personal discussions with battle survivor (Lt.) Paul Longgrear, the Battle of Lang Vei was the death of the United States Special Forces A-Camps, which were small and remote fighting camps with mission augmentation. The fall of Lang Vei showed that the US Army could not hold a camp if the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was determined to expend the operational assets to destroy their objective.

If the  NVA could do this at LV with USMC assets a 105 Howitzer distance away, then any SF fighting camp in VN was a potential death trap. The LV Battle was a knock-down fight between two determined armies; after LV and Tet '68, the outcome of the American war in Vietnam was sealed.

And yet, despite that death knell the U.S. continues 40 years on to emplace its soldiers in indefensible outposts which suffer the same dire fate.

Like LV, the Mogadishu battle [Black Hawk Down - "BHD'] was conducted by the finest Special Operations Forces (SOF) -- the 75th Ranger Battalion assets teamed up with SOF Delta operatives. The difference in the BHD scenario was that the enemy was an unorganized opponent lacking a detailed Table of Organization and Equipment (TO& E) and order of battle; in short, they functioned as militias lacking state apparatus. They probably lacked mission objectives beyond killing soldiers and controlling the countryside and cities by armed violence.

But BHD demonstrated that militias with platoon-level weapons (including RPG2 and 7's) could engage and kill prime US war fighting assets IF the militias were willing to take the casualties. It was estimated in BHD that the U.S. killed 1,000+ militia fighters, yet the U.S. mission was ultimately frustrated and abandoned. Somalia is still the same sewer 20 years on.

The book and the movie were an awe-inspiring view of a world-class infantry, but insurgents and militias world-wide re-learned that they can fight any army to standstill if willing to take the casualties. The lessons taken from the '79 Russo-Afghan war have been re-imagined in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2001 onward.

The Battle at Kamdesh in '09 for which SSG Clinton Romesha earned the Medal of Honor earlier this year occurred 20 miles away from a similar failure the previous year in the Battle of Wanat. While the U.S. soldiers supposedly killed 100 enemy militants, that is immaterial since the 4th Division no longer occupies any terrain in the mountain ranges of Afghanistan.

An old Counterinsurgency (COIN) metric goes, if we are killing 10:1 of ours, then we are being successful. It is doubtful the U.S. met that metric in LV and it assuredly did not in BHD. And in Kamdesh, with a kill ratio of 8:100 ... ? Did we win?

The New York Times reported the Americans following Kamdesh "declared the outpost closed and departed — so quickly that they did not carry out all of their stored ammunition. The outpost’s depot was promptly looted by the insurgents and bombed by American planes in an effort to destroy the lethal munitions left behind" ("Strategic Plans Spawn Bitter End for Lonely Outpost.")

COP Keating was not a win, and they left like Lee slinking out of Gettysburg in July 1863. The difference was that instead of withdrawing under an enemy army's pressure, they faced a rag-tag group of militia fighters who may have been simple bandits or warlord fighters. Though not a Waterloo or Liepzig, it was a total failure nonetheless.

If U.S. forces were to kill 100:1, they would still be losing in a Low-intensity conflict (LIC) or COIN environment.  We no longer talk of LIC, instead pretending that we fight battles, but LIC is the order of the day, and reality demands that understanding. However, that understanding would threaten to upend the profitable military complex as we know it.

Ranger's unit in RVN, Studies and Observations Group (SOG), is reported to have had a kill ratio of 150:1, but we still lost control of the Ho Chi Minh Trail since we never controlled the key terrain on the ground. An army can hold ground, but that is not equal to controlling the ground.

In the last 43 years, the U.S. Army has lost the ability to control the ground. It may have conquered Kabul and Baghdad, but it never controlled the ground, nor the hearts and minds of the locals. This is the fallow result of phony wars.

The latest wars prove the inability of the U.S. Army to destroy and force U.S. will on insurgencies and militia-inspired insurgencies. They are continuations of LV and BHD on another chessboard. What should we have learned?

Time is not on our side.

[cross-posted @ milpub]

A Day Late

--Clinton L. Romesha

I’d rather have the Medal of Honor
than be president of the United States
--Harry S. Truman
______________________

[Note: RAW will run further comments on this action.]

Were it not for a story reprinted from MilitaryTimes.com in his Purple Heart Magazine (May/June 2013) reprinted from MilitaryTimes.com, Ranger would not have known of the fourth living Medal of Honor recipient who served in Afghanistan, Clinton L. Romesha. Romesha was presented with his medal at the White House 11 Feb 2013.

Press on Romesha's MOH was scant, typified by this brief NYT piece, possibly because Romesha declined Michelle Obama's invitation to attend her husband's State of the Union speech while in town for the award, denying the President an important photo op. Romesha's action deserves some Ranger commentary.

Staff Sergeant Romesha was the section leader of the 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. During the action of 3 October 2009 in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, this small unit fought for its life in a nasty little defensive fight reminiscent of those at Wanat and Waygul.

In all, U.S. troops were arrayed for combat in a defense position which was indefensible, to no apparent military purpose; the posts were abandoned soon after each fight.

Commander in Chief Obama said at SSG Romesha's MOH presentation that "A later investigation found that Command Outpost Keating was tactically indefensible". That's what these soldiers were asked to do: Defend the indefensible." If this assessment is correct, why was this not ascertained before eight U.S. soldiers were killed and 22 wounded, and why were the soldiers not extracted? The point of combat operations is that something be achieved as a result of the killing and violence; none of these fights met that bar.

Ranger is not questioning the indubitable valor of this engaged unit -- we are asking why COP Keating was hung out in the breeze, a tasty morsel for the Afghan opposition's picking? Hanging pretty medals from a brave soldier's neck does not erase the question.

In terms of U.S. response, the press rolls endless instant replays of the Benghazi Embassy murders and the Boston Marathon bombings, events in which eight U.S. citizens were killed. We are transfixed and mesmerized by these events, and yet hardly a whisper of the eight Americans killed in this 4th Infantry Division fight. No press and no indignation from the C in C down to the section leaders. Where are the congressional committee meetings searching to assign culpability for the failure?

Oddly, the Army reports four officers (0-3 through 06) received reprimands for the action, but the names or the nature of the reprimands are not stated; as the names are not given there is no way to verify the allegation. If there is culpability, the taxpayers have the right to know the names of the accused as we pay their salaries; this is democracy.

Or does democracy die incrementally in small little fights in insignificant valleys of inconsequential countries?

Why do we blithely accept the meaningless and sacrificial deaths of eight soldiers on some far-flung scrap of land which holds no value and gains us nothing? These soldiers did not die defending our country and Constitution. Their actions in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, were not connected to the safety and security of our Homeland. The U.S. could kill every Taliban fighter in Afghanistan and that country will still never be a democratic member of the fraternity of nations.

So whither the effort, death and destruction?