Helter Skelter

Sgt. Archibald Cutter: You're mad!

Guru: Mad? Mad. Hannibal was mad, Caesar was mad,
and Napoleon surely was the maddest of the lot.
Ever since time began, they've called mad
all the great soldiers in this world. Mad?
We shall see what wisdom lies within my madness.
For this is but the spring that precedes the flood.
From here we roll on. From village to town.
From town to mighty city. Ever mounting, ever widening,
until at last my wave engulfs all India!
--Gunga Din (1939)

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Ranger has read and commented on Pat Tillman, Roberts Ridge, SSG Nein and Cpl. Sanford. My information was gleaned from open source material (After Action Reports available online.)

All of these actions share common threads:

[1] All were based on or resulted in hasty and ill-advised action. Only Nein's action indicated correct troop leading procedure prior to the action. Tillman's unit, the reaction forces at Roberts Ridge and Cpl. Sanford's unit were rushed for time and ignored basics of combat. These include leader's recon, establishing security elements and utilization of preplanned fires. None had an evident appropriate fall back contingency plan.

[2] All of these actions showed the heroism and dedication of our soldiers, even without proper staff planning and coordination.

[3] All of these actions show the lie that is evident in our Phony War on Terror (PWOT© ) in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yeah, we have a great new COIN program with a minty four-star guru, but units will be required at an instant's notice to divert and back up any Iraqi unit that is in a tight. Why?

The why is that the military is desperate to win, and to the military mind, killing people is the same as winning. Screw their hearts and minds -- blow their shit away!

What you have is a magnificently-equipped U.S Army running around willy-nilly looking for targets of opportunity. These hapless searches take place in the latest, most expensive blast-resistant vehicles money can buy. And of course, none of this expensive gear will produce a victory.

Using Cpl. Sanford's action as example, the Iraqi police are in a bad firefight to clear a house and call for help. If they are policemen, they should have backed out, contained the area and halted all movement in and out. The Iraqi Army should have been called for support, and anti-tank weapons could have been deployed to destroy them in place.

Since U.S. intelligence is so faulty the chain of command obviously prefers to throw assaults against houses full of insurgents and cross their fingers and hope for the best. When the best doesn't happen, cover it up with the heroism of the soldiers. Works every time.

These assaults are ill-advised, helter-skelter skirmishes, and overly costly to the tasked units. It is doubtful that the fighting, violence, death and destruction of any of these actions addressed the threat of al-Qaeda.

While the Chechen fighters at Roberts Ridge were hardcore al Qaeda assets, were they a strategic threat to America? Those jihadists wearing shower shoes in sub-zero temperatures were land-bound and fighting to expel the U.S. Army, as are most military assets that face U.S. troops.

Even if they were all al Qaeda linked, they are military arm and have no relationship to the sophistication of the western savvy 9-11 operatives. The threat of al-Qaeda is their infiltration-capable operatives. Their military arm cannot project any offensive action outside their sphere of influence. They may have the intent, but lack the capability. Which leads to the questions for us:

• What are we fighting for?
• What are we fighting against?
• What can we win?
• When will we know if we've won?
• If we win, can we afford the cost?

Victory and War on Terror will never be uttered in the same sentence, save by fools like GWB & Co.