A Marine Corps for the 21st Century

Is the Marine Corps just another army?

By Robert Haddick
This Week at War (smallwarsjournal.com)
May 14, 2010

On May 7, during a discussion with students at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College, Defense SecretaryRobert Gates revealed that he is interviewing candidates to replace Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway, who will retire this fall. Gates said he will expect the candidates to explain to him what in the future will make the Marine Corps unique and not just a second - and by implication, wastefully redundant - Army. "We will always have a Marine Corps," Gates said. "But the question is, how do you define the mission post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan? And that's the intellectual effort that I think the next commandant has to undertake."

The Marine Corps has long sought to differentiate itself from the Army by specializing in amphibious operations -- the ability to project military power from ship to shore. But during his talk to the students, Gates wondered whether large-scale amphibious landings would ever again be practical in the age of relatively cheap, numerous, and precise anti-ship missiles. If not, then what will make the Marine Corps unique?

Some analysts have already attempted to answer Gates's questions. Many of these analysts have concluded that security assistance, with numerous small detachments of Marines providing training and support to allied military forces, will be a major mission in the future. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Novack, then a staff officer at Headquarters Marine Corps, described a plan for Marine Corps regiments to each specialize in a particular region of the world, learn its culture, and then deploy security assistance training teams to build partnerships and indigenous military capacity. Analysts at Rand Corp. called for the both the Marine Corps and the Army to permanently designate up to a third of their combat units for security assistance work. Echoing Lt. Col. Novack's plan, Steven Metz and Frank Hoffman suggested assigning Latin America and the Pacific Rim to the Marine Corps and the rest of the world to the Army. Alternatively, Metz and Hoffman would have the Marine Corps be the Pentagon's primary assault force, with the Army specializing in stabilization, security, and counterinsurgency.

By contrast, Dakota Wood, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, thinks the Marine Corps can still perform offensive combat operations from its traditional naval platform. Wood believes Marine units deployed on Navy ships and equipped with air power and landing craft will be useful for counterterrorism raiding and for direct action against nonstate adversaries. Against nation-state adversaries, Wood concludes that Marine Corps operations against adversary shipping lanes are feasible. However, Wood thinks that the Navy and the Marine Corps need to adopt a more decentralized structure to be effective against the most capable opponents.

Gates's candidates will no doubt explain why the Marines' sea-based tradition will remain relevant into the future. But as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, that argument for what makes the Marine Corps different from the Army will not stop the Marines from jumping into any kind of land war. Even when far from the ocean and appearing to be just another army, the Marine Corps has its own particular way of doing things. That, more than sea-basing, is what makes the Marine Corps unique and a value to the country

Marines "Female Engagement Team" making a difference!

Female Engagement Team Plays Unique Role For Marines In Afghanistan
American Morning (CNN), 31 Mar 2010

KIRAN CHETRY: Well, there is nothing unusual about women serving in the military now, thousands of them stationed in Afghanistan right now and most of them assigned to bases far from enemy contact. Except for two young Marines who are on a mission deep inside Helmand Province, in a location littered with roadside bombs.

Pentagon correspondent Chris Lawrence introduces us to America's Female Engagement Team in this "A.M. Original".

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Just about everyone told these two Marines, sure you deploy to Afghanistan, but you'll never leave the base.

MARINE LANCE CPL. GIADA WITT: They're like, yes, there's zero percent chance that you'll be leaving the wire ever.

LAWRENCE: But here they are, in a remote, heavily IED part of Helmand Province, on foot in Afghan villages.

WITT: Salaam Alaikum.

LAWRENCE: Lance Corporal Giada Witt and Corporal Christina Arana are part of FET or Female Engagement Team.

The Marines realized they were only reaching half the Afghan people, but Witt and Arana can go where male Marines can't -- into the homes of Afghan women.

MARINE CPL. CHRISTINA ARANA: Since this culture believes that the women can't meet with the men, they have to keep themselves covered.

LAWRENCE: Even our crew has to stop at the gate to avoid offending the man who owns this home.

LAWRENCE: I know they seem to be marginalized, but do you think that Afghan women have a good deal of influence within their family?

WITT: Absolutely. And they're definitely a key player in getting information.

LAWRENCE: In a counterinsurgency fight, if a woman tells the team they need a new wall and the Marines get it built, it improves their acceptance in the village. And the women may know from their husbands who the bad guys are.

Women only make up 6 percent of the U.S. Marine Corps and they're not allowed to join infantry or recon.

ARANA: Or it can always (INAUDIBLE). You have to meet with the people. You have to understand them. (END VIDEOTAPE)

LAWRENCE: Yes, and to do that, they receive some training before they're deployed here. Some of it is a cultural awareness, specifically about the area of Afghanistan that they're going to.

The other is a more extended refresher course on combat training. In fact, one of them said, one of the drills they had to do was just do a tremendous amount of push-ups, hop up, go in a full sprint, stop and then fire accurately. It's supposed to get them used to firing under pressure, which is something they may have to do here in Helmand.

CHETRY: Wow.

LAWRENCE: Kiran.

CHETRY: Intense training, but an intense mission. Is this a permanent program, by the way, a full-time job for them?

LAWRENCE: No, it's not. These teams are kind of thrown together by female Marines who also have other jobs, and that's one of the things that critics say. You know, they're getting pulled back into their own units.

They say, if this is yielding good information, if it's yielding good relations, then it should be more of a permanent full-time thing where they are allowed to spend months and months at a time, you know, cultivating those relationships.

CHETRY: All right. Chris Lawrence giving us a firsthand look.

Army gives up Bayonets - M16's next??

Army training: Bayonets out, ‘ab blasters’ in
Five-mile runs also nixed in first changes to regimen in 30 years
The Associated Press
updated 12:00 p.m. ET, Tues., March. 16, 2010

FORT JACKSON, S.C. - At 5 a.m. on the Army's largest training base, soldiers grunt through the kinds of stretches, body twists and bent-leg raises that might be seen in an "ab blaster" class at a suburban gym.

Adapting to battlefield experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army is revamping its basic training regimen for the first time in three decades by nixing five-mile runs and bayonet drills in favor of zigzag sprints and honing core muscles.

Trainers hope the switch will better prepare soldiers physically for the pace of combat, with its sudden dashes and rolling gun battles.

They also want to toughen recruits who are often more familiar with Facebook than fistfights.

The exercises are part of the first major overhaul in Army basic fitness training since men and women began training together in 1980, said Frank Palhoska, head of the Army's Fitness School at Fort Jackson, which has worked several years on overhauling the service's fitness regime.

'Training warriors'

The new plan is being expanded this month at the Army's four other basic training installations — Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., Fort Sill, Okla., Fort Benning, Ga., and Fort Knox, Ky.

"We don't run five miles in combat, but you run across the street every day," Palhoska said, adding, "I'm not training long-distance runners. I'm training warriors" who must shuttle back and forth across a back alley.

Drill sergeants with combat experience in the current wars are credited with urging the Army to change training, in particular to build up core muscle strength to walk patrols with heavy packs and body armor or to haul a buddy out of a burning vehicle.

One of those experienced drill sergeants is 1st Sgt. Michael Todd, a veteran of seven deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

On a recent training day Todd was spinning recruits around to give them the feel of rolling out of a tumbled Humvee. Then he tossed on the ground pugil sticks made of plastic pipe and foam, forcing trainees to crawl for their weapons before they pounded away on each other.

"They have to understand hand-to-hand combat, to use something other than their weapon, a piece of wood, a knife, anything they can pick up," Todd said.

The new training also uses "more calisthenics to build core body power, strength and agility," Palhoska said in an office bedecked with 60-year-old black and white photos of World War II-era mass exercise drills.

'A more obese, sedentary generation'

Over the 10 weeks of basic, a strict schedule of exercises is done on a varied sequence of days so muscles rest, recover and strengthen.

Another aim is to toughen recruits from a more obese and sedentary generation, trainers said. Many recruits didn't have physical education in elementary, middle or high school and therefore tend to lack bone and muscle strength.

When they ditch diets replete with soda and fast food for healthier meals and physical training, they drop excess weight and build stronger muscles and denser bones, Palhoska said.

Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, the three-star general in charge of revamping all aspects initial training, said his overall goal is to drop outmoded drills and focus on what soldiers need today and in the future.

Bayonet drills had continued for decades, even though soldiers no longer carry the blades on their automatic rifles. Hertling ordered the drills dropped.

"We have to make the training relevant to the conditions on the modern battlefield," Hertling said during a visit to Fort Jackson in January.

The general said the current generation has computer skills and a knowledge base vital to a modern fighting force. He foresees soldiers using specially equipped cell phones to retrieve information on the battlefield to help repair a truck or carry out an emergency lifesaving medical technique.

But they need to learn how to fight.
"Most of these soldiers have never been in a fistfight or any kind of a physical confrontation. They are stunned when they get smacked in the face," said Capt. Scott Sewell, overseeing almost 190 trainees in their third week of training. "We are trying to get them to act, to think like warriors."

For hours, Sewell and his drill sergeants urge on helmeted trainees as they whale away at each other with pugil sticks, landing head and body blows until one falls flat on the ground. As a victor slams away at his flattened foe, a drill sergeant whistles the fight to a halt.

"This is the funnest day I've had since I've been here!" said 21-year-old Pvt. Brendon Rhyne, of Rutherford County, N.C., after being beaten to the ground. "It makes you physically tough. Builds you up on the insides mentally, too."

The Marine Corps is also applying war lessons to its physical training, adopting a new combat fitness test that replicates the rigor of combat.

The test, which is required once a year, has Marines running sprints, lifting 30-pound ammunition cans over their heads for a couple of minutes and completing a 300-yard obstacle course that includes carrying a mock wounded Marine and throwing a mock grenade.

Capt. Kenny Fleming, a 10-year-Army veteran looking after a group of Fort Jackson trainees, said men and women learn exercises that prepare them to do something on the battlefield such as throw a grenade, or lunge and pick a buddy off the ground.

Experience in Iraq has shown that women need the same skills because they come under fire, too, even if they are formally barred from combat roles. Fleming said those who had some sort of sports in high school can easily pick up on the training, while those who didn't have to be brought along.

One hefty soldier in a recent company he trained dropped 45 pounds and learned to blast out 100 push-ups and 70 sit-ups, he said.

"We just have to take the soldier who's used to sitting on the couch playing video games and get them out there to do it," Fleming said.

Marjah: Charlie Co., 3rd, 6th Marines

The Marines move on Marja: A perilous slog against Afghanistan's Taliban

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post
Monday, February 15, 2010

MARJA, AFGHANISTAN -- For the Marines of Charlie Company's 3rd Platoon, Sunday's mission was simple enough: Head west for a little more than a mile to link up with Alpha Company in preparation for a mission to secure the few ramshackle government buildings in this farming community.

It would take nine hours to walk that distance, a journey that would reveal the danger and complexity of the Marines' effort to wrest control of Marja from the Taliban.

The operation to secure the area, which began with an airlift of hundreds of Marines and Afghan soldiers on Saturday and continued with the incursion of additional forces on Sunday, is proceeding more slowly than some U.S. military officials had anticipated because of stiff Taliban resistance and a profusion of roadside bombs.

In perhaps the most audacious Taliban attack since the operation commenced, a group of insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades attempted to storm a temporary base used by Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion of the 6th Marine Regiment on Sunday evening. The grenade launch was followed by three men attempting to rush into the compound. The Marines presumed the men to be suicide bombers and threw grenades at them, killing all three.

The attack on the Bravo patrol base was one of several attempts to overrun Marine positions Sunday. All were repelled.

"The enemy is trying last-ditch efforts," said the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Cal Worth.

The intensity of Taliban opposition is forcing the Marines to move cautiously, which sometimes means spending hours to advance only a few hundred yards, as Charlie Company's 3rd Platoon discovered Sunday.

At 6:30 a.m., the Marines disembarked from their trucks, which had been parked single-file along a de-mined path cut through a muddy field seeded with homemade bombs. Tires served as urinals. Shaving, the Marines' daily ritual no matter how grim the environment, occurred atop the vehicles.

Thirty minutes later, it was clear that the armored trucks were not going to get the Marines to their destination. The temporary bridge across the canal ahead of them, installed by combat engineers the day before, was starting to slip. And the road ahead was deemed to be littered with improvised explosive devices.

The first shots

So at 7:30, they set off by foot, accompanied by a contingent of Afghan soldiers fresh out of boot camp. To avoid homemade bombs, they walked across the fields, trudging through mud and over small opium-producing poppy plants.

They hadn't been walking 15 minutes when the first shots rang out. Everyone dropped to the ground. They looked for the shooter. But there were no more shots, just the crowing of a rooster.

There would be no straight path to the destination. The adobe-walled compounds along the way -- and for hundreds of feet to the north and south of their route -- would have to be cleared.

The plan was that the Afghan soldiers would knock on doors whenever possible. In this counterinsurgency operation, the Marines have been told that the people of Marja are the prize. Don't alienate them. Don't knock down doors unnecessarily.

A few minutes later, another shot echoed across the poppy field. Word quickly made it down the line: A Marine ahead fired on a menacing dog while searching a housing compound.

Before anyone could find the owner to make amends, a rattle of gunfire came toward the Marines from the west. The Marines and the Afghan soldiers returned fire with M4 carbines and belt-fed machine guns.

Eighteen minutes later, what sounded like a lawn-mower engine could be heard overhead. A small, unarmed drone, launched from a nearby base, circled above. It revealed what the Marines couldn't immediately see from the field: Three insurgents, one of whom was carrying a walkie-talkie, had been killed.

As a squad from the 3rd Platoon moved gingerly forward, unsure if there were more insurgents unseen by the drone, Worth received a report over his radio: The Marines from Bravo had just hoisted the Afghan flag at a bazaar to the northwest.

Each of his companies have been given Afghan flags, he said. He made it clear that the Stars and Stripes was not to be raised in Marja.

"No end-zone dances," he said. "This is their country."

By then it was safe to approach the owner of the dog, a middle-aged farmer named Jawad Wardak, who was standing in front of his spacious mud-walled house with five young men who he said were his sons and nephews. There were large stacks of dried poppy plants on his driveway, and his fields were filled with small poppy saplings, which will grow to harvest height by spring.

"I'm very sorry about your dog," Worth said. "Hopefully we haven't done any damage to your home."

Wardak shrugged. "It's no problem," he said.

Worth didn't want to pass up the opportunity to make a friend. "We're bringing the government of Afghanistan back here," he said. Wardak said nothing.

"You will see more forces moving through here so that the Taliban goes away," Worth continued.

Some of the Afghan soldiers assigned to the 3rd Platoon also didn't want to miss an opportunity. One of them asked Wardak's nephew for food.

"We'll give you a meal," Worth said to the soldier. "This is not why we're here. We don't want to impose ourselves. We're guests here." But the nephew came out with three large pieces of flatbread anyway, and the soldier left content.


'Expand from here'

Across a dirt road from Wardak's house was an irrigation canal. Fording it would require stepping through thigh-high water, but getting back in the trucks was not an option. A team of route-clearance Marines, with devices that detect and detonate roadside bombs, was discovering devices every few hundred yards. By the end of the day, it would find a dozen on the road paralleling the 3rd Platoon's journey.

It was even worse on other routes. On a road perpendicular to the one the 3rd Platoon was following, Charlie Company's 2nd Platoon discovered a 10-foot wall embedded with 70 bombs.

As soon as the Marines had crossed the canal, Worth noted that his Marines did not plan to check every house on the way to their objective. "We're engaged in a counterinsurgency," he said. "We're not going to be kicking down every door."

As he uttered the word "door," a piercing crackle of gunfire came from a housing compound to the northwest of Wardak's house. Everyone dove to the ground.

The Marines responded with their rifles. When that didn't seem to do the trick, they fired mortars and shoulder-launched rockets. After 10 minutes, the firing ceased. Four insurgents lay dead.

Worth said the slow, methodical pace the Marines are using to move into the area has kept them from "desperate situations" that result in units calling in air and artillery strikes, which have greater potential of causing civilian casualties.

Even so, he said, he aims to secure Marja's government center soon and then extend anti-Talilban clearing operations to other parts of the area. "We're going to expand from here," he said. "We'll bring more locals into the security bubble as quickly as we can."

Two hours later, at 4:30 p.m., the Marines walked into a walled-off courtyard used by Alpha Company. They were wet and tired but had suffered no casualties. Their mission had been accomplished.

Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus!

The following editorial, among the most famous ever written, appeared in the New York Sun in 1897:

Dear Editor-

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O'Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there.

Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real?

Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

======

Let the Afgan Army Fight !!

By Andrew Lubin

Training the Afghans how to shoot and move is the easy part. A typical Afghan soldier can probably beat an American tri-athlete up a steep hill; add in the flak, Kevlar and other equipment our troops carry, and they look back at us in amusement.

What’s not so amusing is the drug use, absurdly low pay, desertion, casual corruption, and problems caused in Kabul, much of which affects their ability to fight.

The pay issue was finally addressed last week when Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, who now oversees training of Afghans, increased the pay for both the Army and the Police. The pay for a basic soldier is now $ 165/month, and a sergeant is $ 210/ month. While this is still far below the $ 250 or so the Taliban pays its fighters, Afghan patriotism is such that enlistments boomed within the next days. One can imagine the results if we simply paid them close to the same as the Taliban.

The issue facing Gen McChrystal and Gen Caldwell is not just one of increasing the size of the Afghan Army, but rather having an efficient Afghan Army. If the war is to be ‘Afghanized’ then the ANA needs to be an effective army and not just a job-training program where the troop strength numbers look good on paper, instead of in the field. The question is not only how to properly train the young Afghans who enlist so enthusiastically, but also how to better utilize the entire Afghan army.

There are simple solutions here, except both are studiously being ignored in ISAF Headquarters who are actively trying to over-complicate the ANA in their zeal to turn them into mini-American soldiers:

1 – Instead of forming more kandaks (an Afghan Army battalion), increase the size of the existing ones. The ANA is short of good officers and senior enlisted; forming more kandaks will dilute these numbers even further. Inexperienced or incompetent officers and senior enlisted is bad for discipline, bad for morale, and saps the Afghan’s ability to fight.

Increasing the kandaks from the current 670 to say 900 will enable the good officers and senior enlisted to retain control of their troops while incorporating the new and inexperienced troops into their kandaks.

2 – Push the ANA into the fight without any further delay. It’s going to take years to get them spun up to Tier One units; so get their headquarters units co-located with their American mentors. Get the Afghans involved in the planning, in the logistics, and in their own training. Push them into the fighting ASAP; their ‘good enough’ is in fact – good enough. Plus they’re respected by the Afghan people; the more you can get them in front of the locals the more you’ve Afghanized the war.

There is already a program in place, instituted by the 3rd Marine Division, who has been mentoring the ANA’s 201’st Corp for the past four years. It’s called “Muscular Mentoring”, and it’s very effective. Each Marine is paired up with his 201st Corp equal, with the Marine Colonel mentoring the 201st Corp CG. From going into the field together, to planning missions, to sharing chai and quiet chats about leadership the Marines and Afghans work together daily.

The program works; in Kapisa Province’s Tagab River Valley, the ANA built their own FOB, and maintains security in the southern part of the valley. Giving them their own battlespace builds both their expertise and effectiveness, as well as promotes their reputation amongst the locals.

This is a vivid contrast to the situation some 20 miles away in Mether Lam, where an American National Guard unit has no interaction with an 80-man ANA troop with whom they share a base. With an increase in IED attacks on the main road, it is disturbing that the Guardsmen, have not approached the ANA for joint missions, instead continue to patrol from the back of their MRAPS with minimal ANA input on missions, tactics, or strategy.

Last year I interviewed a group of young Afghan enlisted men. “Why’d you join-up?” I asked. “My mother and father fought the Russians,” one soldier told me. “and my great-great grandfather fought the British, as did his grandfather. I hate the Pakistanis, and want to kill them all.” These young men don’t need to sit through yet another Army powerpoint; if we could harness this sort of fighting spirit to some reasonable leadership, we don’t have to worry about withdrawing in July 2011; we can withdraw tomorrow.

Tom Friedman:The Policy Better Match their Sacrifice

The Policy Has To Match The Sacrifice

By Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times
September 13, 2009

On Sept. 3, this newspaper published a very revealing front-page article from Iraq about a bizarre bank-robbery that summed up the challenge of where we are in Baghdad and Kabul and how to think about what it will take to succeed in both places.

The article began with an appalling tale: bodyguards for one of Iraq’s most powerful men, Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, tied up eight security officers at a Baghdad bank, executed them point blank and then made off with $4.3 million in cash. It is the sort of story that leaves war supporters shaking their heads, asking what have we accomplished in six years of U.S. involvement there, and war opponents saying, “I told you so.”

But then, suddenly, the story took an interesting turn. It noted that the robbers were quickly identified by witnesses, and most were arrested. After a short trial, a court in Baghdad sentenced four out of the nine robbery suspects to death. One man was acquitted; the other four are still missing.

Although the plotters are still on the loose, “the robbery also demonstrated in some rickety way that Iraq’s young institutions, the judiciary, the news media and its increasingly democratic politics, make it difficult for even the country’s most powerful people to snap their fingers and make an embarrassing case go away,” the article noted. “And, contrary to the state of affairs under Saddam Hussein, there was an open trial free for anyone to criticize — and they did — even if death sentences were handed down in only two and a half days.” All the money was reportedly recovered.

Why is this story revealing? First, Iraqis and Afghans have one big thing in common: They are like battered children. And battered children often grow up to be battering adults. That is, to survive under Saddam in Iraq or to survive the Russian occupation and the Taliban years in Kabul was to survive terrifying levels of brutality. And it made many people brutal and corrupt to get by.

What you see in this bank robbery story is the struggle between Iraq’s old political culture of brutality and corruption and its incipient new one of democracy and the rule of law.

Now that Saddam is gone, we have to hope “that a new generation will grow up with enough rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and democracy that it will be able to overcome the culture of brutality that Saddam instilled,” said Joseph Sassoon, the Baghdad-born author of “Iraqi Refugees” and an adjunct professor at Georgetown. “But we should have no illusions; the batterers may still win.”

That is what we have accomplished in Iraq so far: At a huge cost, we have given a chance for a more democratic political culture to emerge in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. That is not insignificant. But changing a political culture is hard. It will take a long time before one trend decisively wins — and more American help will be needed to keep it on track.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. military is advocating a new strategy, designed to make the Afghan people feel safe in order to get their cooperation in defeating the Taliban. It, too, requires changing the political culture and state-building from bottom up, another long historical process. You can’t visit a Greg Mortenson school for girls there without being touched by the necessity of such an effort. But you can’t walk through an Afghan town made of mud huts, or observe how our Afghan “allies” perverted the last election, without sensing how hard it will be.

While visiting Afghanistan in July, I met a U.S. diplomat in Helmand Province who told me this story: He had served in Anbar, in Iraq, and one day a Marine officer came to him, after carrying a wounded buddy off the battlefield on his back, and said to him, “The policy had better match the sacrifice.”
In Iraq, for way too long, our policy did not match the sacrifice of our soldiers. It was badly planned and under-resourced. Before we proceed with this new strategy in Afghanistan we have to give our generals a chance to make their case, we also have to insist that Congress debate it anew, hear other experts, and, if Congress decides to go ahead, to formally authorize it. Like Iraq, it would involve a long struggle, and we can’t ask our soldiers to start something we have no stomach to finish.

In short, President Obama has to be as committed to any surge in Afghanistan as President Bush was in Iraq, because Mr. Obama will have to endure a lot of bad news before things — might — get better.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told an American Legion convention about Afghanistan: “Let’s take a good hard look at this fight we’re in, what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I’d rather see us as a nation argue about the war, struggling to get it right, than ignore it. Because each time I go to Dover to see the return of someone’s father, brother, mother, or sister, I want to know that collectively we’ve done all we can to make sure that sacrifice isn’t in vain.”

Obama & Staff Discuss Additional Troop Levels

Advisers To Obama Divided On Size Of Afghan Force

By Peter Baker and Elisabeth Bumiller
New York Times
September 4, 2009

WASHINGTON — The military’s anticipated request for more troops to combat the insurgency in Afghanistan has divided senior advisers to President Obama as they try to determine the proper size and mission of the American effort there, officials said Thursday.

Even before the top commander in Afghanistan submits his proposal for additional forces, administration officials have begun what one called a “healthy debate” about what the priorities should be and whether more American soldiers and Marines would help achieve them.

Leading those with doubts is Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has expressed deep reservations about an expanded presence in Afghanistan on the grounds that it may distract from what he considers the more urgent goal of stabilizing Pakistan, officials said. Among those on the other side are Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative to the region, who shares the concern about Pakistan but sees more troops as vital to protecting Afghan civilians and undermining the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been vocal in favor of more troops, and while some officials said she had not shown her hand during the current deliberations, they expected her to be an advocate for a more robust force.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has voiced concern that putting so many troops in Afghanistan would make the United States look like an occupier, but during a news conference on Thursday he sounded more supportive of the prospect.

“There is a unanimity of opinion about what our objective is, and the objective is to disable and destroy Al Qaeda and remove that threat to our national security,” said David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser. “Obviously, there are a variety of opinions about how best to achieve that objective, and it’s valuable and important to hear those views.”

The emerging debate follows the delivery Monday of a new strategic assessment by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who took over all American and NATO forces in Afghanistan in June. Mr. Gates has now forwarded the general’s report of about 25 pages to Mr. Obama.

Although General McChrystal included no specific force proposals in his review, officials expect him to send a separate request in the coming weeks. Military strategists, including one who has advised General McChrystal, said he might offer three options. The smallest proposed reinforcement, from 10,000 to 15,000 troops, would be described as the high-risk option. A medium-risk option would involve sending about 25,000 more troops, and a low-risk option would call for sending about 45,000 troops.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, cautioned that talk about troop levels was speculation. “Anyone who tells you that they know how many troops the commander is going to ask for and the options he may or may not present doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because that has not been determined yet,” Mr. Morrell said. He said that Mr. Gates had not made up his mind about what he would recommend to the president.

Mr. Gates could be the key adviser on this decision, and some military analysts predicted that he might recommend what Pentagon officials call the “Goldilocks option” — the medium-risk one in the middle. Because he was first appointed by President George W. Bush, Mr. Gates could provide political cover for Mr. Obama should the president reject the biggest possible buildup.

Mr. Gates has long been worried that a large number of American forces would alienate the Afghan population. But at a news conference with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Gates said Thursday that his concerns about the American “footprint” had been mitigated by General McChrystal, who has indicated that the size of the force is less important than what it does.

“Where foreign forces have had a large footprint and failed, in no small part it has been because the Afghans concluded they were there for their own imperial interests and not there for the interests of the Afghan people,” Mr. Gates said. But he said that General McChrystal’s emphasis on reducing civilian casualties and interacting more with Afghans “has given us a greater margin of error in that respect.”

Mr. Obama has already ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan this year for a total American force of 68,000, on top of 40,000 NATO troops. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Holbrooke pushed for those reinforcements, while Mr. Biden resisted. “It is true that Hillary was very forceful; I had some disagreement in degree with her,” Mr. Biden later told USA Today. “The president ended up landing on a spot that was where she was.”

Mr. Biden has argued that a sizable increase in resources for Afghanistan invariably means less for Pakistan, a concern born out of his frustration as a senator during the Bush administration pushing for more aid to Islamabad. In some ways, he has told colleagues, Pakistan is more important than Afghanistan because extremism is on the rise there, Al Qaeda has operating room and the government of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, remains vulnerable.

Other American officials said they worried that General McChrystal simply did not have enough forces to turn around Afghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke just returned from Afghanistan, where he heard from military officers who said they needed more help to execute General McChrystal’s strategy of protecting the population from the Taliban, rather than just hunting militants.

As the president’s senior uniformed adviser, Admiral Mullen has said he worries about the impact of a buildup on the nation’s already stretched armed forces. In July, Mr. Gates announced a temporary increase of 22,000 troops in the size of the Army.

Mediating the debate will be Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser. “My job is to make sure the process works the way the president wants and everybody is at the table,” he said. “I try to be open-minded and not prejudice anything.”

He said he would ensure that dissidents got to voice their views to Mr. Obama. “He encourages vigorous debate,” General Jones said. “The thing not to do in a meeting with the president is to sit on your hands and hope you don’t get called on, because that’s a guarantee that you’re going to get called on.”

Not Men, Not Women - Just Marines !

Female Marine Unit Plays Critical Role Developing Links To Afghan Women

By Alfred de Montesquiou, Associated Press
Aug 15, 2009

KHAWJA JAMAL, Afghanistan — Put on body armor, check weapons, cover head and shoulders with a scarf.

That was the drill for female American Marines who set out on patrol this week with a mission to make friends with Afghan women in a war zone by showing respect for Muslim standards of modesty.

The all-female unit of 46 Marines is the military's latest innovation in its rivalry with the Taliban for the populace's loyalty. Afghan women are viewed as good intelligence sources, and more open to the basics of the military's hearts-and-minds effort — hygiene, education and an end to the violence.

"It's part of the effort to show we're sensitive to local culture," said Capt. Jennifer Gregoire, of East Strasburg, Pa.

She leads the Female Engagement Team in the Now Zad Valley of Helmand province, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.

"If you show your hair, it's kind of like seeing a nude picture here, because women are very covered up," she said.

Women are technically barred from combat units in the Marines, and some infantrymen have been surprised to see them in brightly colored head scarves under their helmets, deployed in the most intense combat zones in the country.

"But...I think they understand that what we're doing is vital to operations and vital to the counterinsurgency program they want to run," said Gregoire.

Female troops were assigned to search women at checkpoints in Iraq, and the experience fed into the Afghan effort, said Cpl. Sarah Furrer, from Colorado Springs, Colo., who served in both war zones.

"I'm not married, and I don't have children, so they think that's awkward because I'm 24," Furrer said of her Iraq experience. But as a result, "we're not so much afraid of engaging the women" in Afghanistan, she said.

"I've found you get great intel from the female population," said Capt. Zachary Martin, who commands the Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, stationed in Now Zad. "The women don't want their men out there conducting jihad and getting killed."

Martin said units have frequently received tips from women about weapons caches or hidden bombs.

But just to find the women is a challenge.

There were none in sight as Gregoire's team entered Khwaja Jamal, a village of mud-brick homes with no electricity or government presence.

While heavily armed Marines fanned out, the four women started by trying to strike up conversations with the few old men and young children who ventured outdoors.

The several hundred villagers grow wheat and opium poppies in the crossfire between Marines and Taliban fighters who are in the woods less than a mile away. "They look at us through binoculars. They'll kill anybody who talks to the Americans," said Abdul Gayom to explain why the villagers were so wary of meeting the patrol.

Operation Eastern Resolve 11

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEAugust 12, 2009
PRESS RELEASE 09-09

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Helmand Province, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan –

U.S. Marines and Afghan National Army soldiers launched Operation Eastern Resolve II in the Now Zad District of Helmand province this morning in an effort to disrupt insurgent violence and intimidation campaigns and provide freedom of movement for Afghan citizens to have the opportunity to vote in upcoming provincial and national elections.

Approximately 100 Afghan National Army soldiers and 400 Marines and sailors from Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan constitute the bulk of the U.S. forces conducting Operation Eastern Resolve II, including Marines from Marine Aircraft Group 40, which provided helicopter lift and other aviation support for the mission.

“Our mission is to support the Independent Election Commission and Afghan national security forces. They are the ones in charge of these elections. Our job is to make sure they have the security to do their job,” said Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commanding general of MEB-Afghanistan. “While we encourage every Afghan to exercise his right to vote, who he or she votes for is none of our business.”

MEB-Afghanistan is a subordinate unit of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. The combined U.S. and Afghan mission is to provide security for population centers and connect local citizens with their legitimate government while establishing stable and secure conditions for national elections scheduled for later this month as well as enhancing security for the future.

-30-

The Time to Leave Iraq is Now

Military memo on Iraq: Time to leave
Blunt military assessment comes despite Iraqi forces' ongoing problems
By Michael R. Gordon
The New York Times
updated 1545 EST, July 30, 2009

WASHINGTON - A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that the Iraqi forces suffer from deeply entrenched deficiencies but are now capable of protecting the Iraqi government, and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.”

Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, the memorandum asserts that the Iraqi forces have an array of problems, including corruption, poor management and the inability to resist political pressure from Shiite political parties.

For all of these problems, however, Colonel Reese argues that Iraqi forces are competent enough to hold off Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias and other internal threats to the Iraqi government. Extending the American military presence in Iraq beyond 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis’ military performance while fueling a growing resentment.

“As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,’ ” Colonel Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.”

Not the official stance of U.S. military
A spokeswoman for Gen. Ray Odierno, the senior American commander in Iraq, said that the memo did not reflect the official stance of the United States military, was not intended for a broad audience, and that some of the problems the memo referred to had been solved since its writing in early July.

Referring to the Iraq Security Forces, the memo said: “The massive partnering efforts of U.S. combat forces with I.S.F. isn’t yielding benefits commensurate with the effort and is now generating its own opposition. We should declare our intentions to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Iraq by August 2010. This would not be a strategic paradigm shift, but an acceleration of existing U.S. plans by some 15 months.”

Before deploying to Iraq, Colonel Reese served as the director of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, the Army’s premier intellectual center. He was an author of an official Army history of the Iraq war — “On Point II” — that was sharply critical of the lapses in postwar planning.

Colonel Reese’s memo comes at a sensitive time in the Iraq conflict as American forces are gradually shifting to an advisory role. American combat troops moved out of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities last month, as required by the Status of Forces Agreement concluded by the United States and Iraq.

Colonel Reese’s memo lists a number of problems that have emerged since the withdrawal. They include, he wrote, a “sudden coolness” to American advisers and the “forcible takeover” of a checkpoint in the Green Zone. Iraqi units, he added, are much less willing to conduct joint operations with their American counterparts “to go after targets the U.S. considers high value.”

The Iraqi Ground Forces Command, Colonel Reese wrote, has imposed “unilateral restrictions” on American military operations that “violate the most basic aspects” of American-Iraqi agreement.

“The Iraqi legal system in the Rusafa side of Baghdad has demonstrated a recent willingness to release individuals originally detained by the U.S. for attacks on the U.S.,” he added.

The spokeswoman for General Odierno, Lt. Col. Josslyn Aberle, responded in a e-mail to questions about the memo. “The e-mail was written by Col. Timothy Reese at the beginning of July and sent to selected personnel within Multi-National Division Baghdad on our classified e-mail system,” Colonel Aberle wrote. “It was expressed to a limited audience, and not meant for wider/general distribution.

“The e-mail reflects one person’s personal view at the time we were first implementing the Security Agreement post-30 June. It does not reflect the official views of U.S. Forces in Iraq. Since that time many of the initial issues have been resolved and our partnerships with Iraqi Security Forces and G.O.I. partners now are even stronger than before 30 June.” G.O.I. is the abbreviation for Government of Iraq.

Rapid reduction in American forcesUnder the plan developed by General Odierno, the vast majority of the approximately 130,000 American forces in Iraq will remain through Iraq’s national elections, which are expected to be held next January. After the elections and the formation of a new Iraqi government, there will be rapid reduction in American forces. By the end of August 2010, the United States would have no more than 50,000 troops in Iraq, which would include six brigades whose primary role would be to advise and train Iraqi troops.

Some experts, such as Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former adviser to General David H. Petraeus, have argued that this timetable may be too fast given the host of remaining problems in Iraq, including differences between Kurds and Arab leaders, remaining Sunni-Shiite tensions and the possibility that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki might become more authoritarian.

“Renewed violence in Iraq is not inevitable, but it is a serious risk,” Mr. Biddle wrote in a recent paper. “A vigorous preventive strategy is clearly preferable, therefore. The most effective option for prevention is to go slow in drawing down the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Measures to maximize U.S. leverage on important Iraqi leaders — especially Maliki — can be helpful in steering Iraqis away from confrontation and violence, but U.S. leverage is a function of U.S. presence.”

During his recent appearance in Washington, Mr. Maliki also appeared to be contemplating a possible role for American forces after the December 2011 deadline for the removal of all American troops under the Status of Forces Agreement.

The Iraqi prime minister noted in an appearance at the United States Institute of Peace, a Washington-based research organization, that the Status of Forces Agreement, would “end” the American military presence in his country in 2011. “Nevertheless, if Iraqi forces required further training and further support, we shall examine this at that time based on the needs of Iraq,” he said.

During his visit to Iraq earlier this week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates indicated that might be a “modest acceleration” in the number of American forces that are withdrawn from Iraq this year. At the same time, Pentagon and military officials indicated that Kurdish-Arab friction remains a serious worry and that the American advisory role is still very important.

'Incapable of change'
But Colonel Reese questioned the value of an extended advisory role.

“If there ever was a window where the seeds of a professional military culture could have been implanted, it is now long past. U.S. combat forces will not be here long enough or with sufficient influence to change it,” he wrote. “The military culture of the Baathist-Soviet model under Saddam Hussein remains entrenched and will not change. The senior leadership of the I.S.F. is incapable of change in the current environment.”

Colonel Reese appears to have anonymously circulated a less colorful version of his memo on a blog dubbed “The Enchanter’s Corner.” The author is described as an active-duty Army officer serving as an adviser in Iraq who is “passionate about political issues.” Since word of the memo began to spread, the memo has been removed from the site.

What Friends Are All About

The war in Afghanistan

Keeping Your Nerve

The Economist
July 18, 2009

It has been a bloody month in Afghanistan but America’s allies, especially Britain, should not lose heart

Afghanistan is said to be the graveyard of empires. The British army came to grief there in the 19th century, the Soviet one in the 20th. Such was Afghans’ reputation for ferocity that Rudyard Kipling told those left wounded on Afghanistan’s plains: “Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains.” These days British soldiers are again dying in Afghanistan, along with Americans, Canadians and many others. The Taliban are resurgent. Each fighting season is bloodier than the last.

President Barack Obama is deploying an extra 20,000 troops there this year. But some allies are already on their way out. The Netherlands will withdraw fighting forces next year, followed by Canada in 2011. Now the public in Britain, which has the second-largest contingent in Afghanistan, is agonising over the country’s role in the war after a dreadful month in Helmand.

After eight years of disheartening warfare, it is tempting to see NATO’s mission as a repeat of past misadventures in the Hindu Kush. The Soviets lost even though they had more troops than NATO has today, a more powerful Afghan army and were supported by a cadre of motivated Afghan communists. But such comparisons are wrong. Unlike the anti-Soviet mujahideen, who were backed by America, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the Taliban have no superpower sponsor. In the 1980s Soviet aircraft were shot down with American-made Stinger missiles; today NATO has mastery of the skies. The Taliban are a Pushtun faction, not a national movement; their insurgency is largely limited to the southern half of the country.

Afghans may feel anger over the death of civilians killed by foreign forces, frustration at the chaos and insecurity, and dismay at the corruption of President Hamid Karzai’s government. But opinion polls say that most want Western troops to stay; they remember the misery of the civil war and the oppression of Taliban rule too well. They want the West to do a better job of securing the country.

The price of friendship

For America Afghanistan is a war of necessity; it is from there that Osama bin Laden ordered the attacks of September 11th 2001. For many European allies, though, it is less vital—a war of solidarity with America, a war of choice. Such operations quickly turn unpopular when they go badly, and governments tend to inflate their aims. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, talks of promoting “an emerging democracy”.

Critics say the effort is misconceived: the real danger is in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda’s leaders are now hiding. But helping Pakistan fight Islamic militants will only be harder if the Taliban and al-Qaeda can claim victory in Afghanistan. Others say the West is being over-ambitious. It can never hope to create a stable democracy in Afghanistan; all it needs is a small contingent to protect Kabul, and some special forces and bombers to deal with any returning al-Qaeda fighters. But such a minimalist approach is what allowed the Taliban to regroup.

The cost to NATO countries is immediately apparent: tens of billions of dollars and the lives of more than 1,200 soldiers. The cost of leaving is harder to measure but is probably larger: the return of the Taliban to power; an Afghan civil war; the utter destabilisation of nuclear-armed Pakistan; the restoration of al-Qaeda’s Afghan haven; the emboldening of every jihadist in the world; and the weakening of the West’s friends.

America will naturally take on most of the task in Afghanistan. But allies are vital. They share the burden, they confer political legitimacy and their joint commitment makes it harder for too many to drop out. Yet some are expending a disproportionate amount of blood. Britain is among them, but it is not alone. As a share of their population Canada, Denmark and Estonia have suffered more military fatalities.

Friends and allies

Britain’s ambition to be a global “force for good” comes at a cost. As America’s best friend, with privileged access to intelligence, it feels compelled to take part in America’s wars. As the most capable militarily of NATO’s European members (together with France), it helps to rally others. But fighting in Afghanistan is not just about prestige. With its large population of Pakistani origin, it has much at stake in helping to maintain the stability of Afghanistan and Pakistan. London has been attacked by al-Qaeda more recently than New York.

So what should Britain do? To begin with, the government must act with conviction, rather than wish the problem away. It cannot be at war with a peacetime mind-set. As a share of the budget, defence spending has shrunk since 2001. The defence ministry is a parking place for weak ministers or a stepping-stone for strong ones. Priority should be given to manning fully the army’s ranks, and probably expanding them. More must be done to provide helicopters, transport aircraft, drones and better-protected vehicles. This would wreck budgets and upset the navy and air force. So be it. Losing a war is even more demoralising than losing ships or jets. The government should have announced a Strategic Defence Review a long time ago, not delayed it until after the election.

At the very least Mr Brown should agree to the army’s request for a permanent uplift of 2,000 troops for Helmand. Western forces are never going to garrison the whole province, let alone Afghanistan. But what they hold must be held securely. And above all, they must train and expand the Afghan army and police so they can gradually take over. That will not be cheap, but it is the best way to bring home Western troops.

In many ways, the push to pacify Afghanistan is only just starting, now that the war in Iraq is ending. America’s Marines launched a big operation in Helmand on July 2nd. Afghanistan’s presidential elections take place next month. It will not be clear until the autumn, and probably not until late next year, whether Mr Obama’s “surge” has worked.

This is not the time to lose heart. Security must be improved, economic activity encouraged, government strengthened and insurgents offered inducements to defect. But for those things to happen, the Taliban must see that the Afghan government and its foreign friends are winning, not losing.

The Priority is Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military's primary focus needs to shift immediately from Iraq to Afghanistan, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday.

"We remain committed to the mission we've been given in Iraq -- make no mistake. ... But Afghanistan has been an economy of force operation for far too long," he said at a Pentagon news conference.

Mullen said he is "gravely concerned" about recent Taliban and al-Qaeda gains across much of southern Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

"This isn't about 'can do' anymore. This is about 'must do,' " Mullen said. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are "recruiting through intimidation, controlling through fear, and advancing an unwelcome ideology through thuggery. ... The consequences of their success directly threaten our national interests in the region and our safety here at home."

Mullen's remarks came less than a week after the release of a State Department report indicating a dramatic spike recently in terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

The report stated that al Qaeda and its extremist supporters have moved across the Afghan border "to the remote areas of the Pakistani frontier, where they have used this terrain as a safe haven to hide, train terrorists, communicate with their followers, plot attacks and send fighters to support the insurgency in Afghanistan."

It noted that the largest number of attacks occurred in Pakistani provinces near the Afghan border, including Balochistan, the North West Frontier and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where extremists have sought to challenge the government and extend Islamic law.

Mullen noted that while President Obama's decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan "provides commanders more manpower and more resources ... we need a commensurate commitment from a civilian side.

He said that "more concerted pressure" was needed from the Pakistani government as well.

Pakistan's military recently launched an assault on militants in Taliban-held areas, after the Taliban seized territory in violation of an agreement signed this year by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. The deal, criticized by the United States, allowed the Taliban to implement Islamic law, or sharia, in the region in exchange for an end to fighting. The recent operations are part of the Pakistani army's intensified drive against the Taliban in its restive tribal regions.

The Pakistani government has been criticized for not cracking down on militants along its border with Afghanistan. As a result, the U.S. military has carried out airstrikes against militant targets in Pakistan. The strikes have rankled relations between the two countries.

Mullen said that while the United States is concerned about recent Taliban and al-Qaeda gains inside Pakistan, he remains confident that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure. "The worst downside with respect to Pakistan is that those nuclear weapons come under the control of terrorists," he said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently called Taliban gains in Pakistan an "existential threat" to the countr

Sect Gates visits Marines !

Gates Visits Lejeune
Jacksonville (NC) Daily News
April 24, 2009
By Jennifer Hlad

The Marines had a special guest at their training Thursday, as they wrap up pre-deployment exercises in preparation for a tour in Afghanistan.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited Camp Lejeune, stopping by to watch 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion conduct a mock attack on a village at the Military Operations in Urban Terrain facility, and see 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, train to recognize roadside bombs.

The Marines will leave in the next few weeks to join the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade in southern Afghanistan.

"You know the challenge," Gates told the Marines from 2nd LAR, after they completed their attack. "We will do everything we can to support you. ... Get those guys."

In the LAR exercise, the Marines were acting on intelligence that a high-value target was in the village, and the objective was to capture him. Maj. Steven Sutey, operations officer for 2nd LAR, said urban operations are some of the most difficult to conduct.

Sgt. Anthony Bellido, a vehicle commander with 2nd LAR Battalion, said the idea was to "get in there as quickly as possible and get him out."

The training incorporated the vehicles and the Marines in an urban environment, said 2nd Lt. Phil Ernst, first platoon commander. Having Gates present was good for the Marines' morale, he said.

"Most of the work we do, there's not a single person watching," Ernst said.

Gates said the visit was a great opportunity to talk to the Marines, who he called "incredibly impressive," and see their training.

He addressed a question about repeated deployments, saying the fact that many service members are on their fourth or fifth deployment makes them "the most battle hardened force the United States has probably ever had in its history."

"I think these men and women want to be in the fight," he said. "Frankly, for months, (Marine Commandant) Gen. (James) Conway has been telling me that the Marines in Anbar province in Iraq are, frankly, bored, and want to get into the fight; and that certainly was the impression I got this morning."

Still, he said the growth of the Marine Corps and the drawdown in Iraq will hopefully result in more time at home between deployments.

Bellido has deployed to Iraq three times and said he is looking forward to deploying to Afghanistan. Ernst said he also is excited to deploy.

"I think all the guys are ready, they're all prepared," Ernst said

Marine vs. Army Recruiting

As the Army takes the day off to reflect on their recruting "issues", the Marine Corps is ahead of their recruiting numbers every month. In fact, even areas like the northeast United States, which include such wealthly and collge-oriented areas likes Fairfield County, CT., Somerset County, NJ, and Bucks County, PA - the Marines EXCEEDED their mission by 150+ recruits.

Army Recruiting Takes Mandatory Stand-Down
February 12, 2009
Military.com|by Bryant Jordan
Every recruiter in the Army is taking a time out tomorrow. And between mid-March and mid-July, pretty much every other command in the Army will be taking one, as well, all in an effort to help troops, Army civilians and their families deal with the stresses of Army life.

But its the recruiting command -- which has been in the spotlight recently over a rash of suicides and claims of unrealistic pressures put on recruiters -- that will stand down first. On Feb. 13, the command’s leaders will conduct a multi-phase training and education program with an emphasis on dealing with the stresses that could cause a Joe to take his own life.

The time-out will in part be used "to discuss suicide prevention and wellness resources available to the Soldiers, Department of the Army civilians and family members in recruiting command," Army Recruiting Command spokesman Douglas Smith told Military.com.

The command is made up of 38 recruiting battalions and five brigades whose mission it is to bring in new blood for the largest of the four military branches.

While stress on Soldiers and their families is an Army-wide problem, recruiting command saw a string of suicides -- 15 since 2003. Four of the suicides occurred between 2005 and 2008 in the Houston Recruiting Command, a spike that prompted an Army investigation.

That investigation, concluded in January, found that poor leadership, job-related stress, personal and medical problems contributed to the deaths. Army Secretary Pete Geren subsequently ordered the stand down slated for tomorrow, officials said.

While the Army was looking at the Houston Recruiting Command for its investigation, Military.com reported in December that Oklahoma City Command recruiters were dealing with their own stress-related issues, including claims of overly long hours, unrealistic demands by supervisors and the pressure to fudge paperwork to qualify applicants who otherwise would not meet standards.

One of the recruiters who previously talked to Military.com said recently that "the [Army] leadership is not happy [with commanders] blaming the recruiters for the problems, rather than looking at failed policies at company and battalion level."

The Oklahoma City recruiters told Military.com in December they have seen the same kinds of stresses plaguing their colleagues that Houston-area recruiters have been through. Two of the recruiters estimated that at least 30 percent of the roughly 200 recruiters in the Oklahoma City battalion are on anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medications. Some also are taking drugs illegally to cope with pressures of the job, they said.

While a third recruiter declined to offer an estimate of how many battalion recruiters were self-medicating or on prescription medications, he said he knows "a lot of guys are taking anti-anxiety" meds. Some want to get on the meds, he said, because it helps keep their supervisors "off their backs." An Army spokesman said Dec. 24, in response to a Military.com query, that the Army probably does not track the number of Soldiers on prescription medications.

Lt. Col. Thomas F. Artis, the Oklahoma City battalion commander, said in his order for the stand down that his "intent is for commanders at Company and Station level to take the lead and provide information and receive feedback on wellness resources available to Soldiers, civilians and family members" associated with the battalion.

The order, dated Jan. 29, says training will be held at battalion headquarters as well as at the various companies making up the district: Oklahoma City, Lawton, Fort Smith, Little Rock, Tulsa and Texarkana. All training is to be done in person, the order stipulates and facilitated by company commanders.

The training will include video presentations and group guided discussions.

According to a battalion operation order dated Jan. 29, the day-long program will be done in four phases -- leader training, individual training of all recruiters, an open forum led by the unit commander and a climate survey that will be conducted afterwards. The climate survey is to be completed no later than Feb. 17, the order states.

Military Recruiting Today

Lost in the noise of the football games this weekend was an announcement that the Marine Corps is three (3 !!) years ahead of its recruiting schedule.

When President Bush announced “the Surge” two years ago, he also ordered the four services to increase their manpower, with the Marine Corps growing from 177,000 to 202,000. The Pentagon estimated that it would take the Marines 5 years to do so, at an unheard of rate of finding 5,000 recruits annually. The Army (told to increase their size by 65,000) and other services were also tasked to increase, but warned gloomily that “wartime conditions” would make meeting even their old recruiting standards impossible. Well, recruiting in the same ugly 'wartime conditions', the Marine Corps hit 200,000 last month.

Perhaps it’s not the “wartime conditions” that makes young American men and women reluctant to join the other services, but what those services offer?

Look at the recruiting advertisements on television. When was the last time you even saw a Navy or Air Force advertisement? Only recently did the Army even drop their “an Army of one” campaign…when I’m embedded, the last thing I want to be out there is alone…maybe our young 17-18 year olds feel the same? And accepting felons ? And forget a high school diploma or even a G.E.D…now the Army will take kids without even a GED…they refer to these dropouts as having an “alternative education.” Who’d want to go out into combat with them?

All four services offer the same bonus plans, the same pay scales. Yet as the Marine Corps gets the dirty jobs (winning Anbar Province) as Air Farce deployments only last three months - Marine recruiting still sets records monthly.

Let’s look at the Marine Corps advertisements…over the years, they don’t change. It’s “Honor – Courage – Commitment” – if you’re good enough to be accepted. Forget the Army promising to teach you how to drive a truck, or the Navy teaching you repair skills….Marine ads show old photos of Iwo Jima, Chosin Reservoir, and Vietnam…now here is something of which a young man can be proud.

Maybe thats the message for which these young men and women are searching; life is too easy these days – what does one do to differentiate him-or-herself from the boring pack? The Marine Corps has an answer: stretch yourself…become a part of something larger and more important than yourself…be part of a tradition of fierce excellence that earns you worldwide respect for the rest of your life.

It's like Brig Gen Robert Milstead, head of Marine Corps Recruiting Command said this weekend “kids don’t join the Marines because they’re tired of flipping burgers; they join because they want to be Marines.”

Well done, Gentlemen, and Semper Fi.