CPT NightHawk

One Week Home

2006-10-26T17:06:00.001+00:00

I have been home for one week now. I figured it was about time that I fired up the laptop and composed this post. I don’t know if this will be the final post or not. I might close this blog and start a new one. I haven’t decided yet because I have been quite busy since I returned home.

We arrived in Jefferson City early in the morning. My bride and sons were waiting for me in the drill hall and I was so happy to see them again. We had a welcoming home ceremony that was mercifully brief. We grabbed lunch at the Coffee Zone then brought the boys back to preschool. They didn’t want to go back to school that afternoon but my bride and I wanted some time for ourselves:).

Since I have been home I cleaned out the kitchen (I am the primary cook and I needed to do an inventory anyway), stowed some of my gear away, spent a day with my dad busting up a tree that fell on a fence and fixing the fence, took my boys to the Jefferson City Harvestfest, and other things.

I have a lot of catching up to do with my sons and my bride. A few days ago I started reading “The Hobbit” to my sons at bedtime and they are really enjoying it. There are improvements to the house I would like to do.

There are a couple of loose ends I want to tie up before I close this post. I turned off the anonymous post feature to this blog because the anonymous posters are getting annoying and are not contributing. If someone wants to be an ass, at least have the guts to register with Blogger or Google so I know who you are. My time is valuable and I can’t stand oxygen thieves. Most of my last post was dealing with a particularly annoying oxygen thief that if he actually is in the military and is enlisted, he can be charged with insubordination and disrespecting a senior officer.

Anyway, I have to deal with two more anonymous comments before I feel like I can close out this blog for a while. The following was written on 22 OCT 2006 and was commenting on my post titled “Embedded in Reality” which I wrote back on 21 AUG 2006!

Maybe you should have waited with your well argumented review untill you'd actually seen these countries in action. The Dutch have taken over Oruzgan and have been in heavy combat there. They also sent troops from their province to help out the Canadians in Operation Medusa including some 155 mm SPG. The Dutch Apaches and F-16 fighter jets have bombed the shit out of taliban providing CAS for British, Canadian and US forces as well.

So just because they build up a "nightclub" on KAF doesn't mean they "don't get it".

22 October, 2006 09:52

The whole gist of my post was who among our coalition brethren understand how Information Operations is supposed to work, not if they are actually contributing something. I am guessing that this guy can’t read because I started the post off by saying “I am now working at Task Force Aegis”. I have seen these countries in action due to my position and am very familiar with what the countries involved have contributed. This dude mentioned the Dutch contribution to Op Medusa. The planning for Op Medusa didn’t start in earnest until after I had posted “Embedded in Reality”! Their contribution to Op Meduas in the form of ground troops was extremely minimal. The Dutch took over a forward operating base (FOB), relieving the Canadians there so they can get to the fight.

I was in Oruzgan province for six months at the Provincial Reconstruction Team at Tarin Kowt. We had about one hundred and twenty personnel plus or minus twenty (incoming and outgoing). The Dutch are now running the PRT and they have around twelve hundred. That is a lot of personnel. I want to ask the dude who wrote the above comment, please define for me heavy combat? I have read their patrol reports so I know what they are involved in. Let us not mistake who is actually mixing it up in Oruzgan. US Special Forces and Australian SAS are in Oruzgan as well and they are the ones sticking it to the Taliban.

This dude should contact the Dutch Embassy and ask them how many missions the Dutch PSYOP company (two sections and a headquarters) have conducted. When I was in Oruzgan, the PRT had one, sometimes two PSYOP operators and they went on missions practically everyday, sometimes hitching a ride with the Infantry guys. The number of missions the Dutch PSYOP have mounted is far less, it is actually closer to zero at the time I left Kandahar which was on 27 SEP 2006.

The following comment is a real gem. It was written on 22 OCT 2006 like the previous one (it may be the same dude, I don’t know) and was commenting on my post “Stabbed in the Back” which I posted on 08AUG2006!

Sorry man ... but thats the democracy ur fighting to protect... Journalists are what they are and that is by all means unpredictable...Dont go crying for mommy when one writes something crappy...it's their job!

I triple dare u to not delete this post

22 October, 2006 10:03

I don’t need to be lectured by some anonymous ass about protecting democracy. I am not protecting journalistic incompetence or willful misrepresentation. It is their job to report the facts, all of them, not the selective facts.

In my post titled “Asymmetrical Media”, I answered some questions raised by Stephanie Guttmann, the author of “The Other War”. In it I stated that all that we cared about was that the reporters and journalists fact checked and reported everything. If the coalition screwed up, my boss and me wanted to get that out. The reality is that human organizations make mistakes and the military is no exception.

In my post titled “Stabbed in the Back”, I pointed out that Witte and Mosher did a hit job on the Gulf Region division of the US Army Corps of Engineers. If Witte and Mosher want to pose as impartial journalists, then they need to report everything, which Major General William McCoy pointed out in his rebuttal found here. We have a way with dealing with willfully biased journalists, we freeze them out. I am sure if Witte and Mosher want access with the Army Corps of Engineers again, they will have to come with hat in hand.

Like I said in the post, I will be damned if I will help Witte again. I wasn’t “crying to mommy”, I was stating a fact. Judging by the last remark about triple daring, this commenter is a juvenile little prick.

There, I am officially done dealing with anonymous commenters that are basic oxygen thieves.

Despite the recent spate of anonymous Asses leaving useless comments, I really enjoyed writing this blog. Many of you left wonderful comments on the blog or e-mailed them to me. I am glad you enjoyed my attempt at writing.

Like I said earlier, I am truly thankful to be home. Some of my coalition brethren didn’t come home alive, something my oldest son asked me about last night after dinner. It took every bit of self-control I had to describe to my son a ramp ceremony where we sent home a soldier in a casket.

I am proud of my service in Afghanistan. I did a very unique job where I had a hand in just about everything. I am especially proud of what we accomplished with Op Medusa.

I won’t be posting for a while. My next post will inform you all of my plans with this blog and whether I will continue posting to this one or start a new one. I have the blogging bug now!

CIAO’

CPT Thomas C. Nield aka “NightHawk”

Fourth Leg

2006-10-14T22:05:00.000+00:00

We have been here at Ft. Carson, Colorado for a while already. This is my first opportunity to post. We will be here for a few days to turn in gear, do paperwork, and clear medical. For some of the guys it is still surreal that we are back in the states.

An anonymous commenter left a hostile comment on my post titled “Second Leg” and I will address his concerns point by point.

“General Order 1B says no alcohol until you are CONUS. MPs will be waiting for you.”

All soldiers transiting through Manas Airbase can have two beers or two glasses of wine every twenty-four hours. In Qatar I was able to drink three beers or three glasses of wine every twenty-four hours. If this commenter has deployed to Afghanistan in the past, he would have known about Manas Airbase unless he deployed in 2001. He should know of at least one soldier who has been there recently and he would know about the liberty’s we have at Manas. So far, no MP’s have bothered me.

“Also great OPSEC. Way to tell everyone in the whole wide web that you are redeploying, and exactly where you are. Good job!”

Unit and personnel moves are classified secret and divulging unit or personnel moves prior to movement is a very serious operational security (OPSEC) violation. Divulging your location after you have arrived is not. Besides, all the terrorists in the world knows the route the US Air Force takes to bring soldiers home because we have been doing it for close to six years now. The key is not divulging times. In my last post I did state I was posting from Ramstein. I did not say how long I was going to be there, nor did I say when I arrived or when I was going to depart. OPSEC is one of the areas that I work in as an Information Operations officer so I do know what I am talking about.

“And why the FUCK are you wearing an SF combat patch. Holy shit!”

The first thought that popped in my head when I read that line was:

BECAUSE I EARNED IT YOU MISERABLE LITTLE FUCK!!!!

The Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Oruzgan province (Tarin Kowt) was under the operational command and control of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A). All the personnel assigned to that PRT for thirty days or more are entitled to wear the Special Forces patch to signify former wartime service. While I was there we had Regular, Reserve, and Guard soldiers. We also had a few TICs (Troops in Contact) or firefights. It wasn’t all hugs and kisses serving at a PRT.

“Fucking guard.”

Say that to my face. My name is on this blog, I am currently in Ft. Carson. If you are enlisted please remember common military courtesies. I would hate to see the First Sergeant go ballistic seeing some little shithead dissing one of his officers.

Fourth leg down, one to go.

CIAO’
CPT Thomas C. Nield aka “NightHawk”

Asymmetrical Media

2006-10-11T12:48:00.000+00:00

I am honored that Stephanie Guttmann, the author of “The Other War”, found my blog. In her comment she asked what I was seeing as far as the “whole asymmetrical media as a weapon of war thing”. I will attempt to answer her question but I must state my caveats.

I must be very clear that what I am about to write are my opinions and mine alone. There are other servicemen (US, Canadian, British) who agree with me but I only speak for myself. I am not representing the position of the US military or of NATO. These are general observations only. For more detail I would much rather discuss this face to face.

Here we go.

A little over half of my time in Afghanistan was spent in Oruzgan province. There was one government run FM station in Tarin Kowt (the provincial capitol). No local television stations however news from Kandahar and Kabul along with international news are available via satellite dish. Any newspapers in the province were printed in Kandahar but I never personally saw them. Information traveled face to face. If the Taliban wanted to send a message in Oruzgan province it was delivered personally and then the sat phone net did the rest. Consequently, any message we wanted to get across to the populace was delivered face to face as well and backed up with a project. What we had to contend with were the lengths that the Taliban went to deliver their message. It is pretty tough to counter a message delivered with a beheading.

My experience in Kandahar province was far different. Kandahar City had radio, television, and print media. There is a thriving local press that wants to report stuff. They reported everything. For example, the Taliban would call and tell their media contact that they just blew up a tank. They would then call us and ask us if we lost a tank. We would tell them that we don’t have any tanks in theater and furthermore we haven’t lost any vehicles at all. The press will turn around and report that the Taliban claimed to have destroyed a tank and that the Coalition claims to have all of their vehicles. No editorializing, no spinning, no rooting around for “facts” or “quotes” to write a story with a particular angle.

When my Canadian Army boss first started working with the local press, they bluntly told him that they would relay anything he wanted to say. My boss told them that the press doesn’t work that way. They can report whatever they want as long as they fact check first. They weren’t used to that. The Taliban and the communists before them centrally controlled Afghanistan’s media. This was a unique opportunity to influence in a positive direction a free and independent media.

The local press knows what the stakes are. During Op Medusa the Taliban threatened the local press with death. In typical Stalinist fashion the Taliban would claim one thing when the reality was far different. Our press releases reflected reality and the Taliban had no way to counter except with threatening to kill the messenger. My boss and me took that as a positive indicator for the effectiveness of Op Medusa.

Afghanistan is not suffering what Israel is going through yet. The situation that Guttmann describes in her book “The Other War” needs an international press that actively aids and abets the enemy. The situation also needs a local media that is willfully cooperating with the enemy.

We had a pretty good read on the international media. The Public Affairs folks knew the personalities involved and knew what kind of pieces they would write. All I cared about was that they got the facts straight which the local media was obsessive about (in a good way). To paraphrase the late Tip O’Neil, all media is local. As long as the local media was interested in getting the facts straight, the international media will follow suit.

So Stephanie, I am honored that you found my blog. I hope you enjoyed reading it and that this latest post answered some of your questions. If you want to know something specific, please let me know and I will try to be of assistance.

By the way, I am posting this from Ramstein Airbase, Germany! Third leg home is almost complete. Two to go after!!!!

CIAO’
CPT Thomas C. Nield aka “NightHawk”

Second Leg

2006-10-05T16:30:00.000+00:00

Well, we finally made it to Manas Airbase, Krygyztan. Now we wait for the flight back to CONUS (Continental US). One of the first things I notices when I disembarked from the airplane was it was much cooler and there are far more green leafy things to look at. It’s nice to be back in a more civilized part of the world. You can feel the change in the mood of our merry band from Missouri. Now that we are actually in Manas a huge load was lifted from our shoulders.

We are going to be here for a few days unlike when we passed through here last time. I already checked out the gift shops they have here on the base and there are a couple of things that I might buy for my bride :). I passed up an opportunity years ago to buy a Soviet era flask when I was at the Brandenberg Tor and I think I will indulge myself this time. I already bought my sons stuff from the bazaar at Bagram. One nice thing about Manas Airbase is that we can have two alcohol drinks per twenty-four hours. The local dark beer is pretty good (7%!!!). Tomorrow one of my buddies and I will be testing the wine selection.

I am actually being paid to hang out and wait for a flight. Sleep late, spend some time in the gym, do some shopping, maybe get a manicure/pedicure and a massage (I got my first manicure and a pedicure when I visited Qatar and now I am hooked). It is an unbelievable change of pace. I went from working sixteen to twenty hour days to being a total slacker. I called my bride as soon as I got to Manas and she kidded with me that I better enjoy my time off because I will be busy when I return home!

Two legs down, three to go.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

More Pictures

2006-09-30T13:33:00.000+00:00

I have some free time waiting for my flight to Manas Airbase in Kyrgyztan so I went through my pictures and picked out a few more to share with you all.

I snapped this on my flight from Manas to Bagram when I first arrived in country. We are flying over the Hindu Kush.

This stuff grows pretty well out here. This was taken in Oruzgan province near Tarin Kowt. This was the only plant in the area. In Kandahar Province, there are orchards with acres of this stuff!

The above picture shows what I recounted in my post titled Afghan Automobile Association.

The authorities wanted to salvage the hull of this downed T-55 tank for scrap but the local villagers protested. They wanted to keep it around as a monument because they were the ones who took the tank down. A turret from another T-55 was less than 100 meters away.

Here I am on my first mission. I helped with administering the deworming meds. On subsequent missions the ANA did most of the wrangling and medicating.

This was my last mission in Oruzgan province before I went home on R&R leave. We were doing a ground breaking for a new bridge to cross the Helmand River in the Deh Rawud district. I am in the center and Kerry Greene, the USAID rep is on my right and Richard “Ruff” Reiter, the State Department FSO, is on my left.

Here I am as the mission commander for a big mega shura that we facilitated in Kandahar City. We flew Dr. Mojadeddi, the national director of Program Takhim-E Sol (the national reconciliation program), to the governor’s compound. The man to my left is one of Dr. Mojadeddi’s aides.

We are getting ready to move out. I am manning one of the air sentry positions in the back of a Bison.

I am standing on top of one of the buildings in the governor’s compound in Kandahar City.

Sergeant, is that MAJ Innis over there conducting an Information Operation? Sir, I believe he is but he must really tone it down a bit.

SSG Raley of the Mobile Public Affairs Detachment is to my right. He pointed out that every time he went on a mission with me he is always miserable. He is smiling in this picture so he can’t possibly be miserable. To my right is Maj “Q” Quentin Innis, my boss at TF Aegis. On the far right is Sgt Lee Baldry.

Hope you like them.

CIAO’
CPT Thomas C. Nield aka “NightHawk”

First Leg

2006-09-28T12:58:00.000+00:00

I am posting this entry from Bagram Airfield. I am on my way home.

It felt a little weird leaving Kandahar. The war is still on. Even though Ramadan just started, the Taliban insurgents are still up to mischief. I am still trying to reconcile the fact that I am no longer the J3 Info Ops 3 for TF Aegis. Now I am just one of many GI’s trying to get home

I left behind a good crew to work with. My boss was a blast. He and I share an appreciation for the comedy of Eddy Izzard. We would sometimes interject Izzardisms into our conversations. Some people got it, most didn’t.

I got pretty close with the people I worked with at Task Force Aegis. We shared the same risks and aggravations. We enjoyed each other’s humor. We bitched about the same things. Damn, I will miss everyone dearly, especially “Q” and Lee.

I was asked at a farewell dinner party what is the most vivid memory I have. I said the day I saw a chassis fall from the sky and an armored vehicle drive through a fireball. There are more memories. During breakfast one day we were bitching about ISAF when all of a sudden, the Asst Chief of Operations ripped the ISAF patch off of my boss’s uniform, jumped on it, then picked it up and flung it across the DFAC. The day I was with Grizzly 6 and we were caught in an ambush is another. There are more.

One of these days I will be able to make sense of it all. For now, I am concentrating on getting home. We just completed customs and palletizing of unaccompanied baggage. Tomorrow I have to go to medical and fill out a few forms and clear finance. Saturday we have some briefings. After that, we wait for a flight.

I am kinda bummed right now. I am sure I will be in a better mood the closer I get to home. First leg down, four to go.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Phase 4

2006-09-23T14:10:00.000+00:00

I just got back from a mission where we escorted media around. We showed them the areas of the most vicious fighting and a couple of material assistance distributions. Here are a few pictures from the mission.

In this photo we set up a laager (a modern version of circling the wagons) to wait for the contractors delivering the material assistance. The mountain behind me is typical of Afghanistan. They just jut up from the ground.

In the photo to the right the locals from the village of Regay are offloading the trucks. This village is sympathetic to ISAF and the central government. They allowed people that were pushed out by the Taliban to hole up there until the fighting was over.
I was an air sentry on the last Bison. We left Regay and moved to Bazaar-E Panjwayi and I was engulfed in a cloud of moondust for the last few kilometers. I dismounted, removed my helmet and ballistic glasses, and walked over to chat with the guys. They all grabbed their cameras and started snapping away. I guess they thought it was pretty funny seeing a staff officer smothered in moondust!

The next day we did another material assistance distro. This one is in Pashmul where we literally blasted the hell out of the Taliban.

In the rural areas of Afghanistan I have yet to see the face of a woman of child bearing age. These women are waiting for the rest of their family before they move out with their assistance goodies (rice, beans, sugar, tea, cooking oil, clothing, and blankets).

I am fielding questions from Susanne Koelbl, a correspondent from Der Spiegel magazine. She and her photographer, Knut Mueller, have done assignments all over the world. Herr Mueller snapped this photo.

I was pulling security for the patrol where Grizzly 6 was showing the media parts of the battlefield. Herr Mueller was walking along and snapped this one of me.

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Herr Mueller snapped the photo above of us taking up the rear. I am second, behind the Canadian soldier. My Info Ops NCO from the British Army is taking up the rear. In the photo to the left you see ISAF at work. I am standing with a Hungarian, a Romanian, and a Brit. We are providing security for the media by preventing the people from walking down the trail.

The photo above is pretty cool. A patrol was coming back to the laager while we were escorting the media around the area. Herr Mueller snapped this one when the LAV was making its turn in front of me. An Afghan National Army truck follows behind.

These photos depict my involvement with Op Medusa, Phase 4 Reconstruction. I hope you enjoyed them!

CIAO'
CPT NightHawk

Tyranny of Bandwidth

2006-09-19T10:46:00.000+00:00

When I commanded a Quartermaster Battalion Headquarters company I was in the land of Logistics. It is true that amateurs talk strategy whereas professionals talk logistics. Without beans, bullets, and hay (Class I food/water, Class V ammunition, and Class III petroleum/oil/lubricants) a modern army is not going to get very far. Nowadays we also have to talk bandwidth constraints (the Tyranny of Bandwidth).

Anonymous asked in a comment to my last post “how easy is it to access internet/phones”. One of the men I deployed with was deployed back in 1991 to Op Desert Storm. Communications back then sucked. The bandwidth was anemic and the telephone company’s were woefully unprepared for the demand. Today it is much different.

When I was at the Tarin Kowt PRT we had it pretty good for communications. We had VoIP phones, three satellite dishes for MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) internet use, plus the official US Dept of Defense phone and internet systems. On one of our missions to a Special Forces FOB (Forward Operating Base) I noticed that they had a similar suite of communications systems that we had at the PRT.

Here on KAF (Kandahar Airfield) I have constant access to the internet (both classified and unclassified) and a DSN (Defense Switched Network) phone because I am a staff officer working at a desk. Using DSN, I can call the switchboard at Missouri National Guard Headquarters in Jefferson City and have them connect me to a local number. For soldiers that do not have constant access to a networked computer or a DSN phone, we have a pool of computers and phones that they can use for personal use. If their home community does not have a DSN phone manned 24 hours a day, they can call a switchboard close to where they live and use a phone card.

I mentioned before that the bandwidth at Tarin Kowt was anemic. It was only anemic for the unclass internet because most of the bandwidth for the Dept of Defense systems were dedicated to classified communications. The MWR systems were heavily used so transfer rates were slow for everything except plain text.

I have the luxury of being able to call home practically every day plus the ability to post frequently to this blog. For the soldiers that are involved in operations outside the wire, they have to wait until they get back to KAF or a FOB to communicate with home. I know of at least two soldiers that have purchased their own satellite phones and call home that way but it is expensive.

We all have it pretty good for communications so we are not concerned with the tyranny of bandwidth.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Op Medusa

2006-09-17T16:52:00.000+00:00

Here are some pictures of my involvement with Op Medusa.

Here I am at Patrol Base Wilson. At the moment this picture was snapped, we all heard a boom and wondered "is that ours or theirs?"

In the my post titled “Eventful Week”, I included a hero shot of me and my Info Ops NCO at a material distribution event. The picture above was taken at the same place. I am just watching the Afghans unload the truck.

Today we had our big press event with local and international media at the governors compound. Message was ISAF and the Afghan forces killed lots of Taliban and now we are going to help the people of Panjwayi in rebuilding. I am waiting in the back of the Bison we used to haul all the camera equipment and some media types (the bulk of them were in the other Bison). I pulled air sentry duty again (standing through the top hatch).

I regret not posting pictures before. The bandwidth at the PRT I was previously assigned to was anemic. The bandwidth I have access to here at Kandahar Airfield (KAF) is more robust and I put in some late nights learning how to use the picture feature of Blogger. I hope you like the pictures!

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

By the Sword

2006-09-16T17:18:00.000+00:00

Well, it looks like Pope Benedict XVI is catching a lot of grief for quoting Emperor Manuel II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire. Back in the 1391, Emperor Manuel II said:

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Here is a quick history lesson for you all. Emperor Manuel II was the father of Constantine XI, the last emperor of the Byzantine Empire. Manuel II was married to Helena Dragas, a Serbian princess. Serbia was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire after the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389 (to this day the Serbs will argue that their sacrifice saved Western Europe from certain dominion by the Ottoman Empire). Because the subjects of the Byzantine Empire did not wish to abide by the agreement reached in the Council of Florence in 1452, the remnants of the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

I present this brief history lesson to provide some context. The religion of the Ottoman Empire was and is (in modern day Turkey) Islam. The Byzantine Empire was Christian but it was of the Eastern Orthodox variety, a result of its schism from the Roman Catholic faith when the Roman Empire was falling apart. For the Christians of the Byzantine Empire during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, Islam in the form of the Ottoman Empire was something they truly feared. Over the years European Christians clashed with the Ottoman Muslims numerous times. Dr. Hanson highlights two such battles, Lepanto fought in 1571 and Tours-Poitiers fought in 752, in his book Carnage and Culture.

Back to the quote Muslims around the world are having a hissy over. What about the rest of the speech by Pope Benedict XVI? Key excerpts of his speech are on the BBC website. Ponder the following excerpt:

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God," he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats….

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?

The BBC has listed quotes from Muslims around the world:

This from Salih Kapusuz, the Deputy Leader of Turkey’s Ak Party:

The owner of those unfortunate and arrogant comments, Benedict XVI, has gone down in history, but in the same category as Hitler and Mussolini.

He seems to have a mindset that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world. It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.

It’s amusing that Salih Kapusuz, an apologist for Islamic Fascism, compares Pope Benedict to two well known fascists, Hitler and Mussolini. It’s interesting that Kapusuz referred to the Reformation and the Enlightenment when the Muslim faith still hasn’t had something comparable.

How about this one from Sheikh Youssel Al-Qardawi, head of the Islamic Scholars Associaton:

Our hands are outstretched and our religion calls for peace, not for war, for love not for hatred, for tolerance, not for fanaticism, for knowing each other and not for disavowing each other.

We condemn this and we want to know the explanation of this and what is intended by this. We call on the pope, the pontiff, to apologise to the Islamic nation because he has insulted its religion and Prophet, its faith and Sharia without any justification."

Instead of condemning an academic speech full of complex theological discourse, Al-Qardawi should spend more time condemning the war that Islamic Fascists have declared on the West. I wonder what specific Islamic nation he is referring to or is he actually referring to the transnational Islamic Fascist community? How about Al-Qardawi apologizes for all the senseless deaths that Islamic Fascists have caused?

The prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has this to say:

The Pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created. The Vatican must now take full responsibility over the matter and carry out the necessary steps to rectify the mistake.

How will the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church rectify all the property damage and mayhem rioting Islamic Fascists will cause? Offer to take confession? This goes back to the Western idea of responsibility of ones own actions. There are too many examples of Islamic Fascists blaming the West for their own sordid dysfunctional societies. How about looking at the Pontiff’s speech and having a nice scholarly discussion instead of a bloody riot?

I can go on but I think I have made my point. Christianity has had its martial moments (I claim this land in the name of God and Spain!) but like I said earlier, we have had our Reformation and Enlightenment. All these people criticizing the Pontiff should look to their own societies first. These hypocrites are pointing fingers at us but their religion does have a history of converting people to Islam at the point of a sword or a gun. The journalists that were recently kidnapped in Gaza were freed only when they converted to Islam and they did so at gunpoint.

Back in February of this year I commented a little bit on the furor over the cartoons printed in Denmark. In my post titled Dissent and Tolerance, I pointed out that if the West is going to be critical of Muslims, at least criticize on something of substance. Pope Benedict XVI stated that the Islamic idea that God is so transcendent that “He cannot be seen in terms of human reason.” Violent conversion is not acting in accordance with reason which is contrary to God’s nature. That is a statement loaded with substance and pretty darn hefty to boot.

Pope Benedict XVI will probably express regret that the Muslim world didn’t understand what he was trying to say. This is a man who threw down the gauntlet in front of the College of the Cardinals. During the mass conducted prior to the conclave elevating him to the Papacy, he called on his fellow cardinals to “hold fast to the doctrine of the faith.” I don’t think an apology is coming from this particular pope.

The Muslim world will go on and have its riots. Should someone be forced by the sword to profess ones faith or do it after careful reasoned thought? At least they’re rioting over something worth fighting over instead of a stupid cartoon.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Challenge Coins

2006-09-14T08:03:00.000+00:00

A comment left by Anonymous posted here is asking about the coin in the picture. Some Brit is selling the coin on E-Bay and Anonymous is asking what it is.

The pictured coin is a challenge coin and because it is being auctioned by a Brit, I have to assume that it was presented to a British soldier by the commander of Task Force Aegis. In Greek mythology, the Aegis is the shield used by Zeus and adorned with Medusas head. I can tell you right now that no American or Canadian soldier would be hawking his challenge coin on E-Bay. Challenge coins from task force or mission commanders are the most prized because they denote you were there.

Challenge coins are typically presented by senior officers and senior NCO’s. These coins are typically presented as spot awards for recognizing good work. Whenever a flag officer visits his aide always asks for a number of soldiers to receive a coin from the general. The staff or senior NCO’s would nominate soldiers to receive the coin.

I have a few coins. I received coins from the commanders of Task Force Orion and the Tarin Kowt PRT, both of which I will treasure for the rest of my life. Another coin was presented to me by the officers and men of the 955th Engineer Company (Pipeline) when I left to take command of another unit in 1998. I and all the other soldiers of the 955th were presented coins by the Korean Service Corps (KSC) for training them on the Inland Petroleum Distribution System back in 1997.

We call these coins challenge coins because we in the military like to drink. Let’s say you decide to pop into the Officers or NCO Club, the Regimental Mess, or any off post drinking establishment. Let’s say that you run into someone that you served with on a previous deployment or you both were in the same unit in the past. If your buddy puts his coin on the table and you don’t have yours, the next round is on you. If you were prudent enough to have your coin on your person, the challenger buys! I typically carry my 955th Eng Co and KSC coin with me on all military related ventures in Missouri. I didn’t bring them with me to Afghanistan because I didn’t want to lose them and there is no booze to be had here anyway. I have an open invitation to visit many of the Patricia’s I served with and should I; I will have my Task Force Orion coin with me! If I am in Texas or the Washington DC area I will have my PRT coin with me for sure.

So Anonymous, I hope I answered your question. I am kinda miffed that this coin is being auctioned because there are many soldiers here in Regional Command South that are deserving of this coin. Oh well.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Rebuttal

2006-09-12T08:42:00.000+00:00

Two of my aunts commented on my last post directly via e-mail rather than using the comment feature. My aunt who resides in Winnipeg Manitoba bluntly stated that:

“Jack Layton does not speak for mainstream Canada.”

I can tell you right now that Jack Layton doesn’t speak for most of the Canadian military in Afghanistan either. The running joke was that they would be glad to set up a meeting with the Taliban for Layton anytime. He will just have to forego the body armor and armed escort. They will stand by to pick up his body and severed head afterwards!

My aunt who resides in upstate New York (originally from Canada) started off by saying that she disagreed with me. Here is her comment:

“I must disagree with you. We should have stayed in Afghanistan in the first place and finished the job there, rather than tilt at windmills in Iraq. Hussein is a bad man but he had nothing to do with 9/11 and no "weapons of mass destruction" have been found. Our incursion into Iraq only fueled the fire and unfortunately also exposed how stretched our forces are around the world. Take care.”

I will rebut her comment point by point.

We have more troops in Afghanistan now (US and NATO) now than we did when we toppled the Taliban government back in 2001. This year is the first real effort at hammering the Taliban in their territory (Kandahar and Helmand provinces). We never left so her comment on staying in Afghanistan and finishing the job is off the mark. As for “tilting at windmills in Iraq”, please reread my post “Stabbed in the Back” to see one of the many examples of how the media is not telling the full story of what is going on in Iraq.

Hussein was a bastard that the United States allowed to live after we defeated him and his military in 1991. Hussein had at his command a nation state. Nation states have the resources and the means to sponsor terrorists by supplying advanced weaponry and laundering money. He may not have been directly involved in the planning of the 9/11 attacks, but HE WAS CONNECTED TO TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS! By flouting United Nations resolutions he gave us a reason to invade. Hussein was not living up to his end of the deal and the only way to sort him out was to remove him from power.

As for “weapons of mass destruction”, we did find old munitions and some precursor materials. Was President Bush wrong on emphasizing “weapons of mass destruction”? That was a political decision on how to gain support for the initial invasion. Overall, there were many other reasons to invade. How about all the men and women that his regime killed, raped, and tortured since 1991? Those deaths are partially our fault so I see his removal from power as something we were morally obligated to do. What about the “Oil for Food Program”? The Europeans were debasing themselves in corrupting that program and that sordid mess had to be stopped.

The “fueled the fire” comment is laughable. Like I already mentioned in previous posts, our enemy hates us for what we are. The United States pulled out of Saudi Arabia and we still get grief. We intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo saving many Muslims from certain death and we still get grief. Israel pulls out of Gaza and southern Lebanon and is thanked with rockets. Israel offered Arafat a sweet heart deal and he rejects it! It doesn’t matter what we do, it is WHO AND WHAT WE ARE!

As for the “exposed how stretched our forces are around the world” comment, there is some merit to that comment but not much. NATO has more troops per square kilometer in the Balkans than in Afghanistan. Unfortunately the killing will resume in the Balkans should NATO leave so that is not an option. The United States spends 4.06% of GDP on defense spending and has 2.09% of its fit for service population in uniform (I used the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia for reference). That is half of what we were spending and half the number of personnel in 1991! The United States can easily build up its military to 1991 levels without impacting the economy or increasing taxes. All that is required is a political decision to reallocate government spending and the will of parents to encourage their children to serve. Recently a forty one year old grandmother joined the army along with her twenty one year old daughter. Pvt. Black is a Gen Xer like me. Where are all the Gen Y’s?

Here are some more of my observations that you all can chew on:

President Roosevelt led the United States during WWII. Germany never attacked us; Japan did. From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost an average of 112,500 per year.
Truman finished that war by authorizing the use of two atomic weapons on Japan, saving numerous Allied and Japanese lives from a costly invasion. Truman, through the United Nations, led the United States to war in Korea. North Korea never attacked the United States. From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost an average of 18,334 per year.
John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962 by sending in military advisers. Vietnam didn’t provoke that action by attacking the United States. When Vietnam seized the frigate in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson escalated our involvement. From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost an average of 5,800 per year.
Grenada didn’t attack us. Neither did Panama. Nor did Bosnia and the Serbian province of Kosovo.
In the years since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has not been attacked because the Islamic Fascists have decided to fix themselves in the two countries we invaded. So far we have lost less than 3000 military personnel in 5 years!

I argue that because we have been proactive in taking the fight to the Islamic Fascists, our combat dead are far fewer than what it would be otherwise. Some people argue that the war started on 9/11. Others argue the war started in 1979 when the US Embassy was overrun in Iran. I argue that this conflict has been going on ever since before the battle of Tours-Poitiers fought in 732 AD.

Political will and the courage to recognize that we are in an existential war with Islamic Fascists are what are needed to win. We Westerners didn’t start it, the Islamic Fascists did, and it is up to us to finish it.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Patriot Day

2006-09-11T16:01:00.000+00:00

I am in Afghanistan now because five years ago today the United States was attacked. It was a brilliantly executed plan and extremely successful. Close to three thousand people died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a small patch of land near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Smarter people than me have written reams of material explaining why we were attacked and how we should have responded. I want you all to know what I think.

We Westerners are by and large good people who try to do right by our families. We have a lifestyle that would make Solomon blush because of how we define our relationships with each other and our government. Westerners live with consensual government, free inquiry, innovative enterprise, and rationalism. We place a high value on freedom and individualism.

Our enemy, Islamic Fascists, hate us for what we are yet want the toys we create (cell phones, advanced weaponry, cars, etc). They believe Westerners are decadent and immoral yet the vast majority of Westerners willingly choose to abide by Christian principles. They believe in a government by decree and fatwa and we Westerners prefer the freewheeling mess of a representative democracy. There is no such thing as dissent in their eyes yet we tolerate a level of insult and epithet in order to protect free speech. Westerners believe in civic duty and responsibility and they treat civic positions as a way to enrich themselves and their tribe. They believe if something happens or doesn’t happen, inch’Allah (Allah wills it) whereas Westerners have a more rational and systematic approach to make things happen. Everything that is wrong with them is the fault of the West, not their own sordid and repressive culture. They treat their own women like chattel and keep them under wraps whereas Western women are free and independent. When a Western woman marries she made the decision, not her family.

So who are these Islamic Fascists anyway? They are Sunni and Shia and are found all over the world. Thanks to the Middle East Research Institute we Westerners can read for ourselves the vitriol purveyed to the masses of the Islamic world. Our problem as Westerners is that so many of us don’t believe there is a threat. Amazingly, there are Westerners who actually believe Western society is not worth saving and welcome any attacks from Islamic Fascists as justified.

I have seen the enemy and trust me on this, it ain’t us. I have watched Taliban videos where men who taught at government schools are shown being interrogated and then cut to where they are bound, blindfolded, and lying on the ground. While being held down their heads were hacked off by a man using a small dull knife. On other videos I have seen men sign up for Jihad, do a video will, and then see their pictures with a date and location of their suicide attacks with a claimed number of killed.

Some people like Jack Layton of the Canadian New Democratic Party suggest that we can negotiate with the Taliban. Based on what I have seen, not bloody likely. To an Easterner negotiation is an extension of the conflict whereas Westerners view negotiation as an end to conflict. We Westerners must not be seduced by the siren song of “negotiation”, we just have to kill them.

The last major shooting war where we fought Fascists was WWII. We never negotiated with the Germans, Italians, and the Japanese. The Western way of war is based on killing the enemy on an industrial scale. We have not really started killing Islamic Fascists in large enough numbers to actually change their minds about their Fascist ideology nor have we engaged all of the regimes that promote that ideology.

Therein lays the rub. We are in a war whether we like or not. The Islamic Fascists started it! To all those people in the United States and the Western world who think that we can just pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan and the problem will just go away are sadly mistaken. The Islamic Fascists will keep coming and coming until we as a society make the decision to finally deal with them once and for all.

Think about that when you are going about your business on Patriot Day.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Eventful Week

2006-09-08T19:41:00.000+00:00

Last Saturday I joined a mission that was aimed at visiting some key leaders in an area that was about to be blown all to hell by ISAF forces. The messages we were pushing was that ISAF is capable of killing lots of Taliban, ISAF will stick around when it is done, and that ISAF will help the supporters of the Afghan government out.

We held numerous shuras (meetings) with local village elders and a member of the Wolesi Jirga (the Afghan legislature). We coordinated for the delivery of American supplied material assistance (the Canadian government doesn’t like to use the term humanitarian assistance) that included basic foodstuffs, blankets, and tractors. In the picture I am on the left with my British Army colleague on the right.

Our mission had American, Canadian, and British personnel. Our mission was the velvet glove wrapped around the iron fist. We were delivering aid while the US Air Force was pounding the hell out of Taliban positions with Canadian troops poised to mop up the remnant Taliban.

The patrol base we staged from was pretty close to Taliban positions. Through the night I would be awakened by 500 and 1000 pound bombs going off close enough that I would feel the shock wave. Apache helicopters and A-10’s would blast the Taliban positions with chain guns and Hellfire missiles. No one got a decent nights rest.

The friendly fire incident you may have heard about happened less then a kilometer away where Pte. Mark Anthony Graham tragically lost his life. The Taliban staged a successful ambush less than 300 meters from the patrol base and were successful. All of the families of those killed in the ambush will mourn their loss but one felt it more acutely. WO Richard Francis Nolan was one of the soldiers killed and his wife arrived at the patrol base that morning because she is also in the Canadian Army. She found out about an hour after WO Nolan died as soon as she dismounted from the vehicle she was riding. They had children.

Our patrol was ambushed also but we got lucky. The Taliban threw mortars, RPG’s, and machinegun fire at us. I was a passenger in the lead vehicle so the Taliban started shooting as soon as we got into the kill zone. I was on the side being shot at so I was calling out targets to the gunner through the vehicle communications system. By the time the gunner got eyes on the target he couldn’t engage because the target left his assigned sector of fire. A mortar position (I originally thought it was an RPG) shot early enough that the gunner engaged the position. The mortar landed three meters from my window.

By shooting at my vehicle the Taliban revealed their positions. The vehicles behind us had better views of the targets and blasted the hell out them. The Mark 19 grenade launcher shot around forty rounds and the gunner was laying them in wherever he saw a puff of smoke from a mortar or RPG position. All the other gunners (M2 .50 cal and M240B 7.62mm) stitched rounds into anyone that was carrying an AK-47 or shooting a machine gun.

When we arrived at our destination we inspected the vehicles and we didn’t find any indicator of being hit. No scratched paint and no injuries. They MISSED! We were lucky because lately the Taliban have been pretty effective with their ambushes.

We ran an impromptu vehicle check point and I damn near blew away a couple of guys. The men had waved a car through then all of a sudden they started yelling at me to stop the car. I waved them to stop but the car kept coming and I brought my rifle up and thumbed the safety. The car stopped and the men surrounded the car yelling at them to get out, in English. I almost yelled at the men to just motion for the occupants to get out but the interpreter arrived and sorted the situation out. The occupants had an AK-47 and an RPG launcher. It turned out that they were off duty police. They were a bit truculent until we explained to them that we just fought through an ambush and that they were not in uniform!

The last couple of days we were staging from the Canadian PRT in Kandahar City. The only interesting thing to note from the last couple of days was that riding in the back of an RG-31 Nyala vehicle with a malfunctioning air conditioner is about as close to hell as I want to go. Every time we hit a bump I bounced so hard that I hit the ceiling with my head (thankfully I had my helmet on) and it was close to 50° C (122° F)! Two hours after dismounting the vehicle I was still soaked in sweat. You can see a Nyala on the left side of the picture above.

All this craziness is going on in the Panjwayi and Zhari districts of Kandahar Province. Kandahar Province is not in flames, only Panjwayi and Zhari. There is no resurgence of Taliban, they have always been here. It is only just this year that we are actively seeking out and engaging the Taliban.

My bride is breathing easier now that I am back at Kandahar Airfield. She wants me to put more effort into buying more carpets rather than going on missions! I am getting pretty short anyway so if they ask for my assistance again I will probably decline unless I am directly ordered which is unlikely.

I had a pretty eventful week.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Intellectual Rigor

2006-08-28T10:54:00.000+00:00

Has anyone taken the time to read the ruling issued by Judge Taylor re Case No. 06-CV-10204, ACLU v NSA? I have. You can download the ruling from the Council of Foreign Affairs here. I wanted to read it for myself after reading all the articles praising and condemning it.

Full disclosure. I am not an attorney nor did I sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. My bride and the mother of my sons is a practicing attorney but that does not nor should it imply that I know what I am talking about. Having said that, even a non attorney like me can see where the ruling comes up short (I did take classes on constitutional history/law as an undergrad and as a graduate student).

Judge Taylor’s ruling reminded me of an e-mail my colleague received the other day. The author couldn’t help but throw in little editorial comments here and there. I am sure the comments were meant to plus up the credibility of the author. Instead of relying on facts to support his thesis, he had to throw in puffery that only made him appear to be an idiot. What the author accomplished was to cement our collective opinion that the author is an oxygen thief.

Oxygen thief, ration converter, dead baby, and other base epithets describe the idiots among us. The military is a human organization so we expect to contend with useless people. Because forward deployed units deal with life and death, we strive to minimize their influence.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor is an oxygen thief. Appointed by President Carter in 1979, she has been allowed to serve ever since. Amazing. If this ruling is of similar quality to her previous rulings and opinions, she should have been impeached long ago.

Smarter people than me have already written about the rulings shortcomings so I will not comment on the ruling itself. You can read this article (you might have to register) by Ann Althouse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin instead. You can also read this editorial from the Wall Street Journal or Andrew McCarthy’s piece written for the National Review. I must share what I think are the best quotes.

From Dr. Althouse:

…the judge has a constitutional duty, under the doctrine of standing, to respond only to concretely injured plaintiffs who are suing the entity that caused their injury and for the purpose of remedying that injury. We trust the judge to say what the law is because the judge “must of necessity expound and interpret” in order to decide cases, as Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Marbury. But Judge Taylor breezed through two of the three elements of standing doctrine — this constitutional limit on her power — in what looks like a headlong rush through a whole series of difficult legal questions to get to an outcome in her heart she knew was right.

From the Wall Street Journal:

So let's set aside the judge's Star Chamber rhetoric and try to examine her argument, such as it is. Take the Fourth Amendment first. The "unreasonable search and seizure" and warrant requirements of that amendment have their roots in the 18th-century abuses of the British crown. Those abuses involved the search and arrest of the King's political opponents under general and often secret warrants.

Judge Taylor sees an analogy here, but she manages to forget or overlook that no one is being denied his liberty and no evidence is being brought in criminal proceedings based on what the NSA might learn through listening to al Qaeda communications. The wiretapping program is an intelligence operation, not a law-enforcement proceeding. Congress was duly informed, and not a single specific domestic abuse of such a wiretap has yet been even alleged, much less found.

As for the First Amendment, Judge Taylor asserts that the plaintiffs--a group that includes the ACLU and assorted academics, lawyers and journalists who believe their conversations may have been tapped but almost surely weren't--had their free-speech rights violated because al Qaeda types are now afraid to speak to them on the phone.

From McCarthy:

In the real system of separated powers devised by the Framers, the courts of the United States had no role — none — in defending this nation from foreign threats. That was to be the job of the president and the Congress, which is to say, the officials actually accountable to the citizens whose lives were at stake.

While Judge Taylor bleats about the need to respect “checks and balances,” the check our system has designed for national-security matters is political, not judicial. It implicates the right of all citizens collectively — the body politic — to self preservation. It is not concerned with such comparative trifles as the insatiable idio-obsessions of “activists” and gadflies — however theatrically petrified they may seem over the possibility that, for example, their “right” to shoot the breeze with Ayman Zawahiri might be “chilled” if the NSA lends its ears … along with an audience that already includes every foreign intelligence service on the planet.

The standing rules that Judge Taylor shunned are there for a reason. It is not a legalism. It is not some abstruse jurisprudential technicality that you’d need an Ivy League law degree to decipher. It is about the right of the American people to govern themselves.

There is a difference between collecting evidence for use in a criminal prosecution and the collection of information for use as intelligence. To listen in on a man who uses his phone to set up contract “hits” so he can monopolize Jefferson City’s drug trade does require a warrant. I don’t think a warrant is required to listen in on conversations between Joe Taliban in Afghanistan and his cousin, Masoud living in Jefferson City, coordinating the purchase of cell phones for use in IED trigger mechanisms! Article 3, § 3 of the US Constitution defines treason. If Masoud is a US citizen and he was in fact colluding with his cousin Joe Taliban, Masoud is conducting a treasonous act, not perpetrating a crime.

Congress is charged under Article 1, § 8 of the US Constitution to provide for the common defense among other things. Congress dictates how intelligence is collected. Article 2, § 2 states that the President is the Commander in Chief of the military. Article 3 defines the role of Judiciary and does give the ACLU the right to sue the NSA (Article 3, § 2) but nowhere in Article 3 does it mention that it has jurisdiction over the nation’s conduct of war but as mentioned already, does define treason. McCarthy is right in that war is a political issue, that is why the US Constitution charges elected officials to prosecute war, not the judiciary!

Judge Taylor’s poorly written ruling will be overturned. Unfortunately, it will be overturned because of her baleful lack of intellectual rigor, not on the strength of the arguments put forth by the defendant, the National Security Agency. Because of that, the ACLU will still argue that “warrantless” eavesdropping on conversations between foreign nationals working to kill my family and residents of the United States who are cooperating with the aforementioned foreign nationals are still illegal.

This is a hell of a way to fight a war.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

So Long and God Speed

2006-08-26T13:43:00.000+00:00

Task Force Orion has left Afghanistan and they have built an enduring legacy for the Canadian Army. My colleague and I had a cigar with L Col Ian Hope, the task force commander, the night he left and we chatted about the way ahead and how we should be sorting out the Taliban. We also talked about Western Civilization, the works of Dr. Hanson (L Col Hope and I share the same enthusiasm for Dr. Hanson’s work), and the necessity of political will and the need for “heads on spikes”.

I hated to see them leave. I really enjoyed working with L Col Hope and the Patricia’s. It was a tough tour for them. They were in contact with enemy forces pretty much every day they were in Afghanistan. They are one tired bunch and you can see it on L Col Hope’s face. Despite all the nastiness they had to contend with, they made me a part of them.

L Col Hope and his staff bent over backwards to make me feel at home when I first reported for duty. They took my critiques and my advice to heart. As soon as the task force was able to they implemented the recommendations I made. These guys were willing to change procedures because they wanted to be the best and provide the most optimum conditions for their soldiers down range.

I was born in Melita, Manitoba. If my family had stayed in Canada, I would most likely have joined the Canadian Army. I would like to think that I would have been assigned to the Patricia’s or a unit that is affiliated with them. After twenty years of service to the US Army Reserve and the Missouri National Guard, I was finally deployed to a shooting war. I thought it was provident that I was detailed to Task Force Orion and that I was able to fight alongside my former countrymen. I believe that was no coincidence.

It has been a great honour serving with them. I will miss them dearly. Task Force Orion lost some good people. Volunteers all and from all parts of Canada, both regular and reserve, men and one woman. Here is the roll.

On 2 March 2006 Cpl. Paul Davis, Bridgewater, Novia Scotia and Master Cpl. Timothy Wilson, Grande Prairie, Alberta were killed when their LAV collided with a taxi that failed to yield. Five other soldiers were injured including their interpreter.

On 29 March 2006 Pte Robert Costall was killed in action defending a Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Helmand Province. Eight Afghan soldiers plus one US soldier died as well. He was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario and based in Edmonton with the 1st Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. He was married and the father of a baby boy.

On 22 April 2006, four soldiers were killed when their G-Wagon struck an IED. Killed in the incident were Cpl. Matthew Dinning, born in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and stationed at Petawawa, Ontario, Lt. William Turner, born in Toronto, Ontario and stationed at Edmonton, Alberta, Bombardier Myles Mansell, born in Victoria, British Columbia and stationed at Victoria, British Columbia, and Cpl. Randy Payne, stationed at Wainwright, Alberta.

On 17 May 2006, Capt. Nichola Goddard of Shilo, Manitoba, was killed in action when she was hit with an RPG. She was a Forward Observation Officer with the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, Shilo, Manitoba. Her artillery unit deployed with the Patricia's. Goddard was the first woman in Canadian history killed in a combat role and the first female member of the Canadian military killed in combat since the Second World War.

On 10 July 2006, Cpl. Anthony Joseph Boneca, a 21-year-old from Thunder Bay, Ontario was killed in action west of Kandahar City. He was on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. He volunteered to serve with the Patricia’s for this deployment. He was a reservist from the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment based in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

On 22 July 2006, Cpl. Francisco Gomez, 44, of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton, Alberta and Cpl. Jason Patrick Warren, 29, of Montreal's The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada died when the Bison they were in was hit by a suicide bomber. Eight other soldiers were wounded in the attack. The supply convoy that they were a part of was returning from a supply run.

On 3 August 2006, four Patricia’s were killed. Cpl. Christopher Jonathan Reid, 34, of Truro, Novia Scotia was killed when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb near Kandahar. Later on the same day, Sgt. Vaughan Ingram, 35, from Burgeo, Newfoundland and Labrador, Cpl. Bryce Jeffrey Keller, 27, of Sherwood Park, Alberta, Pte. Kevin Dallaire, 22, of Calgary, Alberta were killed in action supporting Afghan National Police clearing a suspected Taliban position in Zhari District. Three other soldiers were wounded in the RPG attack.

On 5 August 2006, Master Cpl. Raymond Arndt, 31, of Edson, Alberta was killed when his G Wagon was struck by a civilian truck. He was a reservist with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment. Three others were wounded. They were delivering medical supplies to a FOB south of Kandahar City.

On 11 August, Cpl. Andrew James Eykelenboom, 23, of Comox, British Columbia, was killed when his vehicle was struck by a suicide bomber. He was a medic based in Edmonton, Alberta with the 1st Field Ambulance.

Volunteers all!

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"

And I said, "Here am I. Send me!

Isaiah 6: 5-8

I will always remember the sacrifices Task Force Orion made. Task Force Orion made a positive impact in Afghanistan. Canada should be proud of what they accomplished. I know I am.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Embedded in Reality

2006-08-21T21:24:00.000+00:00

I am now working at Task Force Aegis (the brigade headquarters). The incoming Canadian Battle Group (made up mostly of soldiers from the Royal Canadian Regiment) brought their own Information Operations officer so that freed me up to go back to brigade. Before, I was spending half of my time at the battle group and the other half at brigade. I am now spending all of my time at brigade.

Because of the ongoing unit rotations I had to get a “letter of input” for my evaluation before the Patricia’s redeployed back to Canada. I had a sit down with my rater for the first time today (I should have met my rater as soon as I arrived at Kandahar Airfield. I didn’t because I went straight to work for the Patricia’s). During our sit down we talked about our backgrounds, how we ended up in Afghanistan, the work we are doing here, and observations of our coalition brethren.

The focus of my observations are those who “get it” and those who don’t. By “get it” I mean those who understand what Information Operations is all about and when properly conducted and managed will facilitate the killing of Taliban in large numbers. Information Operations doesn’t work by itself, it is the velvet glove wrapped around the iron fist. The words only are effective when you back them up with deeds.

The Canadians: My new boss, a Canadian Major who is the number two Info Ops officer at brigade (I am the number three), commented that we should start calling the Canadian battle group the “Kinetic Canucks”. Most of the Canadian staff officers at brigade and the commander of the battle group “get it”. It’s in the news that the Canadians are piling on the Taliban which makes it easier for me as an Info Ops bubba to get my message out.

The Romanians: They “get it” also. Their equipment isn’t as good as ours but they are trying hard.

The Estonians: Nice guys, excellent English, but they don’t have any combat troops here so I can’t comment on whether they get it.

The Danes: See Estonians.

The French: No, they don’t get it. They were more concerned about having parties at their compound and scoring chicks (easy to do when you have free booze). Plus, they seriously underestimated some situations and it cost them.

The Dutch: They just took over the province I was at for six months. Boy, are they in for a treat. THEY DON’T GET IT!!! Austin Powers said it best, “there are two kinds of people I hate, those who are intolerant and the Dutch!” One of the first things they did on Kandahar Airfield was build a bloody nightclub (no booze though) that’s invitation only. Way to prioritize your efforts guys. Idiots.

Staff Weenies from NATO/ISAF: They don’t get it. Yesterday, the Canadians were raising hell with the Taliban and we didn’t hear a peep from NATO/ISAF. Well, it was Sunday after all and when you work for an organization that is called NATO (short for Not After Two O’clock), we shouldn’t have expected them to raise any interest in the boisterous activities in Regional Command South! The Canadians did NATO/ISAF a favor. The local Kandaharis are starting to think that NATO/ISAF can actually fight so instead of “I Suck At Fighting”, ISAF will only stand for “I Should Ask First”.

The Brits: They get it. They are kicking the snot out of the Taliban in Helmand Province. Today I was watching BBC World with a couple of our interpreters and I noticed that the Brits had fixed bayonets! I thought that was too funny! (Anyone who has seen Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Eddie Izzard’s comedy special Dress to Kill, or has spent some time around Brits will know of what I speak). Here is how I think they were driven to fix bayonets:

Subaltern: Sir, the men are irritated that we have run out of water. I am afraid that they may get a bit cross if we have no afternoon tea.
Commander: Right, will the water from the Helmand River make good tea?
Subaltern: If we boil the water and not use chemicals, the tea should be fine.
Commander: Very well, we must have tea so organize a detail.
Subaltern: Right sir, and oh, here comes a runner. My God man! Why on earth are you running in this dreadful heat?
Runner: Sir, we have spotted movement about and the platoon commander believes the Taliban are attempting to encircle our position.
Subaltern: Sir, I believe that we may not be able to send the water detail to the Helmand River.
Commander: That’s dash cunning of them! Interfering with our afternoon tea. What a bloody nuisance they have become. Color Sergeant!
Color Sergeant: Yes sir!
Commander: Kindly have the men fix bayonets and sort out this bloody nuisance the Taliban have become. We must have afternoon tea.
Color Sergeant: Very good sir! COMPANY!! FIX!! BAYONETS!!

Flag Gazer commented on my last post that she appreciates humor imbedded in reality. I have a lot of reality and I have to see the humor or I would go postal.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Coalition Terrorist Threat Levels

2006-08-20T09:55:00.000+00:00

In light of the recent arrest of would be suicide bombers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere who were planning to blow up civilian aircraft travelling over the Atlantic Ocean, we Americans along with our European friends have increased the threat level of imminent terrorist attack.

The Europeans do not use a color coded like us. I believe their system is a better reflection of their national characters.

The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings and security threats and have raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross."

Londoners have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to a "Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Surrender" and "Collaborate." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

It's not only the English and French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans also increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose."

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

CIAO'
CPT NightHawk

Values?

2006-08-18T17:48:00.000+00:00

One of the people who commented on my last post posits that we can’t win against our current enemy with today’s “values”. So you don’t have to scroll all the way to the end of the last post, Zach’s comment follows:

Can a military that relies heavily on reserve call-ups win this new kind of war?
Can we win "Eastern" wars with Western values?

Only if we can find the vaules that helped us win WWI and WWII. So, the answer is.. No... we cant win with todays "values."

Zach’s comment answers the second question that LTC (Ret) Ralph Peters raised, winning an “Eastern” war with Western values. I think “values” and political will are being confused.

Do you believe that we Westerners don’t have it in us to kill the enemy? Please read “Carnage and Culture” by Victor Davis Hanson, PhD where he states that:

"The Western way of war is so lethal precisely because it is so amoral shackled rarely by concerns of ritual, tradition, religion, or ethics, by anything other than military necessity."

I want to hone in on the word “amoral”. Much is said today about morals and values. Can we win with Western values? What values are we talking about anyway? Do I love my sons differently than how my Dad loved me and my brother when were children? Are we referring to cultural mores where, in my opinion, we Generation Xers were promiscuous but the next generation would make Caligula blush?

We need to divorce the concept of “values” and “mores” from “attributes”. What makes us Westerners are our institutions and ideals such as consensual government, free inquiry and innovative enterprise, rationalism, and the value placed on freedom and individualism. The vulgarity of our culture is a small price to pay for the wealth and freedoms we enjoy and besides, there are far more people who try to live by the Ten Commandments than people who are pursuing a “hedonistic” lifestyle.

Back to “amoral”. The Western attributes of free inquiry, innovative enterprise, and rationalism have given us an economy that is able to produce a frightening war making capability. Al Queda may have knocked down the World Trade Center but we were able to put boots on the ground that were supported by satellite guided munitions and communications. Al Queda killed close to three thousand people on 11SEP2001. We have killed far more of them. The thing is, we could have killed many more.

In my last post I alluded to my disgust with ISAF because they don’t get it. The primary reason they don’t get it is because they don’t understand that Regional Command South (RC-South) is totally different from RC-North and RC-West. The Taliban originated in RC-South and they are not going away quietly. There are newspaper articles out there proclaiming a new Taliban insurgency. Newsflash people, the Taliban never really left, we only just this year started to fight them seriously in RC-South! Another reason they don’t get it is because they are European staff officers who are not aggressive about getting on with it.

In my conversations with some of the people of Afghanistan, the more knowledgeable ones are wondering why we aren’t getting on with it. They know we can kill with impunity from the air and from the ground (the Taliban may be great warriors, but Westerners are better soldiers) but we are seen as not being aggressive enough.

This leads me to my number one complaint about my job as an Information Operations officer. I am not the “cute and cuddly”, “warm and fuzzy”, officer that only deals with “non-kinetic” operations. According to Army Field Manual 3-13, destruction is one of the effects I try to achieve in the physical and information battle spaces. Officers who don’t get it look at me and ask “what can Info Ops do?” I respond with “Killing them supports Info Ops theme number three so go ahead and kill them” and they look at me in shock!!

LTC (Ret) Ralph Peters alludes to my frustrations in an article published in the Summer 2004 edition of Parameters (published by the US Army War College) found here. I quote:

…we shall hear no end of fatuous arguments to the effect that we can’t kill our way out of the problem. Well, until a better methodology is discovered, killing every terrorist we can find is a good interim solution. The truth is that even if you can’t kill yourself out of the problem, you can make the problem a great deal smaller by effective targeting…

With hardcore terrorists, it’s not about PSYOP or jobs or deploying dental teams. It’s about killing them. Even regarding the general population, which benefits from our reconstruction and development efforts, the best thing we can do for them is to kill terrorists and insurgents. Until the people of Iraq are secure, they are not truly free. The terrorists know that. We pretend otherwise.

Substitute Iraq with Afghanistan or any other terrorist haven and we have a solution but we need the political will to make it happen.

That’s the whole point. Zach’s answer about not winning with today’s “values” should read we won’t win unless we make the political decision to do so. We have far too many senior officers who think we can Info Ops our way out of it when we should be using Info Ops to facilitate more killing. The Afghans want the Taliban dead and we should oblige them. The citizens of our coalition brethren plus our own people need to make a decision as to how we want to prosecute the war, fight to win or fight half assed.

We Westerners have everything we need to win. Values? We don’t need them, only the will to win.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Will it Hold?

2006-08-15T18:36:00.000+00:00

One of the biggest problems we have in southern Afghanistan is a resurgent Taliban. Pakistan is our contemporary version of what Cambodia and Laos used to be for the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. The Taliban leadership hole up in Quetta and from there sends money and advisers. The government of Pakistan is ostensibly helping but for many years they have refused to govern the northern part of their country that borders Afghanistan. With an intelligence service that is riddled with Wahhabi diehards, President Musharraf is walking a very thin tightrope in trying to establish credible governmental authority in northern Pakistan.

Israel is dealing with a similar situation. After thirty four days of conflict Hezbollah (who operated from southern Lebanon), Lebanon, and Israel have agreed to abide by United Nations Resolution 1701 which you can read for yourself by clicking here (it is a PDF file). Israel will hand off Lebanese territory to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) who in turn will hand over the territory to the Lebanese Army. The Lebanese Army is supposed to supply 15,000 troops and UNIFIL will be increased to 15,000 troops as well. They will do joint patrols (sorta like what we do in Afghanistan with the Afghan National Army). Here is the kicker, the Lebanese Army is supposed to be the only recognized ARMED force in Lebanon, implying that Hezbollah must disarm.

In my humble opinion, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Taliban are all cut from the same cloth and have the same sponsors. Iran, Syria, and some Pakistani factions have no interest in a stable and self governing Lebanon or Afghanistan. The Islamist Fascists we are fighting against need a base of operations which a non-functioning state provides. There is also the idea that your typical Muslim nowadays doesn't identify with the state but with their culture and religion. I quote from this article by Mark Steyn:

Here's a clue, from a recent Pew poll that asked: What do you consider yourself first? A citizen of your country or a Muslim?

In the United Kingdom, 7 percent of Muslims consider themselves British first, 81 percent consider themselves Muslim first.

And that's where the really valid Lebanese comparison lies. Lebanon is a sovereign state. It has an executive and a military. But its military has less sophisticated weaponry than Hezbollah and its executive wields less authority over its jurisdiction than Hezbollah. In the old days, the Lebanese government would have fallen and Hezbollah would have formally supplanted the state. But non-state actors like the Hezbo crowd and al-Qaida have no interest in graduating to statehood. They've got bigger fish to fry. If you're interested in establishing a global caliphate, getting a U.N. seat and an Olympic team only gets in the way. The "sovereign" state is of use to such groups merely as a base of operations, as Afghanistan was and Lebanon is. They act locally but they think globally.

And that indifference to the state can be contagious. Lebanon's Christians may think of themselves as "Lebanese," but most of Hezbollah's Shiite constituency don't. Western analysts talk hopefully of fierce differences between Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Persian, but it's interesting to note the numbers of young Sunni men in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere in recent weeks who've decided that Iran's (Shiite) President Ahmadinejad and his (Shiite) Hezbo proxies are the new cool kids in town. During the '90s, we grew used to the idea that "non-state actors" meant a terrorist group, with maybe a few hundred activists, a few thousand supporters. What if entire populations are being transformed into "non-state actors"? Not terrorists, by any means, but at the very minimum entirely indifferent to the state of which they're nominally citizens.

A few of us were sitting around the office wondering what the real goal of Hezbollah was and by extension Iran and Syria. If I learned anything from Gunny Poole, it’s all about the deception, baby. If a non-functioning state is in the best interests of Hezbollah et al, why not get a sworn enemy to do the work for you? How about “creating chaos to make an enemy easier to beat” (one of the 36 stratagems of deception from China).

LTC (Ret) Peters recently wrote an article listing lessons learned from the recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. You can read the article here. What follows are the main points he wanted to make.

1: You can win every tactical engagement and still lose at the strategic level.
2: The global media can overturn the verdict of the battlefield.
3: If you start off on the wrong foot in war, you may never recover your balance.
4: Technology alone can't win 21st-century wars.
5: Never underestimate your enemy.
6: In war, take the pain up front, and the overall suffering will be far less.
7: Terrorism is no longer a limited, diffuse, disorganized threat.

As an Information Operations Officer in southern Afghanistan, I am trying to sort out points 1 and 2 (media operations, messaging, and psychological operations), and points 4 and 5 (our western predisposition to look condescendingly on an adversary not as technically advanced as us). Peters also raises the following two questions:

Can a military that relies heavily on reserve call-ups win this new kind of war?
Can we win "Eastern" wars with Western values?

Peters argues that Hezbollah isn’t some rabble with an AK-47 and a couple of magazines. Israeli soldiers encountered well disciplined fighters fighting from well prepared positions with planned exits. They had launched close to 4000 rockets into Israel, used the latest anti-tank weapons, and deployed reconnaissance drones. Israel is going to have to think long and hard about restructuring its military to counter the new professionalism of Hezbollah fighters.

As for the second question, Peters implies that the West will have to sacrifice its values and fight by the enemy's rules in order to win. The example he used was that Israel could have leveled apartment buildings to kill the Hezbollah command centers but instead Israel tried surgical strikes using commandos at great risk

I have to respectfully disagree with the LTC (Ret) Peters. The West is very good at killing people on a large and industrial scale. Ask any person of Japanese or German descent that was around during WWII. Or read Dr. Hanson’s “Carnage and Culture”. We won’t sacrifice our values to win, we just have to make a POLITICAL decision to win and win decisively.

So, what now for Israel and Hezbollah. Lebanon will have to assert sovereignty in her southern area and Hezbollah will have to disarm. I don’t see it happening because Hezbollah has more advanced weaponry and better training than the Lebanese Army. UNIFIL will have to assert its authority by killing violators of the ceasefire who will more than likely be Hezbollah fighters. Because UNIFIL never asserted its authority in the first place, increasing its end strength to 15, 000 with soldiers from countries that think Israel is the real problem and that Germany should have finished the job will not be “combat effective” against Hezbollah.

You are probably wondering why I am talking about Israel and Hezbollah more than I am talking about Afghanistan. With the recent Transfer of Authority (TOA) with the NATO led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), we are coming to the realization here in Regional Command South that ISAF doesn’t “get it”. I firmly believe that the Taliban “gets it” and is exploiting the situation. I wish I could say more but I would seriously compromise our operations. To give you a hint of what we are dealing with, ISAF stands for either “I Should Ask First” or “I Suck At Fighting”, depending on what unbelievable pile of crap is excreted from ISAF in Kabul.

Will the ceasefire hold between Hezbollah and Israel? Will ISAF be able to hold what gains we made in southern Afghanistan when we were under Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)? We can defeat the Taliban and Israel can totally defeat Hezbollah. Afghans who have studied our history are asking us why aren’t we getting on with it. We are very good at killing the enemy; we just need the political decision to unleash the dogs of war.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Stabbed in the Back

2006-08-08T16:55:00.000+00:00

Back in January a story was published in the Washington Post describing the situation in Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan. The PRT I was formally assigned to is at Tarin Kowt, the provincial capitol. You can link to the story here but because it was printed last January you will have to pay to see the rest.

I set up the interviews that Griff Witte, the reporter, had with some of the US troops. I also connected him to one of our computer networks so he can have Internet access to publish his story. When the story was printed we all thought he gave us and the coalition forces in the area a fair shake. He pointed out that Oruzgan Province is a tough province and there is a lot of work to be done but he did it fairly.

Fast forward to this month. I am really disappointed in Mr. Witte and his partner, Andy Mosher. It appears that these two so called journalists didn’t give my brethren in Iraq a fair shake at all. The article can be found here.

When you read the article it sounds like the Gulf Region Division, US Army Corps of Engineers, are all ate up. The reality is far different. Click here for the rebuttal written by MG William McCoy. Read it for yourself and you will see that Witte and Mosher are way off the mark.

I am taking this a little personally because I bent over backward to help Witte out when he visited the PRT. Judging by the tone of MG McCoy’s rebuttal, they rolled out the red carpet for Witte and Mosher. I know that the Gulf Region Division has top notch people working there because I know one of them. He and I were both 2nd Lieutenants in the 110th Engineer Battalion and he is now one of the Gulf Region Division’s operations officers.

This is a classic example of why we in the US military despise journalists. They lie, obfuscate, and selectively use a bare minimum of facts to get the “story” that follows a prearranged theme. We need reporters to report the facts, not journalists to make up a story. The public at home are not being served properly by these so called “journalists”. We help them and assist them and then they stab us in the back.

I’ll be damned if I ever help that little prick again.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Fighting the Long War and Going to the Beach

2006-08-06T18:22:00.000+00:00

I am back from Qatar and back at work. I had a very good time. On my last day I went cruising on a dhow and swam in the gulf. Pretty cool. Before I went on pass I received in an e-mail an interesting question. I was asked about what was going on between Lebanon and Israel. I am sure that there are many people back home that are wondering the same thing.

Right now I am reading Stephanie Guttmans book, The Other War, which discusses the media war between Israel and Yasser Arafat’s PLO during the so-called “Second Intifada”. I am continually amazed at the blatant bias directed against Israel in her efforts to secure her borders and protect her people. I knew that Israel always gets a bad rap but Gutmann points out that it didn’t always used to be that way. Israel has morphed from plucky new independent country to monstrous threat to the world at large.

There are a few articles out there that are arguing the case for Israel (and more arguing the case for Hezbollah and Hamas). I have nothing profound to say about the situation that others who are way smarter than me have already said.

Ralph Peters, a former intelligence officer, in his article here points out that the world will eventually pressure the Israelis to stop. Paragraph four is pretty scathing. I quote:

Europeans have more sympathy with Iran's nuclear program than they do with Israel's attempts at self-defense. But, then, the only thing continental Europeans regret about the Holocaust is that they didn't get to finish the job. Even as Europe suffers its own attacks by Islamist terrorists, Europeans defend the selfsame terrorists against Israeli retribution.

LTC (Ret) Peters isn’t kidding. Based on conversations I have overheard at the dining facility and elsewhere, I am embarrassed to report that some of my coalition brethren couldn’t really give one damn about Israel.

There has been much discussion about Israel’s use of force and how it is so disproportionate. For those of you without any military planning experience, you always go into the attack with disproportionate force. In some circles the planning factor for the ratio of attackers to defenders is three to one. When going after an enemy that fights asymmetrically, the ratio is even higher. Pierre Atlas in his article here makes an impassioned defense of Israel’s use of force. Mark Steyn has a biting article here and I quote:

But, when an army goes to war against a terrorist organization, it's like watching the Red Sox play Andre Agassi: Each side is being held to its own set of rules. When Hezbollah launches rockets into Israeli residential neighborhoods with the intention of killing random civilians, that's fine because, after all, they're terrorists and that's what terrorists do. But when, in the course of trying to resist the terrorists, Israel unintentionally kills civilians, that's an appalling act of savagery. Speaking at West Point in 2002, President Bush observed: "Deterrence -- the promise of massive retaliation against nations -- means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend." Actually, it's worse than that. In Hezbollahstan, the deaths of its citizens works to its strategic advantage: Dead Israelis are good news but dead Lebanese are even better, at least on the important battlefield of world opinion.

This supports Guttmann’s thesis that the Israelis are not getting a fair shake in the media.

Speaking of getting a fair shake David Warren in his article here comments on the coverage of the Qana raid. At first the media was screaming that the air raid of Qana was an Israeli massacre and then coverage suddenly stopped. The reason the coverage mysteriously dropped was that the initial coverage was staged by Hezbollah. I quote:

Now look at the media pictures. Immediately you see several fishy things. For one, bodies displayed to media are removed, successively, from a single neat hole in the ruins. There is no evidence of a rescue mission having been mounted, or of a continuing search for bodies elsewhere under the rubble. The battered bodies do not resemble those which are seen after most real explosions and building collapses: their wounds do not look recent. All the blood and gore seems to be on just one body.

Moreover, as bloggers such as "Eureferendum" have demonstrated, by juxtaposing press photos from various newspapers, the men showing off the bodies -- and identified in captions as "Lebanese rescue workers" -- are the same as had been present at previous alleged atrocities. They are obviously not rescue workers, but Hezbollah propaganda agents.

Warren also states in his article that the Israelis dropped leaflets in the area for more than a week telling civilians to leave the area. Hezbollah, after using its rocket launchers from in between the houses in Qana, were moving them into the houses. Unfortunately, Hezbollah has a history of preventing at gun point civilians from leaving an area when Hezbollah needs dead civilians to amplify its message. Hezbollah must bear full blame for any civilian deaths (I am sure that civilians did die at Qana) but we must be cognizant that the Qana raid wasn’t the massacre it is alleged to be.

Why support Israel anyway? Why should we people of the West (North America and Europe) care about the Jews of Israel? What is Israel anyway?

Israel is the only functioning western style democracy in the entire Middle East. They have regular and transparent elections. They have a free market economy. They have an independent judiciary. They have a free press. In short, since Israel became a nation in 1948 they were able to carve out of the desert a pretty nice place to live, prior to that the place was a hovel.

The Israelis have nowhere else to go. They can’t go back to Europe because Europeans can’t stand them and tried to kill them off during WWII (It wasn’t just the Germans, people all over conquered Europe lent the Germans a helping hand). Besides, the enemy of Israel is also our enemy.

Al Qaeda, Hamas, HiG, Hezbollah, et al and their state sponsors (Syria and Iran) want to destroy the west and implement sharia law over the entire world. This is more than forcing Israel to give up land for peace. Israel left Gaza, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon and all they got was more grief. Her enemies want her destroyed.

We should identify with that. We lost close to three thousand people in one day on 11 SEP 2001 and we took the fight to Afghanistan and later Iraq. We need to let Israel do what Israel needs to do. Have I ever criticized Israel? Of course, I am an Information Operations officer and Israel has made some amazing blunders. What I will not criticize is her right to exist.

Victor Hanson, PhD, in this article here sees some similarities between now and the events of the 1930’s. His point is that we westerners are refusing to see what the real enemy is. I quote:

But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and it is even more baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.

Not any longer.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

Mark my words; we are in for a long war. My sons will probably be called to serve and I will do my best to prepare them for that eventuality. The question remains as to how we are to conduct ourselves. Do we take this seriously or do we just accept the ad hominem attacks to our values.

I close this post with another quote from an article by Peters found here. I quote:

They sunned themselves on the beach where Richard the Lionheart fought. Rockets fell 30 miles up the coast. But these Israelis played volleyball.

They weren't callous. They simply refused to let terror control their lives…………

It's long been a cliche to note that Israel "made the desert bloom" after long centuries of Arab abuse of the soil itself and the destruction of the Biblical landscape of "milk and honey." But the settlers and their children who built Israel did more than irrigate orange groves. They built a civilization where there had been only neglect, decay and oppression.

Above all, the Israelis planted democracy and the rule of law in fields that had been hostile to elementary human decency and dignity for thousands of years.

And on the seventh day, they went to the beach.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

Old and New

2006-07-31T10:37:00.000+00:00

Well, I finally made it to Qatar three nights ago. The base is pretty nice. Every day at 1300 Hrs (1:00 PM) they have the sign-ups for the following days excursions. They give people who are close to returning back into theater first crack at them. They even have a sponsor program where people who work on base will take a few people into town but that program is spotty at best.

My first night I had two glasses of wine and one beer with my dinner. I really enjoyed that. On my first full day I got a manicure and a pedicure (my feet really needed it) and I went swimming in the pool. I signed up for the stand by list for the next days restaurant visit. Night before last I ate at the Chilis. They don't serve alcohol there (that is so un-American!!!) so I went back to the club and had my three glasses of wine.

Yesterday I signed up for the sponsor program hoping someone will take me to town. Sunday is supposedly the best day for sponsors to pick people up. Only two sponsors showed! I was twenty seven on the list so by the 1300 Hrs brief I was bumming. I did get a definite seat for tonight’s restaurant visit. I stuck around hoping that I would be able to get on last nights restaurant visit. Seven people didn't bother to show up so I was able to go. Two restaurant visits in a row plus today my group has first dibs on excursion sign-ups! Sweet!!

Last night I had grilled minced mutton, pickled cabbage, yoghurt with cucumber, and tea with mint. Afterwards we all retired to the veranda overlooking the docks (we were right by the water) and ordered houkas. I figure if you are in the Middle East you oughta smoke a houka at least once. This was unlike any tobacco experience I ever had.

The tobacco comes in different fruit flavors like apple, cherry, grape, and strawberry. I ordered a double apple. The attendant brings it out and it is a little over three feet tall. The base is transparent glass and you can see the water and the air pocket. From the base it is a metal pipe with two fittings to attach the tubes and mouthpieces. The metal pipe is topped with the bowl of tobacco. The bowl is covered in foil and the coals are on top of the foil. The bowl is covered with a metal canister.

I took my first draw and I expected to feel a burning sensation but I didn't. It was so smooth! I could only taste the apple; there was no hint of tobacco at all. Pretty soon I started to feel really good. I got a little light headed. After awhile the attendant came by with a ladle full of hot coals. He took off the canister, dumped the old coals into his ladle and gave me fresh ones. I could tell the houka needed more heat because the taste of the smoke got a little rough. Once I got new coals the smoke smoothed out.

Here I am in Qatar, full from a pretty good meal, smoking a houka by the water, looking at the skyline of the city, and right on the nose at 2000 Hrs (8:00 PM) I hear the call to prayers.

I can't even begin to explain how weird that felt. When I was in Tarin Kowt I sometimes performed officer of the watch duties. I would make my initial rounds and if I was in the right tower at the right time I could hear the call to prayer coming from Tarin Kowt. Pretty much most activity would stop during prayer time. When I heard the call to prayers in Qatar the traffic didn't stop and the attendants kept working. I half expected to see the traffic to stop and everyone jump out with their prayer rugs and start praying. That did not happen.

I guess the people of Qatar are trying to make the best of living in the twenty first century and still maintaining some semblance of their traditions. I was smoking a houka, an old tradition in the Middle East but the houka itself was of a new and modern design. The city I was observing is taking the time and effort to maintain the old tradition of calling to prayer but on the surface looked like any vibrant coastal city in the United States with a new and modern skyline. Last night I saw and felt just a little of how many people in the Middle East are trying to blend the old and new. I just hope they can make sense of it all.

CIAO'
CPT NightHawk

Will I ever get to Qatar?

2006-07-27T12:25:00.000+00:00

All I want to do is take a few days off. That’s all, just a few days. But the US Air Force hasn’t been very helpful.

Last week I figured that if I wanted to ever take advantage of the Pass program I better do it soon. The planets were lining up nicely. The battle group I am assigned to is switching gears to a different type of operation. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO run operation, will be taking over Regional Command South from the US led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). I have already prepared the required annexes to the operations orders for upcoming operations. Plus, it looks like I may be reassigned to TF Aegis (our higher HQ) to work in the plans cell. I figure now is the time to cut the umbilical and take a short break.

Last Sunday, I got the paperwork signed and placed myself on the wait list for a flight. I clear off my desk, configure my “out of office” message on all the e-mail systems I use, said good bye to everyone, and later that night I encamp myself at the terminal for a flight with a report time of 0400 Hrs local. I was the only one in the terminal going to Qatar. Everyone else was going to Bagram. When the Bagram flight was manifesting, I asked the dude at the desk about the status of the Qatar flight.

“Sorry sir, we just found out the bird has developed mechanical problems. They are going to attempt to fly anyway but will not take passengers.” My response, “I need to get to Qatar, what are my options?” “Tomorrow there is another flight departing at the same time.”

I trudge back to my quarters. My room mate was just getting up and was shocked to see me. I told him about the mechanical problems and he laughs (I would have also if I were in his shoes). He asks if I will go in to the office. “What? Are you kidding? I been up all bloody night and I will be up all night tonight again! Screw that, I will be in Qatar tomorrow.”

Monday I sleep till lunch time. I go to the gym, shower up, grab dinner, and then I trudge to the terminal. I ask about the status of the flight. “Sorry sir, that flights been cancelled.” I look at the guy in total disbelief. He tells me that there will be another flight tomorrow at the same time. This time I get the terminal phone number so I can call to verify my flight. I go back to my quarters, my room mate laughs at me again, and I hit the rack.

Tuesday, I do the same routine except this time I call and verify. The flight is still on. I trudge over to the terminal and ask the dude at the desk, flight is still on. I go over to the Green Beans Coffee joint (thank goodness they are open 24 hours) to enjoy a coffee and Danish while reading some investment reports on my laptop. I trudge back over, flight is still on. The flight arrives, they manifest everyone, me and three others can’t get on because the good folks in Bagram already put eight people on. Curses!! Foiled again!!!

Wednesday, same routine. My roommate tries to wake me up for lunch and I say I am not hungry. He then accuses me of being lazy and that I am just trying to avoid going to the office. My response was if I would have known that I would have been delayed as much as I have been, I would have willingly gone to the office but this whole staying up all night to catch a flight is getting intolerable. In any case, I call the terminal and the flight was cancelled!!! They did tell me about an Australian flight and they did get me their number.

Will I ever get to Qatar? I have a sure thing early Friday morning. I called the Aussies and they had one seat left. I am on it!! They have my name and service number. I am not on some wait list. There is a US flight tomorrow as well but screw those guys, I might get bumped or some other crazy thing will happen. Thank God for the Aussies! Hopefully, my next post will be from Qatar.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk

What Kind of Men are We Up Against?

2006-07-14T06:49:00.000+00:00

I was recently asked to participate in a red cell to do some wargaming. I was given a stack of papers to read. Ugh! Tendentious, dry, boring. Fortunately for me I picked up a book when I was home on R&R at Downtown Book and Toy in Jefferson City that really helped me prepare. For those of you who really want to understand how the average militant muslim operates, I highly recommend Militant Tricks, Battlefield Ruses of the Islamic Insurgent by John Poole.

There are a slew of books out there that shed light on why we fight the way we do. One author, Victor Davis Hanson, PhD, has written numerous books on the western military tradition. One in particular, Carnage and Culture, uses key battles between western and non-western armies to illustrate how western civilization makes a superior military establishment. Another classicist, Donald Kagan, PhD, wrote in 1995 On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace, which helps us understand why western societies go to war.

Carnage and Culture discusses two battles where an Islamic country took on the west, Tours-Poitiers fought in 732 AD and Lepanto fought in 1571 AD (I am old school, I refuse to substitute AD for BCE “before the common era.” BCE is a crock of BS). The Islamic countries lost. They tried to emulate the west militarily but did not have the underlying institutions or cultural characteristics of the west. There is a chapter on the Tet Offensive of 1968 where the US did win tactically but lost strategically. How did the US lose in Vietnam?

The previous question begs another. So what happens when a non-western country decides to fight in a manner that is best suited to its culture and way of thinking? Ever since Alexander the Great tore his way east with his army, the denizens of the east have been steadily developing a way of fighting to counter the classic western juggernaut. They have come up with what a couple of former US Marines refer to as Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW).

Hanson touches on why the US eventually lost in Vietnam. John Poole (left the Marines a Lieutenant Colonel, later re-enlisted and retired a Gunnery Sergeant) does a better job of explaining why in his latest work, Militant Tricks, Battlefield Ruses of the Islamic Insurgent. The focus is on Iraq and Afghanistan and Poole uses examples from prior conflicts, especially Vietnam, to illustrate his points. He spends most of the book applying the thirty-six stratagems of deception from ancient China. Poole quotes extensively from Wiles of War: The 36 Military Stratagems of Ancient China, Thirty Six Strategies of Ancient China, and more (his book has an extensive bibliography and has endnotes). There is another book written by a former Marine, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century by Col (Ret) Thomas X. Hammes, that also discusses 4GW tactics but Poole’s book provides a non-western perspective, specifically an Asian perspective.

I already had an idea of how our adversary fights. Can’t help it when you are reading intelligence reports and patrol reports, you see the same stuff over and over. What was new for me was seeing how our adversary fights placed in the broader operational and strategic sense. The biggest “eureka” moment for me was getting a better insight into the eastern mindset and how they fight as opposed to how western armies fight. For that, I have Gunny Poole to thank.

Seeing as I am now in the business of recommending books, there is another I recommend even though I haven’t read it yet. I have purchased and am eagerly anticipating the arrival of The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy, by Stephanie Gutmann. I bought this book on the strength of the review by Joseph Tartakovsky of the Claremont Review of Books found here. Many people back home ask my bride about what I do in Afghanistan. Part of what I do as an Information Operations Officer is working with the media. Read the review of Gutmann’s book and you will get an idea of what I have to put up with.

The adversary here, even though he doesn’t have the advantage of technology that we westerners have, is dedicated, tough, and adaptive. We blast the hell out if his fighting position and find maybe one or two dead fighters with the rest having buggered off. Gunny Poole’s book does an excellent job explaining the theory behind the tactics the adversary uses and uses to great success. The media sure doesn’t make it easy but that is something I have to deal with.

I end quoting a conversation between Strother Martin’s character and Robert Ryan’s character in the classic movie The Wild Bunch:

Coffer: Mr. Thornton? What kind of men are we up against?

Deke Thornton: The best….they never got caught.

CIAO’
CPT NightHawk