By BING WEST
September 14, 2014
By SEN. MARCO RUBIO
By HOWARD J. SHATZ
By RICH LOWRY
Newspapers in the States were reporting the death struggle gripping Sangin. The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment was taking more casualties than any other battalion in the ten-year war. 3rd Platoon had left the States with 52 men; of those, 34 remained, plus 16 replacements. One statistic said it all: One million steps. Each marine walked about two and a half miles a day on patrol. That totaled one million steps in his seven-month deployment, never knowing when he would be shot or blown up.
Garcia kept his distance as the marines fell into a loose line. I noticed the tattered photomap attached to his left hand like a wedding band—the lifeline for calling in fires. At night, he probably used it as a pillow. On patrol, you’d have to cut off his fingers to pry it loose.
The patrol was heading north to sector P8Q, 40 acres of open fields and thick tree lines dotted by a walled compounds and a mosque that sheltered the fighters coming in from Pakistan. The patrol’s mission was to walk for a couple of miles, avoiding mines while waiting to be shot at, hoping in return to light up the shooter. The generals talked about benevolent counterinsurgency, drinking tea with elders and persuading the Pashtun tribes, hurtling headlong into the 9th Century, to support the government. The grunts in 3rd Platoon knew nothing about that. They lost men and killed men.
We walked by the mortar tubes aligned toward their barber-pole-aiming stakes, left the wire in silence, forded an icy stream and plodded along in sloshing boots. Every patrol got wet, muddy and miserable at the start, so there wouldn’t be any hesitation later. The winter-dead landscape looked like a sepia portrait of Oklahoma farms during the Great Depression. Everything was a lifeless shade of brown—the fields, the furrows, the trees and the walls of the compounds, some clustered together, others standing off alone.
he Islamic State, known by the acronym ISIL, is dominating the headlines. Perhaps we’re serious the second time around in Iraq, but I’ve heard the same rhetoric before.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the Taliban is close to conquering the key district of Sangin in Helmand province, which could lead to the fall of southern Afghanistan and erase the gains made by coalition forces over the course of the 13-plus year Afghan war. President Obama has promised to withdraw most of our troops this year, and all of our troops before he leaves office. The war in Afghanistan, already seemingly forgotten, might follow Iraq and also be lost.
But politicians aren’t the only ones to blame. The strategy of trying to build a nation while Pakistan provided a sanctuary for our enemy was a monumental strategic error by our top generals. Would any sane military commander repeat our Afghan strategy? When our grunts are sent forth to do battle eyeball-to-eyeball, they deserve an achievable mission clearly set forth by leaders determined to win. Since 2001, that has not been true.
So why are we again bombing in Iraq? How does one tactic—be it killing on the ground or from the air—fit into a strategy for eliminating Islamists from Iraq, Syria and, yes, Afghanistan?
I’ve seen the mistake—sending forth strong men armed to cover up for a dizzying lack of strategy—from up close for too long. Over the past decade, I have made more than 20 extended visits to Iraq and Afghanistan, embedding with more than 60 units at the grunt level. I am as disappointed in our household-name generals as in Presidents Bush and Obama. The Marines fought because they were marines, not because the strategy made any sense.
Below is an excerpt from One Million Steps, describing a typical patrol. What was achieved by such valor? Patriotism—yes. Grit—yes. A satisfactory end state—judge for yourself.
In early 2011, I flew to Helmand Province for a fourth visit and met with Col. Paul Kennedy. For the past decade, I had embedded about twice each year with our frontline units. The Army and Marine grunts comprise a small community. In 2004, I had embedded with Kennedy’s battalion in Iraq. When I again met him at his headquarters south of Sangin, he was as terse as ever.
“You’d be bored and ignorant up here at regiment,” he said. “I’ll drop you off where the fighting is.”
I arrived at Patrol Base Fires in the farmlands of Sangin in time to join the morning patrol.
By way of greeting, Lt. Vic Garcia, the commander of 3rd Platoon, handed me two straps.
“You know the drill,” he said. “One’s for you. If you have to use the other one on someone, twist the knob until he screams. And stay inside the bottle caps. We don’t want to carry you back.”
Like the horse stirrup or the bicycle, the modern tourniquet is so simple that it took centuries to invent. Cinch the strap around a mangled leg, twist the fist-wide knob tight and the blood stops gushing out. A half century ago, my platoon in Vietnam had used narrow elastic tubing that sliced into the flesh without fully stanching the bleeding. In Vietnam, one in four of our wounded died, mainly from loss of blood. In Afghanistan, one in seven died, but the number of amputations skyrocketed.
The marines on the dawn patrol wore armored vests sprinkled with dried mud, tan camouflage uniforms hard to detect from a distance and weathered, unsmiling faces. A few wrapped tourniquets around their thighs; most stuffed them in their med kits. I unwrapped and stowed a tourniquet in each breast pocket.
By SEN. MARCO RUBIO
By HOWARD J. SHATZ
By RICH LOWRY
Newspapers in the States were reporting the death struggle gripping Sangin. The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment was taking more casualties than any other battalion in the ten-year war. 3rd Platoon had left the States with 52 men; of those, 34 remained, plus 16 replacements. One statistic said it all: One million steps. Each marine walked about two and a half miles a day on patrol. That totaled one million steps in his seven-month deployment, never knowing when he would be shot or blown up.
Garcia kept his distance as the marines fell into a loose line. I noticed the tattered photomap attached to his left hand like a wedding band—the lifeline for calling in fires. At night, he probably used it as a pillow. On patrol, you’d have to cut off his fingers to pry it loose.
The patrol was heading north to sector P8Q, 40 acres of open fields and thick tree lines dotted by a walled compounds and a mosque that sheltered the fighters coming in from Pakistan. The patrol’s mission was to walk for a couple of miles, avoiding mines while waiting to be shot at, hoping in return to light up the shooter. The generals talked about benevolent counterinsurgency, drinking tea with elders and persuading the Pashtun tribes, hurtling headlong into the 9th Century, to support the government. The grunts in 3rd Platoon knew nothing about that. They lost men and killed men.
We walked by the mortar tubes aligned toward their barber-pole-aiming stakes, left the wire in silence, forded an icy stream and plodded along in sloshing boots. Every patrol got wet, muddy and miserable at the start, so there wouldn’t be any hesitation later. The winter-dead landscape looked like a sepia portrait of Oklahoma farms during the Great Depression. Everything was a lifeless shade of brown—the fields, the furrows, the trees and the walls of the compounds, some clustered together, others standing off alone.
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