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US Marines Facing a 'Different War' in Afghanistan
SOUTHEAST OF MARJAH, Afghanistan - For the US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, life is fragile and thoughts focus on the day they see their families again, but something about this war is different.
An Afghan farmer watches on as US Marines patrol near a military base near Marjah, central Helmand. For US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, the war is changing with a major offensive on the Taliban urban stronghold of Marjah where the militants are offering stiff resistance.
(AFP/Christophe Simon) They are preparing for an offensive on Marjah, one of the Taliban's big urban strongholds in the southern province of Helmand, but progress is slow with the militants apparently preferring fight to flight.
The Marines will soon be joined by tens of thousands more soldiers, the lion's share of the 30,000-strong troop surge promised by US President Barack Obama in December to try and turn around the grinding Afghan war.
A foot patrol for one platoon of Marines ends with a dash under a hail of bullets across a heavily-mined poppy field.
The soldiers have been pinned down in a muddy mound, the thorny weeds cutting through skin. They recover soon enough, however, manoeuvring away from the Taliban's crosshairs and driving them away with heavy machine-gun fire.
"I pray in the morning and at night, hoping that someone up there is looking after me," says Lance Corporal Justin Blancas, serving with the Marines 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment Alpha Company's 2nd Platoon.
"I have already made my peace with God because this war is different, it's not conventional," the 23-year-old bespectacled Chicago native says.
"These Taliban have learned their lesson. They adapt as fast as we do, but we are bound by our strict rules. They are not," he adds, panting after a 100-metre dash for cover behind an abandoned mud house.
"It can be a death run like this every day."
The US and NATO troop surge is set to swell the foreign force to 150,000 this year, but Afghan and Western officials are also talking about a political solution to end the Taliban-led insurgency as its enters its ninth year.
To force the Taliban leadership to the negotiating table however, US military officials have said there needs to be greater success on the battlefield -- and this is where the Marines come in.
But the challenges on the ground are immense. Fields are littered with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) responsible for most of the deaths of foreign troops in Afghanistan, which hit a record 520 fatalities last year. Related article: January Afghan death rate signal of tough 2010
The Taliban are also entrenched in their strongholds holding sway over the population and setting up shadow governments across the country, meaning they have the local intelligence that the Marines desperately need.
"Marjah has also been a stronghold by the Taliban for some time. They know where we are coming and can stage ambushes anytime," says one sergeant who asks not to be named.
Five Marines were killed in southern Afghanistan in two days of January alone in IED blasts and ambushes.
Platoon commander Lieutenant David Emison, a Virginia native and the first Marine in his family, still sports a busted lip and chipped teeth sustained from a recent bomb blast that killed a sergeant.
"They (the Taliban) make very powerful IEDs out here. If you step on them, you don't get a second chance," says Emison, the group's tactician, whose 25-year-old wife is pregnant with their second child back home.
He says that after the incident, he has tried to become more careful about where he treads, but knows that a blast could take any of them anytime.
The ex-college wrestler pushes away ugly thoughts and believes the unpopular war Obama inherited from the past administration will have a positive outcome.
"It does not pay to be scared," he says.
Blancas, meanwhile, arms himself with his assault rifle, two rosaries and prayer cards stuffed in his pockets as the Marines prepare a full-on assault on Marjah in the coming weeks or months.
Marjah has a population of at least 60,000. Built in the 1950s with US government help, it was intended to be a model agricultural town with an irrigation system flowing from the Helmand river.
But instead of legitimate crops, poor farmers plant opium poppy, the trafficking and sale of which bankrolls the Taliban movement.
The Marines' mission is to show US strength, assist in installing government control in Helmand province and let the local population know they have arrived.
The challenge however is huge. Taliban militants harass the villagers at night, warning them of trouble if they help US troops. Under the cover of darkness, they also plant IEDs in fields the Marines have to cross.
For father-of-one Blancas, it all comes down to one simple thing.
"We do what we have to do, but I plan to be out of the corps soon and be daddy. I just have to stay alive till then."
32 Comments so far
Show AllSo we need marines over there to kill these people. Maybe it's a crime for them to have their own religious beliefs or to live in their own country. It might also be a crime for them to have any valuable resources on their land. (Sounds kind of like Native Americans)
So Obama thinks that we can "win" by surging troops into the area and killing thousands of them. What do we win? It's certainly not going to be their friendship.
I can't see the Afghanistan campaign as anything other than cold blooded murder. If I'm missing anything here that somehow "justifies" setting up land mines and bombing villages please let me know.
It's a typical guerilla war, and guerilla wars are very, very hard on state-run military forces: they undermine them psychologically, physically, and militarily (by eroding their equipment and making a mockery of their strategies).
Such wars are nearly impossible to win, for the guerilla fighters seek less to confront the occupying forces than to exhaust them psychologically, physically, and economically over years of a game of hide and seek. It's a strategy of dragging the war on for years and years.
Precisely what the dealers of ordnance desire. It's almost like they planned it that way...
But what about the pipeline Chevron wants to build between Iran and India via Afghanistan and Pakistan? We might need that oil to fuel a big battleship in Karachi. James Jones, former Chevron Director, is now Obama's National Security Advisor.
Oh shut up. This is typical drivel from apologetic ninnys who are embarrassed of their good fortune and successes. Look to history. The strongest survives. I am for this war's efforts, but I do believe it is stringing out too long, primarily because of a Democratic controlled congress that changes its positions by checking daily to see which way the wind is blowing.
You live in a surreal, unobtainable utopia. War has been here since the beginning of time and it is here to stay. It is the nature of man. I want to be on the winning side. Fight the war on THEIR soil, not ours. Use all of our available resources to win before they use theirs. We are the ones who have strict rules of engagement which we must follow. They have no rules.
Look around you. Look at your freedom and the things you own. I suppose you do own things, right? Now think of living in a country dominated by communism, socialism, or under a military dictatorship. Imagine not being permitted to own anything, or travel freely. Imagine being afraid to leave your house daily to travel to your government sanctioned job because you don't know whether or not it will be the target of another 'rogue' terrorist who we allowed freely into our country because we didn't want to screen someone from a country known to harbor American hating Armageddon-longing individuals, all for fear of being accused of being politically incorrect.
Feel free to leave this country at any time. I will pay for your airfare.
My guess is that you were spanked as a child and you have never gotten over it.
Actually since you are against everything the country was founded for, you should probably leave. Your rhetoric sounds like a combination of Fox News and "Catcher in the Rye". You are VERY misinformed.
There is no "war". There is only an illegal occupation of a nation. Afghanistan NEVER attacked the United States. Iraq NEVER attacked the United States. Iran will NEVER attack the United States. You have been tricked into believing that "the boogeyman is coming". The entire campaign is for money. It has nothing at all to do with freedom. In fact, we have lost more freedoms in the last 10 years because of our own government than any foreign country.
If someone broke into your home and caused a lot of damage, ransacked everything, then camped out in your backyard I'm sure you would be annoyed too. Would you resist them? Remember they will be falsely accusing you of "being a bad guy".
If you take just a second to stop murdering people, you might discover that they really aren't the demons that Fox News makes them out to be.
And I suppose you are speaking from experience? Perhaps you're privy to closed door meetings behind congressional doors. Perhaps you've sat in on strategy meetings conducted by those whose job it is to produce strategy concerning military objectives? Perhaps you have walked side by side with one of our troops and been privy to their private discussions concerning the difficulty in balancing the demands of the military directive while also reaching out to the villagers (by digging their wells, transporting their disabled and infirm to medical facilities, providing guarded routes so that they can farm and work freely without interference from their own oppressive self-proclaimed religious leaders)? Perhaps you live there right now, and are a propaganda tool. I've seen it all. So unless you can speak from some authority, shut up.
Fed Up With Ninnys:
Whether you are right or you are wrong, one thing is clear: you are rude and obnoxious.
FUWN;What bullshit!Nobody over there asked for you to come there and as for all the "help" you talk about it is just like Vietnamization where I was at.Kill and maim and then say "we are here to help you" stop communism.All bullshit all the time and you dont ask or tell me to leave at your pleasure!Tony
i have friends from eastern europe - who came to the USA after their "liberation" -- who tell me, invariably, although in whispers as , presumably, part of the cultural habit acquired under communism:
"yes - communism was bad ...but in the USA _ we NOW recognize many things that are SIMILAR to what the communist dictators did...it is now becoming a police state just like we had before"....
of course , reality and practicality, jobs, they had moved, they had "put down roots" - dictates things to people.
but the salient point is:
people who HAVE lived under dictatorships or suppression or fear from government...are RECOGNIZING The SAME SIGNS in the "land of the free"
in other words - the LAND OF THE FREE is one big Hypocritical PRETENSE -- while going abroad making deals with dictators ...so long as they are "cooperative" to the US CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
as John Perkins - the former CIA "economic hitman" who worked to - in his explanations - TO "UNDERMINE uncooperative economies and destabilize them...that was my job in our empire project"......
"Our foreign policy has ALWAYS been designed to render other nations PERMANENTLY SUBJUGATED to our will and that of our Chamber of Commerce...it has nothing to do with liberty or justice...I was part of that Project of Empire of ours...through manipulation, assassinations, torture, fomenting instabilities against uncooperative governments, blackmail..and plain theft of their resources".
>> So unless you can speak from some authority, shut up.
The authoritarian speaks!! Another of that mindset that somehow believes the masses must follow the lead of the Masters because only the masters know what is going on.
Is it your suggestion that only those in AUTHORITY know what is happening and only those in AUTHORITY should have a voice and that everyone else should just shut up and go along? Do you grovel when a Congress man walks in the door because he has "secrets" you will never know? I suppose when President Bush warned of UAVS dropping poison Chemicals on Cities nad of Saddam Husseins WMDS you nodded in agreement and deferred to his "Authority" and greater wisdom.
Sounds like Fascism to me.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
You clearly make up your invective as you go along, taking masturbation breaks in between struggling over paragraphs from U.S. News and World Reports. The U.S. as supreme infrastructure rebuilder in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! What a load of shit you are. The same corporations running these botched occupations are the ones who can barely govern the United States. What makes you think they can or should turn these SNAFUS that they created and catalyzed around just to protect your sorry lifestyle? You're just another economically insulated armchair coward worried you might have to get off your ass and work a real job instead of kicking back all cannibal-vampire-like and sucking on the TARP inflated stock market bubble in oil, mercenaries and munitions stock.
If you don't like it here, leave it!
(I mean the Ninny guy)
ARE YOU OVERCOMPENSATING FOR A TEENY WEENY OR WHAT? In a nation that now has NO industry excep weapons and enforcement you are perfectly suited to speak for the mainstream. And if you look around... it IS quickly becoming a country where you cannot "own" anything, travel freely, because they DONT have any job, government sanctioned or not.
Whoever you are Mr. Ninny hater, death awaits you anyway, best tame your jingoistic militarism now while you can.
I look forward to prying your cold fingers from your empty gun.
the words of CHICKEN HAWKS...so long as it is some OTHER american dying and fighting for their so-called "freedom"
"over there" thousands of miles away -- where as the ordinary afghanis say:
"WE HAVE NO QUARREL WITH AMERICANS....what we DON'T LIKE is any foreign power occupying our LAND...and we will fight until they LEAVE, just like all empires before them".
Yes, as Hitler said, "man must kill." You are in good company, Big Amerikkka-is-the Greatest-Country-on-Earth Ninny Boy.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
How many of your children or grandchildren are fighting in this war, pissant? Just because you're a snivelling amoral sociopathic coward don't expect every American to slurp your gruel that is drowning in the blood of innocent children. We're not all inbred greedheads like you whose sick Republican momma used to masturbate you with a silver spoon to get you to stop whining because every day for you as a spoiled brat was Christmas. You should be air-dropped with the Marines into Marjah with 2003 era body armor, a jar of Skippy's peanut butter and a cuticle scissor. And as far as history goes (a subject you know nothing about) the most adaptable survive, not necessarily the strongest. The Nazis were strong AND efficient. They lasted all of 12 years. All great empires fall and the weaker cultural remnants of them are the ones that survive the longest--even after being overrun, raped and pillaged--not the empires themselves.
You're pretty near an absolute moron and probably don't read much and only develop your worldview through sound bites and infotainment, so go rent a copy of Catch-22 and pay close attention to what the old Italian man says to Art Garfunkel, you sorry bloody colo-rectal cancerous fart in a trance with yourself. Oh, and go and tell your momma she wants you.
Paraphrasing a quote:
a definition of insanity (fill in your preferred choice) is doing the same thing over and over again (invading, demonizing (to portray them as inferior, backwards, non-Christian), killing civilians (dehumanize them, again, by referring to innocent people (babies, children, women and men) as "collateral damage" (sorry you were in the way but so what?), eschewing dialogue with those who resist the occupation...) and then expect different results.
Have not wars also been a tool for distraction to implement policies to erode and destroy our Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the name of National security and National interests ( the latter a weaselly way to say avoid saying "corporate interests")? These phrases have become unquestionable patriotic "holy grails" lapped up by a largely uncritical and unthinking population (50% who actually believe the crap foisted onto them by Fox (wasn't it the fox that raided the hen house?) News (Propaganda))?
"When will we ever learn...?"
Hey the moneys coming and soon Xe will control the heroin industry and we will have some sweet afghani brown, sold cheap in san diego!
Don't you know were gonna need some cheap smack to soothe our jobless jangled nerves?
Psyops70
I was with you until your last paragraph, when you decided to endorse what Curtis "The Mad Bomber" LeMay said, and that was to bomb the Vietnamese back into the stone age and apply it to Afghanistan. You were correct when you said that "the war must stop" but most assuredly wrong when you advocate that the U.S. should drop a nuclear bomb or bombs in the Middle East. That, of course, will cause jihads across the world to be launched against the United States. Attempting to replicate Dr. Strangelove in the Middle East is surely one of the most foolish things that one could advise.
Also, a note of correction. The Bush/Cheney screw-up has now become the Obama administration screw-up.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Yeah, the "radiation is our friend--nuke 'em all" crybabies never cease. I don't know how many times I've heard white trash Amurkans start to fret and whine about "nuking the entire" this or that when the screwed-up wars they cheerleaded to begin with go wrong and turn into an open-ended, unaffordable profit exercise for oil, weapons and mercenary firms. No generation of ex-vets is as majority stupid and unlearned regarding their war experience as the still conservative bulk of the failed Vietnam War vets and the right-wing draft dodgers who cheered them on. The ignorant thugs coming back physically and psychologically brutalized from 8 or 9 tours in the Bush/Cheney/Obama war zones will be even worse and 1000 times more dangerous to the civilian population within the U.S.
But as bad as the American-created nightmare in Afghanistan is, the American-created nightmare in Pakistan is far worse and could turn into a civil war if our "policy" there continues along its current lines another few years. The common people of Pakistan are being radicalized and polarized through victimhood by either the Taliban or the Pakistan & American armed forces by the sheer number of civilian deaths and severe injuries inflicted by all these armed groups' "bulldozer in a garden" tactics.
Instead of nuking the Middle East and Central Asia we should seize all the nuclear weapons in Pakistan along with A.L. Khan and get the hell out of Pakistan and Afghanistan. We could strike some sort of restraining deal on India immediately after the fact. To "liberate" Afghanistan and Pakistan from the Taliban would require a couple of million American troops by General Petraeus' own counterinsurgency math, along with a competent occupation and rebuilding plan which we have never had for that region. Our "policy" there now is little better than bloody armed posturing while the CIA, no doubt, takes its cut of the opium trade.
1) The Pastuns are quite willing to negotiate peace now.
Of course all invaders need to leave.
2) Poppys are a legal crop; Herion is illegal by international law but the precursors for it enter Afghanistan up the Kyber Pass in Tandem with USA convoys.
3) If you do not want to be killed by Pastun Nationalists do not go to Afghanistan holding a weapon.
Exactly what I was about to write, 1), 2), and 3).
So nationalist fighters who cannot produce nor afford their own artillery and air force are using improvised explosives and guerilla warfare to again drive out foreign invaders who have extremely different world views, religious beliefs, and socio-economic cultural traditions, and our invading/occupying troops are surprised and angered?
The American Revolution against British forces; the Native Americans' struggle against genocide by European-American forces; the Vietnamese struggle against the French, then the Japanese, then the French again, and finally the U.S.; and the Afghans' successful struggle to drive out the Soviet military have all taught these U.S. soldiers nothing, have they?
These Marines are the same warriors who say they would proudly do anything necessary to drive foreign invading/occupying forces out of the United States, but they just cannot see themselves as foreign invaders/occupiers, can they?
PSYOPS puff piece.
Convince Americans it's all worthwhile.
What is this BS doing on your site?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
There has been a lot of Obama apologism since last fall on CD. In my opinion a lot of that is by editorial choice. If occupation coddling stories start to proliferate on CD I'll begin to worry that its eds are being leaned on by minions from some sub-cavern of the DHS labyrinth of spookdom. The number of fluffer pieces with the ubiquitious slant that these are just wars are all over the MSM right now so thick you can't cut it with a chainsaw. Even the ones that poke occasional obvious barbs at our bungled occupations are still couched in terms of overall support for the "war effort." Probably has something to do with the earlier than usual pre-Spring offensive in the AfPak about to take place--prepping the public for the civilian (which most Amurkans could give a shit about) and U.S. military casualties.
First, The language in some of the comments is very low, unnecessarily explicit e.g.Cicero. Second,things like leave the country and are you strategist? are not arguments because some of us spend all our life following the world affairs and know enough to argue our points. Calling Invading countries and killing people in distant places is occupation and government sponsored terror, is not a personal opinion, it is the language of the low, national and international low. If some people believe that might is right I could say that is barbaric and instigation of violence. the world have changed "slightly" nothing escapes the eyes of the cameras, the ears of the walls and the scanning of the all mighty satellites in the skies.
The late Howard Zinn, he passed 01/17/010, wished that we have an Imperialist anonymous, where people can go through 12 step treatment for their war addiction. people like Mr. Blaire, how still repeating his hard boiled 'reasons' about the war in Iraq. OR the infamous defenders of torture under Nick names like harsh interrogation. Every where, sooner or later soldiers, officers, government employees and yes intelligent officers speak up. In Britten high officials are telling us how they advised Blair and Strow not to attack Iraq because such war is lacking legal support. Another official added that "A similar advice was given before the Suez war 1956, he, Eden, did not listen either.
A second note, We have been at war before!!
"A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence
you can read the full text
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
You should put quotes around that MLK quote at the end of your paragraph even if you do post a link to his related speech at the end of your post.