Top General in Afghanistan Expels Marines
23 March Washington Examiner - Top General in Afghanistan Expels Marines by Rowan Scarborough.
Quote:
The top American general in Afghanistan has expelled a U.S. Marine special operations company for the way the men responded to an ambush March 4, Marine sources said.
Maj. Cliff Gilmore, a spokesman for Marine Special Operations Command, confirmed to The Examiner that the company of 120 Marines is redeploying.
He said the decision followed an ambush on the company's convoy by a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. A second Marine source said the Marines retaliated and some civilians were killed.
The action brought an abrupt end to what promised to be a historic deployment. The unit sailed in January from Camp Lejuene, N.C., as the first Marine Corps special operations company sent overseas. The Corps joined U.S. Special Operations Command a year ago.
The company is now redeploying to Kuwait after just a few weeks in Afghanistan in what was supposed to be a six-month tour.
A Marine officer assigned to special operations said Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the top U.S. commander, took the extraordinary step of expelling the unit after he consulted with Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai...
Marines expelled from Afganistan ?
From the sparse info the Special Ops Company seems to have shot their way out of an ambush . Very curious .
Not a scape goat, but darn close
I concur, I wouldn't say the unit is necessarily a scapegoat, because removing them seemed to be a counter propaganda effort to counter AQ and/or Taliban propaganda. Apparently a political line of operation, but was it the right thing to do?
Of course from where I sit, I don't have a clue on the "rest" of the story, but it "seems" we may have set a bad precedent. Will the Taliban push to get every unit that accidently kills civilians removed from country? Talk about a potentially slippery slope! Where was the counter IO effort putting the blame on the ambushers who sprung an ambush in a populated area?
Now You See, Now You Don't - A Guerilla's Sleight of Hand
The unit gets hit, they shoot and scoot, regroup and return. Some the taliban fighters that were seen going down now have no weapons on or near them. Said weapons are now hidden or on their way to market or back to the taliban by the time the unit returns. The unit Commander is apprised that x number of taliban went down and now their weapons are gone and journalists are snapping pictures of their bodies. It was the right action and right order to confiscate. If it was a safe environment to spring an ambush it would be suitable too for some Afghans present to claim the KIAs were innocent civilians and quite possible for some to intentionally remove AKs, etc from the scene, for whatever purpose. I think Eikenberry is the one who acted irrationally here.