In Afghan War, Officer Becomes a Whistle-Blower

[davidbfpo]

A British think tank contact alerted me to this NYT article 'In Afghan War, Officer Becomes a Whistle-Blower' (it is shown on today's SWJ Blog):http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/wo...n&st=cse&scp=2

Slightly edited passage

How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan...But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on.

The US Army Colonel's original article was 'Truth, lies and Afghanistan' and appears in AFJ:http://armedforcesjournal.com/2012/02/8904030

He starts with:

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

The author has his own blogsite and awaits official permission to publish his full, unclassified report on Afghanistan and has some good photos:http://www.afghanreport.com/

This side of the Atlantic I am aware of a few serving British Army officers who have reached similar conclusions and resigned or taken early retirement. I am sure other US military have spoken out, but how many continue to serve and so far without **** falling on them?

Added: there are two SWJ Blog posts on this matter now and a cross-reference has been added: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/mid...y-leadership-0 and http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/tru...nd-afghanistan

[Entropy]

Good on him.

[carl]

From the short CV the LTC provided in the article, he may have well developed career possibilities outside the Army and he appears also to have some political connections. So big Army doesn't have so firm a grasp on his parts and he is able to speak the truth.

But that is the tragedy of the thing, in order to speak the truth, he has to have established something to protect himself from big Army for telling the truth.

[Polarbear1605]

We are hearing this over and over from different sources. Col Davis comments are not new. For example, Bing West’s comments about “benevolent counter insurgency” in his book the Wrong War. I think this raises’ the question: is the US senior military leadership adapting the strategic tapestry to survive and win on the battlefield…or are they adapting to survive the politics of Washington, DC. Viet Nam was a war where our generals could not turn tactical victories into strategy victories. The jury is still out on Iraq but it is not looking good…the same can be said of our Afghanistan War. If our strategy is so effective why have Afghan civilian casualties due to Taliban activities gone up by almost 30% per year since 2007?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/a...ths/52957246/1

[Vojnik]

From the original AFJ article:

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.

Now, regardless of whether or not I agree with Davis, what sort of classified reporting is an officer for the Rapid Equipping Force writing?

I'm honestly curious.

[davidoff]

Not to show my stripes too much, but an officer involved with a developing program to provide gear to troops that are under-supplied would definitely know and write about strategic weaknesses of supply (weapons, fuel, food, and other items). This information could result in harm to U.S. forces and would be classified. If not because the items are not available, because the locations are so remote that they are hard to supply and correspondingly hard to hold. In addition, logistics shortfalls on the part of the Defense Logistics Agency, Centcom Contracting Command, or Defense Contract Management Agency would likely be considered strategic in nature, prompting classification. In short, if the U.S. military cannot get supplies to someone in a war that is information that would be worth classifying, as well as the reasons why they cannot. I could be wrong, but I had to stick up for logistics (acquisition/contracting).