Green on Blue: causes and responses (merged thread)

[TheCurmudgeon]

More on Bordin's report “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility” . From the Stars and Stripes article "Previously rejected report is now key to US effort to curb insider killings in Afghanistan".

At the time he published it, though, Bordin’s research was roundly dismissed by the military, and the then-public report was quickly slapped with a “classified” label.

“The findings are not consistent with our assessment” of Afghan forces, then-coalition spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Colette Murphy was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal in June 2011. The study, she added, “was systematically flawed, and suffered from generalizations, narrow sample sets, unprofessional rhetoric, and sensationalism.”

Bordin said that following the publication of his report, he was removed from his position as leader of a Red Team — a research group formed to find solutions to military shortcomings — and shortly afterward, a decision to renew his contract was rescinded and he had to leave Afghanistan.

Bordin regards the military’s refusal to act on his suggestions for a year and a half as a willful error that cost lives. He said at one point, when he returned to Afghanistan last May as the leader of a Human Terrain Systems Team, he was immediately demoted after military leadership found out about his report and he was even forbidden from briefing a general on his green-on-blue findings. He resigned his post shortly thereafter.

“That was the height of immoral behavior,” he said. “I have knowledge that can help save American lives … and I was ordered not to give that information out to another military entity.”

Previously rejected report is now key to US effort to curb insider killings in Afghanistan

In my research I have corresponded with Dr. Bordin. He is very bitter about not being able to share what he knew with units getting ready to deply to Afghanistan.