The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan

410 Pages·2011·6.59 MB·English

by  Bing West

ALSO BY BING WEST
The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah
The Village
Naval Forces and Western Security: Sea Plan 2000 (editor) Small Unit
Action in Vietnam
The Pepperdogs
WITH MAJOR GENERAL RAY L. SMITH
The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division

Copyright © 2011 by Francis J. West, Jr.
Maps copyright © 2011 by David Lindroth, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
West, Francis J.
The wrong war : grit, strategy, and the way out of Afghanistan / Bing West.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN: 978-1-58836932-1
1. Afghan War, 2001– 2. United States—Armed Forces—Afghanistan. I. Title.
DS371.412.W47 2011
958.104’7—dc22 2010043107
www.atrandom.com
v3.1
TO THOSE WHO DIED TO SHOW US THE WAY
Sgt. Eric J. Lindstrom, U.S. Army Barge Matal
Sgt. William J. Cahir, U.S. Marine Corps Nawa
Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth W. Westbrook, U.S. Army Ganjigal
Sgt. Jeremy R. McQueary, U.S. Marine Corps Marja
Lance Cpl. Larry M. Johnson, U.S. Marine Corps Marja
TO THOSE WHO RETURNED TO SHOW US THE WAY
Capt. Jimmy Howell, U.S. Army Korengal
Lt. Jake Kerr, U.S. Army Barge Matal
Cpl. Dakota Meyer, U.S. Marine
Ganjigal
Corps
Capt. Edward Brown, British Army Nawa
Man Bear
Sgt. Robert Kightlinger, U.S. Marine Corps
Pig
Capt. Matt Golsteyn, U.S. Army Marja
TO THOSE WHO INSPIRED ME
Betsy, my wonderful wife and first editor Owen, Patrick, Alexandra, Kaki and Gavin, Grace,
Luke, Ronan, Ryan, and Rory
NOTE TO THE READER
I recorded on video many of the firefights described in the book. The
videos are posted on YouTube under the user name BingWest.com.
PREFACE
At first glance, the Pashtun village of Gourogan had the charm of a
hamlet in Mexico or Spain—a hard-packed path too narrow for cars
twisting uphill between tall stone walls, a few donkeys trudging along, a
farmer or two in the fields, arbors of green grapes and small copses of fig
trees baking under the scorching sun. Cpl. Ben Woodhouse wasn’t fooled
twice, though. Yesterday he had turned a corner in just such a tranquil
setting and bumped smack into an equally surprised Talib clutching an
AK automatic rifle. Woody and the bearded Pashtun both jumped back,
shooting harmlessly at each other. The Talib leaped over a small wall
and ran away at sprinter’s speed, leaving behind a corporal who turned
each corner in Gourogan with his rifle ready to fire.
Moving through the fields on either side of Woody was a skirmish line
of Marines. By the time the troops reached the top of the hill, all the
villagers had ducked indoors. The Afghan soldiers with the Marines
shouted for the elders to come out and hold a shura, or meeting.
Gradually, about a dozen old men, many wrapped in shawls despite the
brutal heat, gathered under the skimpy awning of the only store. Dust
was shaken from chipped porcelain cups and a round of steaming green
tea was poured.
The chubby mullah, who was quick to grin, pointed at my Red Sox hat
with the big red B. I explained that baseball was like cricket. Asked the
score of a game, I said about 8 to 4. Oh, the mullah said, we are sorry
your team plays so poorly. (Cricket players score in the hundreds.) The
elders burst out laughing. They had never seen Americans, and the
Taliban had warned that the saman dirian (Marines) killed everyone. Yet
here they were, sitting in the dirt, all very young, clean-shaven, and
polite, while the older one didn’t even know how terrible he was as an
athlete.
Sgt. Bill Cahir, who was in charge of civil affairs on the patrol, spent
some time explaining the size of the United States. Afghanistan, he said,
was smaller than Texas, one of fifty states. So why are you here? an
elder asked. To help your president defeat the Taliban, Cahir said. Karzai
is Pashtun, an elder said, so he should be president. But Kabul is too far
away. Our teacher went to Iran to work after the Taliban closed the
school. Of course, there weren’t any Taliban still in Gourogan, at least
not once the Marines started up the hill.
Over another round of tea, the elders complained about their dry fields
and the lack of everything—electricity, clean water, safety to go to
market, the tribe across the river, the price of seed, no education for the
children. As the cups were filled a third time, Cahir took out his
notebook and asked what they really, really needed. The jovial mullah
said batteries for his loudspeakers for his calls to prayer. Some elder said
his voice was already loud enough, and everyone laughed. The saman
dirian weren’t so bad.
Batteries, fix up the school, money to hire another teacher, supplies for
the dispensary, maybe a hydro generator if the current was swift enough
in the river. Okay, Cahir said, we Marines can do that for you. Now in
return, will you tell the Taliban to keep out?
“How can we do that,” the mullah said with a genuine smile, “when
you cannot?”
“Tell us when they are here,” Cahir said, “and we’ll take care of them.”
The mullah scratched at the dirt and did not answer. The fun was over.
For years, soldiers like Cahir had projected goodwill and brought
resources. In return, the villagers were expected to reject the insurgents,
or to risk death by informing against them. Instead, people like the
mullah accepted the aid and remained neutral, waiting to see who would
win on the field of battle. By giving away billions, we created a culture
of entitlement rather than a rebellion against the radicals.
Preventing a terrorist takeover in Afghanistan is a sound goal. It would
severely damage America’s credibility if the Taliban reseized Kabul. If
chaos spread into Pakistan, terrorists might seize one of Pakistan’s
nuclear bombs. Although the chances of that were slight, one bomb
would incinerate tens of thousands of American civilians.
But in 2002, America had larger ambitions. Together with the United
Nations, the United States agreed to build a democratic nation. Hamid
Karzai was in effect chosen to be the president of the new Afghanistan,
with a strong central government controlling 31 million uneducated
tribesmen. Only the American military had the manpower and
organization to achieve that stupendous goal. Mistakenly, the generals
agreed that defeating an insurgency required our soldiers to be nation
builders as well as war fighters.
Thus our military became a gigantic Peace Corps, holding millions of
shuras, drinking billions of cups of tea, and handing out billions of
dollars for projects. Risk in battle was avoided because generals
proclaimed that killing the enemy could not win the war. Senior officials
fantasized that the war would be won by protecting and winning over
the population. The tribes, however, were determined to remain neutral,
while the Afghan president tolerated corruption and ineffectiveness. The
futile effort to build a democracy diverted the energies of our soldiers
and weakened their martial spirit.
Since it would be disastrous to pull out and we can’t win with the
current strategy, is there an alternative? This raises several questions.
What does the war look like to those fighting it? Like war in general,
counterinsurgency is an incoherent body of thought, with history
providing lessons that contradict one another. So can only one strategy
succeed in Afghanistan? If so, why did the strategy change with each of
the six U.S. generals who were put in charge? What is being
accomplished today? And how do we get out?
In seeking to answer those questions, this book describes the fighting,
the objectives, the interaction with the tribes, and the different tactics
our military has undertaken.
This is a different American military than the one that fought in World
War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Instead of soldiers chosen at random by a
draft, America has warriors who have selected themselves. They did not
volunteer because the military offered jobs. They came from
comparatively affluent families and had career opportunities that paid
more than the military. These soldiers chose to be on the battlefield.
America is the last Western nation standing that fights for what it
believes. No nation can remain a world power without such a martial
spirit. Courage, Aristotle wrote, is that quality that makes all other
qualities possible. As the stories in this book show, our troops are the
hunters, not the prey.
Their aggressiveness and professionalism offer a way out of
Afghanistan. If we put aside building a great Afghan society, we can
reduce the size of our forces by replacing large battalions with small
adviser task forces, letting the Afghans fight their own war.
Why one approach seems better than another raises the question of how
we learn. We learn mainly from our own experiences, or trust books
where others write of their experiences. From these small slices of life,
real and vicarious, we build theories that we apply broadly. This is true
of all professions—politicians, traders, warriors, and the like—where
success depends upon the actions of other human beings.
I write from the perspective of an infantryman. This book is based on
eight extended trips to Afghanistan in three years and over a thousand
discussions with our troops in the field. The focus is upon the fighting in
the northern mountains along the Pakistan border and in the farmlands
of the south. I was embedded in many of the battles and took the photos
in the book, as well as the combat videos on YouTube posted under
BingWest.com.
When I was a grunt in the 1960s, the Marines sent me from one end of
Vietnam to the other. One of my subsequent books, The Village,
chronicled an American squad that fought and advised in a Vietnamese
village for sixteen months. The Village has been on the Marine Corps
Commandant’s Reading List for forty years. So strong are the parallels in
the fighting today that remote outposts in Afghanistan bear the names of
the Marines killed in that village so many years ago. Later, the Pentagon
sent me to the front lines in Cambodia. Since 2001, I’ve made dozens of
extended trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. In various climes and countries,
I’ve been on hundreds of patrols and operations. (Surviving has more to
do with luck than many will admit.)
As an assistant secretary of defense, I participated at the top level of
government in discussions about irregular wars in Vietnam, El Salvador,
Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. An insurgency, though, depends on local
conditions, not upon pronouncements from on high. So this book is not
about generals, or bureaucratic infighting among senior officials, or
backstairs gossip at the White House. It is hardiness and grit in battle,