Mid-East Meets Midwest

The Taliban released a video over the internet yesterday of a U.S. soldier who was kidnapped outside his U.S. base in Afghanistan nearly three weeks ago.

The soldier, who the Pentagon confirmed today, is Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl of Idaho. Just 23-years old, Bergdahl is very emotional, pleading for American troops to return home. At the prompting of his captors, he says, “To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it’s like to miss them, you have the power to make our government bring them home.”

He later continues, saying, “Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country. Please bring us home.”

According to Britain’s The Guardian, Captain Jon Stock, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul condemned the video as propaganda and a breach of the rules of war (because the Taliban obviously abide by those rules).

“The use of the soldier for propaganda purposes we view as against international law,” Stock told Reuters. “We are continuing to do whatever possible to recover the soldier safe and unharmed.”

Stock also confirmed Bergdahl was the US soldier who went missing outside a US base in southern Paktika province on June 30.

However, the circumstances of Bergdahl’s abduction remain unclear. American military sources have said he was snatched from outside the base perimeter along with three Afghan nationals. But, in the video, Bergdahl said he was captured after falling behind on a patrol.

Britian’s Daily Mail reports that Obama administration officials ordered the military to “pull out all the stops to win the safe return of the soldier last night amid fears the propaganda coup could have a devastating effect on US morale and hurt Mr Obama’s new strategy focusing on Afghanistan rather than Iraq.”

Throughout the war in Iraq, comparisons have been drawn between the current occupation and America’s military intervention in Vietnam.  As troops withdrew from Baghdad, blogger George Berkin referred back to this comparison once more.

Berkin says believes a withdrawal from Iraq will be completely different than the American withdrawal from Vietnam because:

• “…in Iraq, unlike in Vietnam, the U.S. will depart having won the military conflict. A powerful dictator was overthrown, the cities have been secured, and the insurgents are not in control in Iraq.”
• The US learned from its mistakes in Vietnam and has since improved the way the military trains local police forces.
• Iraq has a larger size and greater potential wealth to play to its favor, unlike Vietnam.  Berkin said in his article, “For all the blood and treasure invested in South Vietnam, it was (and is) a small and poor country, and police forces were underfunded.”
• Berkin says the task faced by the local security forces in Iraq is very different than the task faced by South Vietnamese forces.  He stated, “In the Vietnam War, the South Vietnamese faced an enormous army. For the North Vietnamese to gain control of all of Vietnam, it was simply a matter of overrunning what remained of the decimated South Vietnamese forces.  The battle for an independent South Vietnam was a standoff when the Americans bolstered the weak South Vietnamese army. When the U.S. left, North Vietnam’s advantage in forces was overwhelming.” Whereas in Iraq, security forces face pockets of resistance and attempting to “quell violence aimed at pitting factions in Iraq – Shiite, Sunni and Kurds – against each other.”

See full article: Iraq and Vietnam

As our troops pulled out of Iraqi cities last week, the American armed forces are now playing a completely different role in Iraq than they have played over the last six years.  Moving away from the days of armed conflict, soldiers focus on civil affairs, helping local governments and fulfilling their roles as advisers, training Iraqi security forces.

This shift has also required a shift in how the Army trains its soldiers.  Now troops are expected to not just help stabilize Iraq, but to transition their duties to their Iraqi comrades by the end of 2011.

The Associated Press reports:

The 3rd Infantry Division, headed by Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, will lead all U.S. military operations in Iraq’s volatile north. Since January, the Georgia-based division has been training at Fort Stewart to defuse potential conflicts before they flare up — largely with the help of Iraqi forces or through diplomacy.

Training to leave a war, however, is a delicate mission.

Retired Gen. John Hendrix, who used to command the 3rd Infantry Division and the Army’s Forces Command, said military planners probably did not have a good idea of what would happen when U.S. troops pulled out of Saigon in April 1975, months before the North Vietnamese takeover.

Military historians say the Army’s overall strategy during the Vietnam War failed precisely because it did not understand the nature of the society. It’s not a lesson the Army wants to repeat in Iraq, with its rich oil fields and strategic location in the Mideast that will be an important U.S. interest for years to come.

“We never got at the strategic problem in Vietnam. We were not nearly as prepared then as we are now,” Hendrix said in an interview. “When that decision was made, we didn’t have nearly as good a plan as how we were going to come out. These guys do have a little bit more of a challenge — they’ll do the last handshake and the Iraqis will look around and there’ll be no one there.”

…”To secure a victory, you send in your closers,” Cucolo said. “I said [to my unit], ‘Gentlemen, ladies, we are the closers. We’re going there, and we’re going to leave it all on the field because this is the decisive moment.’”

To read full article: Army ‘closers’ train for new mission: leaving Iraq