[UnderseaLcpl]

Well, I can certainly see the author's point and am inclined to agree to some extent. I have comrades who are still serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to hear them tell it, not much has changed. In the recent words of my friend Sgt. "Shrapnel" Macintosh, "It's the same ********** ****** ****** as before. We're just going through the motions now."

However, I do not agree with the idea that the war is unwinnable - it's just being fought incorrectly. In my own experience, that of my fellow servicemembers, and in first-hand written accounts o the subject of counterinsurgency, I keep coming across the same themes.

The first is that the training is simply not up to par. It looks good on paper, but when you actually go through it you see that it's mostly just a show. For example, I underwent counter-insurgency training at March AFB, where they had the innovative idea of building an entire simulated town and firebase, with the town populated by "citizens". We would go on patrols through the town on a daily basis and attempt to uncover who the actors portraying "insurgents" were through all the usual techniques. There was a whole backstory for the town and the clans and everything. I'd like to meet the guy who came up with the idea, it really was superb.

Unfortunately, the theory was better than the practice. Most of our actors didn't even speak Arabic, and nobody bothered to teach us, not that anyone wanted to learn. I actually wanted to learn but all I managed was memorization of about 40 phrases. The actors didn't understand or try to emulate arabic culture, other than dress, and the lacksadaisical approach spread to the training companies in about 24 hours. By the end of day 3 nobody was taking the training all that seriously. How can you when the citizen you are attempting to question in Arabic pulls you aside and says "look, man, go down that street and there's a guy in that house on the right with prayer beads and a beard -he's the insurgent, just hurry up. We've got other **** to do."? I find it hard to believe that the military couldn't drum up thirty or so Arabic Americans to provide a convincing training environment and some good advice on the culture and language.

Once in the field, things didn't get any better. Most of the good officers in the line companies in Iraq and Afghanistan understand that you really have to get out and be part of the community you are working in to develop effective relationships with the people and get to know the situation. It's hard to do that when there are dozens of TTPs specifically prohibiting just about every kind of interaction with the locals and you have to go back to your firebase every night, or afternoon, or whenever they feel like calling you back. The poorly-trained troops don't help the situation either. We were always blowing up crap we weren't supposed to be blowing up, or wasting everyone's time at checkpoints with no intelligence on what to look for, or just pissing people off in general when we weren't accidentally killing them. Even if we hadn't messed everything up that badly it wouldn't have mattered because nobody spoke Arabic and we never had enough translators.

I think the whole process needs to be restructured from the ground up, with a core element of regular troops who act only as quick-response forces supporting contingents of specially-trained line infantry who operate for extended periods within the communities, each of which needs an expatriate translator native to the area. Those troops in turn need to support an extensive network of low-key expatriate spies/informers and an even larger network of local support developed by the line infantry. More than anything, the training needs to be improved. Like March AFB, it just looks good on paper.