Unconventional Warfare Now

Unconventional Operations to the Rescue
(Part One of the Lily Pad Strategy)

by Paul E. Vallely, U.S Army, MG (ret)

Most Americans desire an effective change in the US war strategy and the wider global war against Islamic extremists and nations supporting them. President Obama, Secretary, Robert Gates and the Generals and Admirals must deliver it by placing experienced unconventional warfare leaders in charge of the war effort.

Since forcibly removing Al Qaeda and the Taliban in just 34 days in the Fall of 2001 with 100 Special Op Forces and Air Power and Saddam Hussein removed from power in 2003, the U.S.-led coalition Forces has been unable to achieve a take home Victory.

While many Americans recognize the conflict in Afghanistan is not going well and changes need to be made, there is substantial disagreement at the national level on a military strategy. The U.S. is seriously considering adding more conventional forces. Sending an additional 40,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan under current military strategies will be unlikely to make much difference. Excessive and restrictive rules of engagement must be lifted and rules for engagement built into the local Commander’s Operational plan to allow maximum power to be brought to the battle. As well, “Boots on the ground in Afghanistan” really mean Afghan boots on the ground.

Unlike US/NATO troops, the adversaries in this war do not carry arms openly, wear uniforms or insignias, and abide by other laws and customs of wars specified in Geneva conventional and protocols. They instill fear in military opponents, village leaders and local populations through use of suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, kidnappings and beheadings. And they disguise themselves as civilians and hide among civilian populations with weapons stored and discharged from mosques, schools, hospitals, market-places, private residences and public roads.

To prevail, the U.S. has to transition from a conventional to an unconventional war footing and make the enemy pay a heavy price for their despicable tactics. The US must use “proxy forces”. "If you support me, I will destroy the Taliban and al Qaeda," Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum told The Washington Times in an interview at his northern stronghold. "I don't want to be a minister, not even the defense minister. I need to be with my soldiers. Give me the task and I will do it." Other ethnic leaders have made similar offers, but their support is problematic. Gen. Dostum is one of Afghanistan's most notorious warlords -- a Russian-educated former defense minister who turned against the Soviet Union in the 1980s but became a key figure in the Russian-backed fight against the Taliban a decade later. The tribal leaders with support are the only ones that can turn the tide of the war and not the central government in Kabul. As well, there can be no sanctuaries in Pakistan for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

In Iraq and elsewhere, traditional troops, weapons and tactics are less useful than tools of influence, covert operations, and intelligence brought to the battlefield by special operators working harmoniously with indigenous forces and local populations. The prime objective is to create a climate of fear within enemy ranks that breaks their will to continue the armed insurrection.

Joint special operators (from all military branches) are also trained in local cultures and languages making it easier for them to embed in local populations and Afghan security forces and collect information which in turn may be used to “hunt and kill” hostile forces.

Forget about Nation Building until the enemy is defeated.

The action continues to meet resistance throughout DOD’s conventional warfare ranks, their industry partners, and congressional allies. The U.S. active duty military force consists of 1.4 million troops of which only about 50,000 are elite special operators, with only several thousand deployed to Afghanistan. Many military professionals prefer to have special operators continue in a supporting, not leading role.

Immediately after recently assuming his new post, Gates correctly stated that the U.S. must win in Iraq or face a “calamity” that would “endanger Americans for decades to come.” Since the fall of Baghdad, the U.S. has had the will to win but not the right strategy. It’s imperative that the U.S. transition quickly to an unconventional war strategy the war will be lost. The new “Lily Pad Strategy” must evolve now. There will be more published on this new out-of-the-box- global war-fighting strategy…….

Paul Vallely, MG U.S. Army (Ret) is Chairman of the Stand Up America USA and Save Our Democracy Now Projects and co- author of “Operation Sucker Punch” and “Endgame".

On The Job Training For The Anti-American President

Obama's anniversary gift to Russia...
President Obama is making so many foreign-policy blunders that he is starting to make us yearn for the national-security acumen of the Carter administration. His official announcement scrapping the planned missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic was long expected but still landed with a thud. It is hard to remember a strategic choice that is so obviously wrong on so many levels. The Kremlin is delighted. Read More...

The White House picked an auspicious day to wave the white flag on missile defense. The president's national-security team may say they didn't notice that the announcement came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, but everyone in Eastern Europe did. For an administration whose claims of heightened cultural sensitivity border on sanctimony, the timing was an unforgivable faux pas. The anniversary gift compounds the message that Washington is bent on courting Moscow regardless of the broader implications for global security.

Subverting Honduran democracy...

The shameful siege of Honduras continues. In the past few weeks, the United States has cut more than $30 million in non-humanitarian aid, suspended most visa services and sided with Venezuela, Cuba and other of Latin America's worst dictatorships in undermining democracy. Meanwhile, the people of Honduras are desperately trying to maintain their freedom and prevent the return of a regime that Washington is committed to forcing down their throats.

The United States rushed to the wrong side of this issue when former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted on June 28, and since then it has reinforced a bad policy. Rather than seek means of mitigating the crisis, the United States clings obdurately to demands that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power. Read more...

Obama sides with Castro, Chavez of Venezuela, and Zelaya on the future of Honduras. Not so much inexperience, as is communist agenda. Right under our noses.

Cut and Run? Obama goes wobbly on Afghanistan...

It astonishes us how quickly Afghanistan is moving from being a "war of necessity" to "too tough to do." President Obama's comments over the weekend gave the clearest signal yet that his administration is seeking an exit strategy from a conflict he described in August as "not only a war worth fighting" but "fundamental to the defense of our people." Commitment to that fundamental defense is eroding.

The president is being foiled by complex terrain, by which we mean the Congress. The Democratic leadership has indicated it would not look favorably on requests for more troops, which most analysts believe are necessary to stabilize the situation. Read more on Afghanistan...

Obama hardly remembers who A.C.O.R.N. is...

In an interview over the weekend the President was asked whether he supports withdrawing funds and an investigation into the criminal organization. He replied he was unaware there was a problem with A.C.O.R.N. nor did he know they were receiving Federal funding. What?!! The sad thing is there is a certain portion of the population which will believe this fantasy.

Obama has the weakest foreign-policy record of any new U.S. president in recent memory. An around-the-world tour of international hot spots shows that for all the president's lofty rhetoric, he can point to precious few accomplishments. Read more...

If our Congress had anymore integrity than the presumed President, it would be working on the same result Honduras had to deal with Zelaya. {2010}

Stand By Our Warriors

Stand By Our Warriors In Battle

by

Colonel Andy O’Meara (US Army, Ret)
LTG Thomas McInerney (US Air Force, Ret)
MG Paul Vallely (US Army, Ret)

Men have fought wars throughout the annals of history. Americans have known wars since the birth of the nation with aspirations that set our people apart from all others. These lofty aspirations have tested our people in wars to preserve our freedom with decades of domestic strife to make good our claims to the cause of human freedom. Within the brief span of two centuries, Americans have fought wars to fulfill a destiny defined by our Founding Fathers. Each conflict has tested our courage while shaping our identity which stands apart from the Western Civilization that is our heritage. The struggle to endure and preserve our ideals – the love of freedom and the dedication to self-government – has made us unique and has made America an example that inspires mankind.

Today, we find ourselves in a difficult and new kind of war. It is a war that we did not start nor can we end without destroying those who have declared war upon us. Unique to our experience, we find ourselves attacked by assailants who wear no uniform and claim allegiance to no sovereign state and follow a barbaric ideology that takes no prisoners. Our assailants aspire to world domination and wage war to destroy the very aspirations of freedom and democracy. The terrorists conceal themselves within civil populations that provide human shields to these radical zealots that follow a barbaric ideology that takes no prisoners. Their mode of conflict strikes at the values we hold sacred, while they use our aspirations and self-restraint to conceal and protect their assassins. It is a war that tests our men and women in combat more severely than any conflict we have waged before. We have attempted to keep the faith and honor our traditions as well as our noble culture of freedom. In this time of bitter war, the Armed Forces impose strict rules of engagement upon our soldiers as they confront the barbarism of the radical Islamists who exercise absolutely no restraint. No crime is too heinous and no act of treachery too despicable to deter their quest of victory and ultimately world conquest.

In former times, our soldiers have fought on even terms against foes who in many ways shared our commitment to international law and the Geneva Conventions. Such conflict recognized basic human rights and sought to punish those who violated the “Law of Land Warfare”. Such conflicts saw humane treatment of prisoners as the rule and atrocities were the exception. Yet in the bitterest struggles of World War II, the “greatest generation” resorted to retaliation for unprovoked air attacks upon British civilians that resulted in massive bombing attacks of civilian targets in the Third Reich.

Were we to use such tactics today to obliterate the sanctuaries of the enemies, as we did in World War II, the cry of the international media and the United Nations would be filled with outrage at the American combatants? And the United Nations, which we formed at the end of World War II to preserve peace, would side with our enemies openly declaring the American combatants as war criminals. It is fair to say that we live with double standards today that are ignored by the international media and nation-states that support international terrorism. Americans are trained and expected to conduct themselves with the utmost restraint complying with the most humane rules of engagement, standards of conduct that are simply ignored by our enemies. We are asking a lot of our people. They must fight the enemy with great restraint and even the appearances of transgression of the rules of engagement by Americans are punished most severely by our own military courts.

A recent case of apparent transgression of the rules of engagement occurred in Afghanistan that has resulted in the courts martial of one of our finest young warriors who discovered that their Afghan comrades were enemy agents providing valuable intelligence to the enemy. The results of the enemy agents sequestered in the base of an American company resulted in a series of ambushes that killed and wounded numerous soldiers of the 101st Air Assault Division.

The Company Commander, Captain Roger Hill, detained the suspected agents and requested they be evacuated by his higher headquarters which request was denied. Given the limited time detainees are allowed to be held without charges and the lack of support from his superiors, Captain Hill and his subordinates interrogated the detainees. While no detainee was physically injured during the interrogations, Captain Hill was charged with violation of the rules of engagement for making verbal threats during his interrogations. He was called before the equivalent of a grand jury and criminal charges were pressed against him, which could have resulted in the loss of his commission, a dishonorable discharge and a prison sentence. His defense attorney was advised that if he pleaded guilty to the charges that no courts martial would be conducted and Captain Hill agreed to accept the plea bargain.

He was fined by his commander and ordered to be “discharged” from the Army under other than honorable conditions – a harsh sentence for a fine professional officer operating under duress in a harsh environment the enemy had successfully infiltrated. Our hope is that the Secretary of the Army will authorize an honorable discharge for Captain Roger Hill or keep his career in tack as a professional Army Officer. This is not too much to ask since they decided to downgrade everything to an Article 15 and allowed him to resign his commission (a way to subtly oust him from the Army). He deserves all Veteran benefits after 4 years at West Point and nine years of honorable service, including two wars. His highest personal decoration is the Bronze Star.

Given the uneven playing field upon which our combatants are waging war and the barbaric attacks our soldiers are subjected to, it is time for a public debate regarding the double standards that bind our hands in battle, but impose absolutely no restraint upon the enemy.

The bottom line is we must support our valiant American fighting men and women. They are fighting under the most difficult conditions and they are being second guessed by military lawyers (JAGs) and bureaucrats holding down desk jobs secure in the rear areas. Our generation will never succeed in protecting our sacred freedoms unless we are prepared to back our men and women on the battlefield. Stand behind our men in battle or kiss our democracy and freedoms goodbye. We must do all we can as to restore the honorable status of Captain Hill and others like him. Our Armed Forces deserve better.