The Redhunter

COL. SPISZER: ...Good morning, everyone. As stated, I'm Colonel John Spiszer of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, or Task Force Duke. And we're in the process of redeploying back as we complete our year of operations in Afghanistan. We're headed back to Fort Hood. In addition, over the next 90 days at Fort Hood, we're going to start standing down the brigade so we can relocate it to Fort Knox, in accordance with the Base Realignment and Closure directives....

We've continued efforts on what we call Operation Open Highway, where we've dedicated ourselves to protect the main avenue for supply, Highway 1-Alpha, also known as Highway 7, with a grand -- a grand trunk road, which runs through Nangarhar and Laghman. But it really is the main road through the Khyber Pass from Pakistan to Kabul. It is essential that supplies and citizens are able to traverse the road freely, both for the country here and for the NATO forces. We've successfully encouraged and incorporated Afghan security forces to do the vast bulk of this mission....

For our purposes that's all we'll cover of his opening statement, but be sure to watch the entire briefing and read the transcript.

On to the Q & A. We'll cover a few of the more important exchanges

Q Colonel, this is Joe Tabet with Al Hurra. I would like to ask you about your experience, your service during the last month in Afghanistan. I know that you are leaving, you're going back to Fort Hood. What kind of lessons you are taking with you regarding the counterinsurgency? And I have a follow-up question, too.

COL. SPISZER: Boy, I'm sorry, I'm really having a hard time hearing you. My -- Major Stokes (sp) here is sitting here.

Lessons learned for counterinsurgency, I think, is what you're looking for. The biggest lesson learned, I would have to say, is that it is different and that the cookie-cutter solutions are not necessarily the same. I've been here before, I worked with the Afghan National Army in Kabul, I've been to Iraq, in Baghdad, and in just this area, the 25,000 square kilometers here, it's a little bit different everywhere you go.

And they say you need to be population-centric. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to base with the population.

It means you have to keep the enemy away from them. There's a variety of different ways of doing that.

You can interdict the border. You can position yourself in between the enemy and the populace. You can -- depending on what phase of the operation you're in, you can develop the Afghan security forces to take the bulk of it, like we have done mostly in Nangarhar here. The Afghan security forces do the vast bulk of the security operations. And we back them up and enable them.

So it is very different in each place. The biggest thing I've learned here is that the people here, after 30 years, they're not buying what I think the enemy is trying to sell them, as long as you give them a little hope. And for the vast bulk of the population here in our region, you have good water and rivers. You have good roads.

You have a reasonable amount of security and governance, where the bulk of the 3.5 million people are. And because of that, they're not willing to let the enemy operate in their areas. And that is key. You get over that step. And then the next step to work on is, how do you build their faith in their government and their security forces that it's going to stay that way? And that's hard here because for 30 years, they haven't had that faith.

So now they've got hope for the future. We've got to build on the faith that they have, in their government, to work on it. In some ways, this area might be a little unique. And that's the key thing is, you've got to recognize, every area is going to be a little bit unique.

One of the most important lessons of Gen. Petraeus' 2006 U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24 is that the nature of insurgencies not only varies from country to country, they vary from village to village. Iraq was mostly a war in urban areas, cities and towns. Afghanistan is fought in the countryside. The particulars of what worked in Iraq won't work in Afghanistan, if for no other reason than that we didn't do the same thing in all parts of Iraq.

Indeed one of the authors of the surge itself, Frederick Kagan, discussed the similarities and differences between the two countries in a February article that appeared in The Weekly Standard.

We've seen in the news recently complains from Afghans that U.S. airstrikes were killing too many civilians. This last exchange that we'll cover centers on that issue:

Q Colonel, it's Luis Martinez with ABC News. There is discussion about changing the emphasis or the use of air strikes in tactical situations in Afghanistan. Can you discuss how that might have impacted your operations? Because obviously, that's a situation with a tactical commander who has to make that judgment call when he feels he may have to be overrun -- which I think is what they're leaning towards right now, that the issue of air strikes would be limited to only when troops would be overrun. Could you discuss that, sir?

COL. SPISZER: Yeah, I think that in air strikes and other operations and the current emphasis from the new COM-ISAF is -- I think it's just entirely in line with what we have to do. We have to show restraint. We have to ensure that we do everything we can to defeat the enemy, protect the innocent and/or allow our soldiers to protect themselves. And there is definitely a balance in there.

And I don't think it's going to change much the way operations are done in this region because, generally speaking, where we have used air strikes and where we are generally fighting the enemy is not in the vicinity of most of the populated areas. It ends up being further into the mountains. We have -- we've created some space I think where most of the population is safe. And when we do use air strikes -- and it's pretty much we're toe-to-toe with the enemy and it's up in the mountains.

So I don't think it's going to change a lot with how this AO is run and fought and we work the counterinsurgency strategy. It's the right emphasis. It's something that we try and do and we inculcate in all our soldiers, from the lowest private on when he shoots his rifle, all the way up to the leader deciding to drop a bomb, is the element of restraint and the impact it has on the overall campaign.

It's just receiving a well-timed and good emphasis, I think, at this point.

Colonel Spiszer gave a very politically correct response. He's not in a position here to speak freely.

The question, then, is whether these complaints from the Afghans and others are justified. The short answer is that no, they're not, but at least in the short run we're going to have to live with them. As such, reacting like Col Spiszer did in the briefing is the correct and proper thing to do.

The fact is that American and allied forces are more careful now in our use of force than ever before in history. This is right and proper, and we must reject the belacist view (which one sometimes hears from the far right) which says that we should just bomb willy nilly and how dare anyone object. One of the clear lessons of FM 3-24 is that brute force alone will not win a counterinsurgency. And indeed discrimination and proportionality are and must be part of fighting a just war.

The problem now is that Afghan President Hamid Karzai will not or cannot explain to his people that civilian casualties are inevitable. He cannot or will not adequately explain the reasons for the war, sell it if you will, and state why the benefits of victory outweigh the pain of the war.

Civilian populations will accept casualties if the believe that the results will justify the means. From the website of the D-Day Museum says that during the ensuing Battle for Normandy "Between 15,000 and 20,000 French civilians were killed, mainly as a result of Allied bombing." Ouch. Yet the French accepted this as necessary to free themselves from the yoke of Nazi tyranny. Of course we have precision weapons nowadays, but even so, civilian casualties are unavoidable. It would be good if we had a president in Afghanistan who could explain all this. Unfortunately from what I hear Karzai will probably be reelected.

All in all an interesting interview and beneficial to understanding the situation in Afghanistan.