{"id":31750,"date":"2012-08-25T09:10:18","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T13:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=31750"},"modified":"2012-08-25T09:10:18","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T13:10:18","slug":"my-views-on-afghanistan-roes-losing-a-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31750","title":{"rendered":"My Views on Afghanistan, ROE’s, & Losing A War"},"content":{"rendered":"

So most of the time, I write made up and mostly hilarious stories at The Duffel Blog<\/a>, but occasionally, I will take some time to write something serious. I don’t normally toot my own horn over here but since Jonn is away and won’t be posting it for me, I must break my own rule.<\/p>\n

Published at Business Insider, “MARINE: Strict Rules Of Engagement Are Killing More Americans Than Enemy In This Lost War<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

When I returned and transitioned to a role as an infantry instructor in 2006, my peers\u2014who only had deployed to Iraq\u2014quipped that I was part of the \u201cforgotten war.\u201d<\/p>\n

And where are we today?<\/p>\n

Six years after hearing those jokes, the war is forgotten by everyone except the men and women who continue to fight it. My mostly quiet wartime memory of 2005 has exploded into a battlefield of heavy combat with the casualties to go along with it.<\/p>\n

And yet all the blood, destruction\u2014all the efforts of our military\u2014cannot change the unfortunate and highly probable outcome that our 2014 exit from Afghanistan will be marked as a failure.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to believe it, but we are losing this war.<\/p>\n

Each day our soldiers and Marines leave the wire, only to face increasing attacks from a determined enemy. An insurgency that continues to enjoy support\u2014even from inside a corrupt government in Kabul as well as Islamabad.<\/p>\n

And they don\u2019t just face Taliban AK-47s and improvised explosives. They also continue to face the guns of their supposed allies, Afghan National Army and Police forces, who have killed over 30 U.S. military personnel just this year alone.<\/p>\n

As we try to win hearts and minds, the Taliban uses fear\u2014and in a culture of tribalism and tradition, it is fear that works.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can continue reading the whole thing here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So most of the time, I write made up and mostly hilarious stories at The Duffel … My Views on Afghanistan, ROE’s, & Losing A War<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues","category-war-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}