{"id":32247,"date":"2012-10-04T12:09:18","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T16:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32247"},"modified":"2012-10-04T13:20:59","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T17:20:59","slug":"army-guy-shows-up-at-a-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32247","title":{"rendered":"Army guy shows up at a war"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Stars & Stripes<\/a> writes about Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler who visited and took questions from the members of the 3rd Stryker Bridgade, 2nd Infantry Division in Zangabad, Afghanistan. the soldiers seemed as concerned as the rest of us about being shot by their “allies” in the Afghanistan National Army and the Afghanistan National Police, but Chandler was a bit dismissive of their concerns;<\/p>\n

\u201cWith all the green on blues, why are we still doing joint patrols (with Afghan troops)?\u201d one soldier asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would assume we are still doing it because that\u2019s what command tells you,\u201d Chandler said. \u201cWhat should we do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot patrol with the Afghanis (sic),\u201d the soldier said.<\/p>\n

As the Army\u2019s top enlisted soldiers, matters of morale are at the heart of Chandler\u2019s job and nothing has been more deflating to troops than the prospect of being shot in the back by their supposed allies.<\/p>\n

Another Zangabad soldier voiced concerns the attacks were coming on orders from up high.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs Big Army doing any investigation to see if this is deliberate within the (Afghan National Army) command?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Chandler acknowledged the attacks are a dire threat and said the Pentagon has been sending additional intelligence and criminal investigation experts to Afghanistan to help stop the attacks. With international combat troops set to leave at the end of 2014, giving way to a smaller advisory force, trust between the coalition and the Afghan security forces is crucial.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall there is a sense of a lack of trust, but you\u2019ve got to rebuild that relationship and I have a lot of confidence in these guys,\u201d Chandler said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, if I didn’t have to go out on patrol with them, I’d say I have confidence with “these guys”, too. <\/p>\n

Speaking of green-on-blue “insider” attacks, maybe someone can ask the good Sergeant Major why it took five days to release the name of Sergeant First Class Daniel Metcalf<\/a>, that soldier who was killed in the incident back on September 29th<\/a> which we discussed. yeah, it just went up this morning. Names of 3 soldiers who were killed<\/a> on October 1st were released yesterday. And how’s that investigation going into whether insurgents instigated that particular September 29th incident?<\/p>\n

The article doesn’t say whether he did or not, but I hope Chandler lectured the troops on how tattoos reduce their combat effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Updated: I guess they’d have to release SFC Metcalf’s name today since it’s also the day of his funeral<\/a>. I guess he was a homeboy, too. I lived in Macedon for awhile and began kindergarten there a few years back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Stars & Stripes writes about Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler who visited and … Army guy shows up at a war<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32247","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}