E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Growing up in a country that has endured almost constant warfare for more than 30 years, many Afghan soldiers have been fighting nearly their entire lives. Their fighting skills are important for their American partners. The performance of the Afghan National Army is key to the eventual withdrawal of American forces, and for the future of a stable Afghanistan.
So the American soldiers at Combat Outpost Nolen welcome the Afghan soldiers here with open arms, hopeful that they'll take some pressure off their shoulders from the intense battle that has raged here since their arrival. Some soldiers go so far as to say the Afghans have a "sixth sense" for finding the homemade bombs, or IED's, that have plagued them throughout their deployment.
As an institution, the Afghan National Army isn't perfect and has a long way to go before it can operate on its own. There are doubts about discipline, training, equipment, motivation, Taliban infiltrators and their ability to follow the counterinsurgency strategy, which requires diplomacy nearly as much as marksmanship.
But at the man-for-man level, it's different, and bravery is not in doubt.
Watching the Americans and Afghans getting to know each other is like watching the arrival of new kids at summer camp. They play volleyball, share food, give each other nicknames and swap war stories. Whether Afghans, who can fight well individually, can be forged into a cohesive fighting unit is the million-dollar question. The results of the Afghan army's past performances are mixed. But stakes are high here in the fight for Kandahar, the biggest city in the south and the Taliban's former headquarters.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has said, "As goes Kandahar, so goes Afghanistan." Over the coming months a major push will be made to bring Kandahar under the control of the Karzai government. The U.S. military is hoping the face of that push will be an Afghan one. The Afghan army is going to have to step up and prove to its partners that it is ready - not only for the fight, but to operate like a professional army.
Editor's note: Associated Press photojournalists Evan Vucci and Rodrigo Abd are Photoblogging for msnbc.com while embedded with U.S. troops stationed at Combat Outpost Nolen, in the volatile Arghandab Valley in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Leave a Comment:
Now I believe our good friends the Yankee GIs are learning a great deal.Encourage the Afghans to take on their own kith and Kin.
But overall I am impressed with the Camaraderie spirit.Keep it up.
Just don't let that ball go over the wall. I thought i had bad neighbors. :P some dark humor for the morning riser. haha.
It is discouraging enough to know that while I don't condone violence, I cannot prevent my taxes from paying the wages of those who cause violence. What's more, many "volunteers" had no other skills, grades or training to attract a living wage in the labor market after high school. Some didn't even get through high school! I have often wondered what would happen to our "volunteer" army if the labor situation and job availability was not so dismal as to make the military attractive to underachievers?
As I understand it, after their tour they can avail themselves to free college tuition, medical care, priority in seeking public sector job, and a host of other perks and benefits. Yet, they want us to wave flags, pat them on the back and babble the gov't lines about who we like/hate/kill/save or otherwise liberate.
Now go ahead - call me a socialist or commie or whatever it is they train you to call me - but you volunteered and you knew how much you would make and you knew soldiers go to war to die. Really, if nobody volunteered there would be no more war. In particular, you would think that would be the most fervent wish of those of the flag wavers who claim to worship the Prince of Peace. Think so? Think again!
So go ahead - call ME crazy. I am proud that I have never spent one moment of my life learning techniques to kill other humans that some clown in camouflage with lots of medals says I should hate!
Jim1000 - Wow do you hear yourself? You sound like the type of person that believes every stereotype out there and you sound like a coward. I have never been in the Military, National Guard, Reserves, etc. but I know enough about the Military to know that not even the vast majority are worshippers of the "Prince of Peace" (your prejudice shines thru with that remark) or without high school credentials - maybe back in the stone age lack of high school education was allowed.
I know for a fact that many OVERachievers join the Military the day after they get their college degree in hand (when they have the world at their feet - not to mention Pat Tillman who had millions at his feet) because they love this great country more than they love their lives. But these are Americans who posess a dimension to their character someone like you is devoid of. I will take your advice and call you something, it won't be a socialist, or a commie. It is a whimp who thinks you have it all figured out but knows nothing.
To say "if nobody volunteered there would be no war" how old are you, 10? If nobody volunteered there would be a 100 % draft (and rightly so) where whimps "clowns" like you would be shaking in those big boy boots while you wet your big boy "camouflage" pants that you aren't man enough to fill.
I hope one day if someone holds a gun to your head demanding your money you do not call the man in uniform (be it local police - usually a prior MP) that has been trained to "kill other humans" plus risk his own life to protect yours. Or if so be sure to let him know how much hate and disdain you spout for his/her very different views than your own.
Any coward can hide behind a screen name and spout inflammatory things about the truely brave heros. Enjoying annonymity while throwing darts at men who have enough guts to show their face(s) and own their words and beliefs.
Why don't you come out of the closet flag hater and post your true name and go a step further; your picture?
Jim...you're not crazy...you have/had a choice just like I did, and you choose to stand behind me and my brothers and sisters and let us do the dirty work that you're not willing to do...to include taking another life if necessary and laying our lives down to defend your ability to bask in all the freedoms you enjoy.
Opinions like yours tend to tick a lot of people off, especially those of us in the military or who've served before. However, you give me a sense of purpose. People like you NEED people like me and my comrades in arms. Reason being, if everyone in the US thought like you...you wouldn't have the right to think at all! Some of us earn our freedoms, while others (yourself) it's given to by the very people you seem to detest so badly.
We all enjoy the benefits that the gov't and taxpayers provide us for serving our country. As with anything there's room for improvement. I can happily tell you that after 7...yes that's right 7 tours in Afghanistan and a total of 13 deployments in 16 years, in 4 years I will enjoy your tax dollars paying my pension and medical bills for the rest of your life.
Thank you for proving my points. You consider violence acceptable and wish bad, violent things to happen to me. One guy wants my name and picture published. Why? Are you threatening me? Another calls me whimp clown.
I think a lot of you like tough talk, violence and killing way too much and you have found a way to get away with sanctioned murder. You pitiful people with testosterone problems need a gang to scream in unison at little old me. Did I strike a nerve?
Real men don't need a chorus of thugs to drive home their points. Real men don't harm living human beings! I'm a real man and I need no one backing me up when I say I am certain that killing is wrong and rarely justified, but always used as a first resort - invariably by the biggest SOB in the valley.
Killing is wrong. Your words fall heavy and lifeless like the humans you kill. Let's just hope your justifiable murder for hire gig doesn't escalate until you and your blood thirsty generals do in the very earth itself. Then, the day the nukes blow us all away, I am sure you will be confident that you spoke and acted in the best interest of the future generations that never had a chance to even exist.
Incidently, the last justifiable war was WWII and I would have gladly served and died ----- for a reason. Since then, you and your "comrades in arms" have been continually used by a military industrial complex that is fueled by blood and money. Or was Gen. Eisenhower a whimp-clown too when he warned us regarding the very same arrangements you promote and support as your life's mission!
In the dark of the night in the last days of your life, when you dogs of war try to reconcile your "heaven quest" with your "life's bloody work", may you find no peace or forgiveness for the damage, destruction and carnage you have wrought. May the faces of the victims haunt you until the last second of your existence! And you better hope to hell that your god was just joking about that "Thou shall not kill" thing!
Jim - Kim here. None of your points got proved, you just come across sounding like all your toes got stepped on. I am not a testerone filled "thug," just a little ol' lady who you whined picked on lil' ol you and organized a gang against poor lil' ol you. Consistent with the "whimp" that I called you earlier. I will call you a new name; Hypocrite. You think you can call soldiers wearing camoflauge "clowns" but cry foul when I counter you.
I think your anger has confused your thinking. I am the Gal, not Guy who called for you to stop hiding behind your screen name and you wrongly assume it is to threaten you physically and twist that into a confirmation that I live by the sword and am blood thirsty. Your overreaction makes you look pathetic.
You rail about "justifiable murder for hire" and "sanctioned" killing. Yet you claim you would "kill" in WW11.
I don't "hope to hell" nothing about my God. Murder is wrong. Killing is self-defense.
You look down your nose at modern day soldiers and insult them as murderers yet concede you would do the same thing if it were only back in WW11. What an ultimate hypocrite! You sound like you have taken on the persona of God and judge mankind. If you approve the war (WW11) killing is OK. If not it is murder.
Go wax philisophical somewhere else! I am entitled to my opinion and I am entitled to call you any name I choose, especially if you have started the name calling. You come across as an arrogant narcissist.
Good job Kim! :)
Thanks Patriot.
These type of haters think they own the higher moral ground by quoting "thou shalt not kill," then twisting it around and throwing it back in peoples faces. In actuality the original Hebrew translates this literally as "thou shalt not murder," which got lost in translation over the centuries. There is a big moral difference in the two acts.
Jim1000
You said to wait until the nukes blow us away? and if we didn't volunteer, we wouldn't have war?
Jim, if we didn't have volunteers(or marines, soldiers, seamen, pilots etc. as I like to call them) then THAT is when you would have the nukes blow us away.
These troops are keeping the great disasters from happening to us. You should be thankful, let alone at least a little grateful. I'm not saying that you have to be patriotic, but remember, the people trying to kill us are not trying to kill us because we live in America. They are trying to kill us because we have different views in culture/religion. And are viewed evil because of that.
Without protection, nothing can survive, and our troops are our protection.
Here's a question jimclown1000...Are you disgusted enough with America's killing that you have packed your belongings to leave? Perhaps you should move to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran or Pakistan and disclose how unjust all the killing is and see where it gets you there. I bet by the same God that you say we should all hope to hell for that you'd have a different outlook on all those men and women in camouflage when you are screaming for one of them to protect you because in those countries, they don't issue stale statements and name calling...they kill you and they could care less how wrong you think killing is. Would you justify killing if the terrorists were knocking on your door? If you remember correctly, they knocked on America's door on September 11 and we answered. Where were you? Under the bed or hiding in the closet? Perhaps you were here degrading an American soldier that was killed in a terrorist bombing, maybe the Yemen incident? Let me guess, you were ranting about how everyone at the World Trade Center was just asking to be killed because they showed up for work on that fateful day. If there is truly any disgust with you, it should be toward yourself for even calling yourself an American. Membership in this country comes with a price and be happy that someone else is paying it for you!
How about I just call you dumbass?
The "CLOWN" you talk about ( and that's all we agree on) is obama with his IGNORANT ROE. So doubt wewill win because obammy doesn't want to "OFFEND" his mu slime cousins!!
John Novak
Nam Vet
Nov67-Jul69
I support our troops 100%. What I don't support, is Bush lying to start this war. Bush lied and no one did anything about it. They just let him lie and get away with it. Now look at all the troops who have died because of it. It's sad to see this corrupt country and people get away with lying. Bush can go to HELL!
JIM1000 you have nothng to be proud of you use the benefits that many great americans died for. Do you speak Japanese or German? because that is what you would be speaking if american troops had not stepped forward. You are to be pittied more then any thing because you do not have the guts to serve.
I am a retired disabled vietnam vet a volinteer who had brains enough after I retired to eventually get a master mariners licence. And I used it for twenty years on the ocean.
What have you ever done. Hurray for our men and women in the service, by the way
My wife was a Marine our son navy my brother AF my grandson Army Granddaughter marines son in law retire navy Master chief Nukes, and another grandson AF>
Wave that flag and shoot those bastards who we are trained to hate.
So sorry you all are going to hell via the family plan! Is there anyone in your family man enough to reject violence?
Oldfe, thank you for your service in Viet Nam and for your family's service. I too come from a long line of patriotic and proud servicemen and women.
No. You signed up. You were not drafted like I was. Live with it. You are in a war risking your lives for the military-industrial complex, helping to make people rich. Explain to me how your being there does anything for anyone's safety here in the states?
Writing or even talking to our corporate pimp elected officials is a waste of time, as they are getting rich on you too.
America! Love it or leave it. Yes, we do not live in a perfect society but we do have the freedom to live. If freedom is too much for some, then by all means, LEAVE. If you don't like the government, then change it. Again, another free privilege to vote some one out. I served 24 years in the military and I realize there are two sides to any argument, but don't cry about it until you have or will be the solution.
For all those who have served and are serving, thank you. Thank you for keeping us safe and I regret having to say this behind a screen and not being able to personally shake your hands and say thanks. I have nothing to say to those who are ignorant. Words cannot express my disbelief at some of the things these people say. Words cannot express how deeply appreciative I am towards our service members. Thank you so much.