"‘Inside attack’ by Afghan kills a US general" by Matthew Rosenberg and Helene Cooper | New York Times August 06, 2014
KABUL — For the first time since Vietnam, a US Army general was killed in an overseas conflict Tuesday when an Afghan soldier opened fire on senior American officers at a military training academy.
The slain officer, Major General Harold J. Greene, was the highest-ranking member of the NATO-led coalition killed in the Afghanistan war, and his death punctuated the problems vexing the Americans as they attempt to wind down the 13-year-old conflict, contending with a political crisis that has threatened to splinter the Afghan government and leave it unable to fend off the Taliban.
Related: Obama Commits More Troops to Afghanistan
That is all he can do, and I'm with him.
I've turned around on it all, readers. The U.S. should expand its occupational footprint once again. We simply can't leave the places to which we have brought such chaos. If anything it will hasten the fall of the AmeriKan Empire, and then the world can breathe a sigh of relief.
The general was among a group of senior US and Afghan officers making a routine visit to Afghanistan’s premier military academy on the outskirts of Kabul when an Afghan soldier sprayed the officers with bullets from the window of a nearby building, hitting at least 15 before he was killed.
Though US officials said Greene was not believed to have been specifically targeted, his violent death at the hands of an Afghan soldier, not an insurgent, was a reminder of the dangers faced by even the highest-ranking — and best protected — officers in Afghanistan.
Driving home the threat, an Afghan police officer opened fire on US soldiers visiting the governor of Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan soon after the shooting at the military academy, Afghan and coalition officials said. The policeman was fatally shot; none of the Americans were wounded.
There was no indication that the attackers were members of the Taliban or that their acts were coordinated. The insurgents did not claim the attackers as their own, instead hailing them as hero soldiers. US officials said they had no reason to suspect the gunman at the military academy was anything but an ordinary Afghan soldier whose motivations remained a mystery.
But scores of these so-called insider attacks have plagued the US military in recent years, and Afghan and US commanders believe the vast majority have been carried out by Afghan soldiers and police alienated and angered by the protracted war in their country and by the corrupt and ineffectual government that the United States has left in place. Few of the attacks are believed to have been the result of coordinated Taliban plots.
It's something still worth fighting for, isn't it?
Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, maintained Tuesday that the insider attack, the first in months, would not change the Obama administration’s plans to leave a residual force in Afghanistan after most US forces are withdrawn at the end of the year and the NATO combat mission here formally concludes.
Then we aren't really leaving so why keep doing this?
Kirby emphasized the progress that Afghan forces had made in recent years, citing as examples their role in limiting violence in the presidential election in April and the June runoff vote.
That makes one wonder who really is behind violence, and I guess more civilian dead this year is progress!
“They have had a good year. Securing not one, but two, national elections and stopping or minimizing the impact of countless numbers of attacks throughout the country — even in Kabul,” he said.
Yet the shooting was a blunt reminder that discipline and vetting remain a challenge, and rogue Afghan soldiers and policemen remain a threat, despite a sharp drop in insider attacks since 2012, when the violence peaked and dozens of coalition service members were killed by Afghan counterparts.
I'm sure the residual force loves seeing that.
With foreign troops having largely ceded their front-line role to Afghan forces in the past two years, training and advising Afghans is one of the few crucial roles still played here by the coalition.
Whatever.
Greene, 55, was one of the most senior officers overseeing the transition from a war led and fought by foreign troops to one conducted by Afghan forces.
His specialty was logistics — he was a longtime acquisitions officer — and he was dispatched to Afghanistan to help the Afghan military address one of its most potentially debilitating weaknesses: inability to manage soldiers and weaponry.
Greene had spent time at US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass.
Former senator Scott Brown hailed Greene as “someone I respected greatly, and it makes me angry that he was killed by someone suspected of being a member of the Afghan military. General Greene was a good man, a great leader and a mentor to me and all who knew him. His death is a reminder that conditions remain very tenuous in Afghanistan, and that the Taliban has sympathizers everywhere and still poses a very real threat.”
Haven't seen him in my Globe in a while.
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"General’s killing underlines continuing Afghan tensions; Officials remain unclear about motive for attack" by Pamela Constable | Washington Post August 07, 2014
KABUL — Major General Harold Greene, the highest-ranking US military officer killed in a war zone in four decades, died not at the hand of a sworn enemy but from a burst of gunfire by a soldier in an allied army who had been largely paid, trained, and equipped with American and NATO support.
Vietnamization didn't work; why would this?
It will probably never be known what led the shooter, identified as a man in his 20s, to hide in a bathroom at a military training base near the capital Tuesday, then emerge and open fire on a delegation of visiting American and European military officers, before being shot dead himself.
It was also unclear what provoked two other ‘‘insider attacks’’ this week: a firefight Tuesday between an Afghan police guard and NATO troops near the governor’s office in southern Paktia province, and an attack Wednesday in Uruzgan province in which an Afghan police officer poisoned his colleagues’ food and then shot at least seven of them before fleeing in a police truck, officials said.
Just yesterday the NYT was telling me insider attacks were down. Weird how they flat-up just as the U.S. is almost out the door, huh?
But the troubled 11-year history of the post-Taliban Afghan security forces, including the Afghan army, offers an ample range of possible explanations for such deeply disturbing incidents, whether aimed at Afghan cohorts or foreign military dignitaries.
I'm not interested in WaPo propaganda, cover story, or speculation. Sorry.
The army, the most professional and popular of the new defense forces, has drawn recruits from across the country who have been expected to replace local and ethnic loyalties with adherence to a national government and its defense. The aim has been to forge an army of about 80,000 men and officers who could be weaned from foreign tutelage by now and prepared to take on the Taliban alone, then gradually grow to as many as 120,000 troops.
From the beginning, however, the project has been plagued with problems. Soldiers have gone AWOL and deserted in high numbers. Ethnic imbalances between officers and troops have been sources of envy and friction. Equipment has been old and expensive to replace.
Perhaps most problematic, the American mentors who have ‘‘embedded’’ with Afghan units were slow to arrive, and Afghan fighting traditions — honed over decades of anti-Soviet guerrilla combat and civil war — have been both more brutal and egalitarian than the orderly American ethos of haircuts and salutes.
Oh, puke.
In a 2009 report on the state of the Afghan army, the Rand Corp. and the Royal Danish Defense College found that although steady improvements were being made in professional skills and combat readiness, the army was still very much a ‘‘work in progress’’ and would need continued international support for the foreseeable future. Despite significant gains in some areas, the report said, ‘‘operational effectiveness remains very much in the balance.’’
But my military commander told me progress and.... sigh. Been told for years that the Afghans have been taking the lead, too.
Five years later, some problems have eased, but others have arisen. American military officials report that Afghan troops participate in all combat operations against the Taliban and lead at least half of them. The domestic popularity of the force has grown, pay has increased, and desertions have shrunk. But reports of high-level corruption have soured morale below, and enthusiasm for the fight has faltered as Taliban insurgents have become better armed and more rapacious.
Translation: We're LOSING!
One of the most vexing developments has been the spread of insider attacks, in which Afghan personnel have opened fire on their foreign military counterparts. The phenomenon became noticeable in 2008 and surged for the next several years. In 2012, there were 60 such attacks, including the fatal shooting of two American advisers by a government worker inside the Interior Ministry. By June of this year, 87 insider attacks had killed 142 coalition troops, according to the Long War Journal, an online publication focused on counterterrorism and Islamic radicalism.
The motives behind these attacks have ranged widely. In some cases, insurgents infiltrated the services and waited for the chance to attack foreign troops. In others, Afghan soldiers and police attacked their American trainers after taking offense at certain orders or perceived insults. Some have been angered by civilian bombings or reports of Korans being burned at US bases. Others have professed Taliban sympathies or railed at US foreign policy in the Islamic world.
The fatal attack Tuesday was an embarrassment to the Afghan military leadership, because it occurred inside the Afghan equivalent of the US Military Academy at West Point, and was aimed at a Western VIP delegation that had come to assess the army’s progress in being able to defend the nation as Western forces prepare to leave.
Yeah, it's embarrassing when the government and its mouthpiece media are caught telling whoppers.
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Also see: Natick mourns Army Major General Harold J. Greene, killed in Afghanistan insider attack
Didn't someone once say live by the sword,....
NEXT DAY UPDATE: John Kerry urges Afghans to end election dispute
Greene already an afterthought?
