War Is Boring

The commandos came under the cover of darkness. It was mid-February in Laghman province, just east of Kabul in mountainous eastern Afghanistan. A team of U.S. Army Special Forces swept in together with an elite unit of the Afghan police, known as the Provincial Response Company. But this time the target was not a Taliban. This time the Green Berets were helping the Afghans take down one of their own, a government official named Nangyalai.

At 3:00 in the morning on Sunday a 38-year-old U.S. Army staff sergeant reportedly sneaked out of a coalition outpost in the Panjwai district of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, walked at least 500 yards to a cluster of home compounds known as khalats and began forcing open doors. Moving from khalat to khalat, the sergeant allegedly shot and killed at least 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children.

This weekend U.S. Army sergeant, apparently acting alone, reportedly shot and killed at least 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar. There’s nothing I can say about this travesty that Andrew Sullivan doesn’t say better.

Potentially hundreds of bystanders nearly perished when a suspected U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone fired a missile over North Waziristan in Pakistan’s restive northwest near the border with Afghanistan last week.

On Jan. 7, someone strolled into a supply room at Camp Eggers, a coalition base near the U.S. embassy in downtown Kabul, pocketed two sets of car keys and walked out undetected. Sometime over the next 24 hours, the thieves drove away with two black-painted, armored Toyota Land Cruisers belonging to the U.S. Army’s 26th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, a unit that escorts coalition personnel around Kabul.

In one sense, the U.S.-led coalition has itself to blame for the riots and killings that have raged across Afghanistan in the wake of last week’s accidental burning of the Koran by American forces. Too many U.S. troops habitually disrespect their Afghan trainees, according to some of the elite forces who head up those training sessions. And those small, tactical acts of cultural stupidity can lead to a strategic moment, like the one we’re having now.

The official line from the Pentagon is that U.S. forces will still work hand in glove with their Afghan counterparts, even after an Afghan Interior Minister employee murdered two American troops on Saturday. But some elite units are already reducing cooperation with the Afghans until anger over U.S. troops burning the Koran dies down, casting doubts on the Pentagon’s assurances that no change in U.S. strategy is necessary.

Ali Mohamed has a surprise for his U.S. Army advisers. An explosive one. It’s right here in his backpack.

AFGHANISTAN: International Special Operations forces play an important but largely unheralded role in Afghanistan. American Army Rangers, Green Berets and Delta Force, along with Navy SEALs and Air Force specialists work with the best from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and a host of other allied nations to kill and capture insurgents and terrorists. They also train Afghan militia, police and soldiers.

Oklahoma U.S. Rep. Mike Reynolds, a Republican, introduced a bill to reinstate the anti-gay Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy for Oklahoma Guardsmen — a move that House Speaker Kris Steele promptly killed.

Afghan security forces will take over as U.S.-led international troops gradually withdraw from Afghanistan through 2014. At least that’s the plan. Poor leadership could undermine Afghan efforts to secure their own country. “There’s a gross lack of leadership in Afghanistan,” says “Tom,” a U.S. Army Special Forces officer assigned to train Afghan police in Laghman province, east of Kabul.

LAGHMAN, Afghanistan — Coalition forces here have been hit hard in the past year. Bombings and gun battles have killed more than a dozen U.S. troops and wounded around 100 from Task Force Thunderbird, built around the Oklahoma National Guard’s 45th Infantry Brigade.