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Lessons Learned

By lex, on August 10th, 2009

A former Marine officer applies Ramadi lessons learned to the fight for Afghanistan – “Step one is showing up.”

We’d better hurry up.

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August 10th, 2009 | Tags: , | Category: afghanistan, GWOT

5 comments to Lessons Learned

  • xformed
    August 10, 2009 at 6:09 pm

    Good reading. And sorta OT on LL: I just was reading back in a blog I found and there was a long article on the V-22. Might be good fodder round these parts, since StormBringer looks like a newbie with some good stuff. With all the expertise and flight hours on this blog, I suspect the discussion wil lget very interesting, too.

  • virgil xenophon
    August 10, 2009 at 6:34 pm

    I guess my comments about the Tribes that I made down-thread under “Still Seriously Dead” would apply here equally–if not better–as well.

  • Dust
    August 10, 2009 at 8:22 pm

    The Marine Captain should be careful with the facts before giving the perception that the Pennslyvania National Guard heavy brigade was derelict in doing its mission in Ramadi in ’05 and ’06. I find the captain’s assertion disingenuous at worst and misinformed at best.

    One of those ARNG heavy task forces was RIP’d by elements of 6 different battalions to cover the same area with the same mission, a significant disproportion in relative combat power between the outgoing and the incoming units. It was a case of too many bad guys in one area and insufficent force to clean them out. The insinuation the Marine Captain makes that these soldiers refused to engage the AQI in Ramadi rhymes with bullshit.

    Tomorrow, I am going to share his piece with several officers, company commanders, platoon leaders, and TF primary staff officers, and NCOS who were there, including one of the heavy task force commanders. I am sure they will have some strong opinions of the Marine junior officer’s accessment of their performance. That ARNG Brigade bled plenty in the performance of their duty. And they bled with and for their active component Marine brothers in that AOR. They never balked at rolling up AQI and insurgents when it was their AOR right up to the point to the TOA. The son of one of my best friends was killed trying move across multiple canals, out of sector, to get his mounted patrol to a downed Marine Cobra crew. Marines died with these Guardsmen too.
    Another fact, it was one of the ARNG task forces that first forged an alliance with one of the Sunni tribes in Ramadi. Some of theise tribal sheiks were brought over to visit Washington by the State Dept. I have met the Sheik here in the US as he asked to visit the former TF commander and soldiers in their home state and it was granted. The captain better get the facts before slandering someone’s reputation.

  • Daly
    August 13, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    I’m pretty sure I never slandered the performance of our Guardsmen in Ramadi. I’m simply pointing out the fact that the southern side of the city had no coalition presence: affording the enemy a safe haven. We also exerted no control over southern Ramadi during this time, not by choice, but because of a lack of comabt power.

  • Weekend Mashup—August 21 to 23 | Steven Pressfield Online
    May 26, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    [...] people on a one-on-one basis. As Tom Daly wrote in his guest post “Lessons from Ramadi”—which Neptunus Lex also pointed out to his readers (Thanks, Lex!)—“step one is showing [...]
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